The issue of Cloning and Ufos have been common in Science Fiction for a few decades. While cloning seems to be technically possible by now, there has never been a proof that Ufos exist and little green men visit our planet on a regular base. Ufos have always been considered a hobby for the feeble-minded looking for something new to believe in after god was declared dead. People were not buying the story of some creator in the sky anymore since it turned out to be nothing but a sheme to hold people down and follow authorities into the next war. Since there is no proof of extra-terrestrial life, it's a matter of belief when people talk about the flying saucer which is supposed to have crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. You've heard the story. The US-gouvernment caught a bunch of gray little aliens and locked them away in some underground-complex. But if you believe in the crashed Ufo, you will also have to believe that there has been some sort of covering up, right? From there it's just a small step to believing all kinds of weird things which prove that Ufos actually exist. You will believe in Men in Black doing the dirty work and that story about large machines underneath the northpole which are not part of Santa's production facilites for sure.

The Nazis have believed this kind of shit already when they tried to prove that there was a sunken island called Thule north of Iceland which was populated by Übermenschen (Thule was supposed to be the home of the Aryans, an alien race of giants which fell from grace when they started to fuck around with the underlings). Theories like that had been invented by the Ariosophs and Theosophists in the late 19th century, but they were presented as "ages old germanic lore" to the public. It was nothing but disinformation used to get into power and stay there.
Mythology was one of the big secrets for the Nazis' success. If you believed in Thule or Atlantis and a forgotten primaeval culture, you were willing to believe in a lot of other things as well.

Now Clonaid came along in late 2002 and announced the birth of a clone-baby. Even though there was no proof that the kid actually existed, not even a picture of a baby in general, the media went wild. They did a lot of promotion for a bunch of lunatics who hid behind a guy calling himself Rael. Rael's mother stated in various interviews that her son had always been a liar and that he's simply out for the money. So far, so good.

Wouldn't we assume that a story about Ufos without pictures wouldn't make the headlines? If you got a picture of an alien and his vehicle, fine, let us see it and we might be interested. Otherwise the press is not really interested in people who believe in Ufos, Bigfoot and the monster of Loch Ness. You know why? Because these people are foolish. They have no understanding of the real world we're living in because they're not able to process all the complex information thrown at them. They're looking for a nice and easy explanation for everything and that's where all the armchair-conspiracy-theorists come in.
Clonaid is obviously a hoax. You can't take these people serious. Last year Rael wanted to bring Hitler back from the dead to punish him for his crimes. This time he has cloned a human being. Next year he will charge money to enter the alien embassy he's building. People send him money to keep in contact with the aliens because they like to believe in things like that. But it's obviously a swindle. You know why? Because THERE ARE NO UFOS! It's a hoax! So, if we don't believe in Ufos in the first place, how can any sane person take the clone-story serious? It's just a promotion-stunt carried out by a bunch of attention-seekers trying to make money. Isn't it so obvious that a story like this should be on page 24 of any serious newspaper instead of being a headline for weeks?

It's not a matter of whether the clone-baby exists or not, it's about the question why everyone falls for these people. If you believe in step one, the Ufos, you might automatically buy the clone-story too. If you don't believe in Ufos, you will be a sceptic about the clone-baby too. So, it''s not about cloning, it's about Ufos. Why isn't anyone in the mayor media saying: "look at these people, they're idiots because they believe in Ufos, ha, ha!"

Nobody questions the Ufos and the cloning-story is taken seriously. Why does this pop up now? Why does the president of the United States, currently going to the war, have time to comment on this clone-story basically saying that it might be dangerous if anyone can clone whoever he want? Don't we know that already? Why isn't he saying: "look at these people, they're idiots because they believe in Ufos, ha, ha!"

It looks like there are so many people believing in Ufos in the US, that the gouvernment can easily work with that belief. There have been polls proving the facts that a lot of citizens of the US believe in falsehoods like god, ghosts and Ufos. In 1991, Gallup and Newport questioned 1236 adult Americans and the results (which can be found on pp.137-146 of their '91-report) are alarming. Around 52% believe in Astrology, 22% believe that aliens have already landed on earth, 33% believe in the lost continent of Atlantis, 41% believed that Dinosaurs and humans lived simultanously, 65% believed in Noah and his flood, 42% believed in communication with the dead, 35% believed in ghosts and 67% claimed they've had a psychic experience themselves.

Something is going wrong over there! It's known that most people in the US believe in the ancient text of the bible (Noah's flood). Everyone else keeps ridiculing the Americans for going to church all the time and all that. But 22% buy the Roswell-story! Almost every fourth person believes that aliens have visited us already! That's nuts! All these sexual abduction-stories are identical to the ones people kept telling when they were still abducted by fierce Native Americans on an almost weekly base. Back then when the aliens were not invented yet!

