David Clarke and Nick Pope - For heaven's sake make up!

I see that there's been an exchange of fire between two of Britain's 'UFO experts' recently, especially coming on the heels of the final release of the MOD's UFO Files.

The Huffington Post article by Lee Speigel gives a good summary so far of these two having come to blows.

Whilst, I tend to favour Pope's view - and those of others such as Timothy Good - that these are not all the files that the relevant UK authorities possess concerning UFOs (note I'm not specifically concerned with just MOD's files here), I do wish these two would try and settle their differences.

One of the most recent salvos in this exchange was by Pope seemingly and indirectly referring to Clarke as a 'useful idiot' (which was in both the Reuters and UFOs and Nukes articles I referred to in my last post), which I thought was unkind given Clarke's work to have the MOD files released. Pope now appears to have offered an apology for his remark. It also doesn't help matters that - if certain claims being made about him are true - Pope might not have been the UFO sceptic he maintained he was before working for the MOD (the HuffPost article by Lee Speigel gives details).

As Lee says in his article:-

"If there are any losers here, it must be the public, for the confusion this has brought up. After tens of thousands of pages of UFO files have been released by the U.K., who are we supposed to believe about how significant (or not) those documents really are?"

The two protagonists - like many others in the UFO community - seem more concerned with attacking each other (and perhaps protecting their own reputations) than making a collective effort to continue to search for answers.

Despite the arguments put forward by both supporters and sceptics generally, the phenomenon of UFOs and UAP persists. Of those cases that come to light, there are still a significant number that cannot be put down to chinese lanterns, balloons, experimental aircraft, drones, meteorological or astronomical phenomena, the mental state of observers etc.

The observable universe apparently stubbonly refuses to fit into the neat world-view of either hardened sceptics or avid supporters. In addition, whilst I favour 'cock-up' or 'WYSIWYG' (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) rather than 'conspiracy' to explain much Government activity, it would be foolish to think that any Government is entirely 'open' or 'transparent' on a topic such as this.

Still both Clarke and Pope - whatever flaws they might be considered by some to have (including each other) - are well-known and dare I say, respected names in the field and are bolder than I (and many like me), by publicly having just such an association with the UFO phenomenon, whilst I - through necessity - must remain anonymous.

That is why I think it is important that they acknowledge their differences in a mature, gentlemanly fashion and just try to get along.

Smoke and mirrors - the MOD's 'X-Files'

[Updated 11 July 2013 see below*]

The tenth and final batch of files on UFOs from the Ministry of Defence have now been released (groan). If you want to see them you can go to the relevant website here.

Screen capture of the site where the MOD files can be accessed

Whilst this may engage the interest of many a ufologist, I have learned not to expect too much from, what I view, as a diversionary exercise by the U.K. authorities, in much the same way that the now infamous Project Blue Book was used (more extensively) by the authorities in the U.S. over four decades ago. Whilst they sometimes make for an interesting read, I'm afraid any excitement I might have felt over these mislabelled UK 'X-files' files dissipated shortly after release of the first set some time ago. Funnily enough, I see that former MOD official Nick Pope apparently thinks the same according to one Reuters article I read today, which I was unaware of when I started writing this post.

*Since writing this post, I notice that Robert Hastings, author of the website UFOs and Nukes has written an interesting article concerning the latest MOD UFO files release, which also includes a definitive statement by Nick Pope (some of which is referenced in the former Reuters article). Readers might want to check out the relevant page of Mr Hastings's site here.

The same can be said generally with most material released under the UK's Freedom of Information (FOI) Act. Having contributed to responses to many a Freedom of Information case myself in two Government Departments, I know that our Government is, with a few exceptions, very careful not to put controversial material into the public domain and officials will obsesses over the tone of the covering response to FOI requesters, even with the relatively low or baseline security level cases I was involved in. My experience of FOI cases and processes is that these are mostly burdensome to Government Departments, using up significant amounts of officials' time and effort that could be usefully employed elsewhere, for the release of material that is effectively of little or no value.

