A.D. After Disclosure

Dark Skies | Accept No Imitations

Friends and supporters have been contacting us, many with congratulations on how our “Dark Skies” has been made into a new film, starring Keri Russell, to be released by Dimension Films next February. While it sounds like a dream, we tell them, it’s actually a nightmare.

To set the record straight, we’re Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman, the two writer/producers who created the NBC series called “Dark Skies.” It was produced by Columbia TV (now Sony) and aired in 1996 and 1997. We wrote the pilot, multiple episodes and produced all twenty hours that were aired in primetime on Saturday nights.

Our original “Dark Skies” introduced viewers to an alien invasion that featured a continuing focus on the mysterious and terrifying abduction phenomenon. So our well-intentioned friends can be forgiven if they hear about the Dimension Films version that focuses on an alien abduction and assume we had something to do with it. While that is decidedly not the case, our definitive version may have inspired it.

Our “Dark Skies” had been in the news even before Dimension decided to use our title for their film. Our series was given a world-wide release on DVD in 2011 from both Shout Factory (US) and Medium Rare Entertainment (UK). In dozens of reviews, the work received critical praise as a classic that has stood the test of time in the sci-fi and UFO media. It also spawned new interest in the reboot of our series, something that we were talking to Sony TV about when the news from Dimension Films broke.

Our "Dark Skies" has established itself in the minds of a significant number of science fiction fans as a gripping piece of conspiracy drama set in the world of UFOs and abductions. It anchored NBC's Saturday night "Thrillogy" concept in the 1996 season premiere and starred Eric Close ("Nashville") and the late film character actor J.T. Walsh (“Sling Blade”). Its main title design won the Emmy award and its pilot screenplay received a Writers Guild nomination. The Syfy Channel aired the entire series multiple times. Since 2010 there's been a Facebook page where thousands of fans from many different countries push Sony for a TV revival. 

And yet here we are. A film in the same genre as our work is being promoted right now using the same exact title as our work. Most Hollywood businesses legitimately consider creative and artistic interests and rights in these cases. This one seems to have slipped through the cracks of acceptability.

Supporters of the creative rights of writers should ask Dimension Films to let their film stand on its own merits and call it by a different title. "Dark Skies" is taken. 

Join the Dark Skies Resistance @ Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/darkskiesufo

See the Dark Skies Playlist @ YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5A1058EDE798E4B1

Read more about Dark Skies @ AfterDisclosure.com
http://www.afterdisclosure.com/dark-skies/

Get the original, classic and definitive Dark Skies series @ Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Skies-Declassified-Complete-Series/dp/B00465I156

WGA (Writers Guild of America) Credit, 1996
“Dark Skies” | Created by Bryce Zabel & Brent V. Friedman

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115151/

False Assertions from The White House about ET

Sixty-four years after flying disks became a worldwide phenomenon, a formal position on this phenomenon has been issued in print by the executive branch of the United States government for the first time.   On Friday, November 4 the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) responded to two petitions submitted to the We the People section of the White House website.  One of these, the Disclosure Petition, was submitted by Paradigm Research Group.   The White House response gave the administration's assessment of the assertion by a growing number of researchers and activists that flying disks and other related phenomena confirm an extraterrestrial, non-human intelligence engaging the human race. 

See:  https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/response/searching-et-no-evidence-yet and www.disclosurepetition.info.

OSTP researcher Phil Larson wrote, "The fact is we have no credible evidence of extraterrestrial presence here on Earth."  Unfortunately for the OSTP and the Obama administration, that assertion is false.  Furthermore, given that approximately 50% of the American people are now convinced of an extraterrestrial presence and more than 80% believe the government is not telling the truth about the phenomenon, it is an embarrassment.

There are only four possible explanations for this statement from the OSTP:

Breaking News From Roswell? Or Journalistic Malpractice?

