stanford | In a special episode recorded in front of a live audience, Dean Lloyd
Minor welcomes Chelsea Clinton, a bestselling author and an advocate for
public health and early childhood education. They discuss the
importance of accountability for scaling global health initiatives, and
the power of storytelling to counter misinformation in science and
health. They also talk about finding motivation through conscious
optimism and rebuilding public trust through support of individuals,
families, and communities. Along the way, they share memories
of Chelsea’s time as a Stanford undergraduate and their overlapping
memories of their home state of Arkansas.
Chelsea Clinton is vice chair of the Clinton Foundation and
the Clinton Health Access Initiative, working to improve lives, inspire
emerging leaders, and increase awareness around public health issues. At
the foundation, she is active in the early child initiative Too Small
to Fail, which supports families with resources to promote early brain
and language development; and the Clinton Global Initiative University, a
global program that empowers student leaders to turn their ideas into
action. A longtime public health advocate, Chelsea uses her platform at
the Clinton Health Access Initiative to address vaccine hesitancy,
childhood obesity, and health equity. In addition to her foundation
work, Chelsea also teaches at Columbia University’s Mailman School of
Public Health and has written several books for young readers, including
the #1 New York Times bestseller She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World. She is also the co-author of The Book of Gutsy Women and Grandma’s Gardens with Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton and of Governing Global Health: Who Runs the World and Why? with Devi Sridhar. Chelsea’s podcast, In Fact with Chelsea Clinton,
premiered in 2021, and she is a co-founder of HiddenLight
Productions. Chelsea holds a bachelor’s degree from Stanford, a master
of public health degree from Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health,
and both a master of philosophy degree and a doctorate in international
relations from Oxford University.
endoftheamericandream | The freedom to say whatever we want is one of the most fundamental
rights in a free society. If we are not free to speak up, it is is just
a matter of time before all of our other rights are taken away as
well. So it should deeply alarm all of us that free speech is under
attack like never before. Much of the population has become convinced
that “hate speech” is a special class of speech that does not deserve
protection. Of course in practice “hate speech” ends up being whatever
forms of expression that the leftist elite hate. That is why “hate
speech” laws are always written so vaguely. That way they can be used
to go after whoever the leftist elite feel like going after at the time.
It is not always easy to have a society where people are allowed to
say whatever they want. People say things all the time that deeply,
deeply offend me. And there are some that have said things about me
that are tremendously hateful and untrue.
But if we are going to have a free society, people have got to be
free to say whatever they want. So we should never support freedom of
speech being taken away from anyone, because once we start going down
that slippery slope it is just a matter of time before they come after
our freedom to say what we want.
That is why what is happening in the state of Washington is so alarming. A new law would allow private individuals to collect up to $2,000 every time they report someone to the new “hate crimes and bias incidents hotline”…
Senate Bill 5427,
after it is signed into law, would allow private individuals (note:
this is not limited to American citizens) to report “bias incidents*”
(see definition below) to the State Attorney General’s Office, with the
possibility of receiving up to $2,000 of taxpayers money for this noncriminal
incident. The bill was very clear: this is a non-crime which they will
then forward to local law enforcement to investigate. What’s to investigate? No crime, no investigation.
The Progressives & Marxists who sponsored this bill say it is intended to help “victims of hate crimes” before a crime even happens. Say what? In reality, SB 5427 would
create a “tattletale hotline,” undermine legitimate criminal
investigations, and freeze, not just chill, speech & the press in
Washington State. People will stop talking to others and writing to
others except very close friends & relatives, for fear a greedy “Karen” will report them to Washington’s version of the Gestapo.
This is crazy.
Do we live in East Germany now?
It has been pointed out that those that use social media could make a fortune reporting their fellow citizens to the new “tattletale hotline”…
“Spend five minutes on Twitter on any given
day and I assure someone would say something offensive under this law
that we could call a ‘hate crime’ and collect $2,000 from the attorney
general,” Conservative Ladies of Washington Founder and President Julie Barrett told the Senate Ways and Means Committee at a Feb. 20 public hearing. “It
potentially target[s] people for actions they don’t like, but are not
actually hate crimes. In collaboration with bills like HB 1333, this would create sort of a ‘tattletale hotline’ to report people one doesn’t agree with or doesn’t like.”
Of course we have seen similar efforts in other states.
In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul intends to massively expand the hate crime laws in her state…
Governor Kathy Hochul today highlighted her
groundbreaking State of the State proposal to expand the list of charges
eligible to be prosecuted as hate crimes and announced grant funding to
strengthen safety and security measures at nonprofit, community-based
organizations at risk of hate crimes or attacks because of their
ideology, beliefs, or mission.
“The rising tide of hate is abhorrent and unacceptable – and I’m
committed to doing everything in my power to keep New Yorkers safe,”
Governor Hochul said. “Since the despicable Hamas attacks of October 7,
there has been a disturbing rise in hate crimes against Jewish and
Muslim New Yorkers. In recent years we’ve seen hate-fueled violence
targeting Black residents of Buffalo and disturbing harassment of AAPI
and LGBTQ+ individuals on the streets of New York City. We will never
rest until all New Yorkers feel safe, regardless of who they are, who
they love, or how they worship.”
twitter | In which Jon Stewart tries to convince you crime and urban decay are simply “the price of freedom” and Russia’s clean streets and subways are only possible because of political repression—a total crock, and he knows it. America could easily enjoy those things too, and has in the past.
The idea here is just to use the bogeyman Putin to reconcile Americans to their own social decline by making them reflexively suspicious of high-trust societies, and associate any attempts to stem/reverse the problem (or even draw attention to it) with authoritarianism. “Don’t believe your lying eyes and draw the obvious conclusions—that’s what fascists do!”
