007 And The "Normalized" World Above Our World....,

espionagehistoryarchive |  We’ve analyzed 007 in the past, as well as Howard Hughes in light of Scorcese’s The Aviator, but could there be a connection between the two? What if Ian Fleming was encoding an explosive, real-world conspiracy involving Howard Hughes, JFK, Aristotle Onassis and a legendary kidnapping? Not only is there evidence to suggest this, but the film version of his 1954 novel Diamonds Are Forever subtly suggests much more. We know Fleming was a high-level Royal Navy psychological warfare specialist and involved in numerous covert operations, and as I’ve argued many times, Fleming’s novels and the film versions, in their own respective ways, elucidate these clandestine activities, touching on everything from black-market smuggling networks to actual espionage and assassinations.

Fleming’s inspiration for the novel stemmed from meetings and discussions with former MI5 chief Sir Percy Stillitoe, then working for the DeBeers diamond empire. Combined with these tips, as well as information he received from wealthy socialite William Woodward and Los Angeles police intelligence on organized crime and smuggling operations, Fleming composed the fourth Bond novel in 1954 as a literary means of detailing the dark world of precious gem and jewel markets. To add intrigue to this already intriguing tale, Fleming was also approached by Aristotle Onassis for a film version of either Casino Royale or Dr. No, with Onassis desiring to be a part of the funding (Ian Fleming by Andrew Lycett, pgs. 336-7). No stranger to Hollywood, Onassis was also a friend of numerous tinsel-town heavyweights, including the Greek film executive Spyros Skouras.

With these connections, my thesis here, in concert with the fascinating insight of Basil Valentine, is that Diamonds Are Forever the film provides a crucial insight into the coded reference of Willard Whyte as a stand in for Howard Hughes. As I argued in my Scorcese analysis, Hughes was intimately tied to the CIA through Robert Maheu, an intelligence-establishment figure who emerged from the CIA-dominated advertising world. It is possible Maheu was involved in the reported kidnapping escapade of Hughes, which The Gemstone Files allege was orchestrated by Onassis, leading to Hughes being spirited away to the magnate’s lavish island, Skorpios.

In regard to Diamonds Are Forever the 1971 film, it is a curious note that Whyte, the Hughes stand-in, is said to have been kidnapped and/or never emerging from his penthouse for years. As it turns out, it is the inimical Bond villain Blofeld, and particularly Ernst Stavro Blofeld, that is behind the diamond smuggling plot as a means of moving in on Whyte’s aerospace operations. If Basil’s thesis is correct, then Stavro could be a composite of Onassis and Niarchos, the brother-in-law of Onassis and a rival shipping magnate. Stavros Niarchos is reported to have been counted as a Bilderberg member, as well as being a close associate of the Rockefeller Foundation for certain. These considerations are admittedly speculative.  

When we consider Hughes’ close connection to the CIA through operations like Project AZORIAN, which sounds just like a SPECTRE-style operation from a 007 film, we can certainly presume much more was being conveyed here. Even questions relating to the moon mission arise, given the seemingly out-of-place shot of Bond stumbling across a sound stage in Hughes’ facility, where actors in astronaut suits are staging a phony lunar landing. Is Fleming implying that the moon mission itself was a psychological operation? Speculation is welcomed here, but the real message of Diamonds centers around exotic weaponry along directed energy lines. The same theme re-emerges in the 1974 film adaptation of Fleming’s The Man with the Golden Gun, where alchemy and techne combine to reveal the Pentagon’s darkest future tech. Given that Jackie married Aristotle Onassis just five years after JFK was gone, could this signify a mafia-mandated marriage tradition? Perhaps Fleming knew the answer about this and the real SPECTRE.

Using Ken Klippenstein DoD Tries To Discredit David Grush By Leaking His Medical Records

theintercept  |  On Tuesday evening, Ross Coulthart, an Australian independent journalist who covers UFOs and has interviewed Grusch, posted a statement attributed to Grusch on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

“It has come to my attention that The Intercept intends to publish an article about two incidents in 2014 and 2018 that highlights previous personal struggles I had with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Grief and Depression,” the statement reads. “As I stated under oath in my congressional testimony, over 40 credentialed intelligence and military personnel provided myself and my colleagues the information I transmitted to the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) and I took the leadership role to represent the concerns of these distinguished and patriotic individuals.”

Grusch’s wife, Jessica Grusch, did not respond to several requests for comment.

A former colleague of Grusch’s expressed shock that he retained his clearance after the 2014 incident, which was also documented in public records obtained by The Intercept.

“I think it’s like any insular group: Once you’re in, they generally protect their own,” said the former colleague, who asked not to be named because they feared professional reprisals.

The former colleague said that the 2014 incident was known to Grusch’s superiors, a claim that Coulthart appeared to confirm in an interview on NewsNation, a subscription television network owned by Nexstar Media.

“The intelligence community and the Defense Department clearly accepted there was no issue because he was allowed to keep his security clearance,” Coulthart told Chris Cuomo Tuesday night.

Two Republican members of the House Oversight Committee, Reps. Anna Paulina Luna and Tim Burchett, were tasked with organizing the July 26 hearing after Grusch’s whistleblower claims became public. Not all House Republicans are supportive of the effort. Rep. Mike Turner, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, has taken a dim view of Grusch’s claims.

“Every decade there’s been individuals who’ve said the United States has such pieces of unidentified flying objects that are from outer space,” Turner said. “There’s no evidence of this and certainly it would be quite a conspiracy for this to be maintained, especially at this level.”

Grusch emerged as the hearing’s star witness, but his evidence was largely secondhand: When asked, Grusch said he hasn’t seen any of the recovered alien vehicles or bodies himself. While two former Navy fighter pilots alleged unidentified aerial phenomena, neither said anything about their provenance. Grusch was alone among the witnesses in attributing them to extraterrestrials.

“My testimony is based on information I have been given by individuals with a longstanding track record of legitimacy,” Grusch said in his opening statement.

