Malta to Host Debut of New Atlantis Documentary; Plus: Harry Reid Gives Depressing Interview about His UFO Beliefs

​I fell behind on work yesterday, and unfortunately ran out of time for a lengthy blog post. So I will give a couple of quick news notes. The first is about a documentary scheduled debut on Saturday in the island nation of Malta. The high-profile (for Malta, anyway) offering traces the fringe claims of Maltese artist Francis Xavier Alosio and was produced by Sprout Media’s Ed Hamilton. The 45-minute film claims that the temples of ancient Malta are far older than the Neolithic and are in fact the work of Atlanteans from 9,600 years ago or more. 

​You will, of course, recognize the claim, since it appeared in a number of fringe history books and documentaries over the years, and received an airing on the H2 channel’s In Search of Aliens four years ago. There remains no evidence of Atlantis in Malta, nor that the temples are 10,000 years old or older.
 
Alosio is a Maltese native and a former missionary who quit the church and took up the cause of fringe history, including a new faith in the “divine feminine.” He and his partner, Christine Aurelia, lead “Lemuria Energies” tours of the California coast when he isn’t in Malta promoting his three books about the islands’ Atlantean heritage, or leading tour groups to Maltese temples.
 
“The 45-minute documentary is the result of over 100 hours of footage and the making of this investigative feature was a challenge and an enterprising undertaking to say the least. We did miracles within the time constraints, the means and the personnel that were at our disposal, but we managed to raise enough money through the support of friends as well as sponsors, and were finally able to film this original documentary,” Aloisio told the Times of Malta this week.
 
The Temples of Malta and the Connection to Atlantis was funded through an Indiegogo campaign, which attempted to raise $9,000 but took in just over $3,000. According to the fundraising page, the documentary will be released online following its Maltese debut.
 
Maltese media is enamored of the production because, the Times claims, it is the first Maltese documentary about its ancient past entirely produced by a Maltese production company and based on the works of a Maltese author.
 
The paper reported that a sequel is already in the works for next year.
 
Meanwhile, back here in the U.S., former Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) gave an interview to New York magazine in which he outlined his involvement in appropriating money for the Pentagon’s efforts to investigate unidentified aerial phenomena, money which ultimately went to a company run by billionaire Robert Bigelow, a longtime believer in UFOs and a friend of Sen. Reid. The head of the Pentagon program defected to Tom DeLonge’s To the Stars Academy.
 
Anyway, Reid delivered some truly depressing remarks. After Reid declared the subject of space aliens off limits, the magazine’s reporter asked Reid about his interest in science and space before he met Bigelow and Las Vegas UFO journalist George Knapp. Read this and feel awful. The reporter’s words are in bold and Reid’s are in roman:

Great. I’m curious: Before you met Bigelow and went to his conferences, probably in the 1990s, were you a science buff? Were you just interested in things like space and aeronautics?
Zero. I’ll give you a couple of facts to support that. I took a math class in high school, geometry. I had to go beg the teacher to give me a D so I could play football. That’s not my strong suit, math and science. But that doesn’t take away the fact that I’m terribly interested. Some of my friends were really interested in science fiction. It bores me. I was never interested in it. Just didn’t care.
 
Not even the Mercury program, Apollo program? Was that something --
Zero. I mean I read the news. I saw it. That was nice, but it never piqued my curiosity about how they got a rocket into space, that kind of stuff. That was never my interest.

​So Reid became a believer in flying saucers and government UFO conspiracies precisely because he knew nothing about the subject, and charismatic fringe idiots were able to fill the empty space where general knowledge should be with propaganda and mysteries.