TheConversation.org

What on Earth? is out on DVD!!! It’s an 81 minute feature film, plus great bonus material.

Here’s the beautiful new film website: http://WhatOnEarthTheMovie.com.

You people on the listserve get the posts I put on my blog, “Making Sense of These Times” (which is embedded in the site under BLOG), so there hasn’t been any need to be on the blog site. However, it’s something to look at now because there’s more there than these posts: http://TheConversation.org.

Do send me any Outside the Box Ideas (see Column Left).

I’m still looking at how to do the Diary, and, in the meantime, have directed you to sites (Column Right) to check in on the current season, which is quite sensational. Very unusual formations are coming in. Here are a couple of them:

I’m focused on getting this movie out to the world, and can use help. If you’d like to come to my house, in West Hollywood, California, to strategize, email me for an invitation. You’ll see the hour version, which isn’t on the DVD and is what likely would sell to television, plus have a great meal and meet trippy people. And if you aren’t close enough to come or aren’t a social animal but could help me get distribution, be in touch. I’d most like to get this film on television, where the largest number of people would see it. As the film says, “If we knew we were being visited it would make us into one humanity in relation to ‘the other,’…which could be what saves this civilization!”

And of course I’d be most appreciative if you would buy DVDs!!!!!

PS: Here’s the Press Release for the DVD:

WHAT ON EARTH?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: SUZANNE TAYLOR … PHONE: 310.652.3440 … suzanne@WhatOnEarthTheMovie.com

June 15, 2009

WHAT ON EARTH? – AWARD-WINNING FEATURE DOCUMENTARY ABOUT THE CROP CIRCLE PHENOMENON NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD

LOS ANGELES, CA — What on Earth? — “Inside the Crop Circle Mystery,” an award-winning feature-length documentary film, has just been released on DVD.

A long time producer of events and projects having to do with our consciousness and our worldview, filmmaker Suzanne Taylor tracks her interactions, in England, over six summers, with an international community of visionary artists, scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, educators, writers, and farmers who marvel at crop circles.

The superstars of the film are the circles, which remain an unexplained global phenomenon that has puzzled humanity for centuries — the photography is awe-inspiring. A question that’s addressed by the interviewees is why something so startling and spectacular is largely ignored.

Circle enthusiasts, who converge in England every summer to go circle-chasing and indulge in circle analysis, talk about why they are so taken by this phenomenon. Evidence is presented that challenges the idea that all the glyphs are made by people, and the motives of hoaxers, who make some of the formations, is a subject for speculation. Interviewees also give viewpoints about who or what is delivering the formations that can’t be accounted for as coming from people, and why they are being created.

“The most startling revelations we get from the circles come from their shapes,” says a character in the movie. “Mathematical information encoded in them delivers a virtual curriculum in number and geometry.” Also, the circles are looked at as art, as instigators to reexamine ancient knowledge lost to a culture that has become separated from nature, and as coming from a source that is aware of us and delivering patterns that point to events on Earth as well as in response to whims and wishes of individuals and groups.

In the film, people speculate about what the effect would be if it were officially declared that the circles aren’t being made by people. “If that happened,” says Taylor, “it would get us thinking as one humanity in relation to ‘the other,’ which would be the best position from which to work cooperatively to solve the problems we all share.” Questions also are raised as to whether, if were we open to circlemakers who come from elsewhere, they might offer advanced technologies to help us as we run out of resources and heat up the planet.

The DVD of What on Earth? also contains outstanding bonus material. It includes commentary by researchers about their favorite circles; an alternative opening that delivers more information about the filmmaker; a moving eulogy about Pulitzer Prize winner, John Mack, a Harvard psychiatry professor who was enamored with the circles and is in the film; a music video of a crop circle song that’s in the soundtrack of the movie; and a gorgeous montage of circles.

After a preview screening in February, at the UFO Conference in Laughlin, Nevada,What on Earth? garnered the award in the conference film track for best feature documentary. In April, the movie was the only film shown at the X-Conference, in the Washington, DC area. The X-Conference is an annual gathering to address the politics and implications of the UFO/ET issue: exopolitics. Taylor will take the film to England, in July, for a screening at the Glastonbury Symposium, a major crop circle conference that’s held yearly.

