From: Sean Jones <tedric@tedric.demon.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 22:35:32 +0100
Fwd Date: Thu, 01 Jul 1999 00:48:55 -0400
Subject: UK-UFO-Network Ezine 102 Part 2
______ _______ ______
------ / / // ____// /---------------------------------------
U K / / // ___/ / / / 29th June 1999
/ / // / / / / N E T W O R K part 2 - Issue 102
--- (_____//__/ (_____/------------------------------------------
The United Kingdom UFO Network - a free electronic magazine with
subscribers in 58 countries.
This issue comes in 3 parts. If any part is missing please mail:
ufo@holodeck.demon.co.uk giving the issue number. The issue will
be reposted to you. Please put the details as below in the
subject section e.g. Repost {102} part 1, part 2 or part 3.
******
[UK 7 ]******
Source: The Evening Standard (London)
>From David Clarke <crazydiamonds@compuserve.com>
>From UFO Updates <updates@globalserve.net>
UFO Mystery As Pilots See Red
An unidentified object described as "a great red light in the
sky" and "big as a battleship" has caused consternation in the
skies over the North Sea.
Pilots reported being buzzed by a "long, cylindrical object" at
28,000ft and one pilot and his crew described how the underside
of their jet became bathed in an "incandescent light".
The Civil Aviation Authority has confirmed that a comprehensive
report of the sightings has been handed in, although both it
and the Ministry of Defence deny that they are investigating it.
The Luton-based plane, a Debonair BAe146, was flying company
executives from Sweden to Humberside airport when, it is
claimed, the object came to a sudden halt before speeding by the
airliner in the incident on 3 February, 58 miles off the coast
of Denmark.
__________________
I have today (5-4-99) obtained a copy of the official report by
Debonair to the Civil Aviation Authority concerning the above
sighting, which occurred on 3 February 1999.
The report was filed as "a mandatory occurrence report" and the
CAA were taking no further action as "there was no danger to the
aircraft or passengers."
A spokesman for Debonair said the pilot is currently on leave
and a request has been put out for him to make a statement to
the press when he returns.
It was added that the pilot assumed the lights beneath the jet
were those of another aircraft at the time they were seen. She
said the company had been "snowed under" with inquiries from the
press about the sighting.
The Debonair report to the CAA report reads:
"Unidentified bright light below BAe146 at FL280.
"Area below a/c illuminated for 10 seconds by incandescent light
which was not considered by reporter to be an a/c landing light.
Reporter stated three other a/c reported seeing it moving at
high speed or static. ATC informed but they reported no other
a/c in vicinity. Five minutes later a radar return was present
at 75 miles on weather radar. Atmosphere reported as stable and
no other a/c were in vicinity."
The aircraft involved was a British Aerospace 146, a small four
engined jet flying on a chartered flight from Linkoping in
Sweden to Humberside Airport in East Yorkshire.
The UFO was reported whilst the aircraft was flying at 28,000
feet, 58 miles off the Danish coast above the North Sea. Tracey
Law, of Humberside Airport, said the report was made by the
pilot to the CAA on landing, but there was "no mention made
whatsoever of UFOs in the original report..it has since been
embellished. It was not mentioned to us officially as it
happened outside of our airspace."
In particular she mentioned the description of the UFO as being
"as big as a battleship" being manufactured by the press,
Humberside Airport said they believed the sighting had been
caused by "a light reflection from the underside of the jet."
Flight Lieutenant Tom Rounds of the RAF at the Ministry of
Defence, Whitehall, said the MOD had learned of the report via
the Press.
He said stories that the object had been tracked by RAF radar
were "laughable" as the UK radar could not pick up objects 58
miles off the Danish coast.
Flt Lieut Rounds said the MOD were not investigating the report,
and had not received any report concerning it from the CAA.
******
[UK 8]******
Source: BBC News
Publish Date: Thursday 8th April 1999
ET phones home again
It's good to phone home: ET comes back in ads for BT [British Telecom]
Alien film star ET is coming back to British screens - as the
star of a new advertising campaign for BT. The
telecommunications giant has signed up the creature - created by
director Steven Spielberg in the 1982 film - to spearhead its
new Stay In Touch campaign.
