Amanda Swisten: July 2011

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Another Medevac

Aside from the normal things going on this week, we also had a medical evacuation. Someone needed to be evacuated from a container ship that was passing by. We've also had a few more Laysan ducks become sick from botulism. So far we've been able to cure them all with antitoxin and food. We have to check for sick and dead ducks daily, since botulism can spread through maggots from an infected carcass.
It's the quiet season around here now, until the albatrosses come back in October. It's quite a bit easier to get around the island now that the birds aren't blocking the roads. The birds are great, but it's nice to have a little break. Just like with the seasons, you appreciate the summer a bit more after the winter.

We're pulling away from the ship after picking up the patient. It was a bit rough, but at least they had steps for the person to get down to our boat.

Our fancy state of the art ambulance.

There are few enough birds around now that the planes can land in the daytime. The Coast Guard was nice enough to bring us a few supplies when they came.

The heat waves coming off of the runway give a kind of cool effect on the photo. You'll have to double click on the picture to make it bigger to see that.

The brown noddy chicks are starting to hatch.

Here's a convex crab I found out on the beach. These usually aren't out on land.

This Laysan albatross climbed up on a pile of marine debris. Maybe it's climbing out of the verbesina to try to catch the wind.

This is the parade field now. There are only a couple of albatrosses out there.

This was from almost the same spot back in April.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Paul's Greek Adventure

[Right: Painting by Kennedy A. Paizs of St. Paul preaching at the Areopagus in Athens (Acts 17:16-34)]

The second reading for today's Divine Office is from Acts 17, and it set me to thinking about what Paul's experience of preaching at the Areopagus must have been like. This was his 2nd missionary journey. He, along with Silas and Timothy, ran into some major trouble in Thessalonica, where he had preached in the local synagogue so convincingly over three Sabbath days that some Jewish believers, as well as some devout Greeks and, Luke says, "not a few of the leading women" became followers of Jesus. Such "sheep-stealing" didn't go down well with the majority of the synagogue members. They began a protest among the local gentry, into the marketplace where they enlisted the help of some "ruffians". Paul and Silas ran for cover. Accusing Paul and his band as "these people who have been turning the world upside down [and] have come here also", the crowd searched for them, in the meantime attacking Jason, the host of the preachers, and others, and hauled them before the local authorities on the charge of "acting contrary to the decrees of the emperor" by referring to Jesus as "King". After shaking Jason and company down for some bail money, probably under the excuse of a "slow economy", the city officials release them.

By night the Christian community sends Paul and Silas off to Beroea, the next town, where they do a repeat teaching session in the local synagogue. Even though the Beroean Jews, as well as "not a few Greek women and men of high standing", seem more receptive, the gang from Thessalonica pursues Paul there and continues to stir up trouble. With that, Paul is sent off to Athens, on the coast, for safety, while Silas and Timothy remain behind. Paul's final directive to his chaperones is to have Silas and Timothy join him ASAP.

Luke continues: "16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols." One can imagine Paul, ever restless and eager to tell people about Jesus, walking the streets of Athens, taking in all the astounding architecture and listening in on the heady philosophical conversations which characterized the city at that time, looking for an "angle" to convey "the mystery hidden for ages".

Following his usual preaching routine, he can't stay away from "his" Jewish people: "17 So he argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and also in the market-place every day with those who happened to be there." Nothing like a bunch of rabbis for a lively discussion! We can imagine Paul also being the sort who "never met a stranger", probably walking right up to folks in the marketplace and initiating conversation. Maybe even some form of "Are you saved?"

Here in Athens, unlike some of the other podunk places which Paul missionized, he would have run into some rather well-trained and intelligent academics. Luke notes: "18 Also some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers debated with him. Some said, ‘What does this babbler want to say?’ Others said, ‘He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign divinities.’ (This was because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.) 19 So they took him and brought him to the Areopagus and asked him, ‘May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 It sounds rather strange to us, so we would like to know what it means.’ 21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new. Basically, they challenged him to "Show us what you got".

Paul unabashedly accepts their challenge, so filled was he with passion for spreading the good news about Jesus the Christ. From what Luke says next, one assumes that Paul knew Greek, which was a plus. Intellectually, given his very fine Hebrew upbringing, he could easily hold his ground with these folks. "22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, ‘Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way." A compliment isn't never out of place as a good way to start a sermon.

