The fracas I refer to began with Nick Pope being featured in a Daily Mail article on the prospects of an actual xenomorphic invasion manifesting amidst the London Olympic 2012 games - or as we call them here in England around the picturesque porch of a local pub sheltering from the effervescent Summer rains: tax hikes. Only this time, Nick Pope, rather than playing his usual card of soberly and professionally and very politely downplaying such, well, conspiracy theories, this time around, the warning, the eschatological vision of doom was being heralded by none other than Nick himself. He spoke of how the MoD would react to this threat, of how our gallant lads would guard the homeland, of how Eurofighter Typhoons would engage their fleet and Rapier missiles would target their ships, of how 'Space shuttles, lasers and directed-energy weapons are all committed via the Alien Invasion War Plan to defence against any alien ships in orbit.’
I’m reminded of Admiral Hill Norton’s beautiful logical counter to the British government statements that the Rendlesham Forest Incident was of zero national security interest: ‘That is one explanation, that it actually happened, as Colonel Halt reported. The other explanation is, that it didn’t. And in that case one is bound to assume that Colonel Halt and all his men were hallucinating. That the Colonel, of an American Air Force base, in Suffolk, and his merry men are hallucinating, when there are nuclear armed aircraft on the base, must be of defence interest. If indeed what he says took place, did take place, and why on earth should he make it up, then surely the entry of a vehicle from outer space, certainly not man made, to a defence base in this country, also cannot fail to be of defence interest.’
So there we were, teetering on the edge of our seats. Had Nick gone mad? Had all those years of secrecy oaths finally got to him, the pressure? All the vicious and petty back-stabbing accusations made against the man by conference ticket holders who distrusted his modest and conservative ways, all the grandstanding against him from some public speakers in this field (you know who you are) while Nick would watch on from the audience at conferences, did it all finally get under his skin? Had his mild mannered and imperturbable public persona taken a vacation? Had he, on the go after his move to America, like Saul of Tarsus, enjoyed an epiphany and suddenly decided to tell the world of super secret, classified organisational military structures set in place to understand and deter a xenomorphic threat? He had been hinting for years that the MoD knew more, or rather, at least, were more interested and concerned with UFO sightings, than they ever let on in public statements, all the while maintaining that there was no formal cover-up.
One can of course split hairs like priests counting angels on a pin. Surely if something is classified, and a government or military is claiming no interest in a thing, and one day, via a freedom of information request down the line, documents come out that starkly contradict this, combined with scores of whistleblowers and witnesses who will testify to same, then isn’t that a cover-up, a conspiracy? Conversely in the similar sense that an apocalypse is really just a lifting of a covering. From the Greek apokalupsis - to uncover, disclose, reveal. Disclosure, indeed.
I attended a conference talk Nick gave last year in England, I believe his last before moving stateside, called Lizards and Lies: The Truth About Conspiracy Theories. In the talk, he addressed chemtrails, the assassination of Princess Diana, 9/11, and false-flag alien invasion scenarios. He spoke of how as a community we owed a duty of care to the vulnerable amongst us not to get suckered by doomsday cults based around either the UFO or the New World Order, or indeed both. He recalled the tragedy of the Heaven’s Gate Cult. That was his motivation for coming out at a conference and dismantling and debunking these major conspiracy theories, which he usually politely stays away from - indeed, he is hounded by ambush journalists in the field fishing for statements they can twist.
He spoke at a conference devoted to fleshing out those very topics, Weird 11 in Swindon, and I sincerely respected Nick’s stated intent, and my opinions on his individual attempts at dismantling each particular conspiracy are not at issue here - but for the record, no, I do not believe Her Majesty of Great Britain Queen Elizabeth the 2nd, is a blood drinking reptile - not literally, anyway. I felt bad for him. You could hear the crickets. People were not amused. Murdoch’s Sun sent a reporter, who completely ignored the talks given by Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval and others, jumped straight to the conspiratorial jugular, and quoted Nick as saying:
‘One reason I am interested in conspiracy theory is that I am part of one – critics claim I work on behalf of the Government to infiltrate the UFO community. Yet after 21 years in the MoD, my experience tells me those in power are NOT intent on global ruin. They want to make a BETTER world.’
That same article featured a friend of mine, Ben-Emlyn Jones, known for his video journals and blogs under the flag of Hospital Porters Against the New World Order. Well, someone has to take a stand, yeah? Nick was a gentleman enough to actually introduce the Sun reporter to Ben, who was then quoted at length and later blogged about his reaction to Nick’s Lizards and Lies presentation. Would a blood drinking member of Majestic do that? Getting back to the Olympics. I read the original and sensational article, and started commenting about it online. I tagged Nick in a few posts I made on facebook, witnessed a lot of debate and consternation and paranoia about what it all meant. Days went by and nothing happened. Then we learnt that this was all a marketing strategy. Partly targeted at ‘UFO geeks’ like me? The creators of Resistance: Burning Skies were paying Nick to get up a buzz about their alien invasion game, going so far as having him write up ‘Top Secret’ war plans to post online.