It is the filmmaker’s hope that those in power turn their attention to the phenomenon to examine the available evidence. With our fingers in the dike to solve the pressing problems that challenge us on planet Earth, her hope is that the announcement of the reality of an ET engagement with us will shift the worldview that holds all our problems in place. See her petition, “A Call for an Investigation of What is Known about Crop Circles.”
To learn more about the movie, to view the trailer, and to place orders for the DVD,
visit www.WhatOnEarthTheMovie.com.

My film website is in the works, where this blog will sport a new feature: Crop Circle Diary. I have been sending you emails of all the posts I make, but the Diary will be a different matter. You won’t get them unless you tell me you want them.

When the Diary is up I’ll get things off to a heartfelt start with this post, which has nothing to do with the circles except it was sent to me by Michael Newark, a doll of a guy from England, who is a master dowser circle person and is in my film:

Charlie Brown was a B-17 Flying Fortress pilot with the 379th Bomber Group at Kimbolton, England. His B-17 was called Ye Old Pub and was in a terrible state, having been hit by flak and fighters. The compass was damaged and they were flying deeper over enemy territory instead of heading home to Kimbolton.

After flying the B-17 over an enemy airfield, a German pilot named Franz Steigler was ordered to take off and shoot down the B-17. When he got near the B-17, he could not believe his eyes. In his words, he “had never seen a plane in such a bad state.” The tail and rear section was severely damaged, and the tail gunner wounded. The top gunner was all over the top of the fuselage The nose was smashed and there were holes everywhere.

This is a painting done by an artist from the description of both pilots many years later.

Despite having ammunition, Franz flew to the side of the B-17 and looked at Charlie Brown, the pilot. Brown was scared and struggling to control his damaged and blood-stained plane.

Aware that they had no idea where they were going, Franz waved at Charlie to turn 180 degrees. Franz escorted and guided the stricken plane to, and slightly over, the North Sea towards England. He then saluted Charlie Brown and turned away, back to Europe. When Franz landed he told the CO that the plane had been shot down over the sea, and never told the truth to anybody. Charlie Brown and the remains of his crew told all at their briefing, but were ordered never to talk about it.

More than 40 years later, Charlie Brown wanted to find the Luftwaffe pilot who saved the crew. After years of research, Franz was found. He had never talked about the incident, not even at post-war reunions.

They met in the USA at a 379th Bomber Group reunion, together with 25 people who are alive now - all because Franz never fired his guns that day.

When asked why he didn’t shoot them down, Stigler later said, I didn’t have the heart to finish those brave men. I flew beside them for a long time. They were trying desperately to get home and I was going to let them do that. I could not have shot at them. It would have been the same as shooting at a man in a parachute.

Both men died in 2008.

Here are German Ace Franz Stigler, artist Ernie Boyett, and B-17 pilot Charlie Brown

[confirmed by snopes: http://www.snopes.com/military/charliebrown.asp]

With my film website still in development, I’m not trying to promote the movie publicly or drive traffic to purchase DVDs (that are being sold at our Coming Soon page even before the official release, and before the fine tuning I keep doing). However, the film is being shown at special screenings.

This is a press release for the yearly conference put on by the big advocacy group for government disclosure of UFO/ET material, where they are featuring What on Earth? I am thrilled by this stunning development, where I am going to be on the bill with some of my favorite presenters.

Press Release
April 6, 2009

Washington, DC - X-Conference 2009 will be held at the Hilton Hotel in Gaithersburg, Maryland on April 17-19. It is the annual conference produced by Paradigm Research Group to address the politics and implications of the UFO/ET issue - exopolitics. There is a “disclosure movement” underway which is now international and gaining momentum. See: http://www.exopoliticsworld.net. This movement seeks nothing less than the formal acknowledgement by world governments of the extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race.

Conference and registration information is found at: http://www.x-conference.com. It is open to the public and there is on-site registration. Press passes are available.

X-Conference 2009 will be hosted by former CNN news anchor, Cheryll Jones. Speakers include: Stephen Bassett (Moderator); George Noory (Special Presentation); Edgar Mitchell, PhD; Dr. Roger Leir; Joseph Montaldo; Col. John Alexander, PhD; Nick Pope with Major Milton Torres; Colin Andrews; Art Campbell with Manuel Kirklin; Richard Dolan; Graham Hancock; Paola Harris; Jeff Peckman; Michael Salla; PhD; Victor Viggiani; Alfred Webre, JD. Guest Activists: Dr. Joseph Buchman, Dr. Rebecca Hardcastle, Terri Mansfield, Robert Fleishcer (Germany), Angelika Whitecliff, Frederik Uldall (Denmark).