This is, of course, one of the main reasons why the MOD set out to release 'all' the UFO files they have to the public - to reduce some of the increasing workload on an ever decreasing workforce of civil servants.

It should come as no surprise then that material of a significantly higher security level will never see the light of day. This is irrespective of the UK's blessed FOI Act because, the effort of releasing it (properly redacted) notwithstanding, it is deemed too sensitive to release in the interests of national and international security - largely with strong justification.

This leads me onto the recent Sky interview (below) of famous and long-standing ufologist Timothy Good - author of the fascinating "Need to Know" amongst other books, whose comments echo my own thoughts on the matter.

Whether you subscribe to Mr Good's theories or not, it would be truly naive to assume that the material released by the MOD is in any way a true reflection of the UK authorities' amassed files - whether definitive and revealing or not - on the subject of UFOs. As Mr Good suggests there are other players in the defence, intelligence and security community who will maintain records that will not reach the MOD, let alone reach the public domain. GCHQ, MI6 and Royal Naval Intelligence spring to mind for example and are referred to by Mr Good in the interview.

Now it may be that many such records might only be retained for 'horizon scanning', in that they are used to assess whether there is evidence of a technological or strategic advantage which our military and intelligence community needs to be aware of. This is likely to be in the context of assessing the capabilities of hostile foreign powers or organisations, and not necessarily because of some implied 'extraterrestrial' threat.

It's also interesting to note that this comes at a time when a certain whistleblower (a very foolhardy one at that) has compromised the security of some GCHQ and NSA activity, which would otherwise never have been revealed. Anything the authorities, especially those in defence and intelligence, deign to reveal to the public will only ever be a tiny piece of the true picture. And that's even excluding the subject of UFOs, which as Mr Good suggests, might have one of the highest orders of security clearance attached to it.

Douglas Trumbull's UFOTOG Resurrected?

Visual effects expert Doug Trumbull

In previous postings, you'll have seen my speculations about visual effects expert Douglas Trumbull and his supposedly shelved UFOTOG project. Mr Trumbull was kind enough to take the time out to update me on UFOTOG as it stood when I asked him about it.

My previous posts are below with the most recent first.

Douglas Trumbull's response on UFOTOG

Open email to Douglas Trumbull about UFOTOG

Still no news on UFOTOG

Well according to an interview that Open Minds (click link) was able to get with a colleague of Trumbull's, who - rather interestingly in itself - is a representative of Mutual UFO Network - Mark D’Antonio (a photo analyst for the MUFON), a new 'fictionalised' account concerning the use of the equipment featured in the UFOTOG project is soon to be released.

Whilst encouraging, this appears to be a new approach being taken with this project. It seems that rather than produce an actual documentary (yet) of Trumbull and his team's efforts to get verifiable data on intelligently controlled non-terrestrial objects; or conversely even come away with no verifiable data to support existence of the same; Trumbull is perhaps seeking to generate further interest and funding for UFOTOG by releasing this 'fictional' version of a documentary.

The UFOTOG Humvee in action

To paraphrase Mark D’Antonio from the Open Minds interview, the film will be 'A visual foray into what could be the potential reality of the project'.

I think that this is great news that the project is alive and well and that Mr Trumbull has some support in this.



It's also very interesting to see that Mr Trumbull is now apparently working with a well-known, long-standing and respected American UFO investigations body on this project.

This could be a smart way to engage more undecided hearts and minds (and potentially well-funded backers) for the project without the stigma of ridicule being attached.

We'll have to see whether this leads to an actual groundbreaking documentary in time...

Book review: "A.D. After Disclosure" by Richard M. Dolan and Bryce Zabel

Front Cover of the book

What can I say? Life got in the way of blogging again for a while so - sorry for the absence of posts since early April.