Shortly after The Intercept reached out to Grusch for comment for this story, Coulthart went on Cuomo’s show and said that The Intercept was planning to publish “confidential medical records” about Grusch that had been leaked by the intelligence community. Coulthart, an ardent defender of Grusch, told NewsNation that “Grusch believes the government may now be behind an effort to release his medical records in an effort to smear his credibility.”

“This is a document that would be, if the media had done the right thing, it would be in his police department file, in the file in the county sheriff’s office,” Coulthart said in his interview with Cuomo. “But Dave has checked today, because he assumed that the journalist had done his homework and just asked the local sheriff for the files. The sheriff has confirmed it did not come from him. The only other place that had this information is the intelligence community, Dave’s personal files inside the intelligence community, where quite properly, when anybody is security assist, things like this have to be looked at, and somebody inside the intelligence community leaked it.”

Coulthart went on to compare the purported leak to Richard Nixon’s attempts to discredit Daniel Ellsberg, who shared the Pentagon Papers with the New York Times.

“I think there should be an inquiry into the circumstances of how sensitive records pertaining to a decorated combat veteran’s file found their way to a journalist not through the proper channels,” Coulthart said. “This could’ve been requested under FOI, as is normal, but the county sheriff has confirmed that did not happen.”

Ken Klippenstein Wrote About The DoD Office Of Information And Perception Management (IPMO)

theintercept  |   While perception management involves denying, or blocking, propaganda, it can also entail advancing the U.S.’s own narrative. The Defense Department defines perception management in its official dictionary as “[a]ctions to convey and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning.” This is the part that has, historically, tended to raise the public’s skepticism of the Pentagon’s work.

The term “perception management” hearkens back to the Reagan administration’s attempts to shape the narrative around the Contras in Nicaragua. The Reagan administration sought to kick what his Vice President George H.W. Bush would later call the “Vietnam syndrome,” which it believed was driving American public opposition to support for the Contras. Ronald Reagan’s CIA director, William Casey, directed the agency’s leading propaganda specialist to oversee an interagency effort to portray the Contras — who had been implicated in grisly atrocities — as noble freedom fighters.

“An elaborate system of inter-agency committees was eventually formed and charged with the task of working closely with private groups and individuals involved in fundraising, lobbying campaigns and propagandistic activities aimed at influencing public opinion and governmental action,” an unpublished draft chapter of Congress’s investigation into Iran-Contra states. (Democrats dropped the chapter in order to get several Republicans to sign the report.)

The Smith-Mundt Act, passed in 1948 in the wake of the Second World War, prohibits the the State Department from disseminating “public diplomacy” — i.e., propaganda — domestically, instead requiring that those materials be targeted at foreign audiences. The Defense Department considered itself bound by this requirement as well.

After the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon triggered backlash after U.S. propaganda was disseminated in the U.S. In 2004, the military signaled that it had begun its siege on Fallujah. Just hours later, CNN discovered that this was not true.

But in 2012, the law was amended to allow propaganda to be circulated domestically, under the bipartisan Smith-Mundt Modernization Act, introduced by Reps. Adam Smith, D-Wash., and Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, which was later rolled into the National Defense Authorization Act.

“Proponents of amending these two sections argue that the ban on domestic dissemination of public diplomacy information is impractical given the global reach of modern communications, especially the Internet, and that it unnecessarily prevents valid U.S. government communications with foreign publics due to U.S. officials’ fear of violating the ban,” a congressional research service report said at the time of the proposed amendments. “Critics of lifting the ban state that it may open the door to more aggressive U.S. government activities to persuade U.S. citizens to support government policies, and might also divert the focus of State Department and the BBG [Broadcasting Board of Governors] communications from foreign publics, reducing their effectiveness.”

The Obama administration subsequently approved a highly classified covert action finding designed to counter foreign malign influence activities, a finding renewed and updated by the Biden administration, as The Intercept has reported.

The IPMO memo produced for the academic institution hints at its role in such propagandistic efforts now. “Among other things, the IPMO is tasked with the development of broad thematic messaging guidance and specific strategies for the execution of DoD activities designed to influence foreign defense-related decision-makers to behave in a manner beneficial to U.S. interests,” the memo states.

As the global war on terror draws to a close, the Pentagon has turned its attention to so-called great power adversaries like Russia and China. Following Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, which in part involved state-backed efforts to disseminate falsehoods on social media, offices tasked with combating disinformation started springing up all over the U.S. government, as The Intercept has reported.

The director of national intelligence last year established a new center to oversee all the various efforts, including the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Foreign Influence Task Force and the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force.

The Pentagon’s IPMO differs from the others in one key respect: secrecy. Whereas most of the Department of Homeland Security’s counter-disinformation efforts are unclassified in nature — as one former DHS contractor not authorized to speak publicly explained to The Intercept — the IPMO involves a great deal of highly classified work.

That the office’s work goes beyond simple messaging into the rarefied world of intelligence is clear from its location within the Pentagon hierarchy. “The Influence and Perception Management Office will serve as the senior advisor to the USD(I&S) [Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security] for strategic operational influence and perception management (reveal and conceal) matters,” the budget notes.

When asked about the intelligence community’s counter-disinformation efforts, Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Congress this month, “I think DIA’s perspective on this, senator, is really speed: We want to be able to detect that and it’s really with our open-source collection capability working with our combatant command partners where this is happening all over the world — and then the ability to turn something quickly with them, under the right authorities, to counter that disinformation, misinformation.”

Like Project Blue Book, The AARO Is DoD's UAP Public Affairs And Coverup Office

defensescoop  |  AARO Director Sean Kirkpatrick issued a fiery statement spotlighting “his own personal observations and opinions” — but “not necessarily official DOD and IG positions” — on social media Thursday. The Pentagon authenticated his post Friday. 

In it, Kirkpatrick wrote that he “cannot let yesterday’s hearing pass without sharing how insulting it was to the officers of” the Defense Department and the intelligence community who have been “working diligently, tirelessly, and often in the face of harassment and animosity, to fulfill their Congressionally-mandated mission.”  

Allegations of “retaliation, to include physical assault and hints of murder, are extraordinarily serious, which is why law enforcement is a critical member of the AARO team, specifically to address and take swift action should anyone come forward with such claims. Yet, contrary to assertions made in the hearing, the central source of those allegations has refused to speak with AARO,” Kirkpatrick wrote — pointing at Grusch without directly stating his name. 