A documentary by Suzanne Taylor, “What on Earth?,” will have its East Coast premier. She will present the film along with award winning documentarian, Suzanne Bauman. See: http://www.WhatOnEarthTheMovie.com

All members of the U. S. Congress have received invitations to send representatives to X-Conference 2009.

A post-conference press event will be held at the National Press Club, 14th and F Streets, NW, Washington, DC on Monday, April 20, at 10 am. Speakers will have announcements and take questions on the most important issue of our time.

Contact: Stephen Bassett
Executive Director
Paradigm Research Group
202-215-8344
PRG@paradigmresearchgroup.org

And here’s a press release for my film’s showing. If anyone has any press connections in the D.C. area, I’d love to get a story in the local press about this.

WHAT ON EARTH?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: SUZANNE TAYLOR
PHONE: 310.652.3440
suzanne@mightycompanions.org

APRIL 8, 2009 V.1

WHAT ON EARTH? – AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY ABOUT CROP CIRCLES TO SCREEN AT GAITHERSBURG “X-CONFERENCE”

GAITHERSBURG, MD — What on Earth? — “Inside the crop circle mystery,” an award-winning feature-length documentary film, will be screened as part of the X-Conference on Friday, April 17, at 9 pm, at the Hilton Gaithersburg, 620 Perry Parkway, Gaithersburg, MD 20877.

The X-Conference is an annual gathering to address the politics and implications of the UFO/ET issue: exopolitics. There is a ‘disclosure movement’ underway which is international and gaining momentum. The movement seeks the formal acknowledgement by world governments of an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race.

In What On Earth?, filmmaker Suzanne Taylor tracks her interactions in England as part of an international community of visionary artists, scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, educators, writers, and farmers who marvel at crop circles, the unexplained global phenomenon that has puzzled humanity for decades, and perhaps even centuries.

The superstars of the film are the circles themselves. The photography is breathtaking and awe-inspiring. A big question that’s addressed by the interviewees is why something so startling and spectacular is so largely ignored.

The circle enthusiasts, who converge in England every summer to go circle-chasing and indulge in circle analysis, talk about why they changed their lives to engage with this phenomenon. Evidence is presented that challenges the idea that all the glyphs are made by people, and the motives of hoaxers who make some of them is a subject for speculation. So are questions about who, or what is delivering the circles that can’t be accounted for as coming from people, and why they are being created.

“The most startling revelations we get from the circles come from their shapes,” says Taylor. “Mathematical information encoded in them delivers a virtual curriculum in number and geometry.” Also, the circles are looked at as art, as instigators to reexamine ancient knowledge lost to a culture separated from nature, and as coming from a source that is aware of us, delivering patterns that point to events on Earth and in response to whims and wishes that individuals and groups express.

In the film, interviewees speculate about what the effect would be if it were ascertained that the circles aren’t being made by us. “If that happened,” says Taylor, “knowing we aren’t the only intelligent occupants of the cosmos likely would humble us to where we would think as a planetary humanity and work cooperatively to solve the problems we all share.”

For information about the screening, contact:
Stephen Bassett
Executive Director
Paradigm Research Group
PRG@paradigmresearchgroup.org
202-215-8344.

This piece, one among other stories of UFO engagements with nuclear weapons, came into my email last week. What a weird world we are in, where reports like this are by and large ignored.

In step with this story, I’m headed for the D.C. area where my movie, “What on Earth?,” is being featured at the yearly X-Conference. The purpose of that event is to get the government to release classified UFO/ET files. (See the next post for more about the film showing.)

The difficulty of being able to prove that UFOs exist is why I focus on crop circles. We can point at evidence. The formations can be studied. In a reality grid that takes science as its chief deity, they give us the best chance for a breakthrough to establish us in a larger reality that we know now. I keep wondering, as the economy teeters, if the intelligence that’s not us also would intervene if we were going too far down the economic tubes. My fantasy has the circlemakers doing something undeniable enough to dispel all doubts of visitation, whereby we would pull together as one humanity to deal with ‘the other.’ How sweet that could be.

How ’bout them defenseless nukes?

