Thank GAWD Brandon An'em Protecting Our "Cognitive Infrastructure"

tablet  |  My fellow citizens, meet the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency—better known as CISA—a government acronym with the same word in it twice in case you wondered about its mission. This agency was created in the waning days of the Obama administration, supposedly to protect our digital infrastructure against cyberattacks from computer viruses and nefarious foreign actors. But less than one year into their existence, CISA decided that their remit also should include protecting our “cognitive infrastructure” from various threats.

“Cognitive infrastructure” is the actual phrase used by current CISA head Jen Easterly, who formerly worked at Tailored Access Operations, a top secret cyber warfare unit at the National Security Agency. It refers to the thoughts inside your head, which is precisely what the government’s counter-disinformation apparatus, headed by people like Easterly, are attempting to control. Naturally, these thoughts need to be protected from bad ideas, such as any ideas that the people at CISA or their government partners do not like.

In early 2017, citing the threat from foreign disinformation, the Department of Homeland Security unilaterally declared federal control over the country’s election infrastructure, which had previously been administered at the local level. Not long after that, CISA, which is a subagency of the DHS, established its own authority over the cognitive infrastructure by becoming the central hub coordinating the government’s information control activities. This pattern was repeated in several other government agencies around the same time (there are currently a dozen federal agencies named among the defendants in our suit).

So, what exactly has the government been doing to protect our cognitive infrastructure? Perhaps the best way to wrap your head around the actual operations of the new American censorship leviathan is to consider the vivid analogy offered by our brilliant attorney, John Sauer, in the introduction of our brief for the injunction. This is worth quoting at length:

Suppose that the Trump White House, backed by Republicans controlling both Houses of Congress, publicly demanded that all libraries in the United States burn books criticizing the President, and the President made statements implying that the libraries would face ruinous legal consequences if they did not comply, while senior White House officials privately badgered the libraries for detailed lists and reports of such books that they had burned and the libraries, after months of such pressure, complied with those demands and burned the books.

Suppose that, after four years of pressure from senior congressional staffers in secret meetings threatening the libraries with adverse legislation if they did not cooperate, the FBI started sending all libraries in the United States detailed lists of the books the FBI wanted to burn, requesting that the libraries report back to the FBI by identifying the books that they burned, and the libraries complied by burning about half of those books.

Suppose that a federal national security agency teamed up with private research institutions, backed by enormous resources and federal funding, to establish a mass-surveillance and mass-censorship program that uses sophisticated techniques to review hundreds of millions of American citizens’ electronic communications in real time, and works closely with tech platforms to covertly censor millions of them.

The first two hypotheticals are directly analogous to the facts of this case. The third, meanwhile, is not a hypothetical at all; it is a description of the Election Integrity Partnership and Virality Project.

The censorship activities of the nation’s largest law enforcement agency, which it terms “information warfare,” have turned the FBI, in the words of whistleblower Steve Friend, into an “intelligence agency with law enforcement powers.” But there is no “information warfare” exception to the constitutional right of free speech. Which other federal agencies are involved in censorship? Besides the ones you might suspect—the DOJ, NIH, CDC, Surgeon General, and the State Department—our case has also uncovered censorship activities by the Department of the Treasury (don’t criticize the feds’ monetary policies), and yes, my friends, even the Census Bureau (don’t ask).

In prior precedent-setting cases on censorship, the Supreme Court clarified that the right of free speech guaranteed by the Constitution exists not just for the person speaking but for the listener as well: We all have the right to hear both sides of debated issues to make informed judgments. Thus all Americans have been harmed by the government’s censorship leviathan, not just those who happen to post opinions or share information on social media.

The judge presiding over the case, Terry Dougherty, asked on Friday in court if anyone had read George Orwell’s 1984 and whether they remembered the Ministry of Truth. “It’s relevant here,” he added. It is indeed time to slay the government’s Ministry of Truth. I hope that our efforts in Missouri v. Biden prove to be a crucial first step in this project to restore our constitutional rights.

 

Federal Judge Puts His Size 13 Triple E Brogans Deep In Brandons Shit Stained Behind....,

ZH  |  On Tuesday, the Fourth of July, a federal judge in Louisiana kicked the Biden administration's censorship complex in the teeth - ruling that federal officials (with limited exception) can no longer communicate or collude with big tech companies to censor "protected speech."

 The order prohibits Biden officials from "collaborating, coordinating, partnering, switchboarding, and/or jointly working with" key academic groups behind various censorship campaigns, including the Election Integrity Partnership, a coalition of researchers led by the Stanford Internet Observatory and the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public.

This is a huge win for free speech - and comes on the heels of Twitter Files revelations of government influence and control over various hot button narratives they wished to steer. And of all people who deserve to take a victory lap - journalist Matt Taibbi and Louisiana AG Andrew Baily have opined on the ruling.

First, Taibbi drops his thoughts via Racket News...

Here’s how federal judge Terry Doughty yesterday described the digital censorship controversy at which pundits a half-year now have repeatedly rolled eyes, dismissed, and mocked as a nothingburger: “If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”

Doughty then ordered a sweeping halt to the censorship schemes outlined in both the extant Missouri v. Biden lawsuit and in the Twitter Files. Critics who’ve been snickering about this issue might want to read this 155-page ruling now, and ask themselves if the current Supreme Court would or would not agree with Doughty. Still think this is a nothingburger?