No, actually, we don’t have to accept “urinal caked chaotic subways” to protect our liberty. Incredibly stupid and insidious argument by Stewart.
Ep. 75 The national security state is the main driver of censorship and election interference in the United States. "What I’m describing is military rule," says Mike Benz. "It’s the inversion of democracy." pic.twitter.com/hDTEjAf89T
UNREAL: The censorship technologies originally intended for terrorist organizations have been weaponized against the American people.
TUCKER CARLSON: “So you’re saying the Pentagon, our Pentagon, the US Department of Defense, censored Americans during the 2020 election cycle?”
MIKE BENZ: “Yes. The two most censored events in human history, I would argue, to date, are the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Benz calls artificial intelligence-based censorship technologies, which were created by DARPA to take on ISIS, “WEAPONS OF MASS DELETION.”
That technology, Benz says, has “the ability to censor tens of millions of posts with just a few lines of code.”
Benz detailed how the government-funded Virality Project identified 66 dissident narratives related to COVID-19, breaking them down into sub-claims for monitoring and censorship through machine learning models, aiming to control the spread of information harmful to official narratives or individuals like Tony Fauci.
“And whenever something started to trend that was bad for what the Pentagon wanted or was bad for what Tony Fauci wanted, they were able to take down tens of millions of posts. They did this in the 2020 election with mail-in ballots.”
“The
biggest news media companies are privately owned and operate without
direct government control, in contrast to the state-controlled media
landscape in Russia,” writes Politico’s Sergey Goryashko. “Russian state
TV and the primary news agencies there are the property of the
government, and the Kremlin controls other media or destroys those not
willing to collaborate.”
At the bottom of the article is a line which reads as follows: “Sergey Goryashko is hosted at POLITICO under the EU-funded EU4FreeMedia residency program.”
I
really couldn’t have come up with a more perfect illustration of what
I’m talking about here than the US government and its European lackeys
running a complex and elaborate project to further slant European media
against the Russian Federation, which then manifests as a Politico
article calling Putin a liar and claiming propaganda does not exist in
the west.
There’s an old joke that goes like this:
A Soviet and an American are on an airplane seated next to each other.
“Why are you flying to the US?” asks the American.
“To study American propaganda,” replies the Soviet.
“What American propaganda?” asks the American.
“Exactly,” the Soviet replies.
In
reality the nature of the US-centralized empire allows it to run a
massive, nonstop international propaganda campaign through mass media
platforms which are mostly privately owned. A diverse network of factors
feeds into this dynamic which I’ve detailed in my unusually lengthy
article “15 Reasons Why Mass Media Employees Act Like Propagandists”,
but the gist of it is that anyone who’s wealthy enough to control a
mass media platform is going to have a vested interest in preserving the
status quo upon which their wealth is premised, and they will cooperate
with establishment power structures in various ways toward that end.
The
fact that these mass media outlets look independent but function as
propaganda organs for the US empire allows its propaganda to fly into
people’s minds without triggering any gag reflex of critical thinking or
skepticism, which wouldn’t be the case if people knew those outlets
were feeding them propaganda. Propaganda only really has persuasive power if you don’t know it’s happening to you.
FAIR | The United States is on the verge of a constitutional crisis, one
that enlivens the nationalist fervor of Trump America and that centers
on a violent, racist closed-border policy.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (NBC, 1/14/24):
“The only thing we are not doing is we’re not shooting people who come
across the border, because, of course, the Biden administration would
charge us with murder.”
In January, the Supreme Court,
with a five-vote majority that included both Republican and Democratic
appointees, ruled that federal agents can “remove the razor wire that
Texas state officials have set up along some sections of the US/Mexico
border” to make immigration more dangerous (CBS, 1/23/24). The state’s extreme border policy is not merely immoral as an idea, but has proven to be deadly and torturous in practice (USA Today, 8/3/23; NBC, 1/14/24; Texas Observer, 1/17/24).
In a statement (1/22/24),
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton decried the decision, saying that it
“allows Biden to continue his illegal effort to aid the foreign invasion
of America.” Paxton, a Republican, vowed that the “fight is not over,
and I look forward to defending our state’s sovereignty.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, also a Republican, “is doubling down, blocking the agents from entering the area,” the PBS NewsHour (1/25/24) reported. PBS
quoted Abbott declaring that the state’s constitutional authority is
“the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the
contrary.”
University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck (Houston Chronicle, 1/26/24) observed that Abbott’s position “has eerie parallels to arguments advanced by Southerners during the Antebellum era.”
For
a great many people, a Southern state invoking its “sovereignty” over
the federal government in defense of violent and inhumane policing of
non-white people sounds eerily familiar to the foundation of the
nation’s first civil war. And 25 other states are supporting Texas in
defying the Supreme Court (USA Today, 1/26/24), although none of them are states that border Mexico.
Texas media are sounding the alarm about this conflict. The Texas Tribune (1/25/24):
From
the Texas House to former President Donald Trump, Republicans across
the country are rallying behind Gov. Greg Abbott’s legal standoff with
the federal government at the southern border, intensifying concerns
about a constitutional crisis amid an ongoing dispute with the Biden
administration.
Houston public media KUHF (1/24/24)
said this “could be the beginning of a constitutional crisis.”
University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck said in an op-ed in
the Houston Chronicle (1/26/24) that Abbott’s position is a “dangerous misreading” of the Constitution.
Other legal scholars are watching with concern. Erwin Chemerinsky,
dean of the law school of the University of California at Berkeley,
told FAIR, “I think that this is reminiscent of Southern governors
disobeying the Supreme Court’s desegregation decisions.” He added, “I
agree that it is a constitutional crisis in the sense that this is a
challenge to a basic element of the Constitution: the supremacy of
federal law over state law.”