He also said AARO has yet to see credible proof regarding allegations of any reverse-engineering programs for non-human technology, and that some information reportedly obtained by Congress has not been shared with his office. 

Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough declined to weigh in on Kirkpatrick’s statement in an email to DefenseScoop late Friday evening. 

“The department is aware of Dr. Kirkpatrick’s post, which are his personal opinions expressed in his capacity as a private citizen and we won’t comment directly on the contents of the post. We do want to reinforce the department’s unwavering commitment to openness and accountability to the American people and Congress,” she wrote.

Still, Gough’s official Pentagon responses also echoed some of the notions articulated by the AARO director.

“The department has no information that any individual has been harmed or killed as a result of providing information to AARO. Any unsubstantiated claims that individuals have been harmed or killed in the process of providing information to AARO will serve to discourage individuals with relevant information from coming forward to aid in AARO’s efforts,” she wrote.  

“To date, AARO has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently,” she reiterated.

Gough did not respond to follow-up questions from DefenseScoop Monday regarding new or existing channels for service members to flag UAP incidents, and whether or not there’s been an uptick in new reports to AARO — or intensified harassment — since the hearing. 

According to Graves, the former F-18 pilot who testified last week, DOD’s responses reflect “a perfect example of why witnesses are reluctant to come forward.”

“The Pentagon Press Office statement following the hearing was misleading. The disconnect between pilot witness testimony under oath at the Congressional hearing and the Pentagon Press Office’s dismissal is a perfect example of why witnesses are reluctant to come forward. It makes zero sense that our military would undermine its own servicemen and women when they are reporting serious flight risks,” he told DefenseScoop on Monday. 

Based on his own experiences with military-connected UAP, Graves formed and now runs the witness program Americans for Safe Aerospace to provide an entity for the public to safely and securely report observations or encounters. He testified at the hearing that his team estimates roughly only 5% of UAP sightings are currently reported to AARO.

“I hope Congress will hold DOD accountable and push for more support for witnesses and whistleblowers. For example, the [Pentagon] Press Office says AARO welcomes witness accounts — but AARO has not even implemented a public reporting mechanism as required by last year’s [National Defense Authorization Act]. How are witnesses even supposed to get in contact?” Graves told DefenseScoop.

Gen Mark Milley Don't Know Nuffin Dindu Nuffin Bout No UAP's...,

washingtontimes  |   EXIT INTERVIEW: Army Gen. Mark A. Milley has had a momentous — and at times polarizing — four-year run as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents Trump and Biden. In the first of a series of articles ahead of the scheduled end of his tenure in October, Gen. Milley sat down with senior Washington Times military correspondent Ben Wolfgang to discuss some of the achievements and controversies of his time as the Pentagon’s highest-ranking military officer.

Some UFO sightings by military personnel are “difficult to explain,” said Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but the nation’s top general insists he has seen no evidence to back up public allegations that the Pentagon has recovered extraterrestrial beings or has engaged in decades of cover-ups to hide the truth from the American public.

In an exclusive interview with The Washington Times, Gen. Milley acknowledged that some reports of what the government now calls unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, lack easy explanations despite serious, ongoing research inside the Pentagon and a growing belief that at least some of the craft could pose national security threats. He made the comments less than two weeks after former U.S. intelligence officer David Grusch told Congress under oath that he is aware of “a multidecade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program” and even suggested that the Pentagon has been secretly keeping extraterrestrial bodies in storage.

Gen. Milley didn’t address the credibility of Mr. Grusch’s testimony but made clear he has seen no evidence backing up the extraordinary claims.

“The guy was under oath. I’m sure that he was trying to say whatever he thought was true. … I’m not going to doubt his testimony or anything like that,” Gen. Milley told The Times during a wide-ranging interview in his Pentagon office on Friday. “I can tell you, though, that as the chairman, I have been briefed on several different occasions by the [Pentagon’s] UAP office. And I have not seen anything that indicates to me about quote-unquote ‘aliens’ or that there’s some sort of cover-up program. I just haven’t seen it.” 

 

 

Russian Military Using Weapons That Didn't Even Exist 18 Month Ago

sputnik |  Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov earlier said that Kiev’s counteroffensive, which was launched on June 4, has been unsuccessful on all fronts as Russia continues its special military operation in Ukraine.

The next few weeks will see the Ukrainian counteroffensive “run its course”, former International Monetary Fund (IMF) economist and Bank of America strategist David Woo has told Russian media.

Woo said that he was “really impressed” with the fact that "Russian military technology has literally been going through a revolution every three months" and "the Russians are constantly learning from their mistakes."

“The Russians are now fighting with weapons they didn’t have 18 months ago because they didn’t exist 18 months ago. And that to me is the most impressive thing, […] whereas the West is still walking around in the same circle, Russia’s getting better and better, and this war is gonna [sic] be won by technology in the end,” the former IMF economist argued.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov earlier said that Kiev’s counteroffensive, which was launched on June 4, has been unsuccessful on all fronts as Russia continues its special military operation in Ukraine.
The next few weeks will see the Ukrainian counteroffensive “run its course”, former International Monetary Fund (IMF) economist and Bank of America strategist David Woo has told Russian media.

Woo said that he was “really impressed” with the fact that "Russian military technology has literally been going through a revolution every three months" and "the Russians are constantly learning from their mistakes."
“The Russians are now fighting with weapons they didn’t have 18 months ago because they didn’t exist 18 months ago. And that to me is the most impressive thing, […] whereas the West is still walking around in the same circle, Russia’s getting better and better, and this war is gonna [sic] be won by technology in the end,” the former IMF economist argued.

He was echoed by the Russian Defense Ministry, which, in turn, said that Ukrainian troops kept trying, but were failing to advance as they continue to suffer heavy losses in men and materiel. A number of Western media outlets also pointed to the unimpressive results of Kiev's counteroffensive, admitting that its progress was "slower than desired." Fist tap Dale

The Greatest Military In Human History

tomdispatch  |  In his message to the troops prior to the July 4th weekend, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin offered high praise indeed. “We have the greatest fighting force in human history,” he tweeted, connecting that claim to the U.S. having patriots of all colors, creeds, and backgrounds “who bravely volunteer to defend our country and our values.”