The long rumored crash of a craft of unknown origin outside of Roswell, New Mexico in July of 1947 has just been solved. The US government was wrong. The US Army Air Corps was wrong. The US Air Force was wrong. And more amazing, over 500 witnesses directly or indirectly involved were wrong! The latest "theory of the month" has been proposed by author, Annie Jacobsen in her just released book about Area 51 and a single addendum about Roswell which for some reason is getting all forms of media attention. I will limit my response to address strictly the Roswell Incident of 1947.

Simply put, this represents another classic example of lazy journalism at its worst and investigative malpractice at its finest. I recall when the Air Force was planning on the Pentagon release of their "fifth" official explanation for the Roswell case. It was reported to us that the new "theory" was what actually crashed was a Russian flying wing with a... get this... crew of monkeys in silver jump suits. The story would continue that the fiery crash would burn off all their hair and leave all the witnesses bewildered as to what they truly were. We immediately sent off a FAX to Washington just asking one question: "Which monkey was flying?" End of story. And the same applies here.

The mere suggestion that the Soviets captured a Horton Brothers "flying wing" at the fall of Berlin in 1945 (mind you, none were operational at that time and they were mainly constructed of wood), manned it with 13 year-old mutants created by German scientist Joseph Mengele as to appear "alien", flew all the way from Russia, intended to crash in New Mexico, the heart of the most militarily sensitive territory in the world, to "scare us." To say totally absurd would be an under statement.

Donald Schmitt is the co-author of the best-selling book,Witness to Roswell, and is the leading specialist who continues to investigate the Roswell Incident. He is the former co-director of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, where he served as Director of Special Investigations for ten years. Prior to that, he was a special investigator for the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek. The Showtime movie Roswell was based on first book, UFO Crash at Roswell. His latest book and life rights have been optioned, along with those of Stanton Friedman, as the basis for the feature film project, Majic Men.

The German brothers, Walter and Reimar Horton experimented with flying wings in much the same way that Jack Northrop did in California during the 1930s. Historically, all of the NAZI prototypes were destroyed by American forces at the fall of Berlin - so they would not fall into the hands of the Soviets. The only Horton H.IX to survive is now kept at the Smithsonian in Washington.

Writer Jacobsen claims that the Soviets created mutants to resemble the Martians described by H.G. Welles in War of the Worlds. Jacobsen should know that Welles modeled them from earthly octopus. That, and the fact that the Russians never did capture Mengele paints an illustration of pure fiction.

It never seems to matter what the new alternative explanation is. These theorists never address the unusual, exotic characteristics of the wreckage. The weightless, nearly indestructible material. The material that possessed perfect memory. The fiber optics. Except for the later, no one on earth has such material even today. And there must have been divine intervention to save us if either the Germans or Russians had it back in the forties.

The author states that Area 51 was named due to her one lone anonymous source's claim that the crashed craft and children were moved there from Wright Patterson in 1951. In reality, Nevada is divided into sections and the facility just happens to be in Section 51.

We have presented and named in our bestselling book Witness to Roswell, and previous books since 1991, hundreds of eyewitnesses who were actually there. Witnesses who right up to their deathbeds swore that what had crashed, what they held in their hands, and the bodies they loaded into ambulance trucks, were not from this world. These are all ignored by the US national media because it can't be therefore it isn't. Anything but UFOs is alright with these so-called guardians and keepers of the truth. Except, when it applies to Roswell -- the truth be damned no matter how ridiculous the alternative "theory." We chose to present the facts as presented to us by the truth bearers - the participants.

In recent weeks, we have all heard dozens of versions of what took place during the raid which killed Osama bin Laden. Have any of us noticed that none of these accounts come from the actual participants? For the same reason over the past twenty years, we have focused on the people who were there... not the so-called "truth" that some journalist or government official wants us to believe. Eyewitnesses send people to prison and serve as the staple for our judicial system for a reason. I can solve every crime ever committed by just siting at my computer and throwing out "theories." It's up to us as objective, free thinking, rational individuals to examine the evidence and decide which carries the greatest weight. Over 500 witnesses can't all be wrong and would certainly win hands-down in any courtroom throughout America.

