UNIDENTIFIED ANOMALOUS PHENOMENA DISCLOSURE ACT OF 2023

democrats.senate.gov |  Eminent Domain over any and all recovered technology:

SEC. 10. DISCLOSURE OF RECOVERED TECHNOLOGIES OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN AND BIOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF NON-HUMAN INTELLIGENCE.

(a) EXERCISE OF EMINENT DOMAIN

The Federal Government shall exercise eminent domain over any and all recovered technologies of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence that may be controlled by private persons or entities in the interests of the public good.

Number 4): Legislation is necessary because credible evidence and testimony indicates that Federal Government unidentified anomalous phenomena records exist that have not been declassified or subject to mandatory classification review as set forth in Executive Order 13526 due in part to exemptions under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as well as an overbroad interpretation of "transclassified foreign nuclear information", which is also exempt from mandatory declassification, thereby preventing public disclosure under existing provisions of law.

1954 is the year Oppenheimer was relieved of his Q clearance. I don't want to overstep the possibilities here, but this is huge.

Legislation is necessary to create an enforceable, independent, and accountable process for the disclosure of such records. Legislation is necessary because credible evidence and testimony indicates that Federal Government Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena records exist that have not been declassified or subject to mandatory classification review as set forth in executive order 13526 due in part to exemptions under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as well as an over broad interpretation of "trans classified foreign nuclear information", which is also exempt from mandatory classification, thereby preventing public disclosure under existing provisions of law.

This bill states that there's credible evidence and testimony (note: *not* simply testimony) that the government has been hiding stuff they're mandated to disclose by claiming it's exempt under the "Atomic Energy Act of 1954" or is exempt due to an overly-broad interpretation of "transclassified foreign nuclear information."

And later on page 12, look who we find is mentioned in a list of entities who have had anomalous materials that was created or made available for use by, obtained by, or otherwise came into the possession of

The Department of Energy and its pro-genitors, the Manhattan Project, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the Energy Research and Development Administration;

 

Chuck Schumer Knows Something...,

On topic after about 7 minutes of writers strike chatter. A very good discussion about the newest series of events, notably including the Schumer Amendment.

Couple of things I think merit some extra discussion:

Zabel muses that the new apparent urgency strikes him as occurring because there may be some amount of "bad news" coming soon. Coulthart responds carefully, saying he generally knows what the government knows, and there does exist some specific reason(s) for the time constraint. Frankly, I'm not sure what to make of this. Leslie Keane has made similar remarks, but just a few weeks ago Coulthart was relatively pessimistic about the disclosure process at all. I'm not sure how those things jibe, exactly. Did something change in those few weeks?

Coulthart mentions Grusch is prepared to go into detail about the alleged murders in furtherance of the cover up, at the congressional hearing. That has all kinds of potential to be a breakthrough issue if he can back it up.

Coulthart says he's not hearing anything about the "strike team" rumors that would lead him to believe it.

Lastly, Coulthart mentions the now-infamous "big boi" craft that's too large to move, saying he can't reveal the location because of US and Australian national security (hint hint), but that he released the info as a challenge to the executives in charge of this facility and others to behave in good faith because he - and congress - already are aware of these places/programs, and are watching.

Anyway, worth the time to hear their comments in full context, as I'm guessing there will be sound bites and micro-quotes out there soon.

The Phenomenon: It's Not A Question Of Belief

guardian |  The government program and its known records have rendered the question “do you believe in UFOs?” obsolete, according to the Times’ investigators – “their existence, or nonexistence, is not a matter of belief”. UFO means, simply, that we don’t know what these incidents are – not necessarily alien, but a matter of government record, as fact. “It’s not a question of belief, it’s not a question of whether this is happening,” said Mellon. “Our government and our defense department have publicly acknowledged that this is real and that this is happening.” The observations released by the military seem to suggest advanced military technology, enough to have concerned the Department of Defense – which announced a new taskforce into the matter this August – as well as the Office of Naval Intelligence and members of two Senate committees. “The challenge now is to figure out where they’re coming from, how they’re made, and what the intent is,” said Mellon.

Both Fox and Mellon acknowledged the difficulty in entertaining the idea of confirmed UFOs, and some of The Phenomenon’s more fantastical claims, without skepticism. Indeed, the idea suggested by the film that governments from the US to Russia to Australia have systematically suppressed coverage, research or speculation of UFO sightings seems dubious, if not outright dangerous, given the very real threats rampant conspiracy theories, which often invoke the military and/or space, pose to American democracy in the Trump era. Mellon agreed that “there is a problem with disinformation in this area, and unfortunately there’s a lot of junk and hoaxes as well as just information from people seeing something they’re not understanding, that has an explanation based in science or a classified program”.