"23 For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.'" Brilliant stategy: take something with which they're familiar, then expand on what is really means.

"What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things." I'm guessing that on this point the hearers were pretty comfortable.

26 From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28 For 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.' " Had we been standing in that crowd on the Areopagus, we might have noticed a few people becoming a little restless at this point. Greek philosophers had grappled for centuries trying to understand life, human beings, the origin of things, and had been all over the map in their conclusions, not necessarily coming to Paul's conclusion. For sure, many of them probably had "groped" for the existence and meaning of God. 

Paul is clear in his mind about one thing, and wants to set the Greeks right about it: "29 Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals." I don't know if there were statues and representations surrounding them there at the Areopagus, though I'd imagine there were. Undoubtedly Paul caught their attention, and probably more than a few snuck furtive glances at representations of any deities that might've been there.

Now Paul comes to the real message he wants to offer them: "30 While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.’" There were probably a few winces at the words "commands", "repent", probably even some audible groans, hissses, and/or other manifestations at the phrase "the dead".

That, as Luke notes, pretty much did Paul in! "32 When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said, ‘We will hear you again about this.’" It probably wasn't the first time people had ridiculed Paul or walked away from his sermon. Some of us preachers have experienced similar situations. It really does hurt when you've tried your best to honestly share deep convictions about your faith.

Luke intimates that it wasn't all bad news, though: "33 At that point Paul left them. 34 But some of them joined him and became believers, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them." Dionysius [Denis] the Areopagite shouldn't be confused with the later 6th century Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Dionysius was apparently a judge of the Areopagus when he heard Paul preach, and, touched by what he said, believed. Early Church legend has it that he became the second bishop of Athens. Damaris, whom Luke also mentions, living around 55 AD in Athens, also embraced the Christian faith following Paul's presentation. She may have been of high social status, since only such women were allowed to assist the Areopagus meetings. This may be the reason why her name has been especially recorded. According to Christian tradition she may even have been the wife of Dionysius the Areopagite, and she is remembered to be his faithful assistant in organizing the early church in Athens when her husband later became bishop there. Apparently, for Luke the Evangelist, having such elite citizens converted to the new faith was very important. It served as an example of sacrificing luxury and wealth in order to serve Christ.

Perhaps the moral of the narrative, if there is one, might be that we should take great care, as Paul undoubtedly did, about what we say about our faith and how we say it, not to mention about how we live it in practice. You never know the one or two persons who may be really listening and taking what you say to heart. You could even, unknowingly, help set that person(s) on the way to a unique and wonderful relationship with Jesus.

'Cowboys & Aliens' reviews

The Spielberg-produced sci-fi western Cowboys & Aliens is now in cinemas across the U.S. and Canada (it will reach most other countries by August or September). On the whole, the critics are not impressed.

Friday, July 29, 2011

UFOs and Disney: new article, new information

UFOs and Disney: Behind the Magic Kingdom:

New article examining Disney's close ties to the U.S. national security apparatus and defense industry in the context of the company's production of UFO-themed entertainment.

This article includes newly-uncovered information relating to Disney's much-debated 1995 Alien Encounters documentary drawn from the first interview of its kind with the documentary's writer/director, Andrew Thomas.

Thomas also reveals in this same testimony that, prior to his work for Disney, he personally spearheaded the "special marketing" campaign for Spielberg's 1977 UFO movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. According to Thomas, this campaign involved bringing to a specially selected planetarium:

"tens-of thousands of kids from all around the country on the pretence of seeing an educational planetarium show, but what they really got was a sophisticated message to explain to them that extraterrestrials and UFOs are real and what an encounter of the first, second and third kind actually meant."

The article also includes new revelations from the director of Disney's Race to Witch Mountain concerning his CIA-supervised trip to NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain facility, where he personally quizzed military top-brass on their knowledge of the 2008 Stephenville UFO sightings.

Read the article here.