As a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel from a working-class background who volunteered to serve more than four decades ago, who am I to argue with Austin? Shouldn’t I just bask in the glow of his praise for today’s troops, reflecting on my own honorable service near the end of what now must be thought of as the First Cold War?

Yet I confess to having doubts. I’ve heard it all before. The hype. The hyperbole. I still remember how, soon after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush boasted that this country had “the greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known.” I also remember how, in a pep talk given to U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2010, President Barack Obama declared them “the finest fighting force that the world has ever known.” And yet, 15 years ago at TomDispatch, I was already wondering when Americans had first become so proud of, and insistent upon, declaring our military the world’s absolute best, a force beyond compare, and what that meant for a republic that once had viewed large standing armies and constant warfare as anathemas to freedom.

In retrospect, the answer is all too straightforward: we need something to boast about, don’t we? In the once-upon-a-time “exceptional nation,” what else is there to praise to the skies or consider our pride and joy these days except our heroes? After all, this country can no longer boast of having anything like the world’s best educational outcomes, or healthcare system, or the most advanced and safest infrastructure, or the best democratic politics, so we better damn well be able to boast about having “the greatest fighting force” ever.

Leaving that boast aside, Americans could certainly brag about one thing this country has beyond compare: the most expensive military around and possibly ever. No country even comes close to our commitment of funds to wars, weapons (including nuclear ones at the Department of Energy), and global dominance. Indeed, the Pentagon’s budget for “defense” in 2023 exceeds that of the next 10 countries (mostly allies!) combined.

And from all of this, it seems to me, two questions arise: Are we truly getting what we pay so dearly for — the bestest, finest, most exceptional military ever? And even if we are, should a self-proclaimed democracy really want such a thing?

The answer to both those questions is, of course, no. After all, America hasn’t won a war in a convincing fashion since 1945. If this country keeps losing wars routinely and often enough catastrophically, as it has in places like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, how can we honestly say that we possess the world’s greatest fighting force? And if we nevertheless persist in such a boast, doesn’t that echo the rhetoric of militaristic empires of the past? (Remember when we used to think that only unhinged dictators like Adolf Hitler boasted of having peerless warriors in a megalomaniacal pursuit of global domination?)

Actually, I do believe the United States has the most exceptional military, just not in the way its boosters and cheerleaders like Austin, Bush, and Obama claimed. How is the U.S. military truly “exceptional”? Let me count the ways.

The Pentagon as a Budgetary Black Hole

In so many ways, the U.S. military is indeed exceptional. Let’s begin with its budget. At this very moment, Congress is debating a colossal “defense” budget of $886 billion for FY2024 (and all the debate is about issues that have little to do with the military). That defense spending bill, you may recall, was “only” $740 billion when President Joe Biden took office three years ago. In 2021, Biden withdrew U.S. forces from the disastrous war in Afghanistan, theoretically saving the taxpayer nearly $50 billion a year. Yet, in place of any sort of peace dividend, American taxpayers simply got an even higher bill as the Pentagon budget continued to soar.

Recall that, in his four years in office, Donald Trump increased military spending by 20%. Biden is now poised to achieve a similar 20% increase in just three years in office. And that increase largely doesn’t even include the cost of supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia — so far, somewhere between $120 billion and $200 billion and still rising.

The U.S. Military Has Lost Every Fight Since WW-II AND $21 Trillion Dollars...,

Forbes  |  In two prior columns, which can be accessed here and here, Mark Skidmore and I wrote about $21 trillion in federal government transactions in the Departments of Defense (DOD) and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that our government indicated were undocumented and unexplained. As the concerns and questions we raised gained traction, investigative reporter Dave Lindorff dug into the issue, recently publishing the article “Exclusive: The Pentagon’s Massive Accounting Fraud Exposed” in The Nation. Based on a series of interviews with current and former government officials, Lindorff concluded that Pentagon accounting is “phony”, composed of made up numbers designed to obfuscate and thus propelling “US military spending higher year after year”.

The issue received additional attention in the media when incoming Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez referred to the $21 trillion in a Tweet:

$21 TRILLION of Pentagon financial transactions “could not be traced, documented, or explained.” $21T in Pentagon accounting errors. Medicare for All costs ~$32T. That means %66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon. And that’s before premiums.

This comment captured the attention of numerous media outlets including the New York Times and the Washington Post where the focus was on fact checking (see here and here, for example). The near universal assessment was that the comment by Ocasio-Cortez was misleading—the $21 trillion in undocumentable transactions do not reflect actual unauthorized spending. However, there is a very important point that is missed by nearly everyone.

Despite our efforts as well as those of Dave Lindorff, our government has not shared any underlying data or information regarding the nature of the undocumentable transactions. For example, both Mark Skidmore and Dave Lindorff have repeatedly asked the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to provide an addendum to a report published by the OIG in 2016, which indicated that the Army had $6.5 trillion in undocumentable transactions. Typically, undocumentable transactions are a just small fraction of authorized spending. How could a $122 billion Army financial statement generate undocumentable adjustments that were 54 times authorized spending?

More specifically, both Skidmore and Lindorff requested that the OIG provide more detailed information about the nature of 170 transactions that generated $2.1 trillion in undocumentable transactions (see page 6 of the OIG report). Why would the Army make up such huge phony numbers, as Lindorff and his sources assert? And yet is difficult to imagine that such huge sums could flow in and/or out of the Army financial statement in a way that was unauthorized. It is impossible to verify without greater transparency.

We have consistently argued that in order to determine what these transactions were presumably for, one would need access to the underlying data. And yet the OIG has refused to provide any additional information, even with a FOIA request. Without any supporting documentation, we are all left with having to decide whether or not we “trust” that government authorities are sharing accurate information. At some level, we all must operate with some degree of underlying faith, but in this context there is reason to doubt. As we demonstrated in our last article, Comptroller of the DOD, David Norquist, clearly withheld critical information from Congressman Walter Jones, thus making his testimony deceptive. Greater transparency is needed to re-establish public trust. Instead, we are blocked from accessing any further information. Indeed, the most recent OIG report was fully redacted!