But he noted that “all of the serious people involved in this issue want to take a hard-nosed scientific approach to this topic – we need more and better data” based on “trustworthy” and “authentic” reports released by government departments — “it’s information that the government is surfacing from our own military”.

The Phenomenon, like the many extraterrestrial documentaries before it, ultimately can’t stake a claim on certainty; instead, it concludes with a call for consideration. “I’m not screaming from the hilltops ‘ET is here!’” said Fox. “I’m just saying, ‘Hey, look, there’s a serious situation going on, and this demands not only government transparency, but further investigation.’”

With A Twinkle In His Eye Lt. Col Robert J. Friend Acknowledged The Truth

HuffPost  | A retired Air Force official in charge of one of its most famous UFO research efforts said before his death last year that the effort may have been scuttled not because it was fruitless, but just the opposite.

In a clip from the new documentary “The Phenomenon,” Lt. Col. Robert Friend pointed to the sudden closure of Project Blue Book in 1969. 

“Which would suggest what?” he asked before answering his own question: “That they knew what it was.”

James Fox, the film’s director added: “Or didn’t know what it was.”

But Friend, who led Project Blue Book from 1958-1963, persisted.

“Also the other way,” Friend replied with a telling grin. “That they did know what it was.”

Officially, the project was shuttered despite some 700 open cases because it “no longer can be justified either on the ground of national security or in the interest of science.”

But Friend, who died last year at the age of 99, suggested in his last interview that the shutdown could have been for another reason:

Friend, who was one of the Tuskegee Airmen during WWII and the only Black leader of Project Blue Book, heading it during the civil rights movement, was originally skeptical of claims that aliens had ever made the long trip to Earth.

“Do I believe that we have been visited? No, I don’t believe that,” he told HuffPost in 2012. “And the reason I don’t believe it is because I can’t conceive of any of the ways in which we could overcome some of these things: How much food would you have to take with you on a trip for 22 years through space? How much fuel would you need? How much oxygen or other things to sustain life do you have to have?”

However, Friend also called for more study and said he believes there could be life elsewhere.

“I think that anytime there’s a possibility of scientific pay dirt from studying these phenomena, that yes, it would be much better if the government or some other agency was to take on these things and to pursue the scientific aspects of it,” he said.

More recent revelations indicate that the U.S. government’s interest in UFOs didn’t end with Project Blue Book but have continued in other forms, much of which is detailed in “The Phenomenon.”

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in the film that the federal government has been covering up UFOs and that most of the evidence “hasn’t seen the light of day.”

 

The Atomic Energy Commission And The CIA - UFO Thought Police

wikipedia  |  The Robertson Panel first met formally on January 14, 1953 under the direction of Howard P. Robertson. He was a physicist, a CIA consultant, and the director of the Defense Department Weapons Evaluation Group. He was instructed by OSI to assemble a group of prominent scientists to review the Air Force's UFO files. In preparation for this, Robertson first personally reviewed Air Force files and procedures. The Air Force had recently commissioned the Battelle Memorial Institute to scientifically study all of the UFO reports collected by Project Sign, Project Grudge and Project Blue Book. Robertson hoped to draw on their statistical results, but Battelle insisted that they needed much more time to conduct a proper study. Other panel members were respected scientists who had worked on other classified military projects or studies. All were then skeptical of UFO reports, though to varying degrees. Apart from Robertson, the panel included:

• Luis Alvarez, physicist, radar expert (and later, a Nobel Prize recipient);
• Frederick C. Durant, CIA officer, secretary to the panel and missile expert;
• Samuel Abraham Goudsmit, Brookhaven National Laboratories nuclear physicist;
• Thornton Leigh Page, astrophysicist, radar expert, deputy director of Johns Hopkins Operations Research Office;
• Lloyd Berkner, physicist;
• J. Allen Hynek, astronomer and consultant to Blue Book presented to the panel, but was not a full member.^[15]

Most of what is known about the actual proceedings of the meetings comes from notes kept by Durant which were later submitted as a memo to the NSC and commonly referred to as the Durant Report.^[2] In addition, various participants would later comment on what transpired from their perspective. Captain (later Major) Edward Ruppelt, then head of Project Blue Book, first revealed the existence of the secret panel in his 1956 book,^[4] but without revealing names of panel members. 