UFOs and Disney: Behind the Magic Kingdom

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

The role played by Hollywood in shaping our notions of potential alien life has long been a subject of fascination and contention in the UFO research community. Although there seems to be a consensus among UFOlogists that big screen depictions of UFOs serve to acclimate the populous to the reality of the phenomenon, opinions diverge on whether this acclimation effect is the product of design (inferring the existence of a "Hollywood UFO conspiracy"), or is merely the result of a natural cultural process driven by generic trends and stemming from a simple recognition among Hollywood executives that, when it come to the box office, aliens sell like hotcakes. Within this ongoing debate concerning UFOs and Hollywood, the name of one studio consistently has rung out over the decades – Disney. The House of Mouse has overseen the production and/or distribution of numerous UFO and alien-themed movies in recent times, with the best known examples including Flight of the Navigator (1986) Signs (2002), Lilo and Stitch (2002), Chicken Little (2005), Lifted (2007), I am Number Four (2011), Mars Needs Moms (2011) and the forthcoming John Carter (2012).

Once Upon A Time...

The Disney/UFO connection can be traced back to 1953 when the CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel recommended that the US government make efforts to strip UFOs of their "aura of mystery" through the exploitation of mass media including television and motion pictures. In this context, the panel highlighted Walt Disney Productions specifically as a potential conduit for its propaganda. The panel’s singling-out of Disney made sense given the animation giant’s then firmly established working relationship with the US government: during World War II Disney made numerous propaganda shorts for the US military, and in the 1950s corporate and government sponsors helped the company produce films promoting President Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" policy, as well as the retrospectively hilarious Duck and Cover documentary, which depicted schoolchildren surviving an atomic attack by sheltering under their desks.

That the Robertson Panel highlighted Disney is significant in that the Panel’s general recommendation to debunk UFOs through media channels is known to have been acted upon in at least one instance: this being the CBS TV broadcast of UFOs: Friend, Foe, or Fantasy? (1966), an anti-UFO documentary narrated by Walter Cronkite. In a letter addressed to former Robertson Panel Secretary Frederick C. Durant, Dr Thornton Page confided that he "helped organize the CBS TV show around the Robertson Panel conclusions," even though this was thirteen years after the Panel had first convened. In light of this case alone, it seems reasonable to assume that the government may at least have attempted to follow through on the Robertson Panel’s Disney recommendation.

With this in mind, consider the case of the Oscar-winning Disney animator Ward Kimball. Best known for creating iconic Disney characters such as Jiminy Cricket and The Mad Hatter, Kimball also worked as Directing Animator on Disney classics including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938) and Pinocchio (1940). While at a MUFON symposium in 1979, Kimball claimed that the United States Air Force (USAF) had approached Walt Disney himself in the mid-1950s to request his cooperation on a documentary about UFOs that would help acclimate the American public to the reality of extraterrestrials. According to Kimball, in exchange for Disney’s cooperation, the USAF offered to furnish the production with genuine UFO footage. Kimball claimed that Disney accepted the deal and – ever faithful to Uncle Sam – began work immediately on the USAF project. It wasn’t long, however, before the USAF reneged on its offer of UFO footage. When Kimball challenged the USAF Colonel overseeing the project he was told that "there was indeed plenty of UFO footage, but that neither Kimball, nor anyone else was going to get access to it." The Kimball case, though, seems to be at odds with the Robertson Panel’s recommendations, which were to debunk UFO reality through media channels, not promote it. But perhaps another faction within the military-intelligence community – one with a UFO acclimation agenda – had similarly recognised Disney’s propagandist potential? We can only speculate.

Disney’s Alien Encounters

A tantalising case of alleged Disney/government UFO collusion is that of the 1995 documentary Alien Encounters from New Tomorrowland, which officially was produced with the sole purpose of promoting Disneyworld’s then-new ‘ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter’ ride. Yet, the content of this curious "promotional" documentary was viewed with suspicion by UFO researchers for the following reasons:

- Throughout its forty-minute run-time, the documentary’s presenter/narrator, Robert Urich, makes numerous declarative statements to the effect that UFOs are one-hundred-percent real and extraterrestrial in origin. Such statements include: "For nearly fifty years, officials have been documenting routine alien encounters here on earth; "More than one alien craft crashed and was recovered for secret U.S. military research. The most famous case took place in July of 1947 just outside the community of Roswell, New Mexico"; and "Indications are that government, military and scientific leaders will soon release nearly a half-century of official documentation of ongoing alien encounters on earth."