By Billy Cox

April 9, 2009

When he tested the limits of his security oath in 1995 and went public with how a UFO crippled a nest of nuclear missiles in Montana during the Cold War, former Air Force captain Robert Salas was on his own. No one else who worked inside or around those subterranean silos dared talk about how the world’s top superpower was unable to defend its own nuclear arsenal.

Today, UFOs and Nukes author Robert Hastings has 115 ex-USAF eyewitnesses on record, due in no small measure to Salas’s willingness to gamble that the feds wouldn’t go after him because prosecution would put them in a credibility jam. “If they did,” Salas says from his home in Ojai, California, “we could have a righteous trial.”

In 2005, the erstwhile deputy missile combat crew commander waved the red cape with even more vigor at the government bull by co-authoring Faded Giant: The 1967 UFO/Missile Incidents.   Salas’s story was augmented by other witnesses and FOIA-acquired USAF documents acknowledging the Minuteman shutdown — but without mentioning the U-word.

Salas and co-author Jim Klotz demonstrated how the hovering phenomenon that disabled fully armed nukes on the early morning of March 24, 1967, acted with impunity and deliberate intent, and that its actions weren’t confined to Salas’s post. On March 16, UFOs also visited an ICBM site some 60 miles away, and shut down all 10 of its missiles in similar fashion.

Having apparently dodged legal repercussions, the 68-year-old former FAA aircraft certification engineer remains puzzled over the lack of MSM interest in the vulnerabilities of our deadliest weapons systems. Aside from appearances on Larry King and niche shows like Art Bell and The History Channel, Salas’s story — and those of a growing number of colleagues — has been pretty much ignored by American media.

“I had high hopes for the Peter Jennings special,” says Salas in reference to the ultimately feckless ABC prime-time “investigation” in 2005. “They seemed really interested. They flew me out to Dallas and got two, three hours on videotape. But a week before the show, they called and said, ‘Sorry, we’ve got to cut you out.’ I don’t know if somebody got to them or what.”

Forty-two years later, Salas remains in awe of what happened at Oscar Flight, the code-named Minuteman silo belonging to the 341st Strategic Missile Wing. Shortly after jittery topside guards reported bright aerial objects pulsing silently above the security gate, klaxons started shrieking and the missiles began losing power in rapid succession, one by one, until six to eight amid the 10-shot cluster were reduced to no-alert status. Security upstairs reported the objects flew off immediately afterwards.

“Somehow,” recalls Salas, who monitored the control panels alongside bunker colleague Lt. Fred Mywald, “these objects were able to penetrate 65 feet of earth and a completely shielded cabling system with an electromagnetic pulse that sent signals to upset the most sophisticated weapons in the world.”

Those signals were strong enough to foil the missiles’ guidance and control mechanisms, Salas says. An account of the March ‘67 incidents is available at http://www.cufon.org/cufon/malmstrom/malm1.htm, but by no means are they the only ones involving UFO security breaches with nukes. Salas is in contact with plenty of other witnesses who’ve yet to come forward.

But even if they did, would the media bother to shrug?

“To me, it was a benevolent message,” says Salas, whose world view was forever altered by the event. “My own speculation is that these objects were saying we shouldn’t be messing with nuclear weapons because we might destroy ourselves.”

But maybe that’s not news.

[Here's where you can see video of Robert Salas telling his story: http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case1017.htm.]

My movie, finally called What on Earth?, with the tag line, “Inside the crop circle mystery,” is finished and getting it sold has begun. We got off to a great start with a preview at the big yearly UFO Congress bash, where we won best feature documentary in their film festival.

The statue, that looks like Oscar, is in fact an alien! Happy that crop circles are considered by them to be interchangeable with crafts, as far as unidentified is concerned, so that the film could be eligible for this award. And it has stimulated my already keen imagination about ‘the other,’ and how backwards our world is on this subject, where instead of marginalizing it we should be investigating it.

I submitted this question to the Obama forum that was held today:

If we ascertained that UFOs or crop circles were coming from another intelligence, we would be one humanity in relation to “the other,” which would enable us to best address all the challenges that face us. It is possible that the only thing that needs to happen is for the existing evidence to be taken seriously. Won’t you please change the official policy, which, since the Robertson Panel, in 1953, has been to ridicule such things, and instead make a serious examination of what we already know? If there’s one chance in a million that it would produce such a massive result, aren’t we fools not to pursue that chance?