As early as August 15 CIA analysts, despite their overall skeptical conclusions had noted, "Sightings of UFOs reported at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge, at a time when the background radiation count had risen inexplicably. Here we run out of even "blue yonder" explanations that might be tenable, and, we still are left with numbers of incredible reports from credible observers."^[11] On December 2, 1952 CIA Assistant Director Chadwell noted, "Recent reports reaching CIA indicated that further action was desirable and another briefing by the cognizant A-2 and ATIC personnel was held on 25 November. At this time, the reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that must have immediate attention. The details of some of these incidents have been discussed by AD/SI with DDCI. Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles".^[12]

Chadwell's 2 December memorandum contained the draft of recommendations for the NSC, which were:

1. The Director of Central Intelligence shall formulate and carry out a program of intelligence and research activities as required to solve the problem of instant positive identification of unidentified flying objects.

2. Upon call of the Director of Central Intelligence, Government departments and agencies shall provide assistance in this program of intelligence and research to the extent of their capacity provided, however, that the DCI shall avoid duplication of activities presently directed toward the solution of this problem.

3. This effort shall be coordinated with the military services and the Research and Development Board of the Department of Defense, with the Psychological Board and other Governmental agencies as appropriate.

4. The Director of Central Intelligence shall disseminate information concerning the program of intelligence and research activities in this field to the various departments and agencies which have authorized interest therein.""^[12]

On December 4, 1952 the Intelligence Advisory Committee agreed:

The Director of Central Intelligence will:

a. Enlist the services of selected scientists to review and appraise the available evidence in the light of pertinent scientific theories.

b. Draft and circulate to the IAC a proposed NSCID, which would signify the IAC concerning the subject and authorize coordination with appropriate non-IAC departments and agencies.^[1]

From the IAC minutes of December 4 and the earlier CIA documents it appears clear that the Robertson Panel was the outcome of recommendation (a) of the IAC decision but that this formed part of a wider intended programme of action aimed at enabling rapid positive identification of UFOs from an air defense perspective (i.e. identifying actual Soviet aircraft from misidentified natural phenomena or other conventional objects) and a desire to reduce reporting of UFOs, which were seen as clogging up air defense communication channels and created the risk of exploitation of this effect. The inter-relationships between these wider aspects of the CIA's recommendations and the Battelle Memorial Institute's study, culminating in Blue Book Special Report 14,^[13] which identified a statistically significant difference between 'unknowns' and UFO reports that could subsequently be identified, or the study group referenced in a Canadian government document as operating as early as 1950 under the chairmanship of Dr Vannevar Bush, then head of the Joint Research and Development Board, to discover the 'modus operandi' of UFOs^[14] are unclear.

 

Cognitive Activism (REDUX 5/13/08)

One of my favorite reference sites is Organelle. Hopefully by now, you will have already availed yourself of this extraordinary resource. If not, no time like the present. Enjoy.

Why are you doing this?
Firstly, it is my experience and understanding that we as a species, and Earth as a planet are facing a variety of unprecedented threats for which both are vastly more unprepared than human beings imagine. For the humans, early (current) results include cataclysmic changes in human health and cognition. For the biosphere, the results vastly exceed what can be briefly discussed. Simply stated, the anciently and arduously conserved biocognitive libraries of Earth are being burned, wholesale. Humans believe this has little to do with them, and, as far as action goes, egregiously ignore these matters. No one finds wholesale atrocity surprising anymore. We accept it as a fact of life, whether it is the physical atrocities of war and ‘research’ or the cognitive and relational atrocities bred in the thriving soup of our human cultures.

I do not believe we can give answer to these challenges without some very new and powerful methods of approach and forms of understanding. It is my sincere belief that Cognitive Activism holds forth promises of new and extremely powerful ways of understanding both the genesis of these matters and their resolutions.

If you want to paint me with a label, for some reason or other, the label transhumanist might be relatively accurate, in that I believe we have not yet glimpsed even the tiniest portion of our real cognitive and relational potentials. However, I am an a-mechanical transhumanist in that I do not really believe that machines and our relations with them ‘enhance’ us. It is not enough for there to be an apparent benefit to some dimension of our activity (i.e. relation with machines); the costs of creation, relation, and protection (maintenance) of machines must necessarily be available for evaluation if we are to decide they are ‘beneficial’. But these costs are neither examined, nor available for examination, since many of them exist in terrains we are but poorly equipped to recognize or evaluate.