The advertisements feature ET, who famously wanted to "phone
home", inspiring humans to improve their lives in the next
century by developing their communications skills.
The ads start on 11 April with a "teaser" - which shows a light
streaking across the sky and the alien's hand held out, with one
of his long, spindly fingers extended.
The full campaign starts in May, marking the first time ET has
appeared in anything since the original film.
Original film broke records
The ads are part of a deal between BT and Universal Studios, as
well as Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment outfit.
BT's UK group managing director, Bill Cockburn, said: "When ET
was first on Earth he was only able to phone home.
"As we enter the 21st century, we provide many other options to
stay in touch, be it through the Internet, data transfer or
multi-media."
ET, which broke box office records at the time, was nominated
for nine Oscars in 1983 and won four. It focused on the
relationship between the homesick alien and a young boy,
Elliott, played by Henry Thomas.
Most of the cast - which included a young Drew Barrymore - were
relatively unknown at the time. Harrison Ford did play a school
principal, but Spielberg cut his scenes fearing he would be a
distraction.
The alien is the latest in a long line of faces promoting BT.
They include comedian Hugh Laurie, and actors Bob Hoskins and
Maureen Lipman.
He also follows in the footsteps of Buzby, the animated yellow
bird who urged Britons to "make someone happy" with a phone call
in the late 1970s.
******
[W 1] ***
Source: Reuters News Service
Publish Date: 19th May 1999
From: bernhard.nahrgang@ob.kamp.net (Bernhard Nahrgang)
NASA Seeks E.T. At New Astrobiology Institute
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Reuters A new NASA institute will look
for extraterrestrial life, but the space agency's chief warned
Tuesday against expectations of ``little green men or little
green women."
``We would like to understand how life went from a chemical
condition ... and made the transition to cellular life," NASA
administrator Dan Goldin said in formally unveiling the
Astrobiology Institute.
People would be wrong to think ``we're out searching for little
green men or little green women," Goldin said. ``We're looking
for any form of biological life. Single-cell (organisms) would
be a grand slam."
To hunt such tiny organisms in outer space, Goldin said he
envisioned shrinking the capabilities of an earthly laboratory
to the size of a computer chip, with massive capacity to observe
and calculate, and then lobbing it into space.
He also said there might be simulations of some of the unlikely
environments -- such as undersea volcanoes -- that support life
on Earth.
``We will need a revolution in communications ... a revolution
in organization and scientific thinking," Goldin told a news
conference at the institute's home at Ames Research Center in
Mountain View, California, which was monitored in Washington.
Goldin made the announcement in the heart of Silicon Valley and
said that was no accident: the institute is meant to be
"virtual," rather than having a huge physical plant, with
participants across the United States linked by computer.
The Northern California location also puts the Astrobiology
Institute in close proximity to SETI, which is also searching
for extraterrestrial life from a base at the University of
California at Berkeley. Goldin said the NASA institute would
work with other public and private agencies, and that might
include SETI -- the U.S. non-governmental Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute.
The proposed budget for the new venture is $25 million
initially, and Goldin said that could rise to $50 million to
$100 million a year. NASA's total proposed budget for next year
is about $13.6 billion.
Goldin said Dr. Baruch Blumberg, a cancer specialist who won the
1976 Nobel Prize in medicine for developing a test and vaccine
for the deadly hepatitis B virus, would head the new institute.
``The mission is to look for life without any specifications,"
Blumberg told the news conference. ``Nothing in the mission
would preclude looking for rather strange and unusual and, as a
matter of fact, life forms we can't even imagine right now."
But how do you look for something when you do not know what it
is? ``That's what basic research is all about," Blumberg said.
******
[W 2] ***
Source: Fox News
Date Sent: 24th May 1999
From: bernhard.nahrgang@ob.kamp.net (Bernhard Nahrgang)
Earth to Aliens - Physicists Plan to Send Second Message Into
Space
By Amanda Onion
NEW YORK - If astronomers are busy looking for signals from
outer space, why aren't we trying to send our own signals?