And so I have just one question for Ms. Jacobsen regarding her new "magic bullet" solution to Roswell. After we obviously have wasted all of our time and effort all these years:  Which of the 13 year-olds was flying?

I just thought I would ask.

Calling Roger Ebert...

Roger Ebert has been getting a lot of attention this week for his beautifully written essay titled, A Quintessence of Dust. In it, he features the graphic below -- created by NASA -- showing 1,235 planets we know to exist as well as the suns they orbit. 

Here's the key concept to appreciate this: each planet is a black dot. Below the top row, you'll see our own sun over on the right side. The people who estimate such things are estimating that millions of such planets exist in our galaxy alone. Ebert's mind boggles at this and, of course, so does mine and probably yours, too.

I have a small bone to pick with Roger Ebert, however, even though I am a great admirer and have probably read several hundred of his film reviews. But, before I get to that, I want to invite you to feel some of the same wonder, mystery and curiosity that comes with this image. Take a few seconds now and look at it, and let it sink in. And, if you want to see it larger, just click on it and you'll see it on an even grander scale on your computer.

 

As I said, I love Roger Ebert and, as a fellow writer, I have to stand in awe of his skill and capacity. These traits have made him the most significant film reviewer of our time.

My bone to pick is that he appears to not understand the UFO situation and indirectly put down those of us who do. In the same week he wrote his essay about the worlds the Hubble is exposing us to, he also wrote this in his review of the new film, "Source Code."

"Source Code" is an ingenious thriller that comes billed as science fiction, although its science is preposterous. Does that matter, as long as everyone treats it with the greatest urgency? After all, space travel beyond the solar system is preposterous, and yet we couldn't do without "Star Trek." 

Ebert is saying that if you believe that it is possible to travel the galaxy and the universe that you believe in something that is preposterous. I say that very statement is preposterous.

I think Ebert is a smart enough man with, as he speaks about in his article, the curiosity it takes to consider these big questions and be on the leading edge of things. He could do the world a tremendous service, now that he is thinking about such things, if he would bring his game up on this subject.

John Alexander: Realities and Myths

I first met John Alexander in 2003. Of all the people associated with the topic of UFOs, he is undoubtedly among the most interesting. Indeed, he has become something of the official ufological boogyman. Go to any UFO conference, and if John Alexander is there, he will inevitably be the subject of much private conversation and speculation.

The reasons are self-evident, once you learn a little bit about the man. Alexander spent a long and distinctive career within the U.S. Army. While rising to the rank of colonel, he distinguished himself as a maverick. Consider that in an organization as rigid and bureaucratic as the U.S. Army, he championed such areas of research as psi phenomena, remote viewing, and non-lethal weapons technology. None of this was easy, and yet Alexander was quite successful in the course of his career. He is clearly a formidable individual. 

Then there is the UFO connection. During the 1980s, Alexander initiated and led an extended inquiry throughout many avenues of the Pentagon at high levels to find a UFO related program. As he put it many times, he was convinced such a program had to exist. After all, he himself has long been a believer in the reality of UFOs as something that is not from our ordinary reality, and which could well be extraterrestrial.

Toward that end, he created something he innocuously titled the Advanced Theoretical Physics Group. Later, this was erroneously called the UFO Working Group by the journalist Howard Blum in his 1990 book Out There. Alexander intended this group to be something of a crowbar that would pry open the doors of secrecy. The idea was that by creating a group of top notch specialists culled from throughout the U.S. defense establishment, who would conduct sophisticated analyses of UFO reports, that such a group might gain the attention of the “real” UFO program that had to exist within the Pentagon – so Alexander reasoned.

But they never got the call. After years of door-knocking and briefings with generals and other senior officials, John Alexander never saw evidence that any group or any department was mandated to study UFOs in any capacity. There was much private interest, yes, but no official investigation going on anywhere that he could see. 