With this ruling in the Missouri v. Biden censorship case, Doughty went out of his way on the Fourth of July, to issue a stern rebuke at a conga line of government officials, many of them characters in the Twitter Files. Racket readers will recognize names like Elvis Chan and Laura Dehmlow (of the FBI), Jen Easterly and Brian Scully (of the Department of Homeland Security), Laura Rosenberger (Special Assistant to the President, and one of the creators of Hamilton 68) and Daniel Kimmage (of the Global Engagement Center), who were all just ordered to get the hell off the First Amendment’s lawn. Paraphrasing, Doughty enjoined them from:

• meeting with social-media companies for the purpose of pressuring or inducing in any manner the removal or suppression of protected free speech;

• flagging posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding to social-media companies urging the same;

• collaborating with the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or any “like project” or group for the same purpose;

• threatening or coercing social-media companies to remove protected free speech.

The New York Times, which instantly wrung its hands and stressed the ruling could “curtail efforts to fight disinformation,” grumblingly handed blame to the Twitter Files, without naming them of course, and mislabeling it as a partisan enterprise:

Elon Musk has echoed Republican arguments, releasing internal company documents to chosen journalists suggesting what they claimed was collusion between company and government officials. Though that remains far from proven, some of the documents Mr. Musk disclosed ended up in the lawsuit’s arguments.

The investigation led by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and Missouri’s Andrew Bailey, produced documents showing overt government requests to censor people like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a White House official expressing frustration to Facebook that they weren’t “removing bad information from search,” and emails in which a Facebook official pleads with the White House to understand that they’re already “reducing the virality” of “often-true content” that might promote vaccine hesitancy, among many other things. The Attorneys General likewise scored depositions with people like Dr. Anthony Fauci, and confronted him with documents showing Facebook sending his office updates about how “we are expanding the list of false claims we will remove.”

White House official asks Twitter “if we can get moving” on having posts by RFK, Jr. removed, “ASAP”

Was this illegal? Unconsititional? Did it show a pattern of mighty tech companies like Facebook and Twitter acting like they were reporting to federal officials like Fauci on content moderation? I knew what I thought it looked like, but what judges or a jury might say, who knew?

 

 

What The NYTimes Wrote About A Judge Protecting First Amendment Rights

startribune  | A federal judge in Louisiana on Tuesday restricted the Biden administration from communicating with social media platforms about broad swaths of content online, a ruling that could curtail efforts to combat false and misleading narratives about the coronavirus pandemic and other issues.

The order, which could have significant First Amendment implications, is a major development in a fierce legal fight over the boundaries and limits of speech online.

It was a victory for Republicans who have often accused social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube of disproportionately taking down right-leaning content, sometimes in collaboration with government. Democrats say the platforms have failed to adequately police misinformation and hateful speech, leading to dangerous outcomes, including violence.

In the ruling, Judge Terry A. Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana said that parts of the government, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI, could not talk to social media companies for "the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression or reduction of content containing protected free speech."

In granting a preliminary injunction, Doughty said that the agencies could not flag specific posts to the social media platforms or request reports about their efforts to take down content. The ruling said that the government could still notify the platforms about posts detailing crimes, national security threats or foreign attempts to influence elections.

"If the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States' history," the judge said. "The plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the government has used its power to silence the opposition."

Courts are increasingly being forced to weigh in on such issues — with the potential to upend decades of legal norms that have governed speech online.

The Republican attorneys general of Texas and Florida are defending first-of-their-kind state laws that bar internet platforms from taking down certain political content, and legal experts believe those cases may eventually reach the Supreme Court. The high court this year declined to limit a law that allows the platforms to escape legal liability for content that users post to the sites.

The ruling Tuesday, in a lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri, is likely to be appealed by the Biden administration, but its impact could force government officials, including law enforcement agencies, to refrain from notifying the platforms of troublesome content.

Government officials have argued they do not have the authority to order posts or entire accounts removed, but federal agencies and the tech giants have long worked together to take action against illegal or harmful material, especially in cases involving child sexual abuse, human trafficking and other criminal activity. That has also included regular meetings to share information on the Islamic State and other terrorist groups.

The White House said the Justice Department was reviewing the ruling and evaluating its next steps."Our consistent view remains that social media platforms have a critical responsibility to take account of the effects their platforms are having on the American people, but make independent choices about the information they present," the White House said in a statement.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, declined to comment. Twitter did not have a comment, and Google did not respond to a request for comment.

Jeff Landry, the Louisiana attorney general, said in a statement that the judge's order was "historic." Missouri's attorney general, Andrew Bailey, hailed the ruling as a "huge win in the fight to defend our most fundamental freedoms." Both officials are Republican.

What NorthrupGrumman Thinks About These Aliens And Whatnot....,

northropgrumman  |  Where is everybody? In a universe of at least 100 billion galaxies, why hasn’t anyone stopped by?

The answer depends on who you ask. Some favor the notion of time and distance — extraterrestrial life may not know we’re out here, or may be similarly limited to their local solar system by the finite speed of light. Others make more dire predictions for the fate of advanced life in the universe: Catastrophic events such as war, disease or stellar bad luck that effectively eliminate evolving life once it reaches a certain threshold.