Anyway, whilst routing through one my local bookstores months ago I came across "A.D. After Disclosure" which was amongst the (frankly abysmally) tiny selection of books devoted to the UFO/UAP subject.

For my own reasons, and probably like millions of other people around the world, I'm still effectively at 'first base' when it comes to the subject. I believe the whole UFO/UAP subject deserves much more attention than it gets and less ridicule than it deserves - especially when thousands of professionals in the armed forces and other state services around the globe have been reporting inexplicable things in our skies for at least seventy years. Despite the hard line taken by debunkers and the ridicule the subject attracts, the phenomenon isn't about to go away and - like one well known UK skeptic and self-proclaimed 'expert' on the subject would otherwise like to suggest (whom I won't name here) - it seems a little arrogant to explain all of it away on just wish-fulfilment, mythology, cultural influence or some form of mass-hallucination.

However, I wouldn't go as far as saying that extraterrestrials (in the traditional sense of intelligent species from other planets) are necessarily behind the most compelling of UFO/UAP cases either. So you can begin to see why the central core of this book requires a 'leap of faith' for me - and for many other people I would imagine - by reading it.

First impressions

 

Whilst I doubted the wisdom of having an endorsement by none other than Stan Lee* (of Marvel Comics fame) on the front cover, after having looked into the (quite impressive) credentials of the two authors Richard M. Dolan and Bryce Zabel, I decided to give the book a go - and can honestly say I was not disappointed.

[*Don't get me wrong - I've nothing against Stan Lee and Marvel Comics. I just don't think he's necessarily the best person to be cited endorsing something that appears to be a serious attempt to address the issue of 'Disclosure'.]

What first struck me was that, as far as I'm aware, nobody - outside the various works of science fiction - has made a serious and in-depth effort to tackle the questions arising from what would happen were it to be publicly proven beyond doubt that: a) intelligent extraterrestrials exist; and b) they have been engaging with humanity for some time albeit in apparent secrecy.

So the authors have set a publishing precedent in this at least - but I'm happy to be corrected if there is another similar such book out there that predates this one.

I mentioned making the 'leap of faith' above by reading this book and would point out that it is a necessary one in order to properly appreciate its content.

Re: its overall content, it makes for an accessible and engaging - if sometimes slightly cliched and overly dramatic - read but I can understand that such a writing style would be necessary to retain many readers' attention.

At its Core

 

The central aim of the book is to give informed speculation about the likely consequences of - and a suggested timeline of likely events - in the face of proven intelligent ET contact and this the book does really well. In my view, it effectively leaves no stone unturned in terms of how a significant event leading to Disclosure would affect, amongst other things:-

• initial Governments' responses to the event and how this would be managed; 

• the public's reaction and their subsequent treatment of those in authority especially if certain Governments were proven to be complicit in some sort of cover-up; 

• how this might to a lesser or greater extent lead to political or civil instability; 

• the collateral damage and unintended consequences as a result of such instability; 

• how the mainstream media would cover the developments; 

• how the world would re-examine the phenomenon of UFOs and its history and how this might impact on education; 

• how the entertainment industry might deal with developments; 

• how the economies and stock markets of the world might be affected and whether this might cause another financial crisis; 

• how legal systems might have to change to incorporate previously unforseen legal complexities (something I'd honestly never considered until I read this book); 

• how religions, their followers and leaders might react and how this might affect religious views; 

• how aspects of mainstream science might have to re-evaluate certain theories; 

• how advances in technology might be affected especially in terms of how the world's energy supplies and linked economies might potentially change;

• how different generations might react to such developments; and

• how this might all impact on daily life.

Each of the above (and some other elements I haven't listed) have separate passages devoted to each topic and make a good fist of suggesting what likely consequences might be. One I hadn't expected was in terms of religion (which is backed up by some actual research into public opinion on the question). I won't spoil things by saying why here - I would suggest one reads the book to find out - but suffice to say most people's expectations in this area may be turned on their head after reading this book.