Simply stated: machines and organisms compete for the same terrain and resources. This has severe cognitive ramifications for human beings, as well as physical ramifications. Humans are almost miraculously cognitively malleable and are prone to biocognitive emulation of various functions and features of their common relationals. In the case of machines, the more we relate with them, the more we become like them. Yet a machine is not even the shadow of an organism. It is the shadow of some function of an organism. This is not something we want the experience of ‘becoming alike with’ cognitively, physically, emotionally, nor in any other way.

Each person (and organism) possesses kinds and forms of relational ability (intelligence potentials) that would make the sum of our science, religion, and fiction look like a charred matchstick compared to the Sun. Having had a direct experience of some of these potentials and abilities, I believe it is possible for us to rediscover them together, with the aid of some new ways of relating to identity and knowledge.

In essence, I see the potential for a sudden revolution in human relational intelligence, something more dramatic than anything we can currently imagine. If we can remove the elemental obstructions at the roots of our relational intelligence, we have the chance to radically and positively change what it means to be human.

Do You Taste Chocolate Or Just Read Its Ingredients? (REDUX 5/7/08)

Of the three lines of evolution perceptible to man (and hence attributed by him to nature), the highest, because the most inclusive, is spiritual evolution defined as the self-perception of self. But between, first, this verbal definition and the realization of its meaning; and secondly, the realization of its meaning and its actualization in being—there may be aeons of difference. From merely understanding that the highest value is self-objectivity (the ability, that is to say, to see everything thought of as self exactly as if it were not self) it does not follow that we have it, any more that it follows that if we understand that gold is of more value than silver, we necessarily possess gold. The attainment of the state of self-objectivity is something totally different from its understanding just as acquiring gold is something totally different from the appreciation of its value.

What I am therefore disposed to say of the problems already referred to is that their understanding and appreciation need to be supplemented by something entirely different before they can be solved; and that, in fact, the modern mind, even when desirous of objectivity, is incapable of solving such problems for the simple reason that the modern mind is not, in actuality, self-objective.

I beg myself as well as my readers not to mistake understanding for attainment; and not to imagine, on the strength of their realization of certain truths, that they possess them, or still less, that they can use them. Our being, in which alone truth is possessed, is still a long way behind our understanding. Is then, Progress a "myth"? I do not know. Is it, on the other hand, a fact in Nature? Again, I do not know. Nor do I find it necessary to settle the question one way or the other for my peace of mind. To understand what the question implies, to be satisfied that one can not answer it now, but to hope to be able one day to answer it, that, I think, is enough. . .

 

Gurdjieff On Influences (REDUX 5/18/08)

ONCE there was a meeting with a large number of people who had not been at our meetings before. One of them asked: “From what does the way start?” The person who asked the question had not heard G.’s description of the four ways and he used the word “way” in the usual religious-mystical sense.

“The chief difficulty in understanding the idea of the way,”‘ said G., “consists in the fact that people usually think that the way” (he emphasized this word) “starts on the same level on which life is going. This is quite wrong. The way begins on another, much higher, level. This is exactly what people usually do not understand. The beginning of the way is thought to be easier or simpler than it is in reality. I will try to explain this in the following way.

 

“Man lives in life under the law of accident and under two kinds of influences again governed by accident.

“The first kind are influences created in life itself or by life itself. Influences of race, nation, country, climate, family, education, society, profession, manners and customs, wealth, poverty, current ideas, and so on. The second kind are influences created outside this life, influences of the inner circle, or esoteric influences- influences, that is, created under different laws, although also on the earth. These influences differ from the former, first of all in being conscious in their origin. This means that they have been created consciously by conscious men for a definite purpose. Influences of this kind are usually embodied in the form of religious systems and teachings, philosophical doctrines, works of art, and so on.

of the first kind. But it must be borne in mind that these influences are conscious only in their origin. Coming into the general vortex of life they fall under the general law of accident and begin to act mechanically, that is, they may act on a certain definite man or may not act; they may reach him or they may not. In undergoing change and distortion in life through transmission and interpretation, influences of the second kind are transformed into influences of the first kind, that is, they become, as it were, merged into the influences of the first kind.

 

Full excerpt here.

The Enneagram - A Lecture By G.I. Gurdjieff (REDUX 5/18/08)

In every man there has been implanted a need of (desire for) knowledge, differing only in its intensity. But the passive human mind, while utilizing every means possible to it of taking in (and working over) impressions, often gets into an impasse in trying to find an answer to the question "Why".