But what if the truth lies closer to home? What if invisible aliens exist among us, already here but unseen by human eyes? Astrobiologist Samantha Rolfe of the University of Hertfordshire took this idea and ran with it, exploring the possibility of a “shadow biosphere” capable of supporting alien life on Earth — just not life as we know it.

What We Do in the Shadows

Phosphorus represents a key biochemical building block for RNA and DNA formation in earthbound life. All organisms — plant and animal — require a source of phosphorous to survive, despite its relative scarcity. As noted by Matthew Pasek of the University of South Florida, “phosphorous is the least abundant element cosmically relative to its presence in biology.”

The shadow biosphere theory postulates that other forms of life may exist alongside known organisms but operate in ways we don’t recognize as life. Consider the Mono Lake microorganisms, which use arsenic rather than phosphorus to generate essential energy — while their arsenic adaptation stems from very specific environmental conditions, it’s also possible that larger-scale shadow biospheres have existed throughout Earth’s history. According to Astrobiology Magazine, Earth could have had several “cradles of life” over its 4 billion year history; some may have collapsed as environmental conditions changed while others might have been overrun by our phosphorus-loving progenitors.

It’s also possible that meteorite impacts — or covert alien landings — introduced life into our ecosystem that required a novel energy source, and shadow biospheres have been humming along undetected and undisturbed for centuries or even millennia.

What does this mean for our theory of invisible aliens? The good news is that a proof-of-concept shadow biosphere already exists in arsenic-using organisms. The bad news? While shadow-biological microbes might be alien to us they’re probably not from a galaxy far, far away.

The Uncanny (Silicon) Valley

While energy creation is one way to approach the search for life, it’s also worth taking a look at our biggest chemical contributor: carbon. All life on Earth is carbon-based, since carbon makes it easy to create the strong double and triple bonds needed for cell walls, and is also soluble in water — another essential life-encouraging compound — when converted to carbon dioxide.

But what if carbon isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? Rolfe considers the possibility of an alternative biochemistry based on silicon. As she points out, silicon is widely available on Earth’s surface and — just like carbon — has four electrons to create bonds with other atoms. There are challenges: Silicon is heavier, has a tough time creating strong bonds and isn’t water-soluble. Still, scientists have demonstrated that it’s possible to create bacterial proteins that bond with silicon, effectively creating tiny, silicon-based life.

The chances of silicon-based visitors, however, remains slim here on Earth. Still, there’s speculation that intrasolar moons or exosolar planets could have a chemical makeup that favors silicon life over its carbon companion. Here, climbing out of the terrestrial-focused valley of common life classification means thinking outside the biological box to prioritize the collective action of potential aliens rather than their chemical composition.

Interstellar Rest Stop

What if our invisible aliens aren’t living among us in shadow biospheres or using different building blocks? What if they’ve already visited — and aren’t coming back? What if they’re not aliens at all?

As noted by Business Insider, it’s possible that interstellar travelers visited Earth billions of years ago when their own star system was closer to ours. Maybe they watched the first organic molecules form, or walked among the dinosaurs. Perhaps they accidentally nudged an asteroid toward Earth on their way out of town? Other experts like Harvard’s Avi Loeb wonder if strange interstellar objects like ‘Oumuaumua — the first known interstellar object to pass through our solar system, detected in late 2017 — were of alien origin and sent to Earth deliberately.

Go deeper into we’re-not-alone-out-here speculation and you’ll find theories like the one from Michael Masters of Montana Technological University in Butte. He notes that while the collective evidence for unidentified flying objects (UFOs) continues to grow, details on actual extraterrestrials are almost entirely absent. He posits that the seeming existence of advanced technology without alien operators could suggest a future in which humanity discovers time travel, humans regularly visit the past and occasionally make the mistake of letting their advanced craft get noticed. Since they’re physically and visually human, any crash-landings or future-people infiltrations would go unnoticed. In effect, they’re temporal visitors; aliens by eons rather than elements.

We Are Not Alone

Are we the only house in the galactic neighborhood? Maybe not. Although shadow biospheres and invisible aliens aren’t the probable solutions to our carbon-based isolation, they’re critical steps in changing the way we view life, the universe and everything. Broader perspectives and bigger thoughts make it more likely that we’ll recognize the telltale signs of life — even if it’s not what we’re expecting.

Manta Ray

northrupgrumman  |  From unmanned aerial vehicles and underwater mine hunting systems to defense readiness targets, Northrop Grumman is a leader in autonomous systems, helping our customers meet a wide range of missions.

Northrop Grumman is a leader in the areas of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and we are working to develop autonomous capabilities and intelligent payloads for maritime applications, like the Large Unmanned Surface Vehicle and Medium Unmanned Surface Vehicles.

Northrop Grumman has been pioneering new capabilities in the undersea domain for more than 50 years. Manta Ray, a new unmanned underwater vehicle, taking its name from the massive “winged” fish, will need to be able to operate on long-duration, long-range missions in ocean environments without need for on-site human logistics support – a unique but important mission needed to address the complex nature of undersea warfare.

Northrop Grumman is developing its unique full-scale demonstration vehicle using several novel design attributes that support the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA’s) vision of providing ground-breaking technology to create strategic surprise. Manta Ray will also be able to anchor to the seafloor in a low power state while harvesting energy from the environment.

