Damn.
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by Nordic » Fri Jun 15, 2012 2:16 am
by operator kos » Mon Jun 18, 2012 8:26 pm
One of the most eyebrow-raising cases of government involvement in a Hollywood UFO movie in recent years is that of Race to Witch Mountain (2009), which apparently received extensive support from the CIA – albeit in an ‘off the books’ capacity – despite its plot drawing extensively from UFO mythology (with references both to Area 51 and Roswell) and its presentation of a sinister government UFO cover-up.
In 2010, the film's director, Andy Fickman – a self-described “UFO enthusiast” born and raised in Roswell, New Mexico – told me that, although he personally shaped the majority of the film’s UFO-related content, at least some of it was the result of CIA input. The director claims that, in a highly unusual production arrangement, he and his crew were closely assisted by an active employee of the CIA whose advice extended to designing the alien writing seen in the flying saucer during the film’s climactic scenes.
Despite my best efforts, Fickman has been unwilling to reveal to me the identity of his CIA advisor, but claims he’s a former Air Force Technical Intelligence Officer, 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.
The alien “language” to which Fickman refers appears onscreen in Race to Witch Mountain in the form of holographic symbols aboard the Nordic aliens’ flying saucer. Some are simple, some are more elaborate. Presented below are three of the most frequently recurring symbols that appear in the climactic scenes of the movie...
The question, of course, is what do these symbols mean? Besides them bearing a passing resemblance to certain crop formations (the authenticity of which is debatable), it is difficult to ascribe any significance to them beyond the fact that they were designed by an alleged CIA operative.Has the CIA, in cooperation with Disney, presented us with real alien symbols / language? If so, to what conceivable end? In all likelihood, the symbols mean nothing, but it would be remiss of me not to throw them out there for feedback. Your comments are welcome.
More information on CIA involvement in Race to Witch Mountain can be found in my article UFOs and Disney: Behind the Magic Kingdom.
by Simulist » Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:18 pm
One of the most eyebrow-raising cases of government involvement in a Hollywood UFO movie in recent years is that of Race to Witch Mountain (2009), which apparently received extensive support from the CIA – albeit in an ‘off the books’ capacity – despite its plot drawing extensively from UFO mythology (with references both to Area 51 and Roswell) and its presentation of a sinister government UFO cover-up.
by Joe Hillshoist » Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:38 pm
Nordic wrote:
Damn.
by Simulist » Tue Jun 19, 2012 12:22 am
by justdrew » Tue Jun 19, 2012 4:28 am
by elfismiles » Tue Jun 19, 2012 1:16 pm
by justdrew » Tue Jun 19, 2012 2:55 pm
elfismiles wrote:... and if she were a user here at RI would you both still make those sorts of comments?
by Wombaticus Rex » Tue Jun 19, 2012 3:12 pm
by elfismiles » Tue Jun 19, 2012 3:30 pm
justdrew wrote:elfismiles wrote:... and if she were a user here at RI would you both still make those sorts of comments?
and anyway, ALL the photos in that series (think it was in the guardian?) are setup to be rather unflattering by design.
Wombaticus Rex wrote:That CIA/Witch Mountain angle is off the WTF charts, I love it.
Gonna have to watch that tonight. Whitley shows up, too? Arf.
Reminds me of that CARET flap -- another carefully designed alien language. I think that fabrication of language does have obvious tactical goals that don't have to be related to aliens, though: this is definitely something the NSA would be keenly interested in, too.
Still, the Disney/UFO stuff is just......pause-worthy.
MinM wrote:The Deep Politics of Hollywood:
Close Encounters with the Pentagon
By Robbie Graham and Matthew Alford
... <snip> ...
Similarly, Disney’s UFO-themed Race to Witch Mountain (2009) received assistance not only from the military but from the CIAxix – a curious arrangement since the latter is not even represented on screen; what’s more, the film’s portrayal of the military is decidedly negative. In accordance with the media policies of both DoD and CIA, these facts would tend to disqualify a film from receiving production assistance from either party. In this case, however, both were only too willing to lend a helping hand, as Andy Fickman, the film’s director, told Premiere Magazine: “the military advisors and intelligence advisors constantly helped to keep us honest every step of the way.”xx
Conclusions
To paraphrase The X-Files’ agent Mulder: we may “want to believe” the U.S. government when it says it no longer takes an active interest in UFOs. Certainly we all “want to believe” that Hollywood entertainment is just that – entertainment, rather than disinformation.