- The documentary tells us of alien microbes found in meteorites in Antarctica that had been analysed by NASA. At the time the documentary was televised in 1995, NASA was indeed analysing a Martian meteorite recovered from Antarctica, and had indeed reached the tentative conclusion that it contained fossilised microbial alien life. The inclusion of this information in Disney’s 1995 documentary is intriguing, however, as NASA did not make a formal announcement about its findings until August of 1996 – 17 months after the documentary was televised.

- The actual ‘Alien Encounter’ ride received very little screen time, with the vast majority of the documentary’s content being focused on UFOs and extraterrestrials as a factual reality. The ride itself seemed like an afterthought.

- The documentary was aired in only a handful of US cities at seemingly random times on selected dates in February and March, 1995, with no advance notice – a rather odd marketing strategy considering its purpose was to promote a major theme park ride for families.

For the reasons cited above, many in the UFO research field felt that Disney’s Alien Encounters documentary was an effort by the powers that be to prepare us for Disclosure – a subtle test of public reaction to an official declaration that we are not alone. But in the sixteen years since the documentary was produced, not one UFO researcher has attempted to contact the film’s writer and director, Andrew Thomas, in order to learn the truth of the matter. So, in February 2011, I decided to do just that.

In an hour-long telephone interview, Thomas revealed to me that he had been selected by Disney for the documentary project based on his background in reality television, having been the original producer of the phenomenally successful TV show, Cops: "Making things exceptionally real was the line of work that I was in at the time," he said. The other key factor was Thomas’s previous position as head of "special marketing" for Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) in the mid-to-late 1970s. Regarding Close Encounters, Thomas explained that marketing executives at Columbia Pictures were concerned that Spielberg’s chosen title for the film made it sound "suspiciously like a pornographic movie, because no one had any reference to what that vocabulary meant." This was where Thomas came in:

"Eighteen months before the film [Close Encounters] was going to premiere... before we’d even sold it to audiences, we had a campaign to introduce that vocabulary and make it part of the vernacular, so when the film opened-up everyone would know what was being discussed, and there wouldn’t be any question. So what I did was I worked with a planetarium to create a planetarium show that was about twenty-minutes long... you sit down and a UFO shoots across the planetarium dome and then the audience is trained on how to figure out whether that was a meteor, a comet, or actually an extraterrestrial. We managed to bus-in tens-of thousands of kids from all around the country on the pretence of seeing an educational planetarium show, but what they really got was a sophisticated message to explain to them that extraterrestrials and UFOs are real and what an encounter of the first, second and third kind actually meant."

Clearly, then, Thomas was a natural choice for Disney’s Alien Encounters documentary, the entire purpose of which, according to the director, was to promote the ride itself. Thomas told me that Disney had requested a documentary "about the history of mankind and aliens. Not a film history, but more of a realistic approach... a special about the history of UFO sightings," with Disney’s only stipulation being that "the last five minutes had to focus on the ride." Thomas confirmed to me that, instead of giving the documentary network time, Disney’s plans from the outset were to "seed it into independent television stations across the country."

Chain structures in meteorite fragment ALH84001

But why did Thomas’s documentary take such a strong stance in favour of UFO/ET reality? He summed-up his approach as follows:

"I figured... instead of asking people to question ‘could it be possible?’ to just adopt the point of view that this [alien visitation] has been going on for 50 years, everybody’s known about it... And I thought it fit with the hyperrealistic nature of the ride that we were eventually trying to promote... I did it really kind of naively – I said to myself 'okay, I’m going to believe this right now, and I’m going to believe everything and I’m going to collect all this stuff and construct what would be a documentary if we all just had a consensus that it [the UFO phenomenon] was real...' We didn’t make up anything, but it certainly surprised the people at Disney."

Somewhat disappointingly for conspiracy theorists, Thomas claims to have written the script in just a few hours while flying back from Florida to his home in Los Angeles. "There was nothing to it," he said, "it just kind of came out, it was easy." Furthermore, Thomas claims to have conducted the vast majority his research at the National Archives and stressed that, beyond these archival visits, "there was no direct government contact" on the production. "I didn’t get any special access from anybody," he said.

