Is there intelligent life on earth?
That's the better question. [WHAT IF ALIENS MET RACISTS? MUFON RESIGNATIONS HIGHLIGHT INTERNAL DIVISIONS IN UFO SIGHTINGS ORGANIZATION, Newsweek.com, 4-29-18]:
The Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON, is an all-volunteer organization dedicated to investigating unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in all 50 states and more than 40 countries through a decentralized network of state chapters and local field investigators. While the organization’s mission is promoting UFO research and discovering “the true nature of the phenomenon,” the most hoped for scenario is, of course, extraterrestrial first contact (unless government Disclosure comes first).
Why search for intelligent life in the heavens when such little evidence exists for it on earth?
Imagine an alien race finally comes to Earth and this is the man they meet.
That’s John Ventre. He was, until recently, MUFON State Director for Pennsylvania and oversaw field investigations of the most compelling of the state’s approximately 600 annual UFO sightings. You may have seen him on History Channel's UFO Hunters or Anderson Live. Ventre wrote this on his personal Facebook page in response to a post from a popular alt-right account characterizing Netflix’s Dear White People as promoting “white genocide.” He railed against affirmative action and interracial couples.
“Everything this world is was created by Europeans and Americans,” Ventre said in the post. “F’ing blacks didn’t even have a calendar, a wheel or a numbering system until the Brits showed up.” He further alluded to pseudoscientific race science, which has found purchase in the mainstream right, spread by prominent conservative think tank figures like Charles Murray, who wields unjustified extrapolations from existing IQ data to argue against improving living standards for the poor.
Ventre’s comments have kicked off a wave of anger and resignations across MUFON, most recently UFO researcher Dr. Chris Cogswell.
Cogswell was named Director of Research for MUFON in January, but announced his resignation from the organization on Twitter in April. “When I first joined MUFON, taking on the Director of Research position, I believed this issue [with Ventre] had been dealt with,” Cogswell said. But on April 13, Cogswell learned of Ventre’s “continued role within MUFON as an active member” after Ventre emailed him about preparations for the 2018 MUFON Symposium in Cherry Hill, NJ. “Within six hours of finding out I had resigned. My internal conscience would not let me continue,” he said.
MUFON boasts nearly 4,000 members and 500 investigators across a coalition of just-the-facts data collectors, alien abductees, far-thinking engineers, conspiracy theorists, ancient alien pseudohistorians, religious visionaries and ufology enthusiasts of every possible stripe. If MUFON is successful, who would the first aliens actually meet? An organization representative of the full spectrum of human experience, or a club of aging white men?
It’s a question MUFON is currently struggling to answer, with Ventre’s post a crisis point in the organization’s ongoing evolution.
MUFON Executive Director Jan Harzan initially responded to Ventre’s post in a since-deleted message to the MUFON News page, disclaiming the organization’s responsibility for a Facebook comment “many found offensive.” Instead of condemning Ventre’s words, Harzan blamed the controversy on “the new social media world we now live in” and called for an open dialogue, writing, “There is no justice in hate, no matter what side of the fence you are on. On that we can all agree.”Search for ExtraTerrestrial Life?
Can we commence the search for signs of terrestrial life/intelligence?