There is a book on this phenomena called Why People Believe Weird Things:... by Michael Shermer which I'd recommend. But then there are also books like Hollywood Vs. the Aliens by Bruce Rux which is a collection of bizarre conspiracy-stuff trying to prove that the CIA produced all these Science Fiction-movies to prepare ordinary citizens for the hard truth that aliens actually do exist. There are a lot of people building websites to prove that the US-gouvernment has something to hide.
The interesting part is that the US-gouvernment had always made a lot noise about Ufos themselves. Ever since the incident in Roswell there have been official statements that certain rumours are not true. The effect was that all these statements strengthened the belief that something must have crashed in New Mexico if the army put so much effort into simply denying it instead of saying "look at these people, they're idiots because they believe in Ufos, ha, ha!"

People started talking about Ufos when a mystery airship hovered across America in 1896/97. It was the birth of an idea which inspired H.G.Wells to write "The War of the Worlds". The novel later served as a base for the radio-play Orson Welles broadcasted on October the 30th, 1938. I just got a copy of the original recording and I've listened to it this morning while cleaning the dust off my robot-collection in the lab. Wells made sure that his play was "realistic". He used all kinds of dramatic tricks like letting the music beetween the speakers play extra-long. That way people got the impression that something terrible had happened and even the news-speakers had to go off the air. The results are known. A lot of people left their homes to run away from an alien invasion. H.G.Wells was not amused by the way. The author of the original novel had his attorney threaten leagal actions against Welles.

The fact that so many people believed in aliens already must have been noticed by the gouvernment. Then Roswell happened right at the beginning of the Cold War in 1947. It started a large wave of interest in the topic and a series of strange remarks by various presidents of the US considering aliens and Ufos. Especially Ronald Reagan was fond of the idea that earth to stand together and face an alien invasion some day. Here are some presidential quotes about Ufos and here are more Ufo-quotes by famous folks.

And it's not only Ufos!

"I refer to it as the world's worst-kept secret that President Reagan relies on astrology." Astrologer Sydney Omarr 1988

"Astrologers rumored to be connected to the Reagan White House included Joyce Jillson, who told the Associated Press that the Reagans regularly consulted astrologers, and that it was this counsel that led to Reagan doing things like having news conferences during the full moon. Jillson stated that "she had been to the White House" and "spent a lot of time there after the assassination attempt on Reagan."

Most importantly, Jillson claimed she had originally been employed by Reagan insiders, and paid $1200, to help pick Reagan's Vice President from a list of seven candidates. The Jillson claim actually backed up the same Bush-astrology allegation that had been made five years earlier by Democratic Rep. Larry McDonald. On April 30, 1983 McDonald speaking to the John Birch Society stated,

Mr. Reagan and his wife are both very avid followers and believers. And guess what these seers of the horoscope had to say? That Mr. Reagan would be the nominee and that the Republicans could win the White House only if George Bush was his running mate.

"One of my jobs," wrote Jillson, "was to review the charts of all Vice Presidential candidates. I told Reagan that George Bush was the only choice. The rest is history." The basic astrological sign involved in the decision was that "George Bush, a Gemini, was the most compatible with Reagan, an Aquarian."

The efforts to hide the paranormal and other strange beliefs of the president went as far as to clean up "his oral meanderings" before a text was released for public consumption." This practice, however, had to be cut out when the White House writers were caught altering an interview Reagan had given with the Wall Street Journal.

In this interview, done in 1985, Reagan began to talk about thoughts he had earlier in the morning concerning Armageddon, and how he agreed with many theologians who believed the prophecies were coming together. This idea of an impending upcoming Armageddon being spoken of by a leader with his finger on the nuclear button was too much for the White House handlers.

When the White House transcript of the interview was released publically, the references to Armageddon were gone.  The Wall Street Journal quickly exposed the omission, and the White House publicity people scrambled to explain   that the writers had "accidentally" omitted the references to Armegeddon Reagan had made."

stolen from Presidential Ufos

All of this only leads to the conclusion that Reagan and Bush needed a mighty good excuse for their SDI-program in the late 1980s when the Cold War was getting boring. It all sounds like an old strategy of disinformation. Even though the Soviets were still the official enemy in 1987, the US knew that the Cold War might not last forever and they were right. The German reunification in 1990 put an end to the concept of superpowers threatening each other and suddenly the Cold War was over. Nonetheless, Bush proposed a budget for SDI to Congress in late 1990 which included a 4.5 billion-dollar increase. Even though their were plans with Gorbachev for an American/Soviet-joint venture to got to Mars already, they wanted to push the SDI through. Bush also voted for a twenty-four percent raise for Nasa "to bring astronauts back to the moon" and a revival of the SETI-program (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) which had been cut off by Congress iin 1983 with a tripled budget "to search for proof that life exists-or has existed-beyond earth, by studying other planets of the solar system." So, did these guys build the Star Wars-program to actually shoot at aliens or did they just get their percentage off the people building the technology?

Since there are new talks about another SDI-program in outer space under Bush jr., it's no wonder the aliens are taken so serious again right now. It's no wonder that the Clonaid-story gets blown up beyond proportion if you wanna keep people interested in the possibility of meeting aliens some day. There is still no proof that Ufos exist, but it looks like the US-gouvernment is busy trying to create the impression that something is out there and we could be the target of some enemy up in the sky any day. If everything else fails and earth becomes a peaceful planet, it will always be a good excuse to deal with arms and shoot expensive laser-weapons at least.