But how did Thomas come to acquire his information about the NASA meteorite? "I found it on the Internet," said the director, matter-of-factly:

"It wasn’t a big secret. NASA had been doing that – they’d been getting meteorites... and inside I believe they were finding some complex amino acids, some material that could only be produced organically, that sort of thing, so it was an easy jump [in logic]. And the reason that NASA released the information months later is because they take their time. They don’t find something and release it. They find it and they study it."

Thomas’s meteorite information did raise a red flag at Disney, however: "They called me in and they said ‘we’re really concerned about this thing about NASA exploring rocks in Antarctica.’ I told them it was absolutely true and to let me go back to the office and I’ll get the material [sources] so they can check my facts... no big deal. So it wasn’t any big secret, it was just that the official [NASA] announcement came later."

Former Disney CEO, Michael Eisner

There were aspects of the Alien Encounters project, however, that even Thomas considered strange – not least of all was the fact that Disney CEO Michael Eisner took a direct interest in the documentary, personally vetting its content and even filming his own introduction for the piece:

"I thought it was really odd because to me this was kind of a minor marketing project, but they [Disney] put a lot of weight into it. I mean Eisner doesn’t have to stop walking down the street to pick up a twenty-dollar-bill – it’s not worth his time. But they had him look through this. And he filmed this intro to the show. I didn’t do that. He had his own film crew take him out to a sound stage and film his own intro, which I thought was just really surprising."
Also surprising to Thomas was Disney’s inexplicable TV scheduling for the documentary, which he described as "completely counter-intuitive," because "it played on independent stations in the afternoon at like 2 o’clock or 3 o’ clock, or some horrible time when no one would be watching it."

Overall, Thomas’s testimony punches serious holes in the theory that Disney’s Alien Encounters documentary was a government-sponsored UFO acclimation effort. Yet questions remain; indeed, some of Thomas’s statements only add fuel to the fire: why was Michael Eisner so personally invested in what – on the surface at least – was a minor TV marketing project? And why the bizarre and "totally counter-intuitive" TV scheduling for the documentary?

Indulging the conspiratorial interpretation of events for a moment: if powerful UFO-related interests were involved in the documentary – perhaps having recommended Thomas knowing what he would produce based on his sophisticated work on Spielberg’s Close Encounters – then Thomas himself would likely be oblivious to this fact. He would have been a pawn in a much larger game, so to speak. I’ll be the first to admit that this interpretation sounds farfetched; but it is not entirely beyond the realms of possibility. Certainly, during the time the Alien Encounters documentary was produced in the mid-1990s, Disney was working closely with the Pentagon on two separate pro-establishment Hollywood movies: In the Army Now (1994) and Crimson Tide (1995), both of which received generous production support from the Department of Defense in the form of expensive military hardware and on-set advice from DoD personnel. Indeed, Disney’s continuing willingness to support establishment power structures was effectively demonstrated more recently when it released the TV movie The Path to 9/11 (2006), which was heavily skewed to exonerate the Bush administration and blame the Clinton administration for the 9/11 attacks – provoking outraged letters of complaint to Disney from former high-level Clinton Administration staffers. The nature of Disney’s output makes sense given the company’s historical ties not only to the US defence department, but to the arms industry also. Even now, a long-time Directors Board member of Disney is John Bryson – also a director of The Boeing Company, one of the world’s largest aerospace and defence contractors.

President Obama with Disney/Boeing director, John Bryson

Despite Disney’s demonstrably cosy relationship with secretive institutions, however, and putting aside a couple of unanswered questions regarding the documentary’s personal vetting by Eisner and its curious TV scheduling, there simply is no direct evidence to suggest that Alien Encounters was ever anything more than marketing project for a theme park ride. However, a much more compelling case for Disney/government UFO collusion recently has come to light.

Race to Witch Mountain

Directed by Andy Fickman – a self-confessed "UFO buff" born and raised in Roswell, New Mexico – Disney’s Race to Witch Mountain (2009) depicts the arrival on Earth of two blonde-haired, blue-eyed, human-looking extraterrestrials (UFOlogy’s ‘Nordics’) and their plan to save their own dying planet from total atmospheric degradation. In a September 2010 interview, Fickman explained to me how he had sought to ground his movie as firmly as possible in UFOlogical reality by personally schooling his cast in UFO history: "I would spend time with my actors literally just going through ‘UFO 101’ – we’d watch every DVD that was out there, every documentary; I would give them book, upon book, upon book."