When the full film website gets up, this blog will be part of it, and I’d like this to be a dialogue. I usually think there’s so much smarter thinking than is popularly in play. Like today, at that town meeting, Obama laughing at the suggestion to think about marijuana laws. Along with UFOs, it’s part of the world that is to come, where it’s re-think or else.

When I read things like If We Are in the Death Spiral of Capitalism, Can We Start Using the “S” Word? , I want to jump out of my skin. Yes, yes, yes, it’s an intelligent appraisal of the difficulties we are in. No argument with this:

We seem to have entered the death spiral where rising unemployment leads to reduced consumption and hence to greater unemployment. Any schadenfreude we might be tempted to feel as executives lose their corporate jets and the erstwhile Masters of the Universe wipe egg from their faces is quickly dashed by the ever more vivid suffering around us. Food pantries and shelters can no longer keep up with the demand; millions face old age without pensions and with their savings gutted; we personally are consumed with anxiety about the future that awaits our children and grandchildren.

And it has a suggestion about how the world might be reorganized. But are there any laws to pass, or stimuli to give out, or businesses to shore up or to let fail that will get us to another reality?

It makes me crazy that we aren’t talking about what’s more important than any action to take, which is how to think. Although it may not have been uttered by Einstein, whoever said you can’t solve problems at the level of consciousness that created them was a wise cookie. We argue about actions to take, while I whisper, “Pay attention to the crop circles.”

Look, if we were to ascertain beyond a shadow of a doubt there is other intelligence besides our own, it would produce the biggest change in our thinking in centuries. In fact, since Copernicus and Galileo, who removed Earth from being the center of the universe. That removal from supremacy reordered human thought. A hierarchical world, with kings on the top, which went along with Earth as supreme, no longer could hold sway.

If we were to discover extra-terrestrial life, it would show that we are not intellectually unique in the galaxy. Man has a tendency to think he’s very special. We consider ourselves morally, culturally, and intellectually unique. But if we were to find a signal from another star system, another thinking being, we would know that none of that is true. A connection with another intelligence would be the first bridging across four billion years of independent life in evolution. It would be the end of Earth’s cultural isolation in a galaxy and a universe surely containing millions of other civilizations. It would be without doubt the greatest discovery in the history of humankind. - Paul Horowitz, Project Director, Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI)

So, think about how it would be if we got it that not only isn’t Earth the central stellar body, but that humanity isn’t the only brainy species. It’s one thing where otherness is just in science fiction, but, seriously, just think about what would happen if science fiction became science fact. And I’m not talking about invasion, but everything staying the same except our awareness. Do you think that it soon would be yesterday’s news? Never. We would wonder, we would probe, we would see how we might answer back, and we all would be in it together — one humanity in relation to that otherness. Can’t you see that’s just the way we need to see ourselves to deal with threats to us that are global now?

If ‘the other’ wanted to take over, it had a gazillion years to do that. Galactic wars are waged in science fiction, and in fact we haven’t been harmed by anything from off planet. And, if we made real inquiry into what’s going on, we would not be meeting strange creatures coming out of metallic craft, saying, “Take me to your leader.” We would be just like we are, only we would have had a realization.

So, instead of continuing to marginalize what could be coming from elsewhere, we should be opening our eyes to see what we’ve been titillated by. We are so clever and so resourceful that if there were real interest, where the brightest minds were puzzling it out, we would have answers. I know it about the crop circles, where if you take plant material and soil samples from a ‘genuine’ circle into a science lab, you ascertain that it has undergone inexplicable changes. What little money there’s been for such research has found that to be the case, and, although credible scientific papers attest to such changes, the world isn’t paying attention.

Why? Even if there were an infinitesimal chance to make a breakthrough discovery that could be of such value to us, why not look into that? It would cost very little to investigate the origin of the circles, not to mention that we could get some interesting info about what has been done to throw us off track. Why would hoaxers go out, night after night, year after year, in fields all over the world, for absolutely no recognition and presumably no money? It defies human nature, not to mention human capacities. See Why Real Crop Circles Can’t be Hoaxed.

In 1952, the Robertson Panel was convened by the CIA to look into the buzz going on about UFO sightings. It set official government policy, which still is in place, to use the media to ridicule and debunk. It’s time for that policy to be reconsidered. What we would discover could save civilization.

Suzanne Taylor
Producer/Director What on Earth…Inside the crop circle mystery.