| Debunking the Drones | | Print | |
| 07/29/07 | |
 By: The Paranormal Report Staff Recent sightings of the so-called 'Drones' has prompted widespread speculation on internet forums and a flurry of news reports from within the UFO community from websites and in major media outlets. Very clear photographs of the drones have reportedly come from multiple different sources, centering around the Lake Tahoe area allegedly going as far back as 1995, but with no proof to that effect. The drones appear in several different configurations, normally characterized by a large hair-like array on top, and what appear to be large booms protruding from the sides of the craft, complete with strange writing on the exterior. The drones are a hoax. This case is reminiscent of the Billy Meier hoaxed photographs and film footage. There is no substantial proof or credibility offered in either case, and these photographs upon first glance are even more phony in general appearance than the majority of Meier's. For instance, the drone craft appears similar to a ceiling fan with an eggbeater on top, not very convincing even to the the earnest UFO believer when compared to past, more legitimate, mass sightings of black triangles and discs. We live in the post-Photoshop world, which has proven painful for the UFO field. Anyone can hoax a UFO photograph with knowledge of Photoshop, basic camera work and editing, or CGI movie making abilities. It is imperative in light of these techniques to keep an objective viewpoint when analyzing photographs and video footage of UFO's. At the Paranormal report, we certainly believe that some UFO's appear to represent a superior intelligence of unknown, perhaps extraterrestrial origin, but this does not seem to be the case with the drone UFO's. MUFON field investigators have already very convincingly debunked the photographs as being CGI generated, but it seems to be deeper than just a good old fashioned hoax. The case has been linked to the CARET (Commercial Applications Research for Extra-terrestrial Technology) documents that have been surfacing recently from an anonymous source named 'Isaac'. Without getting into the problems inherent in anonymous sources releasing unverified documents, even this source claims that he is not familiar with the craft as a whole, but only sees similarities in the style of writing on the drone aircraft to that which he claims to have worked with in the 1980's. This is not silver bullet cooroboration of evidence as some have claimed, it is simply an association about how the writing looks from an anonymous releaser of unproven, very new and not yet well scrutinized documents. But even then, the writing itself is questionable. There is something strangely familiar about it, linear characters that bear a very striking resemblance to earth writing. It is very difficult to get into the heads of aliens, and see how they would write their language, if they have one. UFO abduction cases frequently point out that the aliens communicate through some psychic ability, which may preclude any need for writing at all. Further, an alien species would be so drastically different from us, by the virtue of being from another planet, that they likely may not have developed linear writing at all. The very drastic differences in writing on earth illustrates this, there are very glaring differences between the pictoral-based heiroglyphs of the Maya and Egyptians, the dizzying array of characters furnished by the Chinese and the latin alphabet that this article is written in. But thats just humans, imagine the differences that may be found among extraterrestrial writing. From what we do know about potential alien writing comes from Roswell, and the report of that writing claimed that it looked like heirglyphs. The writing on the drones does not, it looks like letters. The photographs themselves seem to defy the "laws" of photography. Firstly, if you've ever taken a photograph of a bird or a Frisbee in the sky, the object tends to come out as a dark silhouette. The person who released the photographs provided themselves with a caveat for this: They were all taken by a professional photographer. Assuming this professional knew what they were doing, how does one light the bottom of a flying aircraft in order to photograph it against a lit sky? Professional or not, its a tough sell that the lighting would be just so as to capture multiple different angles of the craft with such high quality. Further, the pixel density of the object does not appear to be the same as the rest of the photograph in at least one of the pictures.
Currently, Bungie's Halo 3 seems to be engaged in an elaborate viral marketing ploy involving symbols and fake websites one of which appears, on its face to be paranormal related. Here is one of those sites: http://206.16.223.63/evidence.html At the bottom of the site, a mysterious symbol reported to be a rock painting from Tanzania appears and then a link to another website where it is claimed that the same symbol can be seen. This second site is prominently displayed with the Xbox and Bungie themes. Also marked prominently with the logos is this site, obviously related and complete with the same symbol: Which mimics the story, claiming that an African man saw characters from Halo landing, he sees a symbol, the same from the above website, and he paints it on a rock. This symbol has been appearing on everything from viral emails from Microsoft to Circuit City ads, and the avatar of a mysterious poster on the Bungie.net forums known as Adjutant Reflex that has been releasing leads for the viral marketing plan. A poster named Asher has been spreading this site around: http://hushedcasket.com/node/2060 This website is related to the mysterious, and obviously Microsoft contrived Adjutant Reflex. Another site has been linked by Halo fanatics to this viral marketing plan through a Microsoft email. It can be seen here: A close look at the source code of this site reveals another reference to a hidden image, which can be seen here: It appears to be part of a drone. It may also be no coincidence that the JPG title is AR, as in Adjutant Reflex. A whois on this site reveals the name Matt Asher, again. Matt Asher appears to be the owner of the web company, Top Cola, which is designing these sites. But it gets worse. CARET itself also happens to be an organization funded by Bill Gates, like Halo III. It can be seen here: http://caret.iste.org/ More articles tying some of this together can be found at IGN, at these sites: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/796/796753p1.html http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=77896 In short, a large segment of the UFO community may have been had by an ingenious marketing ploy for Halo III. Ultimately, this will be yet another damaging case for the credibility of the field of UFOlogy. The subject matter lends itself to claims with no credibility, and those claims have progressively created an atmosphere where careful, legitimate investigation like that done by MUFON is undermined by hoaxes and wild claims that have no evidence whatsoever. In this atmosphere, the field has progressively become both accepted, and heavily ridiculed in the public eye. Its difficult for scientists, the mainstream media, and everyday people to accept that this phenomena really is occuring when they are mired by hoaxes like that of the drones, which may now be done at a commercial level with the resources of a multinational corporation. One positive aspect of the drone affair is a lesson that should be well learned by those interested in the field of UFO's. Who's research to trust, and who's not to. Be objective and critical, only then will you find the really unexplainable UFO cases. UPDATE!! At the request of Linda Moulton Howe, reporter and editor of www.earthfiles.com, we are reproducing her collection of eyewitness accounts of the drone aircraft as a counterpoint to our article. "Background by Linda Moulton Howe, Reporter and Editor, Earthfiles.com: The first still images of the dragonfly-shaped "drones" in 2007 were dated May 5, from Lake Tahoe, and May 6, from the Bakersfield, California region. Those images were first sent by the alleged respective photographers to UFOcasebook.com and to Lex, webmaster of the Coast to Coast AM website. Lex and I talked about the images and he put me in touch with Chad, the Bakersfield photographer. Subsequently, eyewitnesses to such a dragonfly-shaped aerial "drone" have included one as far back as 1987 in a hangar at Barksdale AFB, Louisiana. Web-distributed CGI demonstrations were made AFTER the first May 5 and May 6 dragonfly "drone" images appeared from Lake Tahoe and the Bakersfield region, using the Chad images. For reference, here is a list of eyewitnesses over a 20-year-long time line from 1987 to 2007 (regardless of the CGI/Photoshop/viral video arguments).
Related Items:How many aliens do we have?Life on Mars? A brief overview Mystery of the Black Triangle Shape-Shifting UFOs The CARET Documents, another H               |