Manta Ray will have command, control, and communications (C3) capability to enable long-duration operations with minimal human supervision. The data from Manta Ray will help the joint force make better decisions and gain advantage during missions.

“Manta Ray will provide payload capability from the sea, making it a critical component of subsea warfare and the DoD’s Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) vision,” said Alan Lytle, vice president, strategy and mission solutions, Northrop Grumman.

Northrop Grumman was recently awarded a Phase 2 contract to continue the Manta Ray program that began in 2020. As part of Phase 2, Northrop Grumman will work on subsystem testing followed by fabrication and in-water demonstrations of full-scale integrated vehicles. The company also broke ground on a new system integration and test lab that will use modeling and simulation to test the system’s software before getting loaded onto the vehicle.

To learn more about Manta Ray visit the DARPA website. Manta Ray is also featured in the new Welcome to Northrop Grumman video series.

What Caused The Riots In France?

fp  |  French police are plagued by “a double problem of racial discrimination and brutality, with neither one being acknowledged by governments past and present,” said Sebastian Roché, an expert on policing at Sciences-Po university in Grenoble.

In France, images of similar incidents “have emerged in the past, but not as damning as these ones,” said Éric Marliere, a sociologist at the University of Lille. “We are looking at a very violent scene that reminds of the George Floyd case” and has contributed to accelerating the protest movement, he said. 

This is also yet another major headache for French President Emmanuel Macron, who’s seeking to rebuild his political capital at home and abroad after months of crippling strikes over his pension reform, and has now had to postpone a scheduled trip to Germany in order to deal with the new crisis, after being forced to leave early from a European summit in Brussels to hurry back to Paris last week.

French police have a long history of heavy-handedness, particularly with ethnic minorities. In the early 1960s, officers under the command of Paris police chief Maurice Papon killed dozens, if not hundreds, of Algerians taking part in a demonstration for independence. Over the following decades, the heavily immigrant, poverty- and crime-ridden suburbs at the margins of France’s biggest cities posed a constant challenge for police. But tensions between residents and security forces in the banlieues have grown worse over the past 15 years, according to Roché, particularly as a result of the 2005 riots. 

Back then, “the police were taken by surprise and lost control of the situation,” he said. In the following years, under different governments, a new approach was developed to police the banlieues, he said, one that largely revolved around the tougher units—such as the anti-criminality brigades, which are specifically designed to carry out arrests and tend to attract the most hot-headed elements. Officers also started being equipped with “LBDs,” riot guns firing rubber bullets that can cause severe injuries or even death.

“The logic became: ‘The police aren’t there to connect with people, earn their trust, and reassure them, but to detain them,’” Roché said. “A police officer who arrives in a banlieue arrives with their LBD, in a position to impose their point of view by force and instill fear,” he said.

This approach continues to be in fashion today. In the thick of the recent violence, Alliance Police Nationale and UNSA, two police unions, defined the rioters as “savage hordes” and “vermin,” against which police are “at war.”

In line with this rhetoric, French cops tend to be more trigger-happy than their European counterparts. The rough French average of 44 people killed by police every year since the turn of the decade pales compared to the hundreds who die in the United States, but it’s much higher than in Germany or the United Kingdom. Some of it may have to do with the lower standards and shorter training that have resulted from Macron’s efforts to quickly beef up police ranks after he came into office in 2017. In recent years, admission rates have gone from one in 50 candidates to one in five. New recruits are now only getting eight months of training, compared to three years in Germany.

This Jungle-esque Arab Spring In The Garden Must Not Be Tolerated...,

English translated pic.twitter.com/SMSPbR9whZ

— Top Notch Journal (@topnotchjournal) July 2, 2023

 

theconservativetreehouse |  Let me take you back to 2010 and 2011 when the U.S. State Department, Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, CIA Director Leon Panetta and French President Nicholas Sarkozy wanted to support the Islamist Spring uprisings in Tunis, Libya, Egypt and Yemen. 

What happened then is very much related to what we are seeing right now in Europe, specifically France; only this time we are seeing the inverse of the government interests regarding social media on display. 

The bad dictators were targeted for removal following the now famous Barack Obama Cairo, Egypt speech. President Barack Obama triggered the removal of the Zookeepers and released the big cats to become apex predators; the downstream consequences eventually showed up with ISIS burning people in cages. 

When the leaders of Tunis, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Sudan and a multitude of other unapproved dictatorships, reacted to the collective effort of the CIA and U.S. state Dept by shutting down cell phone communication, the CIA and DoS responded by enlisting Twitter and Facebook as the messaging platforms for the rebels in each country.

Twitter became the main conduit through which the people on the ground could organize against their regimes. This was the initial merge of the U.S. government using social media to effect political change. [Side Note: this is the atom splitting moment which eventually led to the government’s ability to control, filter and ultimately censor U.S. social media content.]

Twitter, and to a lesser extent Facebook, served the interests of western government by helping the people on the ground to organize protests, violent uprisings, against the dictators in the Arab Spring. As we eventually saw in Libya and Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt, AQIM) and al-Qaeda (Libya, AQAP) were supported by the State Dept/CIA during that effort.

The key takeaway is: the uprisings were supported by the western governments, and the social media platforms served the interests of the western government leadership.

We have the inverse issue for the interests of western government, specifically France and broad parts of the EU as well as the United States.

