Source:LiveScience

Hard to get a sense from Redfern’s prose if this is a widespread issue, or just something toyed at by a deranged minority. The trouble is that the book is primarily in Redfern’s own voice, rather than quotes of his informants. He also has only a few informants, and although they might have a terrifying worldview, there’s no sense of how this worldview is regarded by the mainstream in government. If, for example, Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/etc. care at all about this issue, so it somehow played a part in the war in Iraq. As crazy as Michelle Bachmann is, does she ascribe to this theory? The book doesn’t get into it – just the word of a few faceless subjects. The real premise of the book is that there could be many people in government who believe in this theory, not necessarily that there are.

All that said, I enjoyed it for the premise alone…because I’m basically writing this scenario in The American Book Part II – though mostly from the perspective of the Collins Elite’s worst nightmare: disclosure of a spiritually/technologically advanced race, who are the Anti-Christ in the sense that they disprove elements of Christianity. But then, if there is such a “false prophet” then maybe the Bible was actually being prophetic…

I write fiction because I can get into what I believe without claiming any of it to be true. If there’s a spiritual dimension to the Grays, it would make more sense that they are part of some eternal system of spirituality, rather than centering around a 2000 year old religion constructed on this small planet. This is especially true when you factor in the misinterpretation of the Bible, as is often the case with the religious right regarding Revelation or even the concept of demons themselves:

Did you know that the word “demon” is only mentioned twice in the Old Testament and never in the context of a hell or underworld? Did you know that the Hebrew term used for “demon” has no parallel in other Semitic languages for a denizen of hell or an underworld? Did you know there are no instances of demonic possession in the Old Testament? And what about the word for “demon” (daimon) in the New Testament — it can be used of any spirit being, good or evil. There are also no biblical verses that call fallen angels demons.

So the American Book II is about disclosure. I am so sick of alien invasion stories with weapons. I’m more interested in an alien that invades the world with the idea of a provable God. Could be just as destructive, but for totally different reasons. This whole premise is why I wrote TAB Part I – it doesn’t touch on the UFO issue as much, but acts as an introduction to the ideas I really want to cover. Basically, how do humans integrate with the rest of the cosmos.

If you’ve been reading TAB II online, I’m sorry. I haven’t stopped writing, but I have stopped looking backwards. I reached a point in the book where I didn’t want to keep revising chapters and posting them, I wanted to move forward with the story. So I’m writing a lot, I’m just not a very good serializer.

The UFO Assange, except we have to take his word for it. I can also cite the Disclosure Project as a source – I have it on my bookshelf:

WN: Did you find anything in your search for evidence of UFOs?

McKinnon: Certainly did. There is The Disclosure Project. This is a book with 400 testimonials from everyone from air traffic controllers to those responsible for launching nuclear missiles. Very credible witnesses. They talk about reverse-(engineered) technology taken from captured or destroyed alien craft.

WN: Like the Roswell incident of 1947?

McKinnon: I assume that was the first and assume there have been others. These relied-upon people have given solid evidence.

WN: What sort of evidence?

McKinnon: A NASA photographic expert said that there was a Building 8 at Johnson Space Center where they regularly airbrushed out images of UFOs from the high-resolution satellite imaging. I logged on to NASA and was able to access this department. They had huge, high-resolution images stored in their picture files. They had filtered and unfiltered, or processed and unprocessed, files.

My dialup 56K connection was very slow trying to download one of these picture files. As this was happening, I had remote control of their desktop, and by adjusting it to 4-bit color and low screen resolution, I was able to briefly see one of these pictures. It was a silvery, cigar-shaped object with geodesic spheres on either side. There were no visible seams or riveting. There was no reference to the size of the object and the picture was taken presumably by a satellite looking down on it. The object didn’t look manmade or anything like what we have created. Because I was using a Java application, I could only get a screenshot of the picture — it did not go into my temporary internet files. At my crowning moment, someone at NASA discovered what I was doing and I was disconnected.

I also got access to Excel spreadsheets. One was titled “Non-Terrestrial Officers.” It contained names and ranks of U.S. Air Force personnel who are not registered anywhere else. It also contained information about ship-to-ship transfers, but I’ve never seen the names of these ships noted anywhere else.