But the New York Times has not covered the issue since the Supreme Court decision came down (1/21/24). The AP (1/27/24)
framed the story around Donald Trump, saying the former president
“lavished praise” on the governor “for not allowing the Biden
administration entry to remove razor wire in a popular corridor for
migrants illegally entering the US.” The Washington Post (1/26/24) did show right-wing politicians and pundits were using the standoff to grandstand about a new civil war. NPR (1/22/24) covered the Supreme Court case, but has fallen behind on the aftermath.
The “legal expert” quoted in Fox News‘ headline (1/25/24) works for America First Legal, a group founded by white nationalist Stephen Miller to “oppose the radical left’s anti-jobs, anti-freedom, anti-faith, anti-borders, anti-police, and anti-American crusade.”
Meanwhile, Fox News (1/25/24, 1/25/24, 1/27/24)
has given Texas extensive and favorable coverage of its feud with the
White House, citing its own legal sources (from America First Legal and
the Edwin Meese III Center—1/25/24) saying that Texas was in the right and the high court was in the wrong.
Breitbart celebrated Abbott’s defiance as a states’ rights revolution, with a series of articles labeled “border showdown” (1/24/24, 1/24/24, 1/24/24, 1/25/24, 1/28/24) and several others about Republican governors standing with Texas in solidarity (1/26/24, 1/28/24).
The white nationalist publication American Renaissance (1/25/24)
stood with Abbott but lowered the temperature, saying that it is
“unclear whether this could cause a constitutional crisis, but the
optics are not great for the White House in an election year.” “This
will not be a ‘Civil War’ or anything close to it unless someone on the
ground wildly miscalculates by firing on the Texas National Guard,” the
openly racist outlet asserted. Rather, the publication saw Abbott as
recentering the immigration debate as a way to weaken President Joe
Biden’s reelection chances. “We couldn’t hope for a better start to the
election-year campaign,” it said.
The National Review (1/28/24)
admitted that Abbott is probably wrong on the constitutional question.
Nevertheless, it called him the “MVP of border hawks” for orchestrating a
public relations coup by forcing the federal government’s hand:
Abbott
has managed to get the federal government in the position of actually
removing physical barriers to illegal immigration at the border and
insisting that it is imperative that it be permitted to continue doing
so. This alone is a PR debacle for the administration, but it comes in a
controversy—with its fraught legal and constitutional implications—that
will garner massive attention out of proportion to its practical
importance.
This is impressive by any measure.
The support
of Republican states for Abbott elevates the matter further, but this
also is a relatively small thing. The backing for Abbott is entirely
rhetorical at this point and perhaps not very serious on the part of
some Republican governors. It nonetheless serves to elevate a conflict
over security on a small part of the border into what feels like a
larger confrontation between all of Red America and the federal
government.
al-jazeera | A billionaire real estate tycoon in the United States is rallying
support for a high-dollar media crusade to boost Israel’s image and
demonise the Hamas armed group amid global pro-Palestinian solidarity
protests.
The media campaign — called Facts for Peace — is seeking
million-dollar donations from dozens of the world’s biggest names in
media, finance and technology, according to an email seen by news
website Semafor.
More than 50 individuals are being courted, including former Google
CEO Eric Schmidt, Dell CEO Michael Dell and financier Michael Milken.
They have a combined net worth of around $500bn, Semafor said.
Some of the individuals, such as investor Bill Ackman, have publicly
threatened to blacklist pro-Palestine students who are critical of
Israel. On October 10, Ackman wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that he and
other business executives wanted Ivy League universities to disclose the
names of students who are part of organisations that signed open
letters criticising Israeli policies in Gaza.
US billionaire Barry Sternlicht, who started the project, said the
campaign would help Israel “get ahead of the narrative” as the world has
reacted to the intensive Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip.
“Public opinion will surely shift as scenes, real or fabricated by
Hamas, of civilian Palestinian suffering will surely erode [Israel’s]
current empathy in the world community”, Sternlicht wrote in an email
soliciting contributions from the wealthy figures shortly after Hamas’s
October 7 attacks on Israel, according to Semafor. “We must get ahead of
the narrative.”
Israel has carried out relentless air strikes on the besieged Gaza Strip since October 7, killing at least 11,078 Palestinian people, including 4,500 children, displacing 1.5 million people, and wrecking much of the territory’s infrastructure, Gaza officials say.
Hamas’s surprise attack on Israeli territory on October 7 killed some 1,200 Israelis, according to Israeli officials.
Sternlicht’s media drive aims to brand Hamas as a “terrorist
organisation” that is “not just the enemy of Israel, but of the United
States”, he wrote. The goal is to draw $50m in private donations, paired
with a matching contribution from a Jewish charity. Hamas is already
designated as a “terrorist” organisation by the US and the European
Union for its armed resistance against Israeli occupation.
Note: Reasonable people believe that thimerosol and aluminum adjuvants alike are neurotoxic. Much the same way we believe that atrazine causes gender dysmorphia. I was chewing this cud on my way to CT last week, and again on the way back from NYC yesterday afternoon, lamenting the fact that the airline no longer gives away peanuts as a snack due to the congenitally weak fail tails who cannot abide exposure to peanuts. Either these genetically underprivileged feebs let us all down because weakness, or, they were exposed to something early in life which rendered them dysfunctional.
BigThink | Do you have an uncle who believes vaccines cause autism but refuses to study the reams of research showing them to be safe? What about a friend who avoids information about factory animal farming
so they can eat cheap meat guilt-free? Or how about that CEO who claims
their business is ethically minded, yet doesn’t investigate its supply
chain for exploitation of the environment or the impoverished?