Although the vast majority of the film’s UFOlogical content came from Fickman, at least some of it was the result of CIA input. In a highly unusual production arrangement Fickman claims he was closely assisted by an active employee of the CIA whose advice extended so far even as to designing the alien writing seen in the UFO during the film’s climactic scene. Fickman is unwilling to name this advisor, but claims he is an Air Force Colonel with a background in Technical Intelligence, that he had been "very active in Hollywood" and "had a lot of connections in the computer world and experience in satellite imagery." Fickman said of his CIA advisor:

"All of the on-camera alien language in terms of their spaceship and everything – that was all designed by him in the sense [of what] the mathematics of communication would be, so you know... there would be a similar mathematical equation that the government probably has if they were to ever come across an alien race. So a lot of the things we ended up using were things he was bringing to me... and the next thing you know, that’s what I had on screen."

While on-set, Fickman took the opportunity to ask his CIA man some probing questions: "In typical ‘can’t confirm, can’t deny’ manner," said Fickman, "no matter what I would personally ask him about anything from ‘who killed Kennedy?’ To ‘what happened at Roswell?’ He always played it with a nice smile that implied 'I don’t think you have the security clearance for me to talk to you about anything.'" The CIA advisor also recommended that certain UFOlogical content be removed from the script: "there were things we got rid of in the script that he was just trying to follow logic on from a protocol standpoint," said Fickman, although he would not elaborate on the nature of the changes made.

Andy Fickman, director of Race to Witch Mountain (2009)

Fickman further claims that he was afforded a visit to NORAD’s sensitive Cheyenne Mountain facility in 2008, where – accompanied by his CIA advisor – his team spent 12 hours taking photographs and talking with on-duty military officers, including the heads of NORAD. "We wanted our Witch Mountain to resemble what NORAD and Cheyenne Mountain look like inside," he said. "We took a thousand photos and then by the time they released us into the wilderness maybe we had three hundred that had been approved for us to somewhat copy [for production design purposes]."

Incidentally, Fickman’s Cheyenne Mountain visit took place just a few weeks after the high-profile Stephenville Texas UFO sightings. Remembering that witnesses had described seeing fighter jets in pursuit of the Stephenville UFO/s, Fickman raised the incident with NORAD officers: "I asked the question of all the NORAD people point blank: ‘so, what about those jets – did you guys release those jets?’ And after a kind of thoughtful pause, the guy in charge said ‘hypothetically, if something had invaded US airspace, we would have responded in kind. I have no indication one way or another that jets ever pursued any unknown object at the time you’re referring to.’" Fickman found NORAD’s ‘non-denial denial’ to be "very telling."

The CIA, for its part, claims to have had no involvement in Race to Witch Mountain. In an email to the author, Paula Weiss, Media Spokeswoman at the CIA Office of Public Affairs, said: "We have no knowledge of any CIA officer having assisted with this film…It’s very easy for outsiders, including Hollywood film people, to assume any US intelligence officer is CIA when in fact he could be from DIA, NSA, NGA, etc. Sorry I can’t resolve this for you based on the available information."

Fickman was puzzled by the CIA’s denial. When I asked the director whether or not the CIA man could have been retired from the Agency and had been acting in a private capacity (as is the case with a number of ex-CIA operatives in Hollywood, including Robert Baer, Milton Beardon and Chase Brandon), he replied: "there’s no way we would have had what we had, had he not been an active CIA employee..." Indeed, throughout the NORAD visit, Fickman claims he relied heavily on the influence wielded by his CIA man: "Nothing happened at NORAD without him flashing his card and making his calls."

Fickman believes it was due in large part to the fact that his military and intelligence advisors were secured "through back door channels" that his production was granted such extraordinary access to the inner-workings of the national security apparatus, but he insists there was no hidden agenda behind his government’s uncharacteristic generosity in this regard: "All of a sudden I was in places that I don’t know I would have been had I gone through normal channels. I don’t think there was anything abnormal about what they were doing, I just think it was [that] phone calls were being made and doors were sort of opening."

Fickman’s claims carry with them the weighty implication that the CIA may be operating in Hollywood beyond the dry remit of its media liaison office, which is to provide "impartial advice on matters of accuracy and authenticity" in relation the CIA’s image while on set, and certainly does not extend to accompanying a director on a private trip to NORAD’s Cheyenne Mountain facility, nor designing fictional alien language for a feature film in which the CIA itself is not even depicted.