(via)

["Explanation: Almost every object in the above photograph is a galaxy." Via http://apod.nasa.gov]

Interesting discussion going on at Dangerous Minds about the new FBI/Roswell files.  It came around to someone arguing with me that there is little chance of intelligent life in the universe.  I’ve seen people argue UFOs every way possible, but I’ve never seen it taken that far.  So a refresher:

Number of galaxies in the universe – between 100 and 500 billion:

The most current estimates guess that there are 100 to 200 billion galaxies in the Universe, each of which has hundreds of billions of stars. A recent German supercomputer simulation put that number even higher: 500 billion. In other words, there could be a galaxy out there for every star in the Milky Way.

How many stars in a galaxy – 10 million to 100 trillion stars:

Our own Milky Way is a spiral galaxy. These are much more massive than the relatively tiny dwarf galaxies, and contain hundreds of billions of stars. For example, the Milky Way contains 200 billion stars – 200,000,000,000 stars. The nearby Andromeda galaxy is much more massive than the Milky Way and contains 1 trillion stars; 5 times as many stars as the Milky Way.

The largest galaxies in the Universe are known as ellipticals. These enormous galaxies have lost their spiral shape through many interactions between large galaxies. They’re found at the cores of the largest galaxy clusters. The biggest galaxy ever discovered is inside the Abell 2029 cluster and contains 100 trillion stars. That’s 100,000,000,000,000 stars.

1/4 of star systems have a planet in the habitable zone:

What does this mean?

Well, that’s a whole lot of planets! That’s what it means.

What’s cool, too, is that this number isn’t all that far off from what you can estimate using the report from yesterday. Something like 25% of the stars in the galaxy are like the Sun (that’s a rough estimate, but close enough). That’s 50 billion stars. If 25% of those have earth-mass planets, that’s about 13 billion total

And that’s just the Milky Way, let alone one elliptical galaxy.  Also: that’s from Bad Astronomy, which isn’t known for a lot of rank speculation.

Very roughly it’s something like: 25% of 100 billion x trillions of stars.  So yes, intelligent life in the universe.

And not just intelligent, but potentially billions of years older than Earth.  A billion-year-old species might be able to make itself invisible, appear as Greys or lizards at will, or any number of things.  They’d also know that we’re interesting enough to monitor at a distance, but insane enough to start killing each other if they let themselves be known.

That, or we’re completely alone in the universe, which is as depressing a thought as the size of the universe is awe-inspiring.

Also: Michio Kaku, Stanton Friedman and Nick Pope. (via TDG)

I think Seth Shostak is just doing his job. Either they hired someone who would be a devout debunker no matter what the evidence, or it’s actually his job description to debunk UFOs whatever the evidence. Because the unseriousness with which he approaches this issue suggests that he actively wants the issue to be unserious. It’s not as though disclosure would put him out of a job – he would likely be a go-to media resource if there was first contact. So that’s not it – it’s got to be something else. Because the UFO issue is too important to be so dismissive of it – especially for someone whose job it is to understand this issue implicitly.

Here’s a good takedown of the recent interview with Leslie Kean, which was predictably frustrating, and is not only dismissive of her reasoned approach to the issue, but actually censors what she said. There’s got to be a method to that madness. That, or Shostak just isn’t very bright.

What made the session noteworthy was its invitation to Kean, whose skillfully presented UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record confronts debunkers with their most formidable challenge in recent memory. But it became immediately clear that Shostak (“I have an open mind”) not only wasn’t interested in evidence, he probably hadn’t bothered to read the book.

In his subsequent discussion with Radford, Shostak stated: “The other argument that’s frequently made is that scientists simply dismiss this phenomenon out of hand, that they won’t look, and this is one of the arguments in the new book by Leslie Kean … that there may be something real here and nobody will look at it …”

“Well, there’s a couple of errors right there,” Radford replied. “First of all, UFO sightings have been investigated. The claim that the U.S. government has never looked into these things is patently false. They have looked into these things …”

Whoa, time out. Kean mentioned Project Blue Book, the USAF study, in On the Record. Who claimed Uncle Sam “has never looked into these things”? Nobody. Except maybe Radford. Shostak, who didn’t bother to correct him, is a clever guy who really knows how to bait the hook. Here’s how he opened the Q&A with Radford:

“Ben, in your long career as someone who has investigated UFOs and sorted through the evidence, has there ever been a case that convinced you that aliens have visited the planet?”