Lessons From Egypt: The Inevitability of Sudden Change

The world has turned upside down. What seemed unthinkable a mere month ago has now become a major political force throughout the world. 

Hosni Mubarak, the autocratic head of Egypt, a man who had ruled his country for thirty years under a “State of Emergency,” who had suspended the Egyptian constitution, who had suspended the most basic human rights, who ran an irredeemably corrupt regime, who enriched himself and his family to the tune of more than $70 billion from the backs of the Egyptian people, has fled the country. 

It took just two weeks of massive public demonstrations to get rid of him. 

The events in Egypt – and before them, Tunisia – are electrifying for many reasons. In the first place, there hasn’t been a real popular uprising in the Arab world against their perennially autocratic rulers in most people’s living memory. There have been Islamicist movements, yes, and there have been many government-sponsored public demonstrations regarding the plight of the Palestinian people. Yet, for year after year, generation upon generation, Arab people continued to suffer at the hands of their own governments. 

A populist venting of the people hasn’t occurred since Gamal Abdel Nasser’s pan-Arabism of the 1950s and 1960s. And even those protests pale in force and depth of feeling to those of today. 

For what we are seeing now is something Nasser never encouraged: a true democratic spirit, a true voice of the people. Not an anti-foreign, anti-imperialist populism, but a genuine populism that has identified the corruption and evil of one’s own government, and which seeks to remove the tumor. 

Across the Arab world, people are euphoric. Everything is up for grabs. Right now, demonstrations are occurring in Algeria, Yemen, and Jordan. Look for them to expand in Palestine and Syria. 

What Does NASA Know?

UPDATE: When we first wrote about the Thursday NASA news conference, we ended with the advice to "Lower your expectations."

On that much, at least, we were right. Arsenic-laced life may be a big biological moment, but it's not life on Europa or copping to the truth about ET/UFO reality.

In any case, here is the original post...

NASA has called a news conference for this Thursday "to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life." Their words, not ours.

Of course this causes people to speculate about what those carefully chosen words might mean. Life on another planet? A new way to look for life? Evidence of previous life?

And, if you read the coverage from the establishment media types, many of them use the blog chatter the NASA announcement has stirred up to then imply "there go those crazy UFO guys again." It's a maddening game, to be sure. This graphic to the left is what CBS used to illustrate its coverage. They get to have their cake (invoking real ET contact) and eat it, too (making people who know something about the subject seem goofy). There's another excellent example of this shell game on CNN where they have goofy aliens in the photo and use the story as a springboard to smackdown people who take the bait and discuss this on the Internet. Sigh...

Back to NASA. We don't know what they've discovered, and they're not talking until they're good and ready, so we'll just have to wait. We tend to think that this will not be a blockbuster type of event, just something that moves the ball a little further down the field. A few yards gained, no score.

Clearly whoever's writing press releases for NASA has put something in writing that makes it seem that they may have found evidence to support the existence of ET life. Of course, Walter Haut wrote a pretty famous press release from Roswell back in 1947 and then had to pull that one back... you never know...

It's been a busy year, looking for life. The Kepler Mission has already found almost a thousand possible alien worlds while scanning a small section of space holding less than 200,000 stars. In September, NASA found Gliese 581g, a planet they think could hold liquid water on its surface. Two months later, NASA said they'd catalogued the 500th planet beyond our solar system. 

But that's not what they're going to announce.

From a basic reading of the press release (you can read it at the end of this post), this has all the earmarks of the space agency finding the right chemical signatures -- possibly relating to the Moon or Mars or (our own pony to bet on) one of Saturn's moons. Rhea has been found to have some oxygen and CO2. Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is also the subject of speculation given that two of the panelists named have written about the place in relation to the search for off-Earth life. 

Then there is Europa, of course, with (we believe) more liquid water than Earth!