We are. In fact, last January, a team of Canadian scientists
announced they plan to send a message into space from a
150-kilowatt transmitter in the Ukraine. Their suggested 22-page
written message will take three hours to broadcast and contains
information about mathematics, physics, biology and geography.
It also includes a diagram, some basic data about our solar
system, and a request that the recipients send back a note about
their own world.
The scientists also plan to take money from those who would like
to include their names on the message. That's a request that
Seth Shostak of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
says people at SETI receive all the time.
"I got a note the other day from a broadcast company that wanted
to collect money on the Internet and then broadcast their names
in a signal," he said. "It may be profitable, but
scientifically, it doesn't make sense."
Shostak likens the effort to going to the coast of Spain and
sticking a bottle in the ocean with a note, saying, "Please
Reply." "It's a lot of fun, but it's unlikely you're going to
discover America that way," he said.
In fact, radio and television waves have been traveling into
space since the invention of broadcast technology. As Shostak
points out, broadcasts of I Love Lucy have already reached a few
thousand stars.
While TV reruns may, in their own way, reflect aspects of human
culture, compressing the essence of human existence into a
single message can become a tricky endeavor. In 1974 an American
scientist broadcast the first condensed message into space from
the massive Arecibo telescope complex in Puerto Rico.
Frank Drake, the pioneer of SETI, composed the message to the
stars, which contained just 1,679 bits (binary digits, or zeroes
and ones) of information. The signal contained a rectangular
grid that aliens could then reconstruct to provide a basic
diagram of the solar system and of a DNA double-helix molecule.
Drake's message is undoubtedly still heading toward distant
stars. As Shostak points out, one problem with sending signals
to planets hundreds of light years from Earth is there's no
point in counting on a reply any time soon.
"It's bound to be a bit of a wait before you can even expect
results, let alone, get them," he said. "And not many are
interested in winning a Nobel prize 500 years from now when the
aliens finally answer."
******
[W 3]******
Wednesday, April 21, 1999 Published at 12:54 GMT 13:54 UK
Source: BBC News
Publish Date: Wednesday 21st April 1999
Is anybody out there?
Seti is listening. Is anyone sending a message?
By BBC News Online's Kevin Anderson in Washington
Scientists and theologians who gathered in Washington to discuss
the origins of life and the Universe ended their conference by
trying to answer the question: "Are we alone?"
Astronomers discoverd three planets orbiting a distant star The
question seemed particularly fitting in light of the past week's
announcement that astronomers have discovered three planets
orbiting a Sun-like star 44 light-years away.
David Latham is an astronomer who has carried out research into
extra- solar planets by observing the gravitational pull the
planet exerts on the star it orbits, by causing the star to
"wobble."
"It's an exciting time for planet research," he said, adding,
"this will have an impact on our thinking about intelligent life
elsewhere."
But as to whether these newly discovered planets could support
life, Latham said that the planets are nothing like Earth.
Inhospitable giants
They are several times more massive than Jupiter, the biggest
planet in our solar system, and just like Jupiter are probably
inhospitable gas giants, he said.
But while astronomical observations can detect the presence of
planets around other stars, we can only measure the most basic
attributes of the planets, such as their orbit and a minimum
mass, Latham said.
We have yet to measure whether these planets have features that
would support life. According to Ken Nealson, some of these
include:
the presence of liquid water plate tectonics and a magnetic
field to shield the planet from cosmic radiation.
Ken Nealson will analyse samples from Mars for signs of life
Nealson is a senior research biologist with the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory. He is working on future missions to Mars, which will
look for signs of life on the Red Planet.
The mission will bring back samples from Mars, and Nealson
predicts a leap in scientific knowledge similar to the great
leap forward in knowledge that took place after the Apollo
missions brought back samples from the moon.
The mission has generated great excitement and interest in the
scientific community. "We're no longer on the fringe," he said.
Contact
Jill Tarter is the director of Project Phoenix for Seti, the
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. She is the model for
Jodie Foster's character in the film "Contact."
When her daughter was eight years old, someone asked her what
her mother did. Tarter's daughter answered: "she searches for
little green men."