Last year the Pentagon conducted its first ever independent audit, which it failed. During the audit process Pentagon officials became concerned that the audit would reveal potentially sensitive information. Several months after beginning the audit, the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB) posted a new document, which recommended that the government be allowed to misstate and move funds in order to hide expenditures if it is deemed necessary for national security purposes.

See page 3 of the document for a summary:

This Statement permits modifications that do not affect net results of operations or net position. In addition, this Statement allows a component reporting entity to be excluded from one reporting entity and consolidated into another reporting entity, and the effect of the modification may change the net results of operations and/or net position.

 

We Need To ReWrite Our Scripts For An Alien Visit To Earth

worldpoliticsreview  |  A potentially world-changing revelation was made last week. I am not referring to the reported breakthrough in fabricating room-temperature superconductors, though that claim would be Nobel Prize-worthy if it overcomes the widespread skepticism with which it was greeted. Instead, I’m talking about the congressional hearings last Wednesday that suggested the U.S. government possesses what used to be commonly referred to as unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, but are now officially known as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAPs.

Former U.S. intelligence official David Grusch as well as naval pilots Ryan Graves and David Fravor all testified to that effect before a House Oversight subcommittee last Wednesday. Their testimony came on the heels of Grusch’s claim last month that multiple government agencies are operating programs aimed at recovering and analyzing UAPs, without any congressional oversight. But last week on Capitol Hill, Grusch went even further, maintaining that some of the UAPs the government has recovered contained “non-human” biological material.

The three men’s testimony is the latest twist in a story that has long trailed the Pentagon as a conspiracy theory, but took on a more serious veneer with the release by the U.S. government in 2019, 2020 and 2021 of footage and documentation of UAPs that it had gathered over recent years. Those releases followed the revelation in 2017 that the Pentagon had been operating the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program—a pet project of former Sen. Harry Reid—since 2007, to investigate claims of UAPs. But while there have been other recent congressional hearings on UAPs, they did not include forceful claims of recovered crafts of extraterrestrial origin.

As with the claims about the breakthrough on superconductors, skepticism seems warranted. The objects in question might be truly “unidentified,” and therefore worth investigating. But Grusch’s claims that they are of extraterrestrial origin or contained the remains of extraterrestrial life forms is for now dubious. As Jordan Bimm, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute on the Formation of Knowledge, remarked, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” And for now, extraordinary evidence—or any evidence, for that matter—is not forthcoming.

Perhaps the best argument against the UAPs being or containing ETs is what one might call “the Trump Test”: Since former President Donald Trump would have in all likelihood asked about it during his time in office, surely he would have revealed that the U.S. had proof of their existence if he had been told so, given his penchant for mishandling secrets and his disdain for “deep state” bureaucrats. Since he didn’t, the logic goes, the U.S. must not have such proof. While it’s possible that Trump was not told the truth for this very reason, the possibility of a large bureaucracy keeping such a secret hidden for so long is yet another reason for skepticism.

But for the sake of argument, let us suspend disbelief. What if it is eventually confirmed that intelligent, extraterrestrial life forms have visited Earth and continue to do so? Such a revelation would be important and jarring in many ways, but the impact on international politics could end up being the most profound. Three key implications are particularly worth noting.

First, this would be a “reality-compromising event” that could dramatically alter how citizens view and interact with their own governments. As the political scientists Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall argued, confirmation of extraterrestrial UAPs regularly visiting earth could raise doubts about the competency of national governments to protect their citizens, and even the need for governments to do so. Stated simply, if the aliens are seen as clearly superior to humans, their sovereignty might be preferred to our own governments.

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It is commonly assumed that a hostile alien invasion will cause humankind to set aside its many divisions and make common cause to fight it off. But that is far from certain.

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This feeds what Wendt calls the “UFO taboo,” whereby the U.S. government essentially ignores UFOs or, more accurately, refuses to seriously entertain the possibility of alien UFOs, at least publicly. For example, while the government does acknowledge the existence of UAPs, it is quick to deny claims, such as those made by Grusch under oath, that they are extraterrestrial.

Second and related, confirmation of intelligent, extraterrestrial life could alter how nation-states interact with one another. The possibility of aliens arriving on Earth is often seen as threatening. Indeed, the above-mentioned Pentagon program was started because UAPs were seen as a security risk. And as Rep. Andy Ogles remarked during last week’s hearing, “There clearly is a threat to the national security of the United States of America. As members of Congress, we have a responsibility to maintain oversight and be aware of these activities so that if appropriate we take action.” 

It is commonly assumed that whatever action we take to respond to such a threat will be a cooperative global endeavor. After all, one of the most common tropes in science fiction plots is that a hostile alien invasion will cause humankind to set aside its many divisions and make common cause to fight it off. But that is far from certain. As the failure to coordinate global responses to the climate crisis and COVID-19 pandemic have shown, cooperation is far from a universal response to a global crisis. Some nations might work together to counter the alien threat. But some could seek to protect themselves by going it alone, while others might even align with the aliens if the latter adopt a divide-and-conquer strategy.

Even if extraterrestrials are not directly or immediately threatening, the revelation of their existence could still pull nations apart, rather than bring humanity together. It is possible that the desire to communicate with an alien civilization could spur the same cooperative spirit on display in the International Space Station, but on a grander scale. But it is also possible, and perhaps even likely, that governments will see it as another arena for competition and invoke nationalism to spur efforts to be the first to make contact, much like the space race during the 1950s and 1960s.

Third, the arrival of intelligent extraterrestrial life would point to one hopeful outcome for the future of humans: We may not completely destroy ourselves.