General uprisings, riots and assorted mayhem created by mostly Islamic immigrants and the subsequent cultural clash, are against the interests of France and the EU. The ability of the cultural insurgents to organize on social media is now against the interests of western government. How are they reacting? They are shutting down the utility of the platforms and shutting down the internet.

The initial takeaway from this might be perceived as good. The rioters are creating social unrest, looting, arson and crisis; they must be stopped and controlled. It seems like the government action will be a good thing.

However, as with the example of private corporations joining in alignment with WEF government to target Russia, what do you think will happen when a populist revolt of yellow vests, or anti-vaxxers, or freedom rebels take to the streets? Precedents are being set.

You might cheer France using control over communication to target the violent brown people now; but what happens when those same EU entities decide to target the communication of a different type of uprising. This is me, sending warning flares to those who might not care about this ‘beta-test’.

Oh, and don’t forget the Senate Intelligence Committee recent effort with the “Restrict Act“, total internet and domestic social media control pushed under the auspices of controlling TikTok data collection.

 

 

Two Wealthy Investors' Obsession With Anti-Gravity

MIT  |  This paper examines how various private patrons intervened to support research in gravitational physics from the late 1940s through the early 1960s. Our analysis centers primarily on two wealthy and eccentric businessmen, Roger Babson and Agnew Bahnson, and their efforts to galvanize the study of gravitation. Not only did these patrons provide generous funding at a time when the subject of gravitation received few other institutional sources of support; they also helped to knit together aresearch community. Moreover, we trace the evolution of their patronage efforts, as scientists and patrons revised their arrangements to address what came to seem weak or ineffective features of the original efforts. These unusual philanthropic efforts played an outsized role in spurring what has been called the renaissance of general relativity during the middle decades of the twentieth century

Time To Revisit Pulsed Vibrating Plasmas And The Pais Effect

glennrocess |  So far, not a single physicist of note has been willing to give Dr. Pais’ claims anything but short shrift, and the Navy has since admitted they were never able to prove the Pais Effect actually existed, much less enabled any of Dr. Pais’ wondrous inventions. Soooo…that’s the end of the story, right? It was all just a case of “too good to be true”, right?

Nope. Don’t take off that neck brace just yet. Whiplash #2 was included in the fine print.

It turns out that during TheDrive.com’s investigation, they found a document submitted by NAVAIR’s Chief Scientist/Chief Technology Officer James Sheehy wherein he stated that Dr. Pais’ room temperature superconductor is “operable and enabled via the physics described in the patent application”.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Oscar? The Navy says the Pais Effect doesn’t work, but NAVAIR’s Chief Scientist/CTO gave a sworn statement saying it does work! While I tend to be strongly skeptical of wild claims by any scientist, the ones in charge of research are responsible for keeping the pointy end of our military’s spear the sharpest on the planet, and tend to be hard-nosed, take-no-BS types. Of course they will lie through their teeth as the situation demands, but why would the one in charge lie about this?

I often tell my wife that one thing every military retiree learns along the way is how to justify (almost) anything. At a moment’s notice we can pump out barely-plausible excuses that would make OJ’s lawyers blush. This also means that we’re usually pretty good at figuring out why a government or military functionary would do something out of the ordinary. In this case, I can think of three possibilities: (1) Drs. Pais and Sheehy are both wrong and full of bovine excrement, (2) Dr. Pais is wrong, Dr. Sheehy knows it, but says it works, and (3) they’re both right and the Navy is now lying when it says that the Pais Effect cannot be proven to work.

1. Dr. Pais and Dr. Sheehy are both wrong. While possible, this scenario is the least likely for the reasons I stated above. I think it is highly unlikely that Dr. Sheehy, being who and what he is, would have issued a sworn statement saying the Pais Effect worked if it didn’t actually work.
2. Dr. Pais is wrong, Dr. Sheehy knows it, but says it works anyway. This is possible. In fact, Forbes.com posited that this could be a disinformation campaign vis-à-vis Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, colloquially known as “Star Wars”, in that if we spend a few million dollars on a project and make wild claims as to its success, perhaps China will futilely waste hundreds of billions searching down the same Pais Effect rabbit hole. In fact, as early as 2017, Dr. Sheehy already said that China is currently investigating the effect. One must wonder, then, if China is doing the same thing in reverse with the Pais Effect idea and now our best and brightest are tearing their hair out trying to develop something that isn’t real.
3. Both Dr. Pais and Dr. Sheehy are right, and the Navy is now lying about it. Maybe. Definitely maybe. Despite what the rest of the professional physics community says about the Pais Effect, IF it works, IF Drs. Pais and Sheehy are right, the Navy would have very good reason to deny it. The claimed inventions in and of themselves would radically change the balance of military and political power around the planet, so keeping such information under wraps would allow America to develop the technology and maintain sociopolitical supremacy much as we did by being the first to develop atomic and thermonuclear bombs. Of course, China would have the same motivation and would be much more effective at keeping it secret. “What is this thing called a Freedom Of Information Act request? Off to the reeducation camp with you!”
   

Indeed, hope springs eternal in the breasts of geeks, nerds, and retired sailors. Yes, we would dearly love for the Pais Effect to be real, for the dream of having a DeLorean with a Mr. Fusion pumping out the obligatory 1.21 gigawatts (did I mention Dr. Pais also patented a compact fusion reactor and may have worked on a spacetime modification weapons system?). But no. 

