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Others suggest a global environmental crisis as the source of unification. Still others suggest that it will be the Rapture of the Church or open alien contact that will be so shocking and so disruptive that a leader with answers will arise. An occurrence of open ET contact would obviously have staggering sociological and psychological effects on mankind. While we can only speculate what these effects might be, a number of prominent people have expressed their belief that it would be a powerful unifying force for the nations of the world. On September 21, 1987, President Reagan, in his address to the 42nd General Assembly of the United Nations made a startling statement regarding the unifying effect of an "alien threat": "Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences world- wide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us?"*>” More recently, in an address to the Bilderbergers meeting in Evian, France, on May 21, 1992, according to USA Today and other newspapers, Henry Kissinger stated: "Today Americans would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will pledge with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The a 1 xen ood tao one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenarios, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by their world government." Even Hollywood promotes the notion of global unification through open extraterrestrial contact. In the 1996 movie First Contact, members of the Star Trek team discuss the effect of the first open contact with aliens in the year 2063. Regarding the importance of this first contact, Counselor Troi, the Star Trek team's resident New Age counselor, states that the first open contact with extraterrestrials "unites humanity in a way that no one ever thought possible when they realize that they're not alone in the universe. Poverty, disease, war; they'll all be gone in the next 50 years." unification In his book Messengers of Deception, Jacques Vallee discusses the power of the UFO phenomenon to change lives, inspire awe, and the hope of "salvation from above": "I believe there is a machinery of mass manipulation behind the UFO phenomenon. It aims at social and political goals by diverting attention from some human problems and by providing a potential release for tensions caused by others. The contactees are a part of that machinery. They are helping to create a new form of belief: an expectation of actual contact among large parts of the public. In turn this expectation makes mil-lions of people hope for the imminent realization of that age-old dream: salvation 171 THE EFFECT OF OPEN ALIEN CONTACT the notion of global