To understand why this is the case, consider Fermi’s Paradox, named after the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi. The idea is captured in the simple question Fermi apparently voiced at lunch one day with his colleagues at Los Alamos: “Where are they?” But the simplicity of Fermi’s question masks a profound idea. Given the vastness of space, there must be extraterrestrials somewhere. And since some of these extraterrestrials would, like humans, want to explore space, they should have found us by now. Why haven’t they? Numerous answers have been offered, but a common one portends an ominous future for humanity: extinction.

Specifically, if alien civilizations much older and more advanced than humans on Earth have not yet found us, then they must have destroyed themselves before they could master interstellar space travel. If so, what happened to those aliens could happen to humans. As University of Manchester physicist Brian Cox opined this past week, “Maybe just ‘getting along’ as a global civilization is harder than science.”

But if, to the contrary, aliens have already visited us, then there’s still hope for us. Fermi’s paradox would be solved, but in a way that suggests humanity is not destined for self-destruction.

At the end of the day, all of these speculations are the result of a thought experiment. We still lack credible evidence that the UAPs discussed on Capitol Hill last week are from another world. This is not to say that investigations of UAPs should be discontinued. Even if not alien in origin, they are still in need of explanation. But that should not distract humanity from focusing on the many problems we already face here on Earth, of clearer origin and nature.

The Class Factor In Journalism

caitlinjohnstone  |  Iraq war cheerleader David Brooks has an article in The New York Times titled “What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?“, another one of those tired old think pieces we’ve been seeing for the last eight years that asks “golly gosh could we coastal elites have played some role in the rise of Trumpism?” like it’s the first time anyone has ever considered that obvious point (the answer is yes, duh, you soft-handed silver spoon-fed ivory tower bubble boy).

One worthwhile paragraph about the media stands out though:

“Over the last decades we’ve taken over whole professions and locked everybody else out. When I began my journalism career in Chicago in the 1980s, there were still some old crusty working-class guys around the newsroom. Now we’re not only a college-dominated profession, we’re an elite-college-dominated profession. Only 0.8 percent of all college students graduate from the super elite 12 schools (the Ivy League colleges, plus Stanford, M.I.T., Duke and the University of Chicago). A 2018 study found that more than 50 percent of the staff writers at the beloved New York Times and The Wall Street Journal attended one of the 29 most elite universities in the nation.”

Brooks is not the first to make this observation about the drastic shift in the socioeconomic makeup of news reporters that has taken place from previous generations to now.

“The class factor in journalism gets overlooked,” journalist Glenn Greenwald said on the Jimmy Dore Show in 2021. “Thirty or forty years ago, fifty years ago, journalists really were outsiders. That’s why they all had unions; they made shit money, they came from like working class families. They hated the elite. They hated bankers and politicians. It was kind of like a boss-employee relationship — they hated them and wanted to throw rocks at them and take them down pegs.”

“If I were to list the twenty richest people I’ve ever met in my entire life, I think like seven or eight of them are people I met because they work at The Intercept — people from like the richest fucking families on the planet,” Greenwald added.

Journalist Matt Taibbi, whose father worked for NBC, made similar observations on the Dark Horse podcast back in 2020.

“Reporters when I was growing up, they came from a different class of people than they do today,” Taibbi said. “A lot of them were kind of more working class — their parents were more likely to be plumbers or electricians than they were to be doctors or lawyers. Like this thing where the journalist is an Ivy League grad, that’s a relatively new thing that I think came about in the seventies and eighties with my generation. But reporters just instinctively hated rich people, they hated powerful people. Like if you put up a poster of a politician in a newsroom it was defaced instantaneously, like there were darts on it. Reporters saw it as their job to stick it to the man.”

“Mostly the job is different now,” Taibbi said. “The fantasy among reporters in the nineties about politicians started to be, I want to be the person that hangs out with the candidate after the speech and has a beer and is sort of close to power. And that’s kind of the model, that’s where we’re at right now. That’s kind of the problem is that basically people in the business want to be behind the rope line with people of influence. And it’s going to be a problem to get us back to that other adversarial posture of the past.”

 

Why The West Is So Weak And Russia Is So Strong

gaiusbaltar  |  The main thing to understand is that western societies and economies have been put on an ideological footing. Productivity, competitiveness, technology and science are simply not priorities anymore in the West. Explaining the consequences of this process for the West would take many articles, or a book of several hundred pages. Still, let’s mention a few examples.

The inverse competence crisis – The goal of this entire project has been to place the ideologically pure in all positions of power at all levels of society. These positions are, in a normal and competitive society, occupied by the highly competent 1.5/8 group. The process has now reached near-completion with most positions of power occupied by the ideologically pure. Some of those people have high IQs but they are neither objective nor independent thinkers. The Ideology they must subscribe to is simply incompatible with those qualities. This has some serious consequences.

Remember that positions of power and influence are more likely to demand general competence than other positions (as opposed to specific competence). The greater the power, the more the position demands general competence. The people in these positions now are selected by ideological fervor and reliability – so the higher you go, the more ideologically enthusiastic the people who hold them. This means that the least objective and independent thinking people hold the positions which require the greatest objectivity and independent thinking. Therefore, in the West incompetence becomes greater and more common the higher you go. As someone said - “a general is an incompetent colonel.” This can be seen absolutely everywhere except in some holdout private companies. Those exceptions are of course being addressed as we speak.

The second problem is that many of the irrational/subjective people holding all the power have reasonably high IQs. That may seem to be a positive thing but it has a major disadvantage. Moderate to high IQ irrational/subjective people are the easiest to brainwash of all people. The reasons for that are complicated and need to be addressed in another article – but what this means is that the top tier in the West is not only the most incompetent it can possibly be in comparison to what their jobs require – but are also the most malleable and delusional.

The cost and debt crisis – The migration of the ideologically pure into the ideological power base and positions of influence has created millions of jobs in western societies which create no value. These jobs are much more numerous and more widespread than most people realize, and I wouldn’t be surprised if something like 20%-30% of the entire labor force of the West could be fired without any adverse effect. In fact, the effect would be positive, especially if those people could be made to work the (mostly menial) real-economy jobs they are suitable for.