Each is an example of what psychologists call willful
ignorance — the intentional act of avoiding information that reveals the
negative consequences of one’s actions. Not to judge: We all have a
place in our lives where we look the other way and pretend everything is
fine. It may be personal, political, or professional in nature, but
just below the conscious surface, we know our actions don’t align with
our stated values.
“Examples [of] willful ignorance abound in everyday life,” Linh Vu, a doctoral candidate at the University of Amsterdam, said. “We wanted to know just how prevalent and how harmful willful ignorance is, as well as why people engage in it.”
To find out, Vu and a team of researchers performed the
first meta-analysis on the current empirical evidence of willful
ignorance, and it was published in the Psychological Bulletin,
a peer-reviewed journal published by the American Psychological
Association. They compared the results of 22 studies with a total of
more than 6,000 participants. Here’s what they found.
Moral wiggle room
The classic experiment for studying willful ignorance is known as the moral wiggle room task.
It was designed by Jason Dana, an associate professor of marketing and
management at Yale. Participants are randomly assigned the role of
decision-maker or recipient. The decision-maker is given a choice: They
can take either a $5 or $6 payout. If they take the $5 payout, the
recipient will receive $5 as well. If they take the $6 payout, the
recipient will receive $1.
When provided with this information by a researcher, the majority of decision-makers act altruistically. They sacrifice the slightly larger payout for themselves to give the recipient more money. On average, only about a quarter of decision-makers act selfishly.
But this full-information condition is simply the control. The
experiment really begins when the researchers become less forthcoming.
In
the experimental condition, the decision-makers can still choose
between the $5 or $6 payouts, but this time they are not told what the
recipient will receive. There’s a 50-50 chance the recipient will
receive $5 or $1. Importantly, the decision-makers can ask the
researchers what payout the recipient will receive, and they can do so
at no cost to themselves. In other words, while the decision-makers
start out blind to the consequences of their actions, they don’t have to
stay that way if they don’t want to.
However, in a remarkable escalation the U.K Parliament is now targeting Russell Brand. The British government has sent a letter
to U.S. social media companies, including video platform provider
Rumble demanding they take action against Brand. Not only is the
British government targeting an individual and demanding action over an
unproven allegation, but they are also sending a letter to the U.S.
company demanding acquiescence to their censorship demand.
Standing solidly on the side of freedom, Rumble said no.
However, now Rumble is the subject of a global smear campaign using a
variety of media outlets and constructed controversies. Today, Russell
Brand responded to the overall effort by the British government.
underground | What is the best investigative model to study UFO phenomena? Should we use a legal approach with judicial rules of evidence, obtain testimony and review documents? Should we attempt a “scientific” investigation by analyzing sighting reports? This is the avowed approach of civilian investigative groups like the Mutual UFO Network. Better yet, should we attempt real-time observations of UAPs as Harvard Professor Avi Loeb’s Galileo Project is planning to do?
I prefer the Intelligence-Counterintelligence Model of Val Germann put forth over 20 years ago, and as is the case for most original thinkers in ufology, he was nearly totally ignored. I have modified Germann's analysis for what I imagine might someday be a social movement linking UFOs to possible solutions for the challenges that our civilization is facing. These problems include, endless warfare, the nuclear arms race, racism, global warming and the obscene disparities of wealth and power that exist across our wounded planet.
I imagine that power elites are opposed to revealing what they know and don’t know about flying saucers because the phenomenon undermines the pillars of elite power. These include the economic, political, military and ideological institutions of modern society. Any potential threat to the supremacy of the ruling classes is going to trigger a reaction from them. This is one important rationale for the UFO coverup with continued surveillance and past harassment of UFO experiencers by clandestine intelligence operators in service to our rulers.
So, we now are looking at a dynamic in which an intelligence-counterintelligence approach to UFOs can have utility. In a struggle that will determine the future of Earth civilization, there will be those that support radical reforms such as establishing an enduring world peace and ending environmental pollution, poverty and ignorance. And then there are those that promote conflict, social injustice and the increased accumulation of wealth by the super-rich.
In this conflict-oriented description of the world scene, UFO intelligences are perhaps not an impartial cold and distant mysterious force. In my judgment, they someday might be a potential ally of those that want peace, environmental protection and a new world order based on cooperation, not conflict. This is not an idle fancy. For over seven decades contact experiencers have conveyed messages from flying saucer intelligences. These include stern warnings about the dangers of nuclear weapons, environmental pollution and endless tribal warfare that perhaps brand our civilization as a most self-destructive one.
Rather than being passive contact experiencers, networks of activists for decades have staged what I call Human Initiated Contact Events (HICE). These efforts have involved the Rama network starting in Peru in 1974. This group is now called Rahma. Beginning in the 1990s, contact teams operating under the banner of the Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind Initiative have engaged UAP intelligences in the course of fieldwork. I was a team coordinator in this effort from 1992 to 1998.
Only time will tell if this human empowered approach will be successful in deciphering the flying saucer enigma. As a participant in peace and social justice movements that flourished during the second half of the 20th century, it is a comfort to imagine that we just might have “friends in high places.” These mysterious non-human intelligences might even be willing to grant us limited assistance in the struggles ahead.
Researcher Val Germann wrote an important multi-part article in 1997. The links of the original posting are no longer operational. He has given me permission to repost his work on the contactunderground blog site.
amidwesterndoctor |•At the end of June, English Politician Nigel Farrage reported
that his bank accounts had been closed due to him sharing political
views that challenged the conventional narrative. Although his bank
originally denied deplatforming him for political reasons, an about-face
occurred and a few weeks later, the CEO resigned.
•On July 4th, a federal judge ruled
that the Biden administration was illegally violating the first
amendment by encouraging social media companies to censor anyone who
questioned the flawed COVID-19 narrative. Prior to this ruling, the
Biden administration was actively having critics of the pandemic policy
be censored and de-platformed. Since this ruling, as best as I can
tell, it is no longer as easy for them to de-platform political
opponents on social media.