Man's eyes are dazzled by the bright play of the colors of multiformity, and under the glittering surface he does not see the hidden kernel of the one-ness of all that exists. This multiformity is so real that its single modes approach him from all sides - some by way of logical deduction and philosophy, others by way or faith and feeling. From the most ancient times down to our own epoch, throughout the ages of its life, humanity as a whole has been yearning for a knowledge of this one-ness and seeking for it, pouring itself out into various philosophies and religions which remain, as it were, monuments on the path of these searches for the Path, leading to the knowledge of unity.

 

We have in a way been diverted from our original aim of examining the symbol. As a matter of fact, those of us who know how to listen have approached nearer to an understanding of it. As a perfect synthesis it contains in itself all elements of knowledge of the law expressed by it, and out of it may be deduced and developed in detail in the most accurate fashion all that we have just been saying. By all I have said today, I have not exhausted even the smallest part of what can be said on the subject. In the future we shall once more return to it and dwell on it in greater detail. I by no means think that I have been able to explain anything, as I did not pursue that aim. My task was to give my listeners a sensation of the taste of the understanding with which one must approach the search after the laws of truth. Once more I repeat: in order to understand in these matters, constant efforts are necessary.

Before closing the lecture, I wish to say a few words on what is termed "Initiation". Initiation is customarily regarded as some act whereby one man "The Knower" transfers to another man "The non-knower" knowledge and powers hitherto not peculiar to him and without any trouble on his part; assigning it as thing which becomes his inalienable possession. But from all that has been said by me today, you will already be able to understand, that there is no such transfer and cannot be. There is only self-initiation, which is got by constant and stubborn work, by constant efforts. No one conceals the knowledge of truth. It simply cannot be transferred, just as the finest mathematical ideas cannot be transferred to a man unacquainted with mathematics. And in questions relating to the transfer of a knowledge of the Truth, matters are more complicated than in the example quoted. You have been able to convince yourself of this today. It is possible to teach a man mathematics, but an understanding of the truth he conquers for himself. And woe to man, if under the influence of the poison of what seems Truth, and striving after "practical" results without possessing a perfect understanding and knowledge of what must be done and how to do it, he starts experimenting on himself, often doing himself irreparable harm. Harmony is destroyed and it is incomparably better to do nothing at all than to do without possessing the knowledge. 

 

 Very extensive lecture here.

Assessing Memetic Weapons Capability Of Neoconservatism (REDUX 5/6/08)

Use of radio as a form of memetic warfare has long been known and exploited (Voice of America, Radio Free Europe). The early innovations of memetic warfare are evident in spam, now reaching 80% of internet traffic -- possible to justify future implementation of severely restrictive counter-measures. In contrast to the threat of viruses, spam has a cognitive component. The focus on sexually explicit imagery, together with performance improving drugs and devices, is clearly associated with evocation of lust as a memetic weapon. It is no coincidence that a high percentage of such spam originates in the USA -- where even the highest ranked hotels offer "adult movies". Only the naive would fail to recognize the offensive function of such memetic weapons against other cultures, such as Islam.

Whilst such spam may be understood as a memetic analogue to biological warfare, there is a case for anticipating the development and deployment of memetic analogues to tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. There is also a case for recognizing the probable nature and targets of such weaponry and the appropriate modes of defence.

 

Nuclear weapons -- with their emphasis on mass destruction -- have proven to be a fundamental revolution in warfare. They are destructive not only of mass in the physical sense but also of masses in the demographic sense -- as well as of ecosystems on which life depends. It is therefore useful to question whether any memetic analogue would be equally fundamental in its effect on the:

    "nuclear family", as it has come to be understood in its more restrictive sense
    "nuclear community", as it it is understood in the neighbourhood or quartier sense
    "nuclear culture", as it is increasingly understood, especially by threatened minorities and ethnic groups, and it is becoming framed in the case of "Christian civilization" or the "Muslim Umah"

What are the consequences on these "nuclear" bonds of the emergent possibilities of memetic nuclear warfare? Already the effects of "information warfare" are apparent and a feature of Psy-Ops. Censorship and the control of information on problematic issues can already be understood as "nuclear shields" (cf Missiles, Missives, Missions and Memetic Warfare: Navigation of strategic interfaces in multidimensional knowledge space, 2001). Intriguingly the manipumation of statements regarding "sins" and "virtues" seem to be used in such warfare rather like "binary weapons" -- composed of two ingredients that become lethal only when combined at the last minute before detonation. The art would appear to be ensure the implosive deployment of memetic components based on "sin" (its recognition, evocation of guilt, etc) in conjunction with deployment of "virtue" (occupying the vaccum created). This might be seen as analogous to the deployment of thermobaric weapons.