Behind the Scenes

The real reasons for the CIA adopting an "advisory" role on Disney’s Race to Witch Mountain (as well as on numerous other Hollywood productions) were pointed to in a solitary comment by former Associate General Counsel to the CIA, Paul Kelbaugh. Whilst at a College in Virginia in 2007, Kelbaugh delivered a lecture on the CIA’s relationship with Hollywood, at which a local journalist was present. The journalist (who has since requested anonymity, but who is known to me) published a review of the lecture which related Kelbaugh’s discussion of the 2003 Disney-produced thriller The Recruit, starring Al Pacino. The journalist noted that, according to Kelbaugh, a CIA agent was on set for the duration of the shoot under the guise of a consultant, but that his real job was to misdirect the filmmakers: "We didn’t want Hollywood getting too close to the truth," the journalist quoted Kelbaugh as saying. In a blunt email to my colleague Matthew Alford, however, Kelbaugh denied having made the public statement and claimed that he remembered "very specific discussions with senior [CIA] management that no one was ever to misrepresent to affect [film] content – EVER." The journalist stands by the original report, and Kelbaugh has refused to be drawn into further discussion of the matter.

As a closing thought on Disney’s establishment ties in relation to the UFO question, in January 2011, the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA) staged its 5th Annual Global Competitiveness Forum (GCF) – a major International business convention which this year featured keynote speeches by the likes of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Intriguingly, this year’s GCF event also featured a special panel discussion entitled: "Contact: Learning from Outer Space," in which names such as Stanton Friedman, Jacques Vallee, Nick Pope and Professor Michio Kaku addressed the wide-ranging implications of UFOs and potential extraterrestrial life. How is this relevant to our topic? Well, it might not be, but the primary sponsor of the GCF event was Boeing – a company highlighted by Disclosure Project witnesses as being a key player in UFO-related ‘deep black’ programmes and which you’ll also recall is linked at a directors-board-level to the Walt Disney Company – and a key note speaker at the event was none other than Chairman of Walt Disney International, Andy Bird. UFOs, Disney, Boeing, even former heads of state – all under one roof, so to speak. It proves nothing of course, but is nevertheless worthy of mention in that it brings to mind what the famous ex-CIA operative Robert Baer once told me regarding the Hollywood/Washington relationship: "All these people that run studios – they go to Washington, they hang around with senators, they hang around with CIA directors, and everybody's on board." Certainly, Disney has long been "on board" with supporting government and military power structures; as to whether or not this support extends to an involvement in some indefinable "Hollywood UFO conspiracy" is impossible to say. For now, at least, all we can do is weigh-up what little evidence is available to us and each draw our own conclusions as to precisely what UFO secrets – if any – might lie behind the Magic Kingdom.

Copyright © 2011, Robbie Graham

This article was first published in UFO Matrix magazine: Vol. 2, Issue 1: Summer, 2011.

Received CD-catalog: Hymettos Cartoon Exhibition 2010: Global Financial Crisis

Received today the CD-catalog of the 1st International Cartoon Exhibition in Hymettos, Greece 2010. And two sendings arrived at the same time: both addressed to my P.O.B. yet one is for a friend cartoonist, Nuri Bilgin, possibly because his address not found or by some mistake. I should make a trip to Asia from Europe here to hand on the friend his CD or meet him sometime at the Association of Cartoonists.
What is more, there are two CD's in my envelope. Everything is doubled! Many thanks Giannis Geroulias (I can remember him the organiser of the exhibit).
Well, the CD is full of very interesting cartoons both from the home country and abroad but the Powerpoint program, the slide show, etc. I am no good at copying images from. So, just put down here my contribution only.

P.S.: They are organising the exhibition this year too, with another theme of course, until September 10 to e-mail images, shall I report the regulation soon.

Stylish Male Pent Coat | Fall Male Mens Collection 2011

I like Emporio Armani new stylish male collection fall 2011-2012. A show that opened with a display of EA7 Golf, a new category for Armani, immediately set out its stall. it offered a vision of urban dressing that took the collection into elegant new country. In this Armani designer use Long male coat under Armani jeans.