Deindustrialization has been blamed for the extreme debt levels and tax burdens of the West. That is, as far as it goes, true – but maintaining this giant group of incompetents in their fake jobs is also placing an extreme burden on the West. Western societies are now completely unsustainable and cannot be run without constant debt increase.

The competition crisis – This crisis can be explained by the following example: Let’s say there are three companies with combined 100% market share in some sector. There is no real competition between them and everybody can just relax because the customers can’t go anywhere else. These companies can get away with absolute incompetence on most levels, including in management. They don’t need to think about efficiency, safety, productivity or costs, except on their websites and in annual reports. However, if a competitor with competent employees manages to infiltrate the sector, those three companies will hit a wall. There will be an enormous crisis and one or more of them will most likely go under.

This is exactly the situation in the western economies now. Monopoly and oligopoly is the rule and the main objective of most large western companies is to prevent anyone from infiltrating their sector – usually by bribing regulators or by buying the competition. This is a necessity because a huge number of western companies are now run by incompetent management and staffed by incompetent people, particularly in support and management functions. The immortal words of the nameless Boeing employee about the 737 MAX apply to most large western companies; “this airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys.” Western companies are no longer competitive. They cannot compete with Chinese companies now and soon they won’t be able to compete with companies in general outside the West. They simply can’t function except inside an economic safe-space. In fact, the situation is such that the Chinese already do the real work for many of them and reshoring the work is problematic because of (surprise!) the human capital degradation in the West caused by the repurposing of its education system.

This also applies to western societies as a whole. The entire leadership and diplomatic classes of the West are no longer competitive against the rest of the world for exactly these reasons. They are being outmaneuvered by the Chinese, the Russians, the Indians, and everybody else at every turn. Even African leaders are now more competent than western leaders. They have consistently made decisions that are better for their people than leaders in the West - for the last few years anyway.

The complexity crisis – Earlier in this article I stated that the 1.5/8 group is extremely valuable for modern societies and without it complicated modern societies cannot be managed. In the West this group has been successfully sidelined to a great degree and a good part of it doesn’t even bother with university education anymore. The situation, however, is even worse than that. The reconfiguration of the education system and the break between competence and reward in the job market has fundamentally changed the decision making process behind the selection of university education. Why study engineering (which is hard) when you can get an even better paying job with a degree in psychology (which is easy nowadays)? The reconfiguration of the western education system has changed the reward structure, encouraging young people to pursue easy and useless education – simply because the “system” will provide them with jobs.

This has already caused a major crisis in western societies, particularly in the US. The “maintenance” of complex aspects of US society needs a large group of engineers and people with related education. This maintenance is faltering now, and significantly relies on foreign engineers educated in US universities. You see, why would Americans study engineering in a system which doesn’t reward it? If China and India could somehow recall their engineers and others with hard education from the US, the US system could probably not be maintained, let alone advanced. This will get progressively worse and we will soon reach a point where complex systems which underpin society cannot be kept running. That will require some kind of “reset” to a less complex society, with less prosperity of course.

There are far more crises than those four, but I wouldn’t want to sound like a doomsayer by listing more.

Charles McCullough Had His Own Struggles With Whistleblower Retaliation

twitter | The following is an excellent take from comment on a Twitter post that explains and highlights some key things. Link is shared at the end.

You don’t know me, but I’m a retired Army JAG so I know about whistleblower stuff, and how IGs work and I hear people say he isn’t a whistleblower and he didn’t see the alien bodies himself and he doesn’t have any first hand evidence aliens exist—or it’s hearsay, these comments aren’t wrong, but he’s not whistleblowing by testifying aliens exist to congress and congress barely cares about aliens—if you listen closely to the comments of @timburchett, @aoc, and @mattgaetz, I’m sure they believe the part about aliens, but that’s not their big issue. They’re mad about how defense contractors are in control of our military.

Here’s the TLDR. Grusch perfectly meets the definition of a whistleblower because he got professionally crushed (I’m pretty sure) when he discovered and reported contract fraud around these SAPs).Bbut it’s funny because a lot of people are distracted by the sensational aspect of these special access programs—aliens and alien space ships. Remember, Grusch isn’t whistleblowing to you or to congress. He blew the whistle to the IG. The IG found this credible and told congress.

I suspect Grusch asked an SAP contractor for his contract statement of work to see what was being done for the SAP and they didn’t show him, then he probably said show me the invoices for your work so I can see what you do (because I do the oversight now) and they couldn’t show him invoices for the SAP work they were doing, so he probably brought one contractor in and put him under oath in the SCIF and he got him to confess that they overbill for hammers and toilet seats to launder money so they can pay saps under the table (by padding invoices for other legit service contracts) that aren’t authorized by contract to avoid congressional oversight. Then some General probably fired Grusch who uncovered this government contract fraud/waste/abuse.

So the IG checks the math and agrees, and they take it to congress because it’s DoD/pentagon senior leader misconduct that might indicate the defense contracting industry (military industrial complex) has bribed the most senior leaders of the pentagon with 7-8 figure salaries in post military retirement employment—so it’s getting gnarly fast and the fact that everything is to cover up the existence of aliens and alien space ships is just trivia at this point. Then Grusch’s life is threatened and @rosscoulthart steps in and offers him an interview to go public because once he does it makes no sense to kill him, it will only become more public—so he gives the interview.

But DOD approves it and they probably said ok, you can talk about aliens a little but you can’t talk about how the pentagon is corrupt. So he’s definitely a whistleblower and he s given all the evidence about that he needs to to the IG. He’s not whistleblowing to the public or congress to prove his claims—the IG has it and they believe him. But you feel like he’s trying to convince you aliens exist and we have recovered flying saucers—they do and we have them, but that’s what you care about, congress cares about the DoD corruption and the military industrial complex capture of the pentagon and them not being in control of how tax payer dollars are spent, Grusch doesn’t care what we believe, he says if you want to know—I told the IG where everything is—look for yourself. And he’s suing the military for firing him from his job in the military and federal government because he discovered fraud and he got hammered over it, which absolutely makes him a whistleblower.