The Breakaway Group

 

Another interesting thread running through the book is the theory concerning the 'Breakaway Group' which - the authors suggest - is a super secret organisation which has supposedly been coordinating events behind the scenes ever since apparent contact with intelligent non-humans in the post-war period.  The authors attempt to speculate why the Group came about, how it has been involved with many of the issues listed in the bullets above and how it would seek to manage developments following an unprecedented event which leads to Disclosure might bring.

Conspiracy theorists will of course lap up this aspect of the book. Throughout Ufology in general there are frequent references to 'Cabals' or secret societies trying to clandestinely impose a (mostly unwelcome) 'New World Order' on a largely unsuspecting world.

Thankfully the authors do not sink to regurgitating many of the extreme ideas espoused by many theorists on the web and elsewhere. They do however attempt to take a hard look at how such a body not only could have come into existence (with the possible emergence of the 'military industrial complex' warned about by President Eisenhower in his now famous farewell address) but also just how it might be operating across geographical and legal boundaries and with technological resources quite possibly at least 60 years ahead of that available in the public domain.

The authors readily cite examples of how such secrecy could be effectively maintained and how clever manipulation of the media and national security agencies - amongst other bodies - could confound any serious attempts to reveal such a Breakaway Group to the world.  Even more compelling is the authors' suggestion that such a Group might, given their possible advanced resources, have developed its own 'infrastructure' and society 'off the grid' as it were which is operating under the noses of the unsuspecting billions around the world.

Concerning this thread, one only has to look at bodies like the Bildeberg Group (featured in the press only this week for their clandestine 2013 meeting in Watford of all places!) to see real examples of secretive bodies dabbling in world affairs, and as the authors discuss, impressively large scale undertakings like the Manhattan Project, which apparently employed 130,000 people in total secrecy in its time and was effectively kept secret until necessity required that it be revealed to the world with the infamous (and horrific) bombing of the Japanese. Given that nearly 70 years have passed since that chapter in history, one can begin to understand how mind-boggling subsequent projects could be with greater funding and more advanced technology at their disposal.

The Others

 

Of course no such book would be complete without discussing the non-terrestrial intelligences (NTIs) that are the source of an event that leads to Disclosure. Rather than dwelling much on what such NTIs or ET might actually be (given there could be a number of possible explanations), the authors do examine what might be their likely motivations.
Whilst some interesting points are made, for me this tends to be the weakest element of the book. Whilst it can be an interesting thought experiment to ponder what moves such non-human entities to apparently only indirectly interact with humanity (until the Disclosure event described), one could argue that there is no direct evidence at all to draw on for this. Conversely, the human experience and human history provides a wealth of material for speculation in terms of the likely impact of Disclosure and the likelihood of the existence of a Breakaway Group, which I think this book does really well.

Conclusion

This is a thoroughly engaging, sometimes complex and thought-provoking book which examines - as far as I'm aware - a relatively unexplored territory (outside the realms of science fiction). I would encourage any serious reader to add this to their library. What would be truly fascinating would be to see how accurate some of the authors' predictions would be if the world did indeed one day suddenly find itself facing actual public Disclosure concerning ET contact...


Disclaimer

Neither of the authors of this book are personally known to me and I have not received any incentive from them, financial or otherwise, in writing this review.

The Disclosure Project - Too good to be true?

I'm back from finishing another short-term Government contract which left me rather washed-out just before the Easter Break (hope you all had a good one) - hence another absence on my part from the blogging front.

However, I have had an opportunity to read the book "A.D. - After Disclosure" which I shall review in my next post - and which leads me onto another well publicised long-running project about 'Disclosure'.

Disclosure, with a capital 'D', has increasingly become the buzzword in the UFO community for a paradigm-shifting revelation about what is 'really going on' concerning the UFO phenomenon. Many believers in the E.T. hypothesis behind UFOs support the idea that the authorities (mainly US) have been in some sort of communication with extraterrestrials for the last 65 years (the key start date being the 1947 Roswell incident). The supposed by-product of this dialogue has been the opportunity to reverse-engineer 'alien' technology to make giant leaps in 'human' energy and military technology. All of this has - of course - happened in secret and most of the supporting evidence supplied to date would appear to be anecdotal but supposedly from 'credible' military and government sources.