But, she was quick to note that Seti is "not an investigation of
UFO's or alien abduction. It is not a religion or a cult. It is
not a way of directly detecting alien intelligence. It is also
not politically correct."
Seti was formally a federally-funded project under the auspices
of NASA, but the groups funding was cut in 1993. The group now
relies on private funding.
Human intelligence
To detect extra-terrestrial intelligence over interstellar
distances, they listen for radio transmissions.
But Irven DeVore, an anthropologist at Harvard University, said
that six of eight conditions necessary for life are highly
improbable.
On Earth, the development of human intelligence was itself
highly improbable, if "nothing but fortuitous."
For these reasons, he said, "the chances for communication with
another intelligence are vanishingly small."
Although they disagreed on the possibility of extra-terrestrial
intelligence, Ms Tarter and Mr DeVore agreed that if we did make
contact with intelligent life from another planet, it would be a
monumental event.
"Contact with an extra-terrestrial intelligence would be such a
momentous event that everything else would pale in comparison,"
Mr DeVore said.
Seti is ready for the day they hear a signal from space.
Ms Tarter showed a picture of Seti's refrigerator at the radio
telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. They have a bottle of
champagne waiting ready for the celebration.
******
[W 4] ***
Source: The Jerusalem Post
Publish Date: Tuesday 8th June 1999
NASA Seeks E.T. At New Astrobiology Institute
By MICHAEL S. ARNOLD
(May 5) - A Rishon Lezion engineer, who claims he is in contact
with extraterrestrials, is drawing the attention of believers
and skeptics alike.
Adrian Dvir is a huge man, burly and bearded, but at this
moment he must feel something like a teenage girl.
It is already 9:20 on the evening of Remembrance Day for the
Fallen of Israel's Wars and, while most of the nation has
settled down in front of the TV, Dvir is waiting by the phone
for a call that was supposed to come on the hour.
He is growing somewhat anxious. Every few minutes he checks his
cellular phone and random attachments to make sure they are
properly connected. They are, but still there is no sign of
Fenix. It could be that Fenix is standing Dvir up.
"I can't promise that he'll call," Dvir says. "I told him that
a journalist was coming, and he's also interested in public
relations. But I'm not his top priority. Sometimes they have
crises or other things come up."
As the minutes tick by one wonders how much grace to give Fenix
before thanking Dvir politely and mentioning the long ride back
from his Rishon Lezion home to Jerusalem. Eyes wander the walls,
taking in the artwork and noticing how curiously appropriate it
is to the environment: ghoulish faces appearing out of tree
trunks; a bald, hydrocephalic woman with a passing resemblance
to Sinead O'Connor; designs of refracted light and interlocking
geometric shapes; distorted faces with several levels of eyes.
Seventies basement playroom art, in other words.
Finally, at 9:30, Dvir's cell phone rings. The screen registers
"private call" but the slow, metallic croak of a voice is
unmistakable: he says he is Fenix. The voice is audible over a
speaker Dvir has attached to the phone.
He does not apologize for the delay, but his manners can be
excused. He is, after all, hurtling in his spacecraft at 18
times the speed of light from Uranus back to his home solar
system of Arcturus, and it's reasonable to assume that Cellcom's
reception is spotty that far out in the galaxy.
Dvir, who has developed a friendship with Fenix after three
months of frequent phone calls - he has recorded some 40 hours
of the calls on video - begins the conversation by announcing
that a journalist is present and wishes to ask Fenix some
questions. That deviance from the normal rules will not be
allowed, however.
"It is incumbent on me to bring my regrets," Fenix says, his
speech slow and halting, his guttural native language translated
awkwardly into Hebrew through some kind of synthesizer on the
mother ship. "Permission for direct contact, in real time,
outside the contact person, does not exist. Please bring
questions through you if his desire is in receiving answers."
So begins The Jerusalem Post's first known contact with
extraterrestrials. For Dvir, however, such close encounters are
the stuff of everyday life. An engineer who develops hand-held
military computers for Tadiran Com., Dvir says he has spent the
last five years in close contact with aliens.