Nick is quoted as saying: ‘Computer games have also played a key part in acclimatising people to the reality of extraterrestrial life – and in particular, the idea that aliens might be hostile. The Sony PlayStation first person shooter franchise Resistance illustrates this point and the latest version - Resistance: Burning Skies – is a particularly good example. Given the popularity of such games with young people likely to form the basis of resistance should our military be defeated, it is interesting to speculate whether classified information about weapons and tactics that may be useful in fighting an alien occupation could be embedded into the gameplay.’ And now that the cat is out of the bag and I am writing about this game and it's oh-so-amusing and clever marketing strategy (not), I am now in effect marketing it. The UFO community has suddenly fell victim to something out of Naomi Klein's No Logo.
The game is created by Nihilistic Software and distributed by Sony. I find the name ironic, given the fake, sensational, scare-mongering news marketing it has employed. Granted, it is the Daily Mail, and you might ask, what should we expect? The rag is synonymous in Britain with low-brow thought. But if such publications are to be platforms for UFO topics, as they have been for years in the UK, than we should at least do our best to be on our a-game when engaging with them. Nick's marketing placement only makes us look, in my opinion, like the loveless conspiratorial comic book nerds that we're supposed to be.
One last word about gaming. I do occasionally play them, when I have the time, and my favourite is without doubt the Half Life series. It is an FPS, or as my mother calls them, games where you 'go around shooting things'. Her favourite is Tomb Raider, where you go around stealing things. Half Life's creators, Valve Software, have as their logo a man with a pressure valve in his head, which always reminds me of Jacques Vallee's thoughts as he expressed them in Passport to Magonia, that the UFO is a manifestation of a psychic homeostatic process. What Huxley called the 'limiting valve' of everyday awareness that could be sprung open to the 'Doors of Perception'. The other company, when they do engage in major marketing, does it as playful and provocative art, as witnessed when Half Life’s heroine Alyx Vance was featured in an ad mimicking Apple’s famous ‘1984’ TV placement. I even remember catching a bit of Alex Jones Radio Show, in which one of his crew showed him some footage of the dystopia of Half Life 2, and Alex exclaimed ‘That’s it! That’s it! U.N. Agenda 21, that’s it! Aaaaahhh!’, or words to that effect, anyway. But he had a point. Indeed, never mind about video games being embedded with ‘classified information’, as Nick says, ‘should our military be defeated’ by an alien invasion, the Half Life series suggests that it is very likely militarized physics programs that would invite the aliens in via zero point portals, and then the military would be called in to mop up all evidence of this when the scientists bugger it up. And anyway, if our military can’t fight a xenomorphic invasion, what chance do you and I have? I don’t know about you, but I can’t pilot a F-22 Raptor, nor can I fire a gun, as they’re illegal in England, but I grant you, I can use an X-Box controller, so beware aliens, beware! *shakes fist*
And last I checked, even if I could pilot an F-22 Raptor, it wouldn’t do much good. You’ve read the declassified military reports of our jets being embarrassed by these objects, yeah? So whatever war plans there might be, as Nick Pope said there existed on the show When Aliens Attack by National Geographic, er, I mean NatGeo (google.docs literally doesn’t recognise the former anymore as being correct, underlining it in red), we can be sure that they are not simple extrapolations of current military theatre management (that is, as in, a theatre of war, not military theatre, which is what this Resistance war planning must surely be). As Nick said in the Daily Mail article I began with: 'Space shuttles, lasers and directed-energy weapons are all committed via the Alien Invasion War Plan to defence against any alien ships in orbit.’ Well, we don’t have any of the above that can do that - officially, publicly, admitted. Linda Moulton Howe did interview a very credible sounding former soldier who claimed we did however, in her May appearance on Coast to Coast AM.
In recent years, as Richard Dolan has been tackling his third and final installment in his historical opus UFOs and the National Security State, he has been looking into the what might exist regarding a secret space program, what we may learn one day will have been the spiritual successor of Werner von Braun’s NASA combined with the fabled Majestic 12, via bodies such as the NRO and contractors such as Northrop Grumman, for example, and even, who knows, Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace? I don’t point the finger, and find the man to be infinitely less creepy than some in the UFO community do, from listening to his talks with George Knapp on Coast to Coast AM. Indeed, I don’t find him creepy in the slightest. But you have to wonder.
