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Review of Alien Encounters: Fact or Fiction S01E01 "You Saw a UFO"

6/20/2024

We don’t get as many alien-themed cable quasi-documentaries as we used to. Part of it is the shifting taste of the public, which prefers to freebase its conspiracy theories straight from the internet’s darkest corners. Part of it is due to the collapse of the cable TV industry, which has dramatically slashed programming. And part of it is due to the cyclical nature of kooky programming, which toggles between the paranormal, the extraterrestrial, and ancient mysteries with a numbing regularity. Alien Encounters: Fact or Fiction probably wasn’t destined to dethrone The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch as the top paranormal program, but it’s a pretty dire affair for a supposedly professional production from one of Warner Bros. Discovery’s crown jewel networks.

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Graham Hancock Says Flint Dibble "Conned" Him; Plus: Avi Loeb's Big Night Out

6/17/2024

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Months after debating archaeologist Flint Dibble on The Joe Rogan Experience, Gaham Hancock broke his silence about the encounter, writing on X (formerly Twitter) that he had been “conned” and endorsing a YouTube video alleging that Dibble lied five times over the multi-hour debate in order to humiliate Hancock with false information. Hancock did not explain how he failed to recognize the allegedly false information, which was directly relevant to the information he claimed to have researched for more than thirty years. The arguments used by YouTuber “DeDunker” were not terribly convincing, but even if taken at face value would hardly rise above slight misstatements or minor confusion when speaking extemporaneously for many hours. More concerning is that Hancck jumped on the “conned” bandwagon to save face after having no other response to Dibble dominating the debate for three months.

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House Drops UFO Amendments; Coulthart Mad Australia Laughed at Him

6/13/2024

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This week the House of Representatives quietly dropped proposed UFO amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act. The Rules Committee rejected four proposed UFO amendments from Democrat Rober Garcia and Republican Tim Burchett that would, among other things, have established a federal UFO agency, created reporting protocols for private UFO sightings, and declassified all UFO records. The House Intelligence Committee, however, put new protections for intelligence community whistleblowers into the Intelligence Authorization Act, which may impact alleged UFO whistleblowers.

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Ross Coulthart Claims Trump Under Assassination Threat Over UFO Knowledge

6/6/2024

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This past weekend, NewsNation UFO journalist Ross Coulthart gave an eyebrow-raising speech at a meeting of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies in which Coulthart suggested that both he and former president Donald Trump were under assassination threat because they know too much about UFOs. However, the speech had even more disturbing undertones.

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Ufologists Accuse Journalist of "Attacking" Tim Gallaudet Over Cable TV Ghost Show

6/1/2024

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I usually prepare my weekend newsletter on Friday and take the weekend off. Naturally, that’s when the ufologists decide to make news. Chris Mellon, who only months ago insisted UFOs were alien craft, did an about-face and began talking about UFOs being drones and tweeting that everyone has always known the big problem was drones. Ross Coulthart gave a speech in which he alleged that he had arranged to have all the UFO secrets he knows published by a third party should unnamed nefarious forces succeed in assassinating him for knowing too much. He could, of course, forestall his death by simply revealing his secrets, or even who is after him, but instead he has hopped on the bandwagon with Lue Elizondo, Jeremy Corbell, Garry Nolan, and other UFO influencers claiming unspecified death threats.

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News Roundup: A Quiet Week

5/31/2024

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A few hiccups in the copyediting process meant that I spent most of this week dealing with book-related issues. It was just as well. This was a slow week in the world of space aliens and fringe history. Members of Congress made the usual noises about passing new laws to demand more UFO accountability, and the usual legislators spoke about new UFO hearings, and the usual UFO influencers demanded action, but it was all pretty much the same as it has been. A couple of interesting UFO year-in-review-style pieces ran in the Washington Spectator and the U.K. magazine The Skeptic, though these, too, had little in them we haven’t seen before. Over on NBC News Now, Gadi Schwartz invited oceanographer and retired rear admiral Tim Gallaudet on to opine that, “There are non-human intelligences visiting us in all domains: of the sea, the sky, and we see reports over land.” His argument, however, was more of the usual, which is to say, “I don’t know; therefore, aliens.” The claim amounted to arguing that if someone can’t immediately identify a shadow in the sky or a signal on sensor, it is therefore a space demon from another dimension.

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UFO News Roundup: Lue Elizondo's New Book and Karl Nell's SALT Talk

5/22/2024

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This week I unexpectedly received the copyedited manuscript for my book, which I need to review and correct over the upcoming holiday weekend. As a result, I am unfortunately a bit pressed for time this week, so I can only cover this week’s news in brief.

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Lue Elizondo Claims UFO Whistleblowers Like Him Are Under Assassination Threat

5/16/2024

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In a statement broadcast on The Good Trouble Show UFO podcast yesterday, Lue Elizondo claims that someone is trying to kill him for speaking out about UFOs:

I was notified yesterday that there may be a personal threat against myself and several other whistleblowers formally associated with the UAP effort for the U.S. government. As such, I would like to make this perfectly clear to the American people: I am not prone to accidents! I'm not suicidal! I'm not abusing drugs! I am not engaged in any illicit activities. If something happens to me or my family members in the future, you will know what happened!

I'm curious who informed him of the alleged threat, given that the authorities who might do so would theoretically be the people who are, according to him, most likely to be plotting against him. It would seem counterproductive for UFO conspirators to spill the beans on their murder plots. I guess the UFO conspiracy can keep saucers secret but can't assassinate quietly?

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Graham Hancock Associate Attacks Archaeology YouTuber in Rambling Rant

5/15/2024

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â€‹In case you were keeping score, so-called "UFO whistleblower" David Grusch pulled out of the SALT conference following the flap over revelations he's been ducking invitations to testify to AARO and was replaced with another UFO speaker, Col. Karl E. Nell, who claims credit for influencing Congressional UFO legislation. Meanwhile, there are some dustups occurring as both archaeologists and fringe figures take aim at the popularity of YouTube ancient history videos, whose audiences have outstripped traditional cable TV documentaries and book publishing.

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Review of "Think to New Worlds" by Joshua Blu Buhs

5/8/2024

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Think to New Worlds: The Cultural History of Charles Fort and His Followers
Jason Blu Buhs | University of Chicago Press | June 2024 | 384 pages | ISBN: 978-0226831480

Charles Fort (1874–1932) is probably more famous as an idea than as a man. His grave sits not far from where I write this now, at the Albany Rural Cemetery in Menands, New York. It’s not much to look at—a curving stone bearing his name above a monogram of a blackletter “F” wreathed in laurels, all slowly dissolving beneath a coating of lichens. It’s a stone’s throw from the much more elaborate marker of Pres. Chester Alan Arthur, but what both men share in common is a paucity of visitors who come to pay homage to their mortal remains. By contrast, you can’t visit social media or read a book about the paranormal or earth mysteries without running into someone calling up the shade of America’s greatest crank to conjure the anomalous and clothe conspiracies in the garb of prewar authority. And almost none of them could tell you anything about his life. Fort is a man who became a symbol, representing a certain stubborn resistance to authority, to science, and to the notion of reality as mechanical, material, and knowable.

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