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”, a phrase popularized by Carl Sagan, must be applied here. Until there is hard, publicly-verifiable proof that the Pais Effect (and all its follow-on technologies) works, Dr. Pais’ claims belong on the shelf alongside those of Pons and Fleischmann.

These Polacks Out'chere Just Really Doing The Most....,

polskieradio |  The war in Ukraine has weakened the Franco-German axis that once defined Europe, with the balance of power now shifting toward the UK and Poland, a British political scientist has claimed. 

In an op-ed featured in the British news magazine The New Statesman, Maurice Glasman, a political scientist from St Mary's University in London, highlights the profound impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on the existing order in Europe.

Glasman argues that the invasion has not only disrupted the balance of power across the continent but has also had consequences for the European Union, Poland's wpolityce.pl website reported on Thursday.

Prior to the crisis, the EU functioned under a shared leadership model, with France and Germany at the helm. France assumed a dominant role in military and diplomatic affairs, while Germany focused on economic matters, according to Glasman.

However, he says the legal framework governing the EU was rooted in the primacy of EU law within member states, which ultimately created tensions in both eastern and western Europe.

These tensions were exemplified by Britain's decision to withdraw from the EU, as well as the opposition voiced by Poland and Hungary on social issues.

“The status quo was based on an understanding over the export of gas (as well as oil and coal) from Russia to Germany, most obviously through the Nord Stream pipeline," according to Glasman.

He writes: "Berlin and Moscow held the fate of Central Europe in their hands once more. German economic interests were predominant, partly because the EU did not develop a unified military strategy of its own."

Significant shift in European landscape

Glasman further states: “This is what made the status of Ukraine so explosive. Its integration into either the EU or NATO was not in German interests. It would undermine its economic interests, as the only serious industrial economy within the EU, which were predicated upon cheap energy imports from Russia.”

In his analysis, Glasman highlights the fact that the invasion of Ukraine by Russia has resulted in a significant shift in the European landscape, particularly in the realms of economics and military affairs, wpolityce.pl reported.

Glasman says this shift has exposed Germany's relative weakness and hesitancy in the military sphere, sentiments that are shared by France.

He argues that in the event of a military confrontation with Russia, power and resources within Europe would gravitate towards NATO, subsequently leading to a resurgence of influence from the United States and the United Kingdom.

He writes that “it was widely assumed within academic and elite political discourse that Brexit would lead to the marginalization of Britain within Europe, and to the consolidation of the Franco-German axis within the EU. The opposite has been the case.”

He continues: “Following the invasion of Ukraine, Britain took an unambiguous position of military and political support for the beleaguered Ukrainian state. While the US was offering President Volodymyr Zelensky asylum, Britain immediately transferred weapons and led the western European political response with an unprecedented array of economic sanctions against Russia. It seemed as if Brexit had strengthened its freedom of action at a time of war."

All Is Not Well In "The Garden" As Video Games Cause A Week Of Serious Unrest...,

Telegraph  |  French police said they were “at war” with “savage hordes of vermin” on Friday night as France was rocked by violent waves of riots and looting and about 1,000 more people were arrested.

Two of the country’s top police unions threatened a revolt unless Emmanuel Macron’s government restored order after protests broke out over an officer’s shooting of a teenager outside Paris.

“Today the police are in combat because we are at war. Tomorrow we will enter resistance and the government should be aware of this,” they said.

It came as British travellers were warned about the risk of curfews and travel restrictions due to the spiralling upheaval and vandalism around France.

A domestic intelligence note seen by Le Monde has warned riots could become increasingly “widespread” and go on for “the coming nights”.

The French government announced on Friday that all major public gatherings that could “pose a risk to public order” would be banned. Various rock concerts have been pulled. Some 45,000 police were deployed. 

The Interior Ministry said 994 arrests were made during Friday night, with more than 2,500 fires. The night before, 917 people were arrested nationwide, 500 buildings targeted, 2,000 vehicles burned and dozens of stores ransacked.

While the number of overnight arrests was the highest yet, there were fewer fires, cars burned and police stations attacked around France than the previous night, according to the Interior Ministry. Gerald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, claimed the violence was of “much less intensity”.

Hundreds of police and firefighters have been injured, including 79 overnight, but authorities have not released injury tallies for protesters.

Protests have continued into a fourth night, with rioters in Paris on Saturday night setting fire to a bus and clashing with police. Unrest has also spread to Lyon and Grenoble.

Meanwhile, security will be beefed up during the upcoming Tour de France bike race, which is due to start in Spain on Saturday.

Mr Macron faced intense pressure on Friday to impose a state of emergency as he called on parents to keep their children at home and blamed video games for “intoxicated” young protesters.

In updated travel advice, the Foreign Office said: “Locations and timing of riots are unpredictable. You should monitor the media, and avoid areas where riots are taking place.”

 

 

Rockefeller An'Em Had Tapped Hillary Clinton To Be The "Disclosure President"

NYTimes  | When Jimmy Kimmel asked Hillary Clinton in a late-night TV interview about U.F.O.s, she quickly corrected his terminology.

“You know, there’s a new name,” Mrs. Clinton said in the March appearance. “It’s unexplained aerial phenomenon,” she said. “U.A.P. That’s the latest nomenclature.”

