Originally published at: NEWS AND VIEWS FROM THE NEFARIUM SEPTEMBER 24, 2026
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:04 — 24.1MB) Well, the Nefarium seems to be at it again, with some time-tested psychological warfare tricks with the recent UFO flap over Tehran. Joseph offers a few interpretive possibilities (but not an exhaustive list)…: UFOs over Tehran? Mysterious multi-coloured lights spark debate amid US-Iran war
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Hope the sinuses calm down for you Doc!
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Me too!!! (snuffle sniff snort)
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This Trump Madness triggered a weaponized time-machine wiping out a civilization.
Going back in time to exterminate the seeds of a future civilization.
Really hadn’t had that thought before.
With the recentl from the DEEP Seas to the Moon, the space force is weaponized.
That would cover Iran.
Taking some kind of TABLETS of DESTINY measurements?
The mind perception managent angle is something I hadn’t thought of, and no doubt is in play globally. To an extent that would blow peoples’ minds?
… Wow! over Tehran you say? … Hmmm. Why aren’t the Iranians lobbing up a little bit of anti-aircraft fire? Can anyone at this point in time think that of any reason that the Iranians would not be throwing everything they had including a kitchen sink or two at these things?
In case anyone has forgotten it looks something like this (Anti-aircraft fire over Baghdad)
So these “craft” are able to be recorded and are sometime stationary over Tehran but not a single shot fired at them? In the words of the great Maynard G. Krebs, “Come Now!”
The UFO shtick is coming to an ignominious end. It was a fun larp for a number of “media personalities” and able to be turned into profitable entertainment for the general public over the last 40 years or so but it has run its course. We should let UFOOLOGY in all of its forms die a dignified death and spend our time, effort and energy being concerned with matters of actual existential importance.
Sorry I must disagree, because the assumption here is that the Iranians would automatically shoot at it/them. We don’t know what, if any, their internal command policies might be in this regard.
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It was a real close encounters job! All we need now is the 5 tones 
… When something appears in their sky under their current circumstances I have difficulty imagining that the IRGC would suddenly defer to a “wait and see what it is or if it attacks us before we shoot at it policy”. If one doesn’t shoot first one might not be on a position to ask questions later.
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Hilarious!!! Larson was the best…
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Let’s not forget the Phoenix Lights.
Well done and classic by now! She was a skeptic. Then she followed the bread crumbs.
It was possibly the largest mass sighting in history. No AI. Possibly the one down in Mexico was bigger. This was witnessed by military personal, commercial air pilots and the then governor of Arizona.
Governor Fife Symington (who staged a press conference with someone in an alien costume), followed years later by Symington’s admission that he himself saw the object and considered it “otherworldly.”
She spends years collecting additional witness statements (including a 911 operator, pilots, and others), analyzing images, and researching the broader history of unexplained aerial phenomena. She connects the Phoenix Lights to historical reports going back to ancient times (cave paintings, etc.) and more modern cases.
She argues that the Phoenix Lights were not flares or ordinary aircraft, that a cover-up or dismissal occurred
Rules of engagement. The U.S. military does not fire on unidentified aerial objects over a major metropolitan area without positive identification of a threat (enemy aircraft, missile, etc.). Doing so would risk civilian casualties and require high-level authorization.
There probably isn’t an eyewitness alive that witnessed the Phoenix Lights that is walking around suggesting that it was a hoax.
Why didn’t the US military shoot down any of those drones over New York, New Jersey and other area’s?
But again, this assumes too much in my opinion, as the Iranians may not have identified the targets as hostiles. Again, what is the IRGC’s policy re. UFOs? I don’t know, but I would find it difficult to believe they did not have one. Alternatively, we do not know the altitude of said objects (nor their/its) actual size. But as always, my point in the news and views was not philosophical debate on the event, but rather, assuming it is true, what might it mean? What are some of the interpretive possibilities? As for the nuttery of Ufoology, I’ve spent most of my books trying to argue the case that one should look to human technologies, even if only putative, first, before resorting to narratives of extra-terrestrial technology. Shooting first in a scenario that DOES potentially involve such, however, seems to me to be the far riskier policy, as I attempted to outline in my various books that deal with Truman’s post-1952 UFO flap shoot-down order. I would argue the opposite case from you, and say that if one suspected a display of technology might be “extra-terrestrial”, i.e., a "next generation (or two) technology, which need not necessarily be extra-terrestrial but, again, could be human, that one would not want to risk provoking a response by shooting at it. Perhaps we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
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… The Phoenix Lights Incident differs from the situation in Iran in that the incident did not occur within the context of not one, but two imminent threats of “civilizational annihilation”.
Of course there is always the possibility of …
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“The Phoenix Lights Incident differs from the situation in Iran”
True
Maybe except for the issue of why they didn’t shoot it down.
Of course our military said it was our own equipment. Can’t shoot yourself down. But they were lying.
I’m not an expert on ALL ALien life in the universe and which species have greater technology. For all we know the stuff at Area 51 is light weight stuff compared to what could exist.
It seems to me you’d put too much at risk just shooting. And me thinks you might not be able to hit them anyway.
While I think Phoenix light was an authentic sighting. Still would like to know what they were up to and why they would show up for the show.