Reason to consider the Microbes-on-Moons theories: the group of scientists in attendance includes an oceanographer who has used photosynthesis, arsenic and life in the same sentence; a geologist who's used knowledge of rocks to look for life on Mars; and a biologist who has speculated that Titan strikes him as resembling an adolescent Earth. There's also an ecological astrobiologist who specializes in the chemistry that has to happen in an environment to create life.

The bottom line is that these are not SETI-type disciplines. They are, however, relevant to planetary issues, or findings from our own solar system as opposed to Hubble-like discoveries of planets out there that might be suitable for life.

As for the huge revelation, don't look for NASA to make a disclosure with a capital "D." They haven't found a whale on Europa or even an insect on Mars. And even if they had, recall that these people are historically very closed minded on the subject of there actually being intelligent life visiting us here on Earth. For NASA, the action is all "out there."

As evidence that we should temper our sense of anticipation about Big-D "Disclosure," we offer this statement from NASA's own website, lifted from their "Ask an Astrobiologist" page, which goes to the mind-set of the astrobiologists who'll be sitting at the conference table:

Question: Has NASA any had UFO problems? (I'm doing a school project on them.)

Answer:  No, I can't imagine that NASA would have any problems with something that doesn't exist. The sad thing about UFO reports is that they distract so many people from understanding and enjoying real science.
(There is a lot of nonsense on the Internet about UFOs, but I do recommend the website http://skepdic.com/ufos_ets.html). 
David Morrison
NAI Senior Scientist

Thank you for your open mind, Mr. David Morrison. After Disclosure, you will have to sit in the corner and wear a special dunce cap. We hope you won't be too distracted. We digress...

We're not saying the news conference has anything at all to do with UFOs -- it doesn't. What we're saying here is that the way they think is to get excited about the discovery of an organism that can thrive on a cold moon but maintain a completely closed mind to the actual evidence for advanced, complex life-forms coming to visit us right here on Earth. 

The smart money is on Microbes-on-Moons. This is a far bigger deal than who Kim Kardashian is dating but it is not as big a deal as it probably should be, given that NASA -- or at least a few people there -- must actively know that Others are running around in our skies in vehicles that aren't supposed to exist from places that aren't here and that the life-forms operating these vehicles are definitely not just microbes.

Because of this head-in-the-sand mentality, we have one piece of advice for the rest of us about Thursday:

Lower your expectations.

• Just so you can see for yourself, however, here is the word-for-word release that NASA has up on its official site as we speak.

Expopolitical Lessons from the First Thanksgiving

For nearly four centuries, Americans have celebrated Thanksgiving. I suppose it’s one of the holidays that make you reflect a little more than usual. We gather together with our families, enjoy a nice home-cooked meal, catch some football, and usually at some point remind ourselves of what exactly we do have to be thankful for. 

It is important to remember this, because life really is hard. More than once have I wondered if we are at the mercy of an indifferent trickster demi-god, like Loki. Every thoughtful person I know lives, in one way or another, with pain. We give it out, we soak it in. And yet, I remind myself, although the ride may be difficult, at least we are on it. Every moment that we live is in fact a miracle for which we should be thankful. Let us make the most of our time. 

But it is this our all-too-human tendency to give and receive pain that prompts me to see the irony in our own Thanksgiving history. 

The modern tradition of this holiday was born in 1621, when the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast. The Pilgrims certainly had much to be grateful for. One of the members of the Wampanoag tribe, named Squanto, had taught them how to catch eel and grow the ever-important corn. Another Wampanoag leader, named Massasoit, had brought desperately-needed food to the new colony during their first, terribly hard, winter.

So at that moment, it seemed that the native peoples of North America and the English colonists could find a way to co-exist with one another, to learn, to appreciate, to share the land. Some months before, Massasoit had signed an alliance with the Pilgrims, giving them about 12,000 acres of land. It seemed a decent thing to do for people who had gone through such a hard winter, and who surely seemed too weak to pose a threat. 