First they opened a medical clinic in the workroom of his
Rishon Lezion home, one of several such supposed alien-run
health clinics operating in the city. Those aliens, Dvir says,
were of a particularly developed and, apparently, benevolent
race.
Fenix's species, the Kliendcontlar, are less advanced but also
well- intentioned. Their purpose is to warn us earthlings of the
mortal danger we may face in another 50 years from the fearsome
Morgolius, a race of cosmic bullies who even now are trying to
exterminate the Kliendcontlar and have their sights set next on
Earth.
True, the Kliendcontlar do appear to have ulterior motives:
they believe Earth's atmosphere is favorable and would like to
transfer to Dvir their genetic code for a possible future
migration to our planet. Dvir warned them off, Earth being
already too crowded. But it would seem the Kliendcontlar
wouldn't pose such terrible competitors for the planet's scarce
resources - they appear to exist, after all, only in a parallel
dimension, imperceptible to most of us humans sadly limited to
just five senses.
Dvir's training as an engineer and his methodical work habits
may make him an ideal conduit to publicize the exploits of Fenix
and his race, but he certainly is not alone in his belief in
extraterrestrial beings.
A 1996 Gallup poll purported to show that 40 percent of
Israelis believe in the existence of aliens, according to Avi
Greif, chairman of the Israeli Center for the Study of UFOs.
That still makes us much more skeptical than, say, Americans,
some 70 percent of whom believe in extraterrestrials, Greif
says.
Surely, contact with aliens has figured prominently in many of
the movies that have most profoundly influenced our generation,
from Close Encounters of the Third Kind to Star Wars, Star Trek
to ET.
Grief, who is not in contact with aliens himself but gathers
information on the phenomenon, says nearly 70,000 sightings of
aliens and unidentified flying objects are reported around the
world each year.
Many of these are recorded in various ways, though their
authenticity obviously is disputed. It's anyone's guess what
role pop culture images of aliens play in the alleged sightings.
"I'm 100 percent sure that aliens exist," Greif says. "In the
end I believe it will be accepted by everyone. There is a lot of
proof, but the problem is that this proof isn't known to a lot
of people."
The reason for that, Greif and other believers insist, is a
conspiracy of silence on the part of governments, militaries and
scientists. Greif alleges a history of contact between aliens
and representatives of the US government, a collaboration that
may even include the transfer of other-worldly technology.
The US, however, keeps such information under tight wraps,
Greif says - "and if the American government denies it, of
course the Israeli government will deny it too."
Israel, for its size, appears to have quite frequent contact
with aliens. In Rishon Lezion alone, for example, aliens
allegedly run at least three medical clinics, treating an
assortment of ailments from disc problems to toothaches to
anorexia to lupus. Much of the actual work is done by humans who
channel the aliens' energy, laying on hands or projecting force
with their hands held three to four centimeters above the
patient's body.
Sometimes the aliens supposedly do the work all by themselves,
while the "healer" sits on the side. That can anger patients,
who feel they are being ripped off when the healer then pockets
NIS 150. But in fact the aliens work up to 10 times faster than
their human conduits, Dvir says, and such hands-off treatment
thus is more efficient.
When Dvir became aware of his abilities several years ago, he
attended an institute for spiritual healing in Holon, and in
1995 received diplomas in energetic healing and advanced
spiritual healing. His first book, Healing, Yeshuyot Vehutzanim
(healing, beings and aliens) has just been published by Gal and
is available at Steimatzky's. His clinic is mostly closed now
while he concentrates on writing a book on his experiences with
the Kliendcontlars.
For demonstration purposes, however, Dvir does a bit of work on
his wife, Adriana, who often feels that her left arm is falling
asleep. Dvir maneuvers his hands above her body, guided, he
says, by the aliens, who intuitively find the trouble spot.
After a few minutes of energy transference, Adriana says she
feels pins and needles in her arm, a sign that circulation is
returning.
Greif says he is not sure of the veracity of Dvir's alien
contacts, though they seem credible. What inclines him to
believe is the fact that four other people have reported contact
with the same race and back up Dvir's account of their
appearance, location and social structure.