That’s what I sorted out from everything that was said at the congressional hearing on July 26. Pretty sure that’s the situation. I hear Grusch saying believe what you want—I’m telling you they exist and if you don’t believe me I told the IG everything I know and you can go see for yourself—and he thinks the people should be told and the tech/knowledge doesn’t belong to these aerospace companies.

List Of Incredible People With Incredible Claims

 

As You Follow The UAP Disclosure Narrative What're You Following And What're You Reacting To?

askapol  |  Last Thursday, July 27, the day after UFO whistleblower David Grusch testified before the House Oversight Committee, Ask a Pol brought it up to Senate Intelligence Committee Vice-Chair Marco Rubio (R-FL) who hadn’t caught the testimony but was quick to say he wasn’t dismissing it. 

“We’re not ignoring it,” Rubio says, adding the Senate Intelligence Committee is trying to deal with it “in a very different way” than their House counterparts.  

Rubio also pulls the veil back a tad on his thinking as he describes the Senate focus on UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena). 

“You have to bifurcate this issue. The stuff that they're seeing over restricted airspace, which everyone admits is real and needs to be addressed,” Rubio says. “And then the stories about historic programs. I mean, I don't know, that's gonna take—if that's even true—that's gonna take a long time to unpack. And I'm not ignoring that either.”

As for if their investigation is bearing any fruit? 

“Am I getting answers? Like are people—no. We're getting a lot of information, I'm not sure we're getting a lot of answers yet,” Rubio says. “But these things take time.”

 

On BBC Radio: The Entire Five Eyes Alliance Participates In The Crash Retrieval Program

Full interview of David Grusch and his lawyer Charles McCullough (former ICIG) on BBC .
by u/Same-Intention4721 in UFOs

reddit  |  (BBC Host) : Officer by the name of David Grush caused quite a stir last week when he gave evidence at a Congressional hearing about UFO sightings. He claimed that the US government has away from the public, glare intact and partially intact alien vehicles, and you'll hear him repeat that claim in a moment because he's been speaking to this program. A recent poll found that about 42% of Americans believe in otherworldly UFO's or UAP's unexplained anomalous phenomena, and one in ten Americans reported they'd actually seen one.

Well, here's what Republican Tennessee Representative Tim Burchett said in opening last week's remarkable hearing into alien existence.

Rep Tim Burchett: I think it's time for this country to take back our country,we need to tell the folks at the Pentagon they work for us, that government. We don't work for them. We're not bringing little green men or flying saucers into the hearing,sorry to disappoint. We're just going to get to the facts. We're going to uncover the cover up and I hope this is just the beginning of many more hearings and more people coming forward about this.

(BBC Host) : Well, I've been speaking to David Rush and to his lawyer, Chuck McCulloch.

-Question(BBC Host):First, David, why did he decide to come to come forward and speak at the hearing?

-Answer (David Grusch) : It boils down to a sense of duty, you know, in an act of, you know, truth to power. And it seemed like me going public was the appropriates lever to pull. When it comes to public accountability and emphasizing the seriousness to, you know, different branches of U.S.goverment.

-Question(BBC Host) :the most eyecatching claim that you made during your evidence and and the one that made the most headlines was the claim that the US government has, quote intact and partially intact alien vehicles in its possession. In other words, it has them, but it isn't telling people about them. Why do you go public with that specifically?

-Answer(David Grusch) :I found that to be very important for, you know, the public at large to understand. You know, they're placing the cosmos, their place in the universe. And that's something, you know, I believe the US government should be, you know, held accountable for potentially over classifying or misclassifying basic science.

-Question (BBC Host): But how do you know they have these items?Because you've not seen them yourself, have you?

-Answer(David Grusch) :There's certain things that I have first hand access to that I can't publicly discuss at this time. However, myself and other colleagues interviewed, you know, 40 individuals. Both are current and former highly distinguished intelligence and military personnel that were specifically on these programs and those that were willing, I directed to the intelligence community Inspector General, so the Inspector General was able to interview these people that do have direct.First hand information, right.

-Question(BBC Host) :So, So they have that information directly.Have they actually seen these these vehicles?

-Answer(David Grusch):The individuals I interviewed that I directed to the Inspector General, yes, they have the first hand experiences, yes, right.

-Question(BBC Host) : Which is an extraordinary claim, as you would readily acknowledge.

Why, if it's true, has the government not acknowledged it?

Yeah, I mean, that's a multifaceted question.

-Answer(David Grusch) : You know, it goes back, you know, 8090 years ago and this was first created and they, you know, translated some of the secrecy from the Manhattan Project onto this subject because, you know, they weren't sure how ontologically shocking it was going to be to the world populace.

And then two, as you can imagine, you know it's a Pandora's Box for, you know, potential military and weapons development type reverse engineering activities.

So they decided to keep it under wraps for many years.

-Question(BBC Host) : But we're talking here just about the US government. If they've got these things hidden away, surely other governments around the world might have had a similar experience. So the the idea that it's a solely American thing is surely fanciful.

-Answer(David Grusch): It does cross into other countries and other other allies to include the The Five Eyes and Alliance, which is something I've already stated publicly. The, you know, the media reporting bias and societal transparency is a little different the US. That's the crux what most people hear, but it is certainly not an American issue.

-Question(BBC Host) : I want to put some of the the doubting voices to you in a moment, but I want to bring Chuck in first. I mean Chuck, as a lawyer working alongside David, what are the legal implications of what he is saying and what the government is denying?

-Answer(Charles McCullough) :Our government relies on congressional oversight, the checks and balances of congressional oversight. David's allegation at at its at its base is essentially that Congress does not have access to the information it needs to properly oversee things going on in the executive branch. That was his main concern,so he briefed both of the Intel committees and he's had a 2 hour hearing, two hours of testimony last week.

-Question(BBC Host) : David, can I go back to you with with some of the the responses that have been aired to what you said?

The head of the Pentagon's office in this area, Sean Kirkpatrick, issued a statement last week. You'll be aware of it calling your testimony insulting and saying that you were a never a representative to his unit.

-Answer(David Grusch): Dr.Kirkpatrick oversaw our activities and what we were doing and the money we were spending. I never said I was a part of the core team, so I believe it was just lost in translation or misconstrued