Humanity is a complex species. We want to be good, but there is something about us that just can’t help sticking it to the other guy. History is laden with examples of one group of people pushing out another group because those other people were “different.” They were “The Others.” 

Even in the early year of 1621, the die had been cast for the native peoples. Diseases for which Europeans had developed immunity turned out to be deadly to them. Already, the Wampanoag were suffering from some sort of plague brought from the French traders who had established a foothold farther north.

Disease was one problem. Constant land grabs proved even worse. Other colonists began to arrive in greater numbers. These were the Puritans, and they did not take kindly to native people whose heathen ways were an abomination in their eyes, and who also occupied some very choice land. 

Facts Still Matter (More Than Ever)

Critical Thinking About UFOs in the Social Media Age

Among the “UFO crowd” these days, it's the trend to disparage the collection and investigation of UFO reports themselves. We live in the age of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, smart phones, and instant information. Why, then, bother to interview witness after witness to ask the same old tired questions just to prove they saw something unusual: “if you held out your fingers at arm’s length, how large would the object have been?” 

Besides, we already know UFOs are real, right? So why bother meticulously going over old news? Let’s move on to more interesting issues, like the ET agenda, figuring out the cover-up, or the coming New World Order. 

In fact, I do spend a good portion of my time on those very issues. But there is a danger in forgetting the importance of the nuts and bolts, so to speak, of the field. 

The recent spate of interest in Project Blue Beam has got me thinking about this. The Blue Beam meme, which had percolated at a low level for over a decade, morphed in the last week into a viral campaign that basically scared the living shit out of quite a few people. 

Spreading fear has become so easy. After all, we have Facebook, that addictive purveyor of friendships, online games, and rumors of all stripes. Any and all claims can be copied and pasted and posted and commented and liked to our collective heart’s content. If it's not a fast enough blast, there's always Tweeting.

In the ramp-up to Blue Beam’s supposed arrival, we were treated to a barrage of YouTube links (mostly via Facebook), which featured one particular person warning us to be prepared for the Great Event. No need to go into details and bring more unwarranted attention to these people. They are always around, always willing and able to invent all manner of claims – and there are always people willing to believe what they say. 

Say anything you want, don’t worry about supporting your statements with facts or actual research, and then spew out your message. It’s curious and a bit disturbing, that these people believe they actually are doing real research. In truth, most of them have no idea what real research is. Research is hard, it is specific, it takes time. 

Research is not “I heard this from a friend of mine who heard this from a scientist in Russia.” Research is not “it’s obvious -- look it up, I’ve given you all the facts.” Research is not “it’s on the sites of Alex Jones and David Icke.” 

Walking the Talk

A friend I walk with regularly recently told me that he was a "skeptic" about UFOs. I said that many people were and wanted to know if he would like to read just two books that would make him extremely well-informed on the subject (thinking about my co-author Rich Dolan's impressive first two volumes in his chronology, UFOs and the National Security State). My fitness partner said he was too busy. He remains a skeptic.

That seems to be how it breaks down. A lot of people who haven't bothered to get the facts (like Rich's excellent summation) are skeptics because the whole topic just seems too strange to them to possibly be real. But people who have read up on the matter, are not skeptics. They have armed themselves with some facts.

Personally, if I had to trust the judgment of anybody on anything, I prefer the person who actually knows something about it.

People who follow what's happening in ufology are often dismissed as people who just want to believe. Sometimes that's true. My experience, however, is that for every person who wants to believe, regardless of the facts, there are twice as many who don't want to hear about it, true or not. 

So, on my walks with my friend now, we talk about other things. He's just too busy with his life, his family, his career, and his world-view to want to rock that boat. We walk on...

Do you have your own story about trying to communicate with skeptics on this subject? If you do, at the bottom of this post you'll see a "Comment" section. Write down your story, and we'll see that it gets out there, too.