The challenge for fundamentalists in engaging in such memetic warfare is that even after such deployment, as is evident in Iraq, the population remains highly resistant to replacing Islamic virtues, framed as sinful by the crusading occupation forces, by Christian virtues. In memetic terms, destruction of nuclear bonds in order to reform a culture through "nation-building" processes (conceived as analogous to interrogation, brain-washing, indoctrination and re-education techniques) has proven to be far from successful -- despite the arrogance with which it was envisaged sending an army of missionaries into Iraq to follow the invasion by the Coalition of the Willing [more].

What would seem to be required in relation to community building, nation building, and building a viable planetary culture, is a memetic analogue to nuclear "fusion technology" -- rather than the "fission technology" through which the bonds of the "pattern that connects" are broken. This would call for investment in a degree of imaginative "memetic innovation" analogous to that currently deployed internationally in relation to nuclear fusion [more]. In this light the "clash of civilizations" would be designed into a framework capable of holding their interaction so as to reinvigorate humanity through the rich pattern of energetic relationships the "clash" engendered. Can humanity control its own functions as a memetic nuclear fusion reactor? Is the design challenge analogous to that of avoiding plasma "quenching" in order to ensure sustained fusion? Perhaps "sin" is best to be understood in terms of "quenching" the spirit?

This approach is to be contrasted with fundamentalist efforts to eliminate the difference which enables that memetic energy release in order to create a homogeneous hegemony in which everyone sings from the same hymn sheet -- composed in Washington. Is it possible that models deriving from fusion technology would point to radically new approaches to fusion at a far more fundamental level between contrasting faith perspectives -- a level respectful of both the differences (that are otherwise expressed so violently) and the inspiration that sustains them?

It is the memetic technology required to work with requisite difference that would enable civilization to enegage more effectively with questions of a higher order (Engaging with Questions of Higher Order: cognitive vigilance required for higher degrees of twistedness, 2004).

From Anthony Judge's Seven Deadly Sins of Fundamentalism

The Thought Crime Bill (REDUX 4/4/08)

The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 is a bill sponsored by Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) in the 110th United States Congress. Its stated purpose is to deal with "homegrown terrorism and violent radicalization" by establishing a national commission, establishing a center for study, and cooperating with other nations.

The bill was introduced to the House on April 19 2007, and passed on Oct 23, 2007. It was introduced to the Senate on August 2, 2007 as S-1959. The bill defines some terms including "violent radicalization," "homegrown terrorism," and "ideologically based violence," which have provoked controversy from some quarters. Although Section 899F of HR 1955 specifically prohibits "the violation of Civil Rights and Liberties in the enforcement of the bill," critics claim its enactment would pave the way for violations of Civil Rights and Liberties.

Former presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has said he believes the bill is "unconstitutional" and has referred to the bill as a "thought crime bill".

Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), addressed the bill in he House on Dec. 5, 2007 saying: "This seems to be an unwise and dangerous solution in search of a real problem. Previous acts of ideologically motivated violence, though rare, have been resolved successfully using law enforcement techniques, existing laws against violence, and our court system," despite the fact that this bill does not "solve" anything and enacts no new laws of or pertaining to speech in the United States.

5th Circuit Lets Bidencorp Continue F*cking With Your Cognitive Infrastructure....,

dailycaller  |   A federal appeals court issued a temporary stay on a judge’s injunction barring federal officials from communicating with social media companies for the purposes of censoring protected speech on Friday.

Western District of Louisiana Judge Terry A. Doughty previously denied the Biden administration’s request for an emergency order pausing his injunction on July 10. In an order Friday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an administrative stay on the injunction “until further orders” of the court.

Doughty had previously issued a preliminary injunction barring the Biden administration from communicating with social media companies to censor protected speech on July 4.

The panel of judges who hear the case for arguments on the merits will later consider the administration’s motion for a longer stay, according to the order.

NOW: The 5th Circuit has agreed to temporarily pause an injunction that blocked a wide swath of the Biden admin from contacting social media companies; appeal will be expedited, panel of judges to be assigned later will decide whether to grant the longer-term stay DOJ wants pic.twitter.com/AmQcaeatPL

— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) July 14, 2023

When Doughty denied the administration’s request for an emergency order Monday, he said the injunction only bars the administration from doing something they “no legal right to do—contacting social media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner, the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms. It also contains numerous exceptions.”

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and Louisiana Attorney General Jeffrey Landry slammed the administration’s attempt to stop the injunction as asking to “continue violating the First Amendment” in a July 10 court filing.