The Disclosure Project's logo

Putting himself firmly at the centre of all this for the last two decades appears to be 'Dr.' Steven Greer with his Disclosure Project. There's plenty of stuff that an internet search will reveal about the project's activity which I won't go into here.

What's interesting to note however, is the project's upcoming documentary Sirius which will be broadcast towards the end of this month. It promises to be just the kind of big 'reveal' that many in the UFO community might love.

As for me, I remain firmly on the fence with the Disclosure Project for now. Here's why with some of my pros and cons:-


Pros

1. Steven Greer has been at this for a long time - over twenty years. That seems an awfully long haul for a con operation. If however, the project is a con it's a very well established and elaborate one, and what is the con's purpose - Money? Disinformation?

2. In 2001, Greer brought together an impressive panel of credible witnesses/supporters to speak about the UFO phenomenon and a related Government cover-up before representatives of major media bodies at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. Credentials of most (but not all - see below*) of the witnesses apparently checked out - or to put it another way - have not been seriously challenged by the media since. Witnesses/supporters included air traffic controllers, commercial pilots, military defence specialists with apparently top-secret clearance, military (including former US and other countries' airforce) personnel and - most significantly - astronauts.

3. As in any court of law or formal inquiry, when a significant number of people are brought together from very different backgrounds to offer evidence and testimony which supports a particular theory, there is often a hard core of truth at its centre.

4. Steven Greer appears to have some clout to have latterly been able to recruit Emmy Award winning film director Amardeep Kaleka to direct the upcoming Sirius movie, with actor Thomas Jane doing the narration - but celebrities are only human and can be hoodwinked just like Joe Public.

5. As I write, another event - echoing the one in 2001 - will be run at the end of this month - see http://www.citizenhearing.org/. Whilst this event appears to be driven by another 'Steve' - the controversial Stephen Bassett of the Paradigm Research Group - it suggests that Greer's event in 2001 paved the way for other such events - which is at least getting the whole subject discussed and debated more openly and with a higher profile.


Cons

1. Steven Greer's doctorate apparently has nothing to do with physics or astronomy. It's in 'medicine'. His training allegedly included teaching transcendental meditation and he has supposedly worked as an 'emergency room physician'. But then - what kind of doctorate exactly does one need to be an 'expert' on E.T. or 'exopolitics'?

2. No high-profile members of the mainstream scientific community have come forward to support the project. However, fear of ridicule is a very strong demotivating factor in such a community.

3. At least one witness* (supposedly ex-NASA) at the project's 2001 event famously claimed to have seen photographs of 'a base on the moon' but the dates he offered didn't check out, nor did his apparent age or work history. Was this person himself a hoaxer, a disinformation 'plant' or just simply 'one-cabbage-short-of-an-allotment'?

4. The Disclosure Project recently claims to have analysed a tiny humanoid corpse with 'unknown' DNA. That should usually set alarm bells ringing - for all the wrong reasons. In the past more than one capuchin monkey has been passed off as an 'alien' for example.

5. The mind-blowing claims being made overall by the project and its supporters just feel too good to be true. I know this point is purely subjective but it's a good rule of thumb when applied to the more mundane world of con-merchants and hoaxers. Only very rarely is such a rule of thumb wrong...

Five schools 'visited by aliens' and counting...

So - less than a fortnight after my previous article we have another school 'visited by aliens'!

This time in Buckhurst Hill today, as reported by North East London's local Guardian

Screenshot of the NE London local Guardian news item

I make that five (known to me) in the last year.

What on earth (or off it) is going on?

Why the apparent upsurge in interest in staging such events for school-children in the UK?