Note: In May, a
moderately large regional bank collapsed and the Federal Government
decided to address the bank failure by having Chase bank to take the failed bank over.
This suggests that the Biden Administration is working hand in hand
with Chase and may be able to make requests in return for deals (like
the bank acquisition) it offered to Chase.
•On
July 6th, the FDA gave full approval to the Alzheimer’s drug that had
received a questionable backdoor approval in January (discussed below).
This approval was based on a 1795 person trial
(with 898 receiving the drug) where it was found the drug caused a
small decline in the rate of developing cognitive decline over 18 months
(based upon the results of a survey that could easily be prone to bias)
while at the same time 21.5% of those who received the drug experienced
brain bleeding and or brain swelling.
•On July 25th, Dr.
Mercola announced not only he, but also his employees and their families
had been abruptly deplatformed by Chase:
There are a lot of ways to interpret what happened. The most common
interpretation has been that debanking dissidents is fast becoming the
preferred way to suppress political opposition (e.g., do you remember
last year when Justin Trudaeu had Canada’s banks close all the bank
accounts of anyone who peacefully attended the Trucker protests against Canada’s vaccine mandates).
This
is likely being pushed forward since debanking is a relatively easy way
to create compliance in the population and there is an increasing risk
of widespread political rebellion against the bad policies (e.g., the
COVID-19 vaccine mandates) that have been pushed by governments around
the world. Typically, when policies like these are done, initially
small but visible tests are carried out (e.g., a lot of people can
clearly see what was done to the families of Dr. Mercola’s employees was
wrong) to gauge how the public will react to them and if that tyranny
can be normalized. Much of this in encapsulated by a famous poem I live my life by:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
For
example, during Obama’s presidency, I watched easy to disparage groups
affiliated with the alt-right first be censored online and then be
deplatformed by Silicon Valley payment processors (e.g., Paypal). Many
of my left-wing friends who were worked in natural health applauded this
persecution and could not process why it might not be in their best
interests to promote it. That same censorship was then rolled out
against them (at which point no one stood up for them) and not to long
after that, against anyone who dissented against the COVID narrative.
Note:
Since the Federal Government was recently forced to back off from
overtly violating the First Amendment on social media, less overt ways
of suppressing speech are likely becoming a more and more needed tool
for those nonetheless wishing to do so.
However, while all of the above is likely true, there is another important facet to this entire story—antitrust violations.
After
the civil war, the US economy was taken over by a group of conniving
scoundrels who eventually came to be known as the Robber Barons. A key
approach they all shared was creating absolute monopolizations of their
respective industries, which allowed them to milk obscene amounts of
money as possible from everyone else.
Eventually Theodore Roosevelt put a stop to this through the 1890 Sherman Antitrust act,
and broke up their monopolies. I and many others believe that
Roosevelt was not entirely successful, because he caused the Robber
Barons to diversify into other areas (e.g., after Rockefeller had to
break up Standard Oil, he bought out the medical industry).
Since
Roosevelt’s time, efforts have been made to prevent big players from
monopolizing their respective industries (e.g., in the 1990s, Antitrust Lawsuits against Microsoft
revolved around Bill Gates having his Windows operating system not
allow competitors software on it), but they have not been as successful.
Since that time, Gates appears to have followed in Rockefeller’s
monopolizing footsteps and has gradually bought out the global health
industry through the leverage created by his foundation and its media
advertising dollars (which became obscene during COVID-19).
During
Obama’s presidency, we began to see a merger between Big Tech and Big
Pharma (as each invested in the other)—discussed further here and here.
This was then followed by a gradually increasing censorship of any
information online which challenged the pharmaceutical industry’s
narrative.
During COVID-19, this kicked into
overdrive. First, people were denied access to information about
numerous lifesaving therapies for COVID-19 (ultimately resulting in many
of them instead being forced to succumb to the remdesivir-ventilator
protocol). Following this, a blockade was enacted against any
information even hinting at the widespread harm emerging from the
COVID-19 vaccines, something most of us believe now caused even more
harm than denying the public access to early treatment options for
COVID-19. As you all know, many of the things Big Tech censored for
being “misinformation” (e.g., COVID-19’s origin from a lab) have since been proven true.
Many
have thus argued the Big Tech companies should be held accountable for
the harms that resulted from their monopolistic censorship. Although
their conduct is beyond egregious, it nonetheless makes a lot of sense
if you consider how many investments each industry had in the other and
the incentives they all had to monopolize the marketplace so they could
all make astronomical amounts of money off COVID-19.
The Shadow Government is a combination of big energy, aerospace, and technology. These private sector contractors for the
military industrial complex have taken over control of a lot of the spy
programs as well as research and development on highly classified technology. This gives
those who are in an official government position plausible deniability
and the majority of the money being spent is from the private sector so
Congress is held out of the loop. Elected officials and unelected military and civilian bureaucrats are all still on a big
corporate pay roll as an insurance policy not to step outside the box of permitted discourse.
Grusch isn't asking anyone to trust him; he's asking Congress to investigate his claims. Grusch provided all of the evidence accumulated in his investigation,
including the names and testimonies of first hand witnesses, locations
where alleged craft and biology are held, and documentary evidence (e.g.
photos) to the Inspectors General of Defense and Intelligence and to
the House and Senate intelligence committees.
Apparently everyone involved in the public hearings ALREADY HAVE THE INFORMATION THEY ASKED FOR. if anything seems like a
ploy to cause the shadow government to reveal itself more. It worked.
Look at the reprisals - attacks on the witnesses, the complete lies from AARO, the clear
blackout of MSM media coverage, or if it’s covered, only ridicule.