 

 

Fighting The Government-Led Internet Information War Through The Courts

tablet  |  One year ago, I joined the states of Missouri and Louisiana and several other co-plaintiffs to file a suit in federal court challenging what journalist Michael Shellenberger has called the censorship-industrial complex. While much of the press cooperated with the state’s censorship efforts and has ignored our court battle, we expect that it will ultimately go to the Supreme Court, setting up Missouri v. Biden to be the most important free speech case of our generation—and arguably, of the past 50 years.

Prior government censorship cases typically involved a state actor unconstitutionally meddling with one publisher, one author, one or two books, a single article. But as we intend to prove in court, the federal government has censored hundreds of thousands of Americans, violating the law on tens of millions of occasions in the last several years. This unprecedented breach was made possible by the wholly novel reach and breadth of the new digital social media landscape.

My co-plaintiffs, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, and I were censored for content related to COVID and public health policy that the government disfavored. Documents we have reviewed on discovery demonstrate that government censorship was far more wide-ranging than previously known, from election integrity and the Hunter Biden laptop story to gender ideology, abortion, monetary policy, the U.S. banking system, the war in Ukraine, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and more. There is hardly a topic of recent public discussion and debate that the U.S. government has not targeted for censorship.

Jacob Seigel, Matt Taibbi, and other investigative reporters have begun to document the anatomy of the censorship leviathan, a tightly interconnected network of federal agencies and private entities receiving public funding—where much of the censorship grunt work is outsourced. The “industrial” in censorship-industrial complex should be understood literally: censorship is now a highly developed industry, complete with career-training institutions in higher education (like Stanford’s Internet Observatory or the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public), full-time job opportunities in industry and government (from the Virality Project and the Election Integrity Partnership to any number of federal agencies engaged in censorship), and insider jargon and euphemisms (like disinformation, misinformation, and “malinformation” which must be debunked and “prebunked”) to render the distasteful work of censorship more palatable to industry insiders.

Our lawyers were in court last week arguing for a preliminary injunction to halt the activities of the censorship machine while our case is tried. I will spare you a full account of the government’s endless procedural wrangling, obfuscation, attempts to hide, delays, and diversionary tactics in this case—futile efforts to dodge even the most legally straightforward aspects of discovery, such as our request to depose former Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki. So far, the government has been caught hiding discovery materials, which the judge chastised them about before ruling against their motion to dismiss, reminding the government that the limited discovery so far would widen once the case went to trial.

The government’s lawyers were not able to block the deposition of Anthony Fauci, however, who had to answer some pointed questions about his COVID policies for the first time under the threat of the penalty of perjury. Dr. Fauci seemed to suffer from a strange syndrome of “sudden-onset amnesia” during his deposition, as I have described elsewhere.

Political Elites Spying On And Censoring "Constituents"

public  |  Social media companies, including TikTok, Snap, and Twitter, caused people in France to riot and so the government should shut them down, say French President Emmanuel Macron and the European Union’s top censor, Thierry Breton.

Said Macron, “When things get out of hand, we may have to regulate them or cut [social networks] off.” The reason, Breton explained today, is that “Social media didn’t do enough” to remove "content that is hateful, that calls to revolt and to kill.” Warned Breton, "If they don’t do it, they will be sanctioned immediately.”

The comments made by Macron and Breton are shocking, and anybody who cares about freedom of speech should denounce them as a clear and present threat to the fundamental human right to freedom of expression as enshrined in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, the French Constitution, and the European Constitution.

It’s true that there are legal protections for removing "content that is hateful, that calls to revolt and to kill.” Such immediate incitement to violence is even illegal in the United States, which has much stronger free speech protections than France and Europe.

But neither Macron, Breton nor their defenders have presented any evidence showing that hate speech or incitement to violence rather than outrage over a police killing, combined with a large and restless immigrant population that France has failed to integrate and assimilate, caused the riots.

And their calls for greater censorship come at the same moment that the Macron government has passed a new law allowing police to spy on people by secretly taking control of their phones and laptop computers and activating the microphone, camera, and GPS. The government says a judge will have to approve all spying, but it is reasonable to worry about abuses of power. In 2013, military contractor Edward Snowden revealed mass US government spying without a warrant.

What’s more, the attack on privacy and the demand for censorship is worldwide. The British parliament is expected to pass legislation in the next few weeks that will allow the government to spy on private and encrypted text messages. The Irish Senate is expected to pass legislation in October that will allow the police to enter homes without a warrant and search phones and laptops for evidence of hate speech. And Australia is on the cusp of passing a new law that would require social media companies to remove any speech that causes “harm” to “health” or “the environment,” which would allow government censorship of criticisms of its climate and energy policies.