Who said anything about aliens? Kean’s book dealt with an extraterrestrial hypothesis — the hypothesis that keeps SETI in business — but as she told Shostak earlier on the show, “I’m not even willing to assume that these are aliens.” On the Record deals with radar data, military reports, analysis of plant and soil damage, photo analysis, etc. Reviewing the data doesn’t amount to endorsing aliens. Shostak knows that. And yet, his tortured contortions to avoid said evidence are becoming cartoonish.

In short, debunkers unwillingness to take a serious look at this issue is as mysterious as UFOs themselves.

A new report out this week in Germany in the magazine PM purports that there is “strong evidence” that a Nazi UFO programme was well advanced.

Hitler ordered Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering to develop the super weapon that would change the war.

The PM report quotes eyewitnesses who believe they saw a flying saucer marked with the Iron Cross of the German military flying low over the Thames in 1944.

At the time the New York Times wrote about a “mysterious flying disc” with photos of the device seen travelling at extremely high speeds over the high-rise buildings.

Meanwhile: Nazis Were Given ‘Safe Haven’ in U.S., Report Says

It’s not as though Operation Paperclip is news.

More interested in this:

than this:

Here’s what I wrote on the Daily Grail about “Battle: Los Angeles”:

It’s easier to blow things up than take a more nuanced approach to this subject. And all in all it’s not good for the cultural psyche – if something’s different, go to war with it. It’s amazing that no one in Hollywood has thought to make a disclosure movie yet – where the aliens aren’t violent. “Alien Nation” was sort of like that, which was a precursor to “District 9,” in that the aliens were treated as inferior.

But what if the aliens weren’t inferior – if they had extrasensory powers, but weren’t violent. There’s so much to do with that topic. But humans still need to believe they’re the best in the universe. Especially American humans.

So…I’m writing my own movie. Done with the movie treatment for The American Book of the Dead. Happy with it – sent it off to the producer. Part II is when UFO disclosure is more a part of the story. Which means Part I has to, you know, get made and be a ridiculous, fantastic success. Gotta start somewhere – and I really want these ideas out into the wild. Best way to do that is in a movie.

About:

Rumor has it (in ufology circles, anyway) that The Event is the latest in a long line of infotainments designed to raise the curtain ever-so-slowly on truths that many will find too terrible to contemplate. We’re being acclimatized, in other words, to minimize the number of suicides, riots, business failures and bedwettings that are expected to occur when our government reverses its 60-plus-year-old policy of deflection and denial.

UFO historian Richard Dolan’s book, A.D. After UFO Disclosure, will be released October 11, timed perfectly to ride the wave of interest in such matters likely to be generated by The Event. It’s co-authored by former CNN correspondent, now Hollywood screenwriter, Bryce Zabel.

Dolan talking about his book:

Update: So I’m very behind on the current TV schedule, because Richard Dolan’s also going to be a part of this. A UFO version of “Ghost Hunters,” which was inevitable. Still, this takes Dolan closer to the level of Billie Ray Cyrus than Leslie Kean. A job’s a job, though, and maybe things like this are helpful.

Strange rockets crash to earth in England, the USSR and in America’s New Mexico desert…The political and military leaders of the world are shocked into an unprecedented unity. To fight this common enemy, they must resolve their planet-bound antagonisms, from Cold War tensions to violent standoffs in Ireland and Palestine. But are these martians real?

The first book to use the term ‘flying saucer’ in its title, this novel appeared in the wake of the Roswell incident and other UFO sightings, at a time when people feared both the threat from outer space and humanity’s tendency toward self-destruction. With a playful take on weighty matters, The Flying Saucer is a satisfying combination of science fiction and thriller, witty satire and political commentary.

Bernard Newman is shrouded in some amount of mystery. And this happened:

So, on my wishlist.