Known for her grasp of policy, Mrs. Clinton has spoken at length in her presidential campaign on topics as diverse as Alzheimer’s research and military tensions in the South China Sea. But it is her unusual knowledge about extraterrestrials that has struck a small but committed cohort of voters.

Mrs. Clinton has vowed that barring any threats to national security, she would open up government files on the subject, a shift from President Obama, who typically dismisses the topic as a joke. Her position has elated U.F.O. enthusiasts, who have declared Mrs. Clinton the first “E.T. candidate.”

“Hillary has embraced this issue with an absolutely unprecedented level of interest in American politics,” said Joseph G. Buchman, who has spent decades calling for government transparency about extraterrestrials.

Mrs. Clinton, a cautious candidate who often bemoans being the subject of Republican conspiracy theories, has shown surprising ease plunging into the discussion of the possibility of extraterrestrial beings.

She has said in recent interviews that as president she would release information about Area 51, the remote Air Force base in Nevada believed by some to be a secret hub where the government stores classified information about aliens and U.F.O.s.

In a radio interview last month, she said, “I want to open the files as much as we can.” Asked if she believed in U.F.O.s, Mrs. Clinton said: “I don’t know. I want to see what the information shows.” But she added, “There’s enough stories out there that I don’t think everybody is just sitting in their kitchen making them up.”

When asked about extraterrestrials in an interview with The Conway Daily Sun in New Hampshire last year, Mrs. Clinton promised to “get to the bottom of it.”

“I think we may have been” visited already, she said in the interview. “We don’t know for sure.”

While Americans typically point to issues like the economy and terrorism as top priorities for the next president, a desire for answers about aliens has inspired a passionate bloc of voters, who make their voices heard on social media.

Stephen Bassett, who lobbies the government on extraterrestrial issues, views a Clinton presidency as a chance to finally get the United States to disclose all it knows about life beyond Earth. Since November 2014, Mr. Bassett’s organization has sent roughly 2.5 million Twitter messages to presidential candidates, elected officials and the news media urging a serious discussion of the issue.

“That was a storm, and now it’s like a steady drip,” Mr. Bassett said.

The movement viewed Mrs. Clinton’s decision to correct Mr. Kimmel’s use of the term U.F.O., which some view as loaded and rooted more in science fiction than in science, as a breakthrough because it “suggested she’d been briefed by someone and is not just being flippant,” Mr. Buchman said.

In fact, Mrs. Clinton had been briefed. She was prepped by her campaign chairman, John D. Podesta, who is not only a well-respected Washington hand, having served as a top adviser to Mr. Obama and President Bill Clinton, but also a crusader for the disclosure of government information on unexplained phenomena that could prove the existence of intelligent life outside Earth.

“The time to pull back the curtain on the topic is long overdue,” Mr. Podesta wrote in his foreword for the 2010 book “UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record,” by Leslie Kean, an investigative journalist.

Mrs. Clinton’s position is not a political response to public sentiment — 63 percent of Americans do not believe in U.F.O.s, according to an Associated Press poll. But it reflects the decades of overlap between the rise to power of Bill and Hillary Clinton and popular culture’s obsession with the universe’s most mysterious questions.

 

 

The Destruction Of NASA

strategic-culture  |  In her 2012 book Area 51 Uncensored, journalist Annie Jacobson provided lengthy detail of the Cold War experiments, aerospace technology and nuclear bomb testing that took place at Area 51 during this period which largely put the earlier social engineer experiment of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds emergency broadcast read aloud in 1938. The mass panic that ensued the broadcast provided an insight into the levers of mass psychology that certain social engineers drooled over.

What could account for observed UFO phenomena?

In an interview with NPR Radio, Jacobson stated: “The UFO craze began in the summer of 1947. Several months later, the G2 intelligence, which was the Army intelligence corps at the time, spent an enormous amount of time and treasure seeking out two former Third Reich aerospace designers named Walter and Reimar Horten who had allegedly created [a] flying disc. … American intelligence agents fanned out across Europe seeking the Horton brothers to find out if, in fact, they had made this flying disc.”

During WWII, the Horten brothers were associated with the Austrian scientist Viktor Shauberger whose innovative designs for implosion (vs explosion) flying technology utilized water currents, and electromagnetism to generate flying machines that by all surviving accounts flew faster than the speed of sound. While much of his research was confiscated and classified by victor nations after WWII, Schauberger was promised government sponsorship in America which induced the inventor to move across the ccean where Canada’s Avro Arrow program sought his designs for supersonic nuclear missile delivery aircraft. When he discovered that his work would only be used for military purposes, Schauberger pushed back and over the course of several months, his patents were essentially stolen, and he returned to Austria to die broke and depressed in 1958.

The Strategic Importance of Space

It was never a secret that the post-1971 globalized world order championed by the likes of Sir Henry Kissinger, David and Laurence Rockefeller and other Malthusians throughout the 20^th century was always designed to collapse. With the mass shock therapy that such a collapse would impose upon the world, it was believed that a deconstruction of the Abrahamic traditions that governed western society for 2000 years could be accomplished and a new society could be socially engineered in the image of the Brave New (depopulated) World that would live like happy sheep forever under the grip of a hereditary alpha class and their technocratic managers. The story of the Tavistock-led attack on scientific progress is told brilliantly in the 2010 Lpac film The Destruction of NASA.