So, to move this along and get to the point, last week on Richard Dolan’s radio show Truth Out, on the excellent Global Radio Alliance, show 14, he spoke at length on his exchange with Nick about the hullabaloo that had been generated by his Daily Mail article. I also called in at the start of the third hour and we discussed this issue among other things. Nick was too busy to appear on the show at short notice, but quoting from an email exchange they had, Nick wrote: ‘The real issue here (and it applies to lots of subjects) is the increasingly blurred line between news reporting and marketing.’ Richard replied: ‘Yes, I agree that is a major issue, but it's not clear from your note whether or not you are disturbed by it -- as I am. Because after reviewing the articles relating to your recent statements on alien invasion scenarios and the Olympics, it is clear that you have performed an act of marketing that is masqueraded as news, but which is not news at all and is really nothing more than sensationalism.’ Richard goes on to say in the open letter: My main problem with all this is not that you are being paid to promote a video game. That's your right and more power to you. My problem is that you intentionally used journalism to market a video game in a way that was not immediately or obviously apparent, and which moreover was misleading and which even played to the fears of the general public. It was manipulative. There's no way to avoid the conclusion that this has damaged your journalistic integrity.’
Richard on the show spoke of another correspondence he’d recently had: ‘Here is one reason why truth matters. Couple of days ago I received an email. I’m going to read you this email. ‘Dear Richard. On July 23, 2011 an event changed my life. I was a soldier with the 10th MTN Division and stepped on two improvised explosive devices. I lost both legs, use of my right arm, and nearly my life. Losing all my previous physical hobbies I've divulged myself in the paranormal, and on accident becoming particularly obsessed with UFOs. I've become a fan of your work and I have my head glued to your works. I would be honored to receive an autographed picture and book from you. I am currently continuing my therapy as an outpatient at the new Walter Reed. If you are doing any lectures in the MD/DC area please let me know.’
I’m reminded of an essay by Robert Louise Stevenson, Crabbed Age and Youth, that I read recently, given to me in a book of Stevenson's by a dear friend of mine who is privately tutoring the children of corporate executives in London, preparing them for Cambridge and Oxford, and on how to not be complete sociopathic brats like their parents: ‘There is a strong feeling in favour of cowardly and prudential proverbs. The sentiments of a man while he is full of ardour and hope are to be received, it is supposed, with some qualification. But when the same person has ignominiously failed and begins to eat up his words, he should be listened to like an oracle. Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity. And since mediocre people constitute the bulk of humanity, this is no doubt very properly so. But it does not follow that the one sort of proposition is any less true than the other, or that Icarus is not to be more praised, and perhaps more envied, than Mr. Samuel Budgett the Successful Merchant. The one is dead, to be sure, while the other is still in his counting-house counting out his money; and doubtless this is a consideration. But we have, on the other hand, some bold and magnanimous sayings common to high races and natures, which set forth the advantage of the losing side, and proclaim it better to be a dead lion than a living dog. It is difficult to fancy how the mediocrities reconcile such sayings with their proverbs. According to the latter, every lad who goes to sea is an egregious ass; never to forget your umbrella through a long life would seem a higher and wiser flight of achievement than to go smiling to the stake; and so long as you are a bit of a coward and inflexible in money matters, you fulfil the whole duty of man.’ Nick argued that by the promotion of this game, hundreds of news pieces were generated that would not have been otherwise. But does that not say more about the news? And what of its content? In an age of universal deceit, must telling the truth amount to a revolutionary act as George Orwell said? When was the last time you saw Richard Dolan on C-Span Book TV? Is buzz about this video game and questionable war plans really going to help anyone but the marketing people for Sony? How much more of this marketing game will we be played by? Where will it end? With Nick Pope strolling out of a plastic UFO at the Olympic opening ceremony, throwing copies of the game to the audience like bread to the Romans? I like Nick a great deal, have had dinner and drinks with him on a few occasions, and I appreciate his healthy cynicism even if I don’t share all of his views. But while I can get with playfully confronting the UFO issue, there will be confrontation if you take that issue, one at the hearts of millions of people around the word, and use it to play them, especially at a time like this. And while he may be cynical, I have never seen him overtly act cynically. Nick is somewhat of a national treasure, and this isn’t about him, so much as it is about the very act of this recent drama, and what sort of a world it says we live in. I guess I just watched too much Bill Hicks growing up. You know, the routine he did about people in marketing, and commiting suicide. If you don’t know it, maybe that’s for the best too. You are peacefully uninitiated.
Robert Louise Stevenson in the introduction to Virginibus Puerisque : ‘Our affections and beliefs are wiser than we; the best that is in us is better than we can understand; for it is grounded beyond experience, and guides us, blindfold but safe, from one age to another.’
Truth out.