Judging by the examples outlined in this article, official policy regarding media representations of UFO phenomena seems to have shifted from project to project, from decade to decade, between concerted debunking efforts at one end of the spectrum and, at the other, more subversive attempts to quietly monitor and even seed the content of UFO-related media for purposes of psychological warfare and/or perception management. If nothing else, this should provide incentive for us to sit up and pay greater attention to the fleets of flying saucer movies that will undoubtedly continue to land in our multiplexes in the years to come.
Robbie Graham is a doctoral candidate at the University of Bristol and a Film lecturer at Stafford College. Matthew Alford, PhD is author of the forthcoming book: “Projected Power: How Hollywood Supports U.S. Foreign Policy” (Pluto Press, 2010). The authors have written about the politics of Hollywood for a variety of publications, including The Guardian and New Statesman.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22893.htm
The Deep Politics of Hollywood
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... 29#p270129
A History of Government Management of
UFO Perceptions through Film and Television
Robbie Graham (University of Bristol)
Dr. Matthew Alford (University of Bath)
Abstract:
Our paper shows that the US government (principally the Pentagon) saw the explosion of interest in UFO sightings in the 1940s as not merely a public relations problem, but something that initially raised serious questions about national security, which therefore affected the way that it chose to work on related film projects. It documents numerous cases, most apparent between the 1950s and 1970s, where it has altered scripts and otherwise refused to cooperate with major screen entertainment productions for these reasons. It also highlights an aberrant film, UFO's: Past, Present and Future (1974) that inexplicably received extensive Pentagon support despite being a documentary that was highly sympathetic to the UFO/extra-terrestrial hypothesis, which therefore suggests that the government has had mixed and non-transparent motives when it comes to media cooperation over this issue.
Full text: PDF
http://www.49thparallel.bham.ac.uk/back ... Alford.pdf
http://www.49thparallel.bham.ac.uk/back ... alford.htm
by Joe Hillshoist » Wed Jun 20, 2012 7:33 am
elfismiles wrote:... and if she were a user here at RI would you both still make those sorts of comments?
by DrVolin » Wed Jun 20, 2012 8:39 am
Wombaticus Rex wrote:I think that fabrication of language does have obvious tactical goals that don't have to be related to aliens, though: this is definitely something the NSA would be keenly interested in, too.
by Wombaticus Rex » Wed Jun 20, 2012 10:05 am
Jose Luis, we have always had this question and we’ve always wanted to ask you: Were you ever aided by any official agency when it came to setting up [the UMMO affair]?
JP: Let’s see here...you’re asking me a very sensitive question. I can already say that no Spanish government agency helped me. CSED, for example, the information service of the old CESID. There was no help from Spanish officialdom, but the question extends to other countries, and I would sooner remain silent.
by elfismiles » Wed Jun 20, 2012 12:06 pm
Wombaticus Rex wrote:I never found much indication of US intel there, it seemed to be an organic move on behalf of Pena. A lot of people took this to mean CIA:Jose Luis, we have always had this question and we’ve always wanted to ask you: Were you ever aided by any official agency when it came to setting up [the UMMO affair]?
JP: Let’s see here...you’re asking me a very sensitive question. I can already say that no Spanish government agency helped me. CSED, for example, the information service of the old CESID. There was no help from Spanish officialdom, but the question extends to other countries, and I would sooner remain silent.
Maybe it's because I was raised by feral scientists, but Occam sends me next door to France, who were conducting some tres outre! social synthesis work of their own in regard to UFO manipulations -- Franck Fontaine.
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2 ... think.html
One of my long standing muses is a link between Gladio and this phase of UFOlogy. Got zero evidence, just a hunch that there's some overlap between the two secret programs and networks.
by elfismiles » Wed Jun 20, 2012 5:26 pm
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