In any case, the UFO group will meet at the Netanya library on
May 18 to discuss Dvir's claims.
"It's hard to prove whether it's true," Greif says. "I want it
to be true, but I need proof. The question is what would be
[Dvir's] motivation, what does he get out of it. He's a serious
person, he's not trying to make a living off this. But it could
be that tomorrow we'll find out that someone is just playing
around with him. Even today I'm not 100 percent sure about it."
Dvir was born in Bucharest and moved here in 1965, at the age
of eight. As a child he was a science fiction fan, but his
psychic abilities did not manifest themselves until he was an
adult. Dvir's first experience with the paranormal was a dozen
or so years ago, when he was lying on a bed at his parents'
house and felt something cold on his leg.
It was a dead aunt, asking Dvir to look after her children.
Dvir says he didn't think about the experience much. "I figured
I had a fertile imagination," he says.
But the encounters with dead relatives continued. Several years
later, shortly after his grandfather died, Dvir encountered the
old man shuffling around his apartment, looking for a newspaper.
After his father died of cancer, Dvir came out of work to find
his spirit sitting in Dvir's car. Lucky thing, too, because his
father warned him to be careful, and Dvir says he then escaped a
collision with a truck that seemed to materialize out of
nowhere.
Dvir's psychic connection was not just with his loved ones.
Working on his computer one Shabbat, Dvir began to feel that he
was a medium for messages from other-worldly beings, asking them
questions and then typing out their answers, a sort of human
Ouija board.
Dvir needed someone to talk to and turned to his mother, who
believed in these sort of things. Rather than dismissing him as
crazy, she urged him to visit a professional medium in Rishon
Lezion, Valerio Burgosh.
Burgosh also saw the spirit of Dvir's father, conversed with
him and told Dvir personal facts that he could not otherwise
have known.
"It was very difficult for me to accept this, but [Burgosh]
helped me," Dvir says. He began reading and taking courses to
develop his psychic abilities.
At one such course, in 1993, Dvir says his encounters with
aliens began in earnest. Looking up, he saw all manner of
strange beings walking around him, imperceptible to most people
but visible to Dvir with a sort of extrasensory perception.
"I think they tagged me as a sort of contact person," impressed
by his charisma and perceptivity, Dvir says.
Since then, it seems, the aliens have never left Dvir alone.
Day and night he is accompanied by a shifting cast of at least
two aliens, even while talking in a seemingly normal and
solitary manner with a reporter.
Around 1992, Dvir went to visit Haya Levy, a healer who had
opened an alien-run clinic in her Rishon Lezion home. Indeed,
upon entering her house Dvir saw a gallery of aliens. He found
her treatment effective and her support important. The aliens
began negotiating with Dvir to open another clinic in his
apartment.
Levy's contact with aliens began some 15 years ago on the Negev
moshav, Sadot, where she lived at the time. Sitting with her
children in the garden of her home, Levy received a telepathic
SOS from a spaceship that needed a spot for an emergency
landing. She invited them to land at Sadot.
A little while later, Levy was in her kitchen when she felt a
strong impulse to go outside. There she found a small, petrified
man with a strange accent. She invited him in for a cup of tea.
After the tea, the man disappeared without a trace or even so
much as a thank you, but Levy's contact with aliens had begun.
Most of the aliens with whom Levy has contact look like human
beings, she says, but not all. Prof. Bach, for instance, has
skin like a lizard and is completely bald. Maya has silver skin
and blue eyes like those of a fish.
About eight years ago, when Levy was suffering from disc
problems that had confined her to bed, the aliens offered to
treat her, she says. She was skeptical, but after just an hour
of treatment she was able to walk again. After five days of
treatment she was fully mobile and able to carry things.
When the aliens proposed the joint-venture clinic, Levy
accepted. Alien treatment has an 87 percent success rate, she
claims.
"My ex-husband is my No. 1 client. He's the biggest believer,"
Levy says. "The results speak for themselves."