Why is the attack on free speech and privacy happening in so many nations simultaneously? And what can be done about it?

The Forbidden Planet (REDUX 3/27/08)

 

 

Synopsis; An expedition is sent from Earth to Altair in the constellation of Aquilae (some 17 light years from Earth) to discover what happened to a colony of settlers on its fourth planet, Altair-4. What they discover is how and why an alien race of geniuses (The Krell) destroyed itself overnight while leaving their technology intact at some point in the distant, distant past.

This is of course one of the greatest movies of all time. Forbidden Planet and The Day the Earth Stood Still set the mold for much else that would follow in the sci-fi genre. Both films set the bar very, very high for storytelling in the realm of humankind's possible psychological development.

 

Cognitive Dissonance Incompatible With Collective Psychology (REDUX 3/29/08)

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological state that describes the uncomfortable feeling between what one holds to be true and what one knows to be true. Similar to ambivalence, the term cognitive dissonance describes conflicting thoughts or beliefs (cognitions) that occur at the same time, or when engaged in behaviors that conflict with one's beliefs. In academic literature, the term refers to attempts to reduce the discomfort of conflicting thoughts, by performing actions that are opposite to one's beliefs.

In simple terms, it can be the filtering of information that conflicts with what one already believes, in an effort to ignore that information and reinforce one's beliefs. In detailed terms, it is the perception of incompatibility between two cognitions, where "cognition" is defined as any element of knowledge, including attitude, emotion, belief, or behavior. The theory of cognitive dissonance states that contradicting cognitions serve as a driving force that compels the mind to acquire or invent new thoughts or beliefs, or to modify existing beliefs, so as to reduce the amount of dissonance (conflict) between cognitions. Experiments have attempted to quantify this hypothetical drive. Some of these have examined how beliefs often change to match behavior when beliefs and behavior are in conflict.

The Journal Of Social Structure (REDUX 3/30/08)

As above, so below, as within, so without;

Social Network Analysis [1] is an approach to studying organisations focusing on analysing the networks of relationships between people and/or groups as the most important aspect. Going back at least to the 1950's, it is characterised by adopting mathematical techniques especially from graph theory [2, 3]. It has applications in organisational psychology, sociology, and anthropology. An excellent overview of the field is given by Wasserman and Faust [1].

Social Network Analysis provides an avenue for analysing and comparing formal and informal information flows in an organisation, as well as comparing information flows with officially defined work processes. We are interested in applying Social Network Analysis to military organisations, and especially to military headquarters ranging from brigade to national strategic levels.

An important aspect of Social Network Analysis is the visualisation of communication and other relationships between people and/or groups, by means of diagrams. Visualisation of Social Networks has a long tradition, and an excellent historical survey is given by Freeman [4]. Visualisation of Social Networks is important because of the complexity of organisational structure, and the need for good visual representations of how an organisation functions.

A second aspect is the study of factors which influence relationships, for example the age, background, and training of the people involved. Studying the correlations between relationships is also important, since it offers insights into the reasons why relationships exists. These studies can be done using traditional statistical techniques such as correlation, analysis of variance, and factor analysis, but also require appropriate visualisation techniques.

The ultimate goal of Social Network Analysis is often to draw out implications of the relational data, in order to make recommendations to improve communication and workflow in an organisation. This is the major motivation for our Social Network Analysis programme. In previous work [5, 6, 7], we have applied Social Network Analysis to military organisations. In the course of this work, we have found conceptual distance to be the most useful construct in explaining relationships. This is partly because the human brain is skilled at thinking about and visually judging distances. In this paper we argue the benefits of using conceptual distance for analysing Social Networks, and demonstrate how to do so using a case study.

Table of Contents for the Journal in its entirety.

 

Sociometric Reality Mining (REDUX 3/30/08)

 

 

Within the next few years, Pentland predicts, reality mining will become more common, thanks in part to the proliferation and increasing sophistication of cell phones. Many handheld devices now have the processing power of low-end desktop computers, and they can also collect more varied data, thanks to devices such as GPS chips that track location. And researchers such as Pentland are getting better at making sense of all that information.

To create an accurate model of a person's social network, for example, Pentland's team combines a phone's call logs with information about its proximity to other people's devices, which is continuously collected by Bluetooth sensors. With the help of factor analysis, a statistical technique commonly used in the social sciences to explain correlations among multiple variables, the team identifies patