Wednesday, December 19, 2012

A.D. After Disclosure: A typical book spinning mundane conspiracy theories that are not well-thought out -- also painfully dull, padded, wordy and bland

Review by KEN KORCZAK

This book reads like it was written by a couple of teenage boys who just had their minds blown by the latest super-cool Star Trek movie, and then decided to start a super-cool blog so they could riff about all the cool possibilities of dealing with hostile aliens.

But it doesn't even have that fun infectious enthusiasm of jazzed-up fanboys.

A.D. AFTER DISCLOSURE is depressing and boring. It's also riddled with factual errors and egregiously bad logic. It's hopelessly naïve.

Perhaps worst of all, it offers nothing in terms of new, inside information on the UFO issue. The rare tidbits it does offer are so stupid and laughable they're like something out of a Saturday Night Live skit. Here, I'll give you an example:

The authors offer:

A British "scientist," whom they do not name, says that his grandfather was a bodyguard for Winston Churchill during World War II. This bodyguard managed somehow to eavesdrop on Churchill having a top-level meeting with General Dwight Eisenhower. This bodyguard overhears their private conversation in which Churchill tells a story - whom he heard from someone else -- about a military pilot whose aircraft was buzzed for a few minutes by a UFO.

This bodyguard then blabs it to his daughter -- who is then age 9 -- yes, he tells his 9-year-old details of a private meeting between the Prime Minister and the Supreme Military Commander of WWII Europe.

Then - years later - eventually -- this daughter grows up, gets married and finally gives birth to "the scientist" who one day hears the story from his mother - you know, the story she heard at age 9 from her loose-lipped eavesdropping bodyguard dad -- who overheard two leaders of the Free World discuss a second-hand report from an anonymous World War II pilot who saw a UFO.

More years go by during which time the boy grows up, apparently goes through years of college - and at last becomes "a scientist" - and voilà! -his story can finally be told! His information finally trickles into this book after the authors read it in -- wait for it - wait for it - a British 'Red Top' tabloid, The Daily Mail!

Yes!

The Daily mail, a paper known for its sensationalism and fondly referred to by local Brits as "The Daily Fail"!

Woooo-hoooo!!!! Take that, skeptics!

Speaking of newspapers and journalism, the authors' understanding of the media and the role of the press in society is abysmally simplistic.

On the one hand:

In typical conspiracy theory fashion, they maintain that a significant portion of those in positions of media power are on the payroll of the CIA, or some other nefarious government black-ops service. Hand-in-hand with government spooks, and with pockets full of payola cash, these paid-off media operatives are expertly killing key stories, and also seeding well-placed disinformation stories to masterfully social engineer the perceptions of the public on the UFO issue. Yes! It's that easy!

On the other hand:

They repeatedly accuse the press of being "lazy," "too timid," "hysterical," "asleep at the switch," "unwilling to challenge or confront powerful people" - in short, a gaggle of incompetent, pandering, lazy boobs who would rather stick to the easy stuff, you know, like the topics that shape people's daily lives, such as crime, the economy, covering local school boards and city council meetings, transportation, poverty, social injustice- the distracted lazy bums!

RICHARD DOLAN AND BRYCE ZABEL want it both ways - when they need the media to be a powerful, organized, efficiently competent manipulator of the minds of an entire nation, then the media is an entity of frightening power, efficiency and intelligence. But when they want to moan about the lack of media attention to the UFO issue, the media then becomes a "lazy," "timid," "unwilling," and "asleep at the switch" -- a mass of bungling gomers who helplessly pander and suck up to powerful government agents.

But notice when the authors need to provide a citation for one of their claims, they gladly pluck an item from a cheesy mainstream media British tabloid and serve it up to their readers.

The authors also pass on a dubious bit of information which is often repeated but which has been thoroughly debunked as -- if not untrue - at least improvable- and this misinformation is that former CIA director William Colby director said, "The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media."

Again, Colby never said this, it has been all-but proven that he never said it, and those who care to Google this issue and check on it will see that I am right - and the authors should have Googled it and checked it too - but either they didn't, or didn't care to, but were happy to pass on this disinformation anyway.

Okay, but now wait a minute - don't the authors cite an excellent Rolling Stones article by the mighty Carl Bernstein who showed in great detail how the CIA once recruited reporters and infiltrated all of the major news institutions, including the New York Times, Time Magazine and others? And don't the reporters themselves admit - even the owners and editors of these major news organizations admit - that they had dozens of reporters on the CIA payroll?

