The Paradigm Clock

July 17, 2000
Stephen Bassett

Washington, DC – You, the person reading this right now, yeah, you, guess what? You’re not supposed to be here. That’s right, you shouldn’t be alive. You should be dead or at least not born. Want to know why?

A group of men you most certainly never met, and in some cases never heard of, got together at the beginning of the century and started doing some science. Initially most of the science was out in the open. As each decade passed much of it became secret.

It was the physics of the manipulation of atomic structure, and the men included Fermi, Bohr, Einstein, Szilard, Teller, Seaborg, Lawrence, Oppenheimer, von Neumann, Heisenberg, Frisch, Gamow, Bethe, Hahn, Feynman, Morrison, Kistiakowsky, Neddermeyer, and dozens of others. Their work directly or indirectly led to the creation of the atomic bomb. Later, some of these men with others created the hydrogen bomb.

These men knew what they were doing and some were terrified. Had there not been a driving justification for this science, a world war needing an end; had they just been, as is sometimes the case, doing it because it could be done, many would have refused to proceed, or proceeding, had a nervous breakdown or committed suicide.

At one point they became concerned that igniting an atomic bomb might set the atmosphere on fire and kill all life on the planet. After a few head sessions, they decided the probability of that was “low” and they set off the test codenamed Trinity, a term used to describe the Godhead of the Christian faith.

Starting to get the picture? It was as close as men had come to being gods. They were about to create the means to destroy a world. In time the bombs were built, placed atop missiles, enhanced, MIRVed, and targeted on an enemy who had done the same. Two vast nations, each despising the other, with completely different ideologies, poised to strike in seconds – and not a single soldier had to leave a trench. It was electronic, sterile and easy.

By any historical criteria you might apply to this grotesque circumstance, those missiles should have been launched and you should not be here. But they weren’t, and you are. And the reason you are here has little to do with science; it has everything to do with politics.

The politics of science came of age at Los Alamos as these men attempted to grapple with the implications of their inventions. They lobbied, petitioned, argued and agonized over how to control the physics of nuclear destruction. They reached out to presidents, the public and the press. That effort continues to this day.

Two very powerful developments connect the politics of atomic physics with the politics of disclosure:

1)   In 1947 the editors of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists published to the world the “Doomsday Clock” – a public relations device intended to influence public opinion and awareness of the proximity to nuclear war.  In an effort to attract the media to the political implications of the bomb, a metaphorical clock was set at seven minutes to midnight. If the missiles created by demigods were ever launched, the Doomsday Clock would strike midnight. Over time it would be closer or further from midnight depending upon world events.

2)   There is mounting evidence that from the WW II until the present, intelligent beings from other worlds have attempted to influence our decision making as regards the use of nuclear weapons and the conduct of mass war in general. A fertile and vociferous debate goes on within the UFO/ET research/activist community as to the ultimate intentions of these beings towards our species and our planet. The high end of the mainstream press has yet to catch up with this debate.

Therefore, on April 30, 1998, the Paradigm Research Group published to the World Wide Web the “Paradigm Clock.”  It includes a chronicle of events that have moved the clock. When the governments of the world, most likely but not necessarily led by the United States, formally disclose to their citizens the presence of extraterrestrial beings, the Paradigm Clock will strike midnight.       The time set for April 30, 1998 was 11:57:00 pm, three minutes to midnight, reflecting a view the disclosure process had advanced substantially since the “end” of the Cold War in 1989.

However, there is a wonderful concordance between the politics of disclosure and the politic of atomic physics. The Doomsday Clock was published in the same year the modern UFO era began, 1947 – the year of Roswell and Kenneth Arnold. For that reason the Paradigm Clock was retroactively created going back to 1947 and was initially set at the same time – 11:53:00 pm.

Since it was published in 1998, the Paradigm Clock, has been reset three times:

  • July 27, 1998: Time reset back to 11:56:30 pm
  • July 28, 1999: Time reset forward to 11:57:15 pm
  • July 12, 2000: Time reset forward to 11:58:10 pm

The developments which affected the last time setting are shown below.  Other events going back to 1947 can be found in the Time Change Chronicle at the Paradigm Research Group website.

  • 7/6/00 – On Coast to Coast AM, noted legal/social activist, Daniel Sheehan, confirms the existence of remarkable evidence presented to him during his work on a 1977 research report on extraterrestrial intelligence initiated by President Jimmy Carter.  Former Stanford Research Institute futurist and author of the new eBook Exopolitics, Alfred Webre, who also worked on the Carter report, confirms the project was shut down prematurely.   Daniel Sheehan commits the resources of the Christic Institute to the formal disclosure process.   Both publicly state strong convictions regarding the ET hypothesis.
  • 6/25/00 MSNBC airs a substantive one-hour news documentary on the UFO/ET issue.
  • 6/22/99 – NASA holds a press conference to announce photographic evidence pointing toward active subterranean water on Mars.
  • 6/23/00 – Internet entrepreneur, Joseph Firmage, who has publicly stated his belief in an extraterrestrial presence, launches an integrated media network, Project Voyager, with Ann Druyan, widow of the late Carl Sagan. Firmage declares his venture capital firm, Intend Change, has amassed $225 million.
  • 6/00 – Lt. Col. Philip  Corso comes under intense attack by researchers when FBI files on him are released to and then partially published by Larry Bryant.  These files contain much negative material written up by FBI agents over a span of several decades.
  • 5/23/00 – The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) releases 27,000 new Mars photos onto the Internet, which immediately come under close scrutiny by a host of Mars researchers.  The archive covers one Mars year, 687 Earth days, beginning in September 1997 and extending through August 1999.
  • 5/21/00 – Leslie Kean, an accomplished freelance journalist, publishes in the Boston Globe an extended piece on the UFO/ET issue, focusing on the COMETA report published in France in July of 1999.  The Globe is one of the top ten dailies in America.  The Minneapolis Star-Tribune (May 29), Memphis Commercial Appeal, Irish Independent (June 27, and VSD Magazine (July) follow up with versions of the story.
  • 4/26/00 – Mike Siegel seamlessly replaces Art Bell on Coast to Coast AM.     Premiere Radio Networks makes it clear the program will remain devoted to the show’s previous subject matter, including the UFO/ET/Disclosure issues.   Siegel, who has a Ph.D. and a law degree, demonstrates keen interest in the politics of disclosure.
  • 4/5/00 – The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) release new photographs of the Cydonia region of Mars that had been held back in violation of an agreement to publish such photos quickly.
  • 3/11/00 – A Canadian cable television technician reveals he has taped direct NASA Shuttle videos.  Martyn Stubbs comes forward with anomalous imagery and thousands of hours of tape to examine.
  • 3/10/00 – Touchstone Pictures releases Brian DePalma’s provocative movie, Mission to Mars, and introduces the Cydonia/Face controversy to millions of Americans.
  • 11/99 – Dr. John Mack of Harvard University publishes Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters, his long awaited follow-up to Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens.

The new time setting of 11:58:00 pm is intended to inform the public and the press that disclosure is near.

Should we fear the science of atomic physics and the science of the extraterrestrial propulsion and energy systems, or should we fear the politics of that science?  Can good policy emerge from a morass of lies, covert programs, illegal actions, subversion and public ignorance?

These are the questions the Paradigm Clock invites you to consider, and more importantly, invites your political leaders to consider – openly.  So far more people on this earth have perished prematurely from bad politics than from the laws of nature.

It comes down to what kind of world you want to construct. If you desire a political reality that is done “by you” rather than “to you,” there are two things you have to do – pay attention and get involved.  And now is a very good a time.