The fact that WE the citizens have to DEMAND our government represent
our interests, when they were created for that purpose. The blockage of
House Oversight Committee investigations by obfuscation of evidence or outright denial
of access. The public’s firm grasp of the stigma and psy-op main points i.e., don’t look up, “trust us, nothing to see here.”
The ICIG’s finding that Grusch’s allegations of UAP information being illegally withheld
from Congress is “urgent and credible” (credible enough to proceed for
further investigation). Many in the public can name the contractors,
where craft are keep, and some of the 40 witnesses who have likely
previously made public statements. I do not doubt for a moment that Grusch is presenting
what he believes to be the “truth”. I do not believe that he is intentionally participating in a
psyop. I think he believes what he has been told, read, and I credit him
for his investigative efforts.
We need the public to trust the process;
people of a free and open society to trust what to date has be a very
closed hearing process. We
need clarification. To date we do not have examples because of “spy
craft”, nor access to scif debriefings, names of witness, or clear
definitions of terms like aliens, non-human intelligence, spacecraft,
off-world, crash retrieval, etc… and this is exactly how a public psyop
would work by effectively creating misunderstanding and fear through
omission. While Grusch is not using the word “extraterrestrial”, the
headlines are. He is using the
term “inter-dimensional”, a relatively modern concept but one that is
not reflected in the longer nazi, paperclip and mkultra history.
I want to trust they’ll get it right but
we have questions.
Forbes | UFO fever has been sweeping through the internet in the wake of
explosive claims made by “UFO whistleblower” David Grusch, a former
military intelligence official and Air Force veteran who says the U.S.
government is in possession of alien spacecraft.
Grusch recently appeared on NewsNation to elaborate on his claims, interviewed by journalist Ross Coulthart.
The past few years have seen the fringe beliefs of UFO enthusiasts spread from The Joe Rogan Experience to the New York Times and the Guardian, imbuing UFO mythology with a newfound sense of legitimacy.
During his NewsNation interview, Grusch offered no evidence for his
extraordinary claims, but said that his information comes from “several
sources.” Grusch confirmed that he had not personally seen any of the
alleged alien spacecraft, but has seen “some interesting photos” and
“read some very interesting reports.”
UFO skeptic Mick West released an excellent response video
to Grusch’s interview that delves into the details of his claims.
Notably, many of Grusch’s claims contain illogical assumptions,
popularized by science fiction tropes.
While science fiction can offer a glimpse into an imagined future,
the genre often reflects the cultural anxieties and technological
limitations of the time period in which it is conceived.
What are Grusch’s claims?
Grusch claims that the United States is in possession of multiple
“vehicles” or “spacecraft” constructed by a "non-human intelligence" and
that their existence is being concealed from the public.
Grusch says that these spacecraft have “either landed or crashed” on
Earth, and that both the U.S. government and defense contractors are
currently working to reverse-engineer the technology.
Extraordinarily, Grusch even claimed that some of the vehicles
contained the bodies of pilots, and that some of the spacecraft were
“very large, like a football field kinda size.”
Grusch stated that the vehicles were not “necessarily
extraterrestrial,” and speculated that they might come from another
dimension, stating, “as somebody who studied physics, where maybe
they’re coming from a different physical dimension, as described in
quantum mechanics.”
Grusch described the vehicles as being composed of “extremely
strange, heavy, atomic metal, you know, high up at the periodic table,
arrangements that we don’t understand.”
Grusch hinted that some of the alien beings were malevolent, and had
even killed humans. Grusch also implied that there is some kind of
secret agreement between the government and aliens, and that people have
been murdered to protect the secret.
Grusch claimed that he was taking “great personal risk and obvious professional risk” by speaking to the media.
— 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.
NYTimes | EZRA KLEIN: So that, I think, brings us to the latest story you’ve published. So who is David Grusch? And what is he claiming?
LESLIE
KEAN: David Grusch is a former senior intelligence officer who was with
both the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial
Intelligence Agency. He just left the N.G.A. in April of 2023. He had a
top-secret compartmented information clearance and was involved in a lot
of different aspects of these two agencies.
And
one of them was he was their U.A.P. investigative person, and he was
involved with the U.A.P. Task Force on behalf of both these agencies
starting in 2019 through 2022. And he, during that time — there’s more
that I can tell you about him, but I think we’re more interested to know
that, when he was working at the Task Force, he started to look into
this question of crash retrievals.
And
what it involved was him speaking to many people because he was very
well connected and very well trusted within the intelligence community.
He was able to speak to many people who have direct knowledge of these
programs, people who are actually involved with the programs. And many
of them came forward to him and told him about illegal activities that
were going on because there was no oversight. There were questions about
the Federal Acquisition Regulations that should have been governing
some of the contracted programs.
And
he just was able to gather a lot of data from them over a period of
years, which he eventually brought to Congress and also communicated to
the intelligence community inspector general in a complaint that
involved reprisals that had been taken against him earlier.
It’s
a long and complicated story. But I think the key thing is that he is
making the statement that there are craft in the possession of these
programs, these government programs, and have been for decades that have
been shown to be of nonhuman origin definitively. And he doesn’t have
direct access to the programs. He hasn’t seen the stuff himself. He
hasn’t touched it or had any exposure to it. He has seen documentation
about it — photographs, as I understand it — and has spoken to many
people directly involved. So that’s where his information comes from.
EZRA KLEIN: So has he named any of these people to you?
LESLIE
KEAN: Not to me. The specific individuals, the locations of the
programs, the names of the programs, all of those things are classified,
so he’s not in a position to present any of that information to me. But
he has presented that information to Congress, and he presented about
11 hours of oral testimony to congressional staffers, which was then
transcribed into hundreds of pages. So all that information has been
provided, but not to me.