Yes, but here are the facts: Those reporters were not involved in writing stories for consumption of the American public, or involved in shaping public opinions by seeding stories- stories that were dictated by CIA spies - and especially not stories about UFOs.

Rather, the CIA was using real reporters as covers to act as spies mostly to snoop on other governments around the world, especially the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The CIA was saying to reporters things like, "Hey, since you're going to Yugoslavia anyway to do a story about agriculture, will you check to see how many paved airports they have and how many Soviet aircraft you see while you're there, and let us know when you get back?"

Furthermore, when it became well-known that major media outlets were renting out reporters to act as part time information gatherers for the CIA, Congress objected to the practice and ordered that this kind of activity be ended - which it did - some 35 years ago.

If you don't believe this, and if you still think the CIA has an iron grip on the American Press, then ask yourself:

* Why didn't the CIA stop the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers, a devastating blow to the Vietnam War effort, and major embarrassment to the U.S.?

* Why didn't the CIA stop the Washington Post and New York Times from knocking off President Nixon himself, the Vice President and other top power brokers over the Watergate break-in scandal? Nixon as Commander-In-Chief and top guy of everything had the CIA at his bidding.

* Why didn't the CIA stop the Washington Star, New York Times from revealing the heinous Tuskegee Experiment scandal in which government creeps secretly infected black men with venereal disease so they could study them?

* Why didn't the CIA stop Rolling Stone from running Bernstein's CIA/journalists Cold War connections article?

* Why didn't the CIA stop the New York Times from breaking the Iran-Contra Affair, which was partly a CIA operation?

* Why didn't the CIA stop the media when it uncovered and published the story of Nixon's Secret Bombing of Cambodia, My Lai Massacre, CIA involvement in Bay of Pigs Invasion, 9/11 government incompetence?

* Why didn't the CIA stop Dana Priest of The Washington Post for her persistent, painstaking reports that uncovered the secret CIA "black site" prisons in foreign countries and other controversial features of the government's counter-terrorism campaign?

* Why didn't the CIA stop Barton Gellman of The Washington Post for his authoritative and provocative coverage which blew the lid off the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, embarrassing the CIA to a huge extent, and revealing the CIA as incompetent?

Yea, verily, so it would seem that, despite what authors Dolan and Zabel would have you believe, the CIA is not as all-powerful, and so in control of the press as they say. Also there are clearly a lot of reporters out there who are hungry, eager, unstoppable and constantly driving hard at the hoop, lusting after fame, a Pulitzer Prize and the truth -- and they have nailed the CIA and embarrassed it again and again, decade after decade, on the very biggest stories.

Yet, the suggestion in this book is that there is not a single journalist - among many thousands - who is willing to dig deep enough to find out the truth about what the government knows about UFOs and alien technology - that all the reporters are either "under control and paid off" and/or "too lazy."

Yeah right. What a crock.

Ken Korczak is the author of: MINNESOTA PARANORMALA

7 comments:

  1. ....And I didn't even get fact that the authors have fallen into the classic "Cargo Cult" mentality ... I urge everyone to read up on Cargo Cults: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_Cults

    The authors' conception of what "The Others" are is identical to the mentality of the tribal societies of New Guinea, Melanesian and Micronesian societies when they confronted modern technology during World War II.

    Dolan and Zabel display a primitive understanding of superior entities ...

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  2. You sure come off like you think you are the smartest person on the planet. It must be so hard for you, being so much brighter than everyone else.

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  3. I hope everyone will notice that I give a lot of positive reviews, as well, and on topics concerning UFOs-- please see my reviews of the excellent "Circle and the Sword" by Nigel Mortimer -- "Lightquest" by Andrew Collins -- "Captured" by Kathleen Marden (she's the niece of Betty and Barney Hill) ... and others ... other UFO books get brutal treatment, too, however, such as that by Jesse Marcel Jr.

    Whenever I write a positive review, just about no one ever says anything ... but when I write negative reviews, there's always seems to be someone who calls me "desperate to sell my own books."

    But if I was really "desperate" to sell my own books, I would give all positive reviews, whether I liked the book or not, because positive reviews make my sales spike higher -- but I simply try to tell the truth as I see it ...

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  4. Ken... Bryce here... I've got no problem with your review. It's how you saw it. I don't see it the same way, obviously, but we can agree to disagree. We knew the book would be controversial. We wrote it to stimulate debate, and I guess it has. Anyway, happy holidays, and same to all your readers.

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