I have heard there are species that are capable of interfering with human war efforts. But no way to validate those sources as reliable.
If the war in Iran is another proxy war, there is also the possibility, the UFO belongs to one of Iran’s allies. Russia or China sending the US a message, maybe? That could be a reason why the Iranians didn’t shoot it down.
… I guess I do not have as one of my absolute presuppositions (I try to be extremely cautious with absolute presuppositions) that there are ETs and that they are here. 
… on absolute propositions see History and Reality: R.G. Collingwood’s Theory of Absolute Presuppositions by Paul Trainor (pdf available free online)
Ok, FAIR!! More than Fair challenge.
This then becomes a difficult conversation because the onus is on the believers to convince the non-believers. And despite what most people do, I cannot assert it to be true because I say so or quote an authority. That’s not how a dialectic or deductive thinking works. Still think it should be mandatory in a civilized society.
I’m not prepared to do this but I’m working on it. I propose. I think it can be done. I’m taking a class on Ancient Mathematics and we work through proofs on Aristotle syllogism and Euclid stuff. Fat books.
Euclid’s Elements was, for most of Western history, the second book an educated person owned after the Bible. Today, crickets. Jefferson read it. Lincoln, Hobbes, Spinoza, Kant, Newton, Kepler…yeah, all the smart guys.
You need an agreed upon starting place. Collingwood does not believe in first principles. The Greeks did. Euclid did. You cannot define a triangle or a square without first principles.
Scott Adams didn’t believe in First Principles either. And that’s where our fall out was. Still loved his work, but I had no use for his God Delusion although in some cases it might be true. He changed his tune at the 11th hour because now it was personal. It was no longer intellectual thought.
So to be continued after I finish the course. Because I would first have to argue away Collingwood’s theories and not sound like an imbecile.
I would hypothesize that Dr. Kitells research on the Phoenix Lights was compelling because she was able to eliminate ALL Explanations of the state as being remotely believable. And then do historic research of ancient societies where Aliens were a first principle and included in their art and literature.
With that proviso, here is my basic argument. I’m going to apply the same logic to astrology rather than ETS.
There are over a million books in some Library in Alexandria Egypt on the subject of astrology. There are works in sanskrit back thousands of years in Indian Civilization. I’m sure I can find writings and teachings on the subject through every time period since written history.
Given that, it would seem to me to defy reality that the millions of people who wrote those millions of books were delusional. It doesn’t mean there aren’t chalatans practicing it or that the horoscopes in popular media are worthless.
It’s pretty much the same with ET’s and UFO’s. I have no idea how many thousands or millions of books are on the subject. I first read Stanton Friedman when I was a kid, and watched the movie 1961 alien abduction of Barney and Betty Hill. I was sold. But it wasn’t reasoning or logic that brought me to that conclusion.
So to get into this subject, I require a listener that holds the same presupposition. Aristotle might have considered this unteachable knowledge because it’s not demonstrative knowledge. I can’t pull an ET out of my pocket. But he did have a fancy word for direct intellectual grasp of first principles. And this is tricky too. People will tell you they believe something from the heart but it’s not the heart which they are divining the information from.
Net, net…I agree with Joseph and I cannot meet your standard of proof.
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It sounds like our views on the subject of ETs are rather similar. I am not philosophically opposed to the idea (nor, really, could I be) but by the same token I’m skeptical of most of the stories/“evidence” I’ve heard, and the concentration of Ufoology on certain types of stories to the exclusion of others is to me very disconcerting.
Your view on astrology is slightly different than my own, but we’re both referring to ancient texts on the subject as part of our thinking. Some of those Egyptian texts (Budge’s translation I believe brings this out best) refer to the observations of astrology having been made over thousands of years, and given that ancient astrology’s practice was that of what a modern astrologer would call a “mundane” horoscope (i.e., a horoscope for a king, i.e., a nation/group of people) then the claim to thousands of years observation is actually a claim to being an empirically and statistically based science, and therefore the idea popularized by St. Augustine of Hippo that it denigrated free will was going a bit too far… but understandable in his era as the idea of statistics had not come back around… anyway, I’m rambling, but it’s been an interesting discussion guys.
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Because most of my work is with economics and stock market, I have daily observations of the possible effect of various perturbations. Too many for it to be a coincidence. It doesn’t tell me exactly what’s going to happen, but I know at what times to be on high alert. And it’s consistent.
“being an empirically and statistically based science, and therefore the idea popularized by St. Augustine of Hippo that it denigrated free will was going a bit too far”
Totally agree!!! I’m not the superstitious type. I actually never refer to it for myself or for what actions I should take. I look at the data on how a particular perturbation has worked over time. I would assert, done well, the results exceed most institutional forecasters that come out every quarter. There is no 100% in this science. And we do have good records of people doing mundane forecasts where the future arrives in some theme and variation. I work more with the cycles, the time units, rather than the stations. And some I found hidden in bible that have timed the majority of turns in the stock market. But they can skip a beat. And it is the interval, the rest period that makes it challenging.
People can give away their sovereignty to anything. It takes awhile to figure out what is reasonable and what is delusional. Unfortunately, the charlatans are usually quite good at getting the press.
I think the same thing is true with the UFO field. Every light in the sky is not proof of alien life.
Both delicate subjects to stay rationale on and apply reasoning.