EZRA KLEIN:
So there’s something weird here. So we go back to what we were talking
about at the beginning with the program under Elizondo, and this is this
small rump program. It’s having trouble getting funding having trouble
getting any notice.
And
now, there’s this allegation that, I guess, somewhere else in the
government, they have crash remains. Grusch has said, either to you or
in subsequent interviews, that he believes they have bodies. There’s a
multidecade race between nations to retrieve and hold these things. And
so there’s been this unbelievable level of, I guess, success, findings,
retrievals.
So on the one hand, you
have this program that is supposedly the Pentagon’s investigation into
U.A.P.s, which is having trouble getting off the ground or getting any
notice, and then, on the other hand, this allegation that somewhere in
the government, somewhere else, according to someone else, there is an
incredibly powerful set of programs that are doing this. Is that the
sort of shape of the story?
LESLIE
KEAN: Yeah, I would say that. These programs are completely separate
from the program that Elizondo was involved with, nothing to do with it.
They’re deep black — they call them legacy programs. They’ve been
around for decades, and they’re much more tightly controlled in terms of
security than the program he was involved with. So yeah, they are
completely separate.
EZRA KLEIN: So
but how do you understand what is being alleged about, I guess, the
Pentagon’s organizational structure here? Somebody in theory at the top
of the government knows about the programs and knows what the Pentagon
is doing, and the Secretary of Defense is having one U.A.P. program that
has no attention and then other black programs that do.
Or
is the allegation here the Secretary of Defense wouldn’t know about
this? Or the C.I.A. — what is organizationally, as you understand it,
being alleged? How do you merge in your mind the different programs you
are reporting on here?
LESLIE KEAN:
Yeah, it’s a really fascinating question, Ezra, because these programs
that — or let’s say, one central program that Grusch is talking about
and others have talked to me about, I don’t have that kind of specific
information. I don’t really who knows about these programs and who
doesn’t.
It appears that many
high-level officials don’t know about them, and that’s why he has to be a
whistle-blower and go to Congress about them. The members of Congress
didn’t know about them. Or they might have heard about them, but they
haven’t had the data that he was able to provide. And the other
whistle-blowers that are also coming forward to them — and I know there
have been others. They just haven’t come out with their names yet.
So
it’s a fascinating question because they’re so hidden. And there’s so
much information that is not being brought forward publicly about them
that I cannot say, this is how they’re structured. This is who runs
them. This is who knows and doesn’t. Maybe this president is briefed and
this one hasn’t.
FAS | An extraordinary 95 percent of all Americans have at least heard or
read something about Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), and 57 percent
believe they are real. (1)
Former US Presidents Carter and Reagan claim to have seen a UFO.
UFOlogists--a neologism for UFO buffs--and private UFO organizations are
found throughout the United States. Many are convinced that the US
Government, and particularly CIA, are engaged in a massive conspiracy
and coverup of the issue. The idea that CIA has secretly concealed its
research into UFOs has been a major theme of UFO buffs since the modern
UFO phenomena emerged in the late 1940s. (2)
In late 1993, after being pressured by UFOlogists for the release of additional CIA information on UFOs, (3)
DCI R. James Woolsey ordered another review of all Agency files on
UFOs. Using CIA records compiled from that review, this study traces
CIA interest and involvement in the UFO controversy from the late 1940s
to 1990. It chronologically examines the Agency's efforts to solve the
mystery of UFOs, its programs that had an impact on UFO sightings, and
its attempts to conceal CIA involvement in the entire UFO issue. What
emerges from this examination is that, while Agency concern over UFOs
was substantial until the early 1950s, CIA has since paid only limited
and peripheral attention to the phenomena.
Background
The emergence in 1947 of the Cold War confrontation between
the United States and the Soviet Union also saw the first wave of UFO
sightings. The first report of a "flying saucer" over the United
States came on 24 June 1947, when Kenneth Arnold, a private pilot and
reputable businessman, while looking for a downed plane sighted nine
disk-shaped objects near Mt. Rainier, Washington, traveling at an
estimated speed of over 1,000 mph. Arnold's report was followed by a
flood of additional sightings, including reports from military and
civilian pilots and air traffic controllers all over the United States. (4)
In 1948, Air Force Gen. Nathan Twining, head of the Air Technical
Service Command, established Project SIGN (initially named Project
SAUCER) to collect, collate, evaluate, and distribute within the
government all information relating to such sightings, on the premise
that UFOs might be real and of national security concern. (5)
The Technical Intelligence Division of the Air Material Command
(AMC) at Wright Field (later Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) in Dayton,
Ohio, assumed control of Project SIGN and began its work on 23 January
1948. Although at first fearful that the objects might be Soviet secret
weapons, the Air Force soon concluded that UFOs were real but easily
explained and not extraordinary. The Air Force report found that almost
all sightings stemmed from one or more of three causes: mass hysteria
and hallucination, hoax, or misinterpretation of known objects.
Nevertheless, the report recommended continued military intelligence
control over the investigation of all sightings and did not rule out the
possibility of extraterrestrial phenomena. (6)
Amid mounting UFO sightings, the Air Force continued to collect
and evaluate UFO data in the late 1940s under a new project, GRUDGE,
which tried to alleviate public anxiety over UFOs via a public relations
campaign designed to persuade the public that UFOs constituted nothing
unusual or extraordinary. UFO sightings were explained as balloons,
conventional aircraft, planets, meteors, optical illusions, solar
reflections, or even "large hailstones." GRUDGE officials found no
evidence in UFO sightings of advanced foreign weapons design or
development, and they concluded that UFOs did not threaten US security.