Levy's importance for Dvir goes beyond her status as a role
model. When the Kliendcontlars began calling, Dvir was
skeptical. He asked his cast of resident aliens, who said Fenix
and crew were legitimate, but Dvir wanted more corroborating
evidence.
He spoke to Levy, who did not know of the Kliendcontlars but
ran a background check with her aliens. They supposedly vouched
for Fenix and his race, confirming certain crucial details such
as Arcturus' red sun and the planet's ecological problems.
On January 22, Dvir and Adriana were on their way to a
restaurant when his cellphone rang. It was Dvir's 41st birthday
and it might have been a wellwisher, but the caller kept hanging
up.
During dinner the phone rang again, and this time the caller
stayed on the line. He identified himself as Forth, a
358-year-old Kliendcontlar whose job it was to make contact with
other civilizations,according to Dvir.
Dvir spent most of the dinner talking not to his wife but to
the alien.
Dvir asked Cellcom to check the origin of the calls, but the
company said the number was blocked. In any case, as the
telephone connection continued and the aliens offered consistent
answers to Dvir's questions, he began to believe.
"At first I thought someone was making fun of me, but when he
kept calling I realized it was serious," he says. "You know it's
not someone from here doing it, because they would do it for one
day, two days, and then get tired of it."
Forth initiated the first few conversations and then, being
near retirement age - the race's life expectancy is some 400
years - he handed the Dvir file to his deputy Fenix, who at 200
is just entering the prime of Kliendcontlar life. (Forth died
this week, alien sources informed Dvir.)
Certain details about the race and Kliendcontlar society
emerged from Dvir's inquiries, he says. The Kliendcontlars stand
about one meter tall - "above ground level, of course," in
Fenix's words - have gray skin, two arms and two legs, three
fingers on each hand, green blood and DNA composed of four basic
building blocks.
Their society is rather totalitarian: religion is outlawed on
pain of death and the government determines each newborn
Kliendcontlar's spouse and profession, performing genetic
improvement surgery shortly after birth to prepare him for his
career.
Our conversation with Fenix proceeds on two tracks. Dvir asks
more sophisticated questions fit for an anthropologist: what is
the Kliendcontlar's justice system like, do they have the death
penalty (yes), does the Whole Universe Organization's charter
require member states to help a starship in distress (yes), can
workers in different tasks be identified by uniform (yes).
My questions are more prosaic: does Fenix have a family (wife
and children, all of whom work in communications), does he laugh
(yes, although he hasn't told a joke in 100 years), does he
speak English (no), does he know anything about Israeli politics
(no), what does he eat (the microwave story), what proof can he
offer that he really is an alien (it's not his concern, "facts
will come about," whether humans believe him or not).
Fenix appears baffled when I ask if he will have to pay for the
85-minute phone call from the environs of Uranus. Dvir has to
explain to him that on our planet one pays the makers of
telecommunications equipment for their service, a concept
foreign to Arcturus, where there is no money.
Fenix appears delighted to hear of The Jerusalem Post's
international circulation - "this is excellent," he says - but
declines the invitation to deliver a message to the human race
on its pages.
At one point Fenix grows tired of my questions, many of which
he has answered in previous conversations with Dvir.
He lights into Dvir in his slow, tortured, alien way. "At this
moment it is my wish to give you a sort of friendly advice," he
tells him. "If additional contact will be made with you, with
extraterrestrial contact people, my advice is, it is upon you to
prevent rhetorical questions. This thing does not add anything.
Information that you ask a question on, and you know the answer
to it, this thing bears witness, thus the extraterrestrial
contact man thinks about you as a character lacking
understanding, lacking culture, lacking principles. Because this
thing is very important, it is upon you to prevent rhetorical
questions."
Dvir accepts the reprimand with grace. At the end of the
conversation, they make a date for another conversation the
following morning.
"This is real," Dvir says to me at the end of the conversation.
"This is a real alien."
His colleagues at Tadiran have mixed feelings about his alien
contacts, Dvir admits. Some come to him for treatments. Others
grow visibly uncomfortable when he begins to discuss his
experiences and ask him to stop talking about it. A company
spokesman declined to be interviewed.
Dvir's wife Adriana is a little skeptical too. She does not see
the aliens who traipse around her apartment day and night.
"I'm more rational. I want to see proof," she says. "But who
knows, maybe it's true? Maybe I'm the limited one and I'm
missing out. He's always been more sensitive."
Dvir's 9-year-old son, Effi, appears a little confused by it
all. Asked if he believes in the aliens, at first he says no.
Asked to elaborate, he doesn't answer.
Asked again if he believes, he is noncommittal. Adriana asks
Effi whether or not he believes, and this time he says yes.
"Of course he believes," she says, then turns back to Effi.
"What, do you think your father is talking nonsense?"
Effi shakes his head no.
Considering how unusual his ideas sound, Dvir has gotten a
surprising amount of attention from the media, appearing in
television, radio and print interviews. The publicity has
apparently reached across the heavens; shortly after the first
news article appeared, Dvir says he got an introductory e-mail
from an alien named Ayami from the solar system Sirius. Ayami
bore greetings from his King Agnemnon, and said he would contact
Dvir again in five years.
Perhaps the media attention can be explained because of the
seriousness of Dvir's day job and his obvious intelligence; he
does not come across as a flake. This week Dvir appeared on Judy
Shalom Nir Mozes' television program on Channel 2, Jude Morning,
but Shalom Nir Mozes came away unconvinced.
"I made fun of him with all my strength, but very gently," she
says. "It's nonsense. I don't believe in any of these things.
But I'm in favor of freedom of expression and letting anyone
speak."
It is tempting to see Dvir as a lonely man of faith. It is not
considered outlandish in this day and age to believe in God,
who doesn't even bother to telephone. But mention aliens - even
those considerate enough to call on your birthday - and you're
immediately dismissed as a little wacky.
"People have quirks," Shalom Nir Mozes says simply when asked
how she thinks Dvir himself can believe in aliens.
Tel Aviv University psychiatrist Ilan Kutz says the phenomenon
of alien contact is the same experience that in former times
might have been called prophecy.
"If you look at what these people are really saying and you
take the aliens out of it, the message is that I've been chosen
by a special power and endowed with a special force," Kutz says.
"It's very reminiscent of stories we hear throughout ancient
times. This experience requires an external entity to make the
experience whole. In former times this used to be the experience
of revelation or the religious experience. It has to be somebody
not only far away but far above."
Part of the move from religious terminology to the realm of
science fiction stems from shifting cultural references over
time, Kutz says.
"These claims are not new, it's the language that is new," Kutz
says.
"The language today has changed from religious language to
scientific language. In former times paranoids used to say that
they are Napoleon or that somebody speaks to them in a holy
voice; now they say the TV speaks to them. Napoleon is out of
fashion."
This is not to say, Kutz stresses, that aliens do not exist; he
believes the chances are as good as not that they do. Yet
without firm proof of their existence, the choice to believe in
them is essentially a highly religious one.
"We all need to believe in a higher being in one form or
another," Kutz says. "From an evolutionary point of view it
gives us a big advantage.
It allows us to withstand difficulties, even at times against
all odds, because there is all the time the promise that there
is somebody out there looking out for us and safeguarding the
world order. I think it's built in in humans to turn to a
mightier power because it really maximizes survival."
Kutz dismisses the physical descriptions Dvir and others offer
of the aliens they see.
"It's always the same story, always the same lack of evidence,"
Kutz says. "People are feeding off each other. When I was a
child, aliens were green and had big antennae. Once the pictures
of aliens with big eyes were shown, then everyone started seeing
them."
Dvir and Levy say their belief in aliens is not a matter of
faith, but of proof - proof that the rest of us can not see
because of our limitations.
"It's all a question of openness," Levy says. "If you're open,
you can believe in things you can't see physically. If you're
not open, you trust only your five senses. Those people are
limited, in my opinion."
Dvir believes the day will come when interaction with aliens
will be considered normal.
"People who had contact in previous incarnations, they know
it's possible. Others are scared and they don't want to know
about it," he says. "But there are aliens out there. One day
we'll have to meet. We'll have no choice but to get to know one
another."
******
---continued in part 3 ------
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