May 17, 2021 – Media coverage of UFOs in the lead-up to the release of the Department of Defense’s report on what they are now calling UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena), is intensifying.
Links to newscasts are being regularly posted to the John E. Mack Facebook page. Another Facebook page that is updated (often within hours of a newscast being released) is that of Leslie Kean, the co-author (with Ralph Blumenthal) of the 2017 and 2020 New York Times articles (link, link, link) at the start of this entire process.
A couple highlights: 60 Minutes (May 16) | Anderson Cooper 360° (May 18)
Subscribers to The Washington Post and The New York Times have also been afforded a good selection of articles and editorials on the subject in the past couple months; see for example “We Need To Talk About UFOs Again” by Dan Drezner, in which he notes that if UAPs are “extraterrestrials actively observing us…they seem to be doing so in a way that is not destructive,” and questions whether these aliens would be as eradicative as humans:
“The assumption is that powerful, technologically advanced civilizations will act in a destructive manner. That is possible, but perhaps civilizations that reward destructive entrepreneurship are less likely to generate the technological wherewithal for interstellar travel. And if those UAPs are ETs, maybe there is more hope for interstellar relations than either scientists or science fiction envision.”
— Dan Drezner, “We Need To Talk About UFOs Again”, Washington Post, April 1, 2021
Sample of CNN Newsroom coverage from May 17, 2021:
Alisyn Camerota (CNN): …from all of your reporting, how do we explain that Navy pilots keep seeing things without wings, without propulsion, that can defy all of the laws [of physics] … is it plausible that this could be from Russia or China, that they would have technology that is that many light-years ahead of the United States?
Ralph Blumenthal (guest): Extremely unlikely. Sources that we talked to at The New York Times say they cannot imagine that an Earthly adversary has this advanced technology. And as for our own technology showing up there, it’s even more unlikely that we would risk accidents or disclosure of our secrets – if they are our secrets – in our own airspace. So everything points to an extraterrestrial explanation, but of course no one wants to say that because it’s so outlandish and so unprovable that they’re sticking with what they know, which is that these things are unidentified and they’re real. But beyond that, no one knows. …
Sample of Russell Brand commentary from May 19, 2021:
RUSSELL BRAND: With the pandemic and the complications that have come from it, people are saying “well, how can we ever go back to normal again? What is normal now?”.
As a father of young children and a person that’s always been suspicious of power and authority, I am reflecting on how the world could be organized differently – more fairly. My sense is that in certain areas like comfort and consuming we need to be ready to compromise and change. But we might be able to re-engage once more with [a] sense of community.
We might be able to live together tribally, communally, connected to nature and one another with the new knowledge that what’s happening on Earth is special and magnificent but not unique – there is life elsewhere, there are different layers to reality, there are different technological solutions outside of the limitations of what human beings previously thought of as possible.
And [what of] our new kings, the tech billionaires and their financial heft and might, which is being transposed into ideological might? I.e., “Well, we’ve built this company and that company, so we should be in charge of the future”.
Well no, not necessarily! Not if there are extraterrestrial intelligences that we’re interacting with which are inconceivably advanced. They’re at a point that we’re not going to see in 5, 10, 20, 30 lifetimes, [in which] people are manipulating gravity, and potentially manipulating time, and operating not only in this dimension in ways that we can’t conceive of but potentially outside of this dimension. … The philosophical connotations of an advanced technological species interacting with the Earth is by its nature paradigm shifting. It opens up new potentials of reality. It means we can look at established authority and established order with new eyes, with the possibility of real change.
Sample of commentary by comedian, actress, and syndicated columnist Pam Stone:
“Unless each pilot is wrong, and the Pentagon is wrong and these things have all simply been bugs in the system or actual bugs on the camera lens, the only other possibility appears to be visitors from ‘a galaxy far, far away.’ It’s not that hard to believe. Think how technologically advanced we’ve come in 100 years. My parents lived from the very beginning of aviation to man on the moon and the Space Shuttle. Imagine what we’ll be capable of in the next 100 years — if we don’t kill ourselves, first. And maybe that’s why we’re being visited, to prevent just that. If they mean to do us harm, with their technology, they could have easily neutralized us by now. And really, if you think about it, they’ve already brought us a bit of hope.”
— Pam Stone, “Is intelligent life visiting our planet?”, Index-Journal, May 30, 2021
Commentary in GQ magazine, UK edition, by editor Charlie Burton, May 18, 2021:
“The Pentagon says UFOs are real. So why do we still dismiss them as a joke?”
CNN interview with Luis Elizondo, former Director of AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program), May 23, 2021: CNN The Lead (6 min excerpt)
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Historical perspective from The Debrief, April 15, 2001:
 “Strange balls of light, impervious to machine-gun fire” were seen by pilots throughout the second world war. “No one ever managed to put forward an explanation that stood the test of time. The Foo Fighters are as much a mystery to today’s researchers as they were to the intelligence officials of 1944.”
“Today’s Pilots Encounters with UAP are Nothing New” by Graeme Rendal
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The Believer is the true story of Dr. John Mack, the eminent Harvard psychiatrist who risked his career to investigate the phenomenon of human encounters with aliens and to give credibility to the stupefying tales shared by people who were utterly convinced they had happened.
June 25, 2021 — The Department of Defense report on UAPs (UFOs) has been released.
Ralph Blumenthal was an award-winning reporter for the New York Times. He coauthored the Times article in 2017 that broke the news of a secret Pentagon unit investigating UFOs, and he is the author of four nonfiction books including Miracle at Sing Sing: How One Man Transformed the Lives of America’s Most Dangerous Prisoners. A distinguished lecturer at Baruch College, he lives in New York City.