The only problem these social engineers have encountered in recent years is the re-emergence of actual statesmen who are unwilling to sacrifice their people and traditions on the altar of a new global Gaia cult. Such defenders of humanity’s better traditions have launched the multipolar alliance and have driven a policy of long-term growth and advance scientific and technological progress which is embodied brilliantly by the New Silk Road, and its extensions to the Arctic. The most exciting aspect of this New Silk Road/Multipolar Paradigm is the leap into space exploration as the new frontier of human self-development which has not been seen since the days of President Kennedy.

With China and Russia signing a pact to jointly develop lunar bases and the NASA Artemis Accords calling for international cooperation on Lunar and Mars resource development/industrialization, the age of unlimited growth that was lost with the LSD-driven mass psychosis of 1968’s “live in the now” paradigm shift may finally be recaptured. Programs designed to put humanity’s focus on real objective threats like Asteroid collisions, and solar-induced new ice ages are seriously being discussed by leaders of Russia, China and the USA.

There are billions of suns and potentially billions of galaxies, and chances are there is indeed life on many of the planets orbiting some of the stars within our growing, creative universe… and there is also a fair chance that cognitive life has also emerged on some of those planets. The best way to find out is not to sit at home while the world economic system collapses under a controlled disintegration thinking about Rockefeller-funded conspiracy theories, but rather to fight to revive humanity’s open system destiny starting with a cooperative space program to extend human culture and economy to the Moon and Mars, and then onto other planetary bodies followed by missions to deep space.

If other civilizations exist, maybe it is our duty to take up the torch left to us by JFK and go find them.

Whatever Became Of Planetary Resources And Deep Space Industries?

space  |  A newly unveiled company with some high-profile backers — including filmmaker James Cameron and Google co-founder Larry Page — is set to announce plans to mine near-Earth asteroids for resources such as precious metals and water.

Planetary Resources, Inc. intends to sell these materials, generating a healthy profit for itself. But it also aims to advance humanity's exploration and exploitation of space, with resource extraction serving as an anchor industry that helps our species spread throughout the solar system.

"If you look at space resources, the logical next step is to go to the near-Earth asteroids," Planetary Resources co-founder and co-chairman Eric Anderson told SPACE.com. "They're just so valuable, and so easy to reach energetically. Near-Earth asteroids really are the low-hanging fruit of the solar system."

Planetary Resources is officially unveiling its asteroid-mining plans at 1:30 p.m. EDT (1730 GMT) Tuesday (April 24) during a news conference at Seattle's Museum of Flight.

 

Two of the resources the company plans to mine are platinum-group metals and water, Anderson said. [Images: Planetary Resources' Asteroid Mining Plans]

Platinum-group metals — ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum — are found in low concentrations on Earth and can be tough to access, which is why they're so expensive. In fact, Anderson said, they don't occur naturally in Earth's crust, having been deposited on our planet over the eons by asteroid impacts.

"We're going to go to the source," Anderson said. "The platinum-group metals are many orders of magnitude easier to access in the high-concentration platinum asteroids than they are in the Earth's crust."

And there are a lot of precious metals up there waiting to be mined. A single platinum-rich space rock 1,650 feet (500 meters) wide contains the equivalent of all the platinum-group metals ever mined throughout human history, company officials said.

"When the availability of these metals increase[s], the cost will reduce on everything including defibrillators, hand-held devices, TV and computer monitors, catalysts," Planetary Resources co-founder and co-chairman Peter Diamandis said in a statement. "And with the abundance of these metals, we’ll be able to use them in mass production, like in automotive fuel cells."

Asteroid water could help astronauts stay hydrated and grow food, provide radiation shielding for spaceships and be broken into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen, the chief components of rocket fuel, Anderson said.

Planetary Resources hopes its mining efforts lead to the establishment of in-space "gas stations" that could help many spacecraft refuel, from Earth-orbiting satellites to Mars-bound vessels.

"We're really talking about enabling the exploration of deep space," Anderson said. "That's what really gets me excited." [Future Visions of Human Spaceflight]

In addition to Page, Planetary Resources counts among its investors Ross Perot Jr., chairman of The Perot Group and son of the former presidential candidate; Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google; K. Ram Shriram, Google board of directors founding member; and Charles Simonyi, chairman of Intentional Software Corp., who has taken two tourist flights to the International Space Station.

Cameron serves the company as an adviser, as does former NASA space shuttle astronaut Tom Jones.

80 Years Of Skunk Works Innovation...,

lockheedmartin  |  As we look at the technologies Skunk Works continues to develop now and for the future, it’s just as exciting, and as classified, as Skunk Works’ illustrious history. Work continues in critical areas like UAS, hypersonics, artificial intelligence, low observables and other revolutionary technologies. A prime example that is not being developed under the cloak of secrecy is the team partnering with NASA to develop and build X-59, the prototype that will quiet the supersonic boom.

The way we engineer and build these capabilities is evolving too, as we lean more and more into a digital approach that reduces cost and accelerates development.

The unique and proven Skunk Works philosophy has enabled the impossible to become reality for 80 years. This dedicated and growing team continues to embrace Kelly Johnson’s motto: be quick, be quiet and be on time. We innovate with urgency to push the boundaries, ensuring our customers have the capabilities needed to stay ahead of ready.

 

Of course, there are programs that we can’t share…yet.