They recommended that the project be reduced in scope because the very
existence of Air Force official interest encouraged people to believe in
UFOs and contributed to a "war hysteria" atmosphere. On 27 December
1949, the Air Force announced the project's termination. (7)
With increased Cold War tensions, the Korean war, and continued
UFO sightings, USAF Director of Intelligence Maj. Gen. Charles P. Cabell
ordered a new UFO project in 1952. Project BLUE BOOK became the major
Air Force effort to study the UFO phenomenon throughout the 1950s and
1960s. (8)
The task of identifying and explaining UFOs continued to fall on the
Air Material Command at Wright-Patterson. With a small staff, the Air
Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) tried to persuade the public that
UFOs were not extraordinary. (9)
Projects SIGN, GRUDGE, and BLUE BOOK set the tone for the official US
Government position regarding UFOs for the next 30 years.
Early CIA Concerns, 1947-52
CIA closely monitored the Air Force effort, aware of the
mounting number of sightings and increasingly concerned that UFOs might
pose a potential security threat. (10) Given the distribution of the sightings, CIA officials in 1952 questioned whether they might reflect "midsummer madness.'' (11)
Agency officials accepted the Air Force's conclusions about UFO
reports, although they concluded that "since there is a remote
possibility that they may be interplanetary aircraft, it is necessary to
investigate each sighting." (12)
A massive buildup of sightings over the United States in 1952,
especially in July, alarmed the Truman administration. On 19 and 20
July, radar scopes at Washington National Airport and Andrews Air Force
Base tracked mysterious blips. On 27 July, the blips reappeared. The
Air Force scrambled interceptor aircraft to investigate, but they found
nothing. The incidents, however, caused headlines across the country.
The White House wanted to know what was happening, and the Air Force
quickly offered the explanation that the radar blips might be the result
of "temperature inversions." Later, a Civil Aeronautics Administration
investigation confirmed that such radar blips were quite common and were
caused by temperature inversions. (13)
Although it had monitored UFO reports for at least three years,
CIA reacted to the new rash of sightings by forming a special study
group within the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) and the Office
of Current Intelligence (OCI) to review the situation. (14)
Edward Tauss, acting chief of OSI's Weapons and Equipment Division,
reported for the group that most UFO sightings could be easily
explained. Nevertheless, he recommended that the Agency continue
monitoring the problem, in coordination with ATIC. He also urged that
CIA conceal its interest from the media and the public, "in view of
their probable alarmist tendencies" to accept such interest as
confirming the existence of UFOs. (15)
Upon receiving the report, Deputy Director for Intelligence (DDI)
Robert Amory, Jr. assigned responsibility for the UFO investigations to
OSI's Physics and Electronics Division, with A. Ray Gordon as the
officer in charge. (16)
Each branch in the division was to contribute to the investigation,
and Gordon was to coordinate closely with ATIC. Amory, who asked the
group to focus on the national security implications of UFOs, was
relaying DCI Walter Bedell Smith's concerns. (17)
Smith wanted to know whether or not the Air Force investigation of
flying saucers was sufficiently objective and how much more money and
manpower would be necessary to determine the cause of the small
percentage of unexplained flying saucers. Smith believed "there was
only one chance in 10,000 that the phenomenon posed a threat to the
security of the country, but even that chance could not be taken."
According to Smith, it was CIA's responsibility by statute to coordinate
the intelligence effort required to solve the problem. Smith also
wanted to know what use could be made of the UFO phenomenon in
connection with US psychological warfare efforts. (18)
Led by Gordon, the CIA Study Group met with Air Force officials
at Wright-Patterson and reviewed their data and findings. The Air Force
claimed that 90 percent of the reported sightings were easily accounted
for. The other 10 percent were characterized as "a number of
incredible reports from credible observers." The Air Force rejected the
theories that the sightings involved US or Soviet secret weapons
development or that they involved "men from Mars"; there was no evidence
to support these concepts. The Air Force briefers sought to explain
these UFO reports as the misinterpretation of known objects or little
understood natural phenomena. (19) Air Force and CIA officials agreed that outside knowledge of Agency interest in UFOs would make the problem more serious. (20) This concealment of CIA interest contributed greatly to later charges of a CIA conspiracy and coverup.
The CIA Study Group also searched the Soviet press for UFO
reports, but found none, causing the group to conclude that the absence
of reports had to have been the result of deliberate Soviet Government
policy. The group also envisioned the USSR's possible use of UFOs as a
psychological warfare tool. In addition, they worried that, if the US
air warning system should be deliberately overloaded by UFO sightings,
the Soviets might gain a surprise advantage in any nuclear attack. (21)
Because of the tense Cold War situation and increased Soviet
capabilities, the CIA Study Group saw serious national security concerns
in the flying saucer situation. The group believed that the Soviets
could use UFO reports to touch off mass hysteria and panic in the United
States. The group also believed that the Soviets might use UFO
sightings to overload the US air warning system so that it could not
distinguish real targets from phantom UFOs. H. Marshall Chadwell,
Assistant Director of OSI, added that he considered the problem of such
importance "that it should be brought to the attention of the National
Security Council, in order that a communitywide coordinated effort
towards it solution may be initiated." (22)
Chadwell briefed DCI Smith on the subject of UFOs in December
1952. He urged action because he was convinced that "something was
going on that must have immediate attention" and that "sightings of
unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in
the vicinity of major US defense installations are of such nature that
they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial
vehicles." He drafted a memorandum from the DCI to the National
Security Council (NSC) and a proposed NSC Directive establishing the
investigation of UFOs as a priority project throughout the intelligence
and the defense research and development community. (23) Chadwell also urged Smith to establish an external research project of top-level scientists to study the problem of UFOs. (24)
After this briefing, Smith directed DDI Amory to prepare a NSC
Intelligence Directive (NSCID) for submission to the NSC on the need to
continue the investigation of UFOs and to coordinate such investigations
with the Air Force. (25)
A Foundation of Joy
-
Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
-
Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
-
sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
