Tunguska 1, Roswell 0

This past summer, the Tunguska Space Phenomenon Foundation, led by Yuri Labvin, headed off into the wilds of the vast Krasnoyarsk territory to prove its theory that the huge 1908 explosion in Tunguska was not of natural origin. "We intend to find proof that not a meteorite but an extraterrestrial spaceship dashed with the Earth," Labvin told journalists on July 23 (see www.newsfromrussia.com/science/ 2004/07/23/55206.html). Almost miraculously, the very next week, he and his colleagues claim to have found exactly that--two strange, black stones in the form of regular cubes. (Others have suggested a more terrestrial origin for his alleged artifacts; see James Oberg's News and Comment on p. 5.) But Labvin doesn't deny that a natural celestial object was at least partly responsible for the enormous Tunguska explosion: his theory is that a natural celestial object, heading toward Earth, was approximately ten kilometers in the atmosphere when it collided with a UFO (see www.news.yahoo. com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040822/ sc_afp/russia_space meteorite_comet_040 822230301).

Unfortunately, on this side of the ocean, the search for alien debris has been decidedly less successful. In a highly surprising development, the latest report on the dig at the alleged Roswell UFO-crash site shows that it turned up precisely nothing. According to Wireless Flash Weird News, "In an ending similar to that of Geraldo Rivera's special on Al Capone's vault, a team of investigators who dug up a field near Roswell, New Mexico, found no evidence to prove the 1947 UFO crash ... the important thing was to prove that a UFO had made a gouge in the area they were excavating, and, unfortunately, they didn't turn up any material which suggested that was the case" (see www.ncbuy.com/news/2004-07-14/1010091.html). The chief investigator, Donald R. Schmidt, expressed concern that not only may wind and rain have scattered the expected extraterrestrial artifacts but "animals" may have been "stealing" them. Nonetheless, he plans to go back and look some more.

But don't assume that there hasn't been any recent news out of Roswell; the Roswell Daily Record reported on July 20 that "Fred, a fifty-pound mannequin designed to look like a gray space alien, was stolen around 4:30 P.M. from the corner of Main Street and Eighth Street near Alien Encounter's front entrance. Fred was reclining in a wheelchair on the sidewalk--where he sat every day for months as part of the local tourist attraction--when, according to owner David Baumann, two men parked a white and brown pickup truck by the curb, rolled him and his wheelchair into the vehicle and sped away" (see www.roswellrecord.com/archives/07200 4/news08.html). As for the wheelchair, Baumann used to explain to visitors that Fred was injured in the 1947 crash and needed special care. Veteran UFOlogist James Moseley remarked, "This theft may be the first case of humans abducting an alien, instead of vice versa!"

In an even more remarkable development, the New Nation, an independent news agency in Bangladesh, reports the discovery of a "giant human skeleton" in Saudi Arabia. This is not merely some overly tall fellow; a photo reveals that the former owner of this alleged skeleton was so huge that his skull alone dwarfs those attempting to dig it out (see www. nation.ittefaq.com/artman/exec/view.cgi/ 1018519). The news article recounts the story from the Qur'an of the people of Aad and Hood. They were huge giants, capable of ripping out trees with a single hand. However, they disobeyed Allah, who smote them. Researcher Ulima Kiram of Saudi Arabia speculates that this Middle Eastern Paul Bunyan was a member of the tribe of Aad. Unfortunately, the discovery hasn't yet been reported to science because the Saudi Arabian military has sealed off the area (like the U.S. military does after a saucer crash), and they're keeping a tight lid on the whole thing. It's difficult to fathom a motive for that, however, since the skeleton, if authentic, would provide a powerful proof of the truth of their religion. And in another significant development from the region, a video being shown on Palestinian Authority TV claims that the Palestinian people have lived in the Holy Land since the Creation (see www.cnsnews.com/ ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=\ForeignBure aus\archive\200407\FOR20040730d.html).

We recently mentioned the controversy over a man calling himself Dan Burisch, who claims to be a microbiologist who has worked on cloning alien viruses for a rogue black-op government program at Area 51, alongside an alien named J-Rod (Psychic Vibrations, July/August 2004). Research by George Knapp and others published in August in UFO Magazine (vol. 19, no. 4) has pretty well sent his credibility crashing down faster than a UFO daring to fly over New Mexico (see www.virtuallystrange.net/ ufo/updates/2004/aug/m11011.shtml). Burisch, whose real name is Dan Crain, claims to have earned a Ph.D. at the State University of New York in 1989, but the school has no record of that. During the time he claims to have been earning his Ph.D., he was in fact working as a parole officer in Las Vegas. But UFO journalist and researcher Linda Moulton Howe, one of the biggest supporters of Burisch's claims, says that she still believes his wild story about working with aliens because of his "sincerity." Meanwhile, Michael Salla, whose scholarly research on "exopolitics" and "alien stargates"--he was also highlighted in that same July column--reports that "the program I had been developing, the Peace Ambassador Program [at American University in Washington, D.C.], was summarily terminated in late April 2004" (see www.exopolitics.org/ PA-termination-factsheet.htm); his teaching contract was suspended soon afterward. His first hint of difficulty with the University came in February, when he was interviewed by the Washington Post and told them about President Eisenhower's alleged meeting with aliens in 1954, a meeting that the Eisenhower Library most emphatically denies. Salla characterizes this as "an example of censorship and intimidation of academic researchers exploring extraterrestrial related topics," while others are applauding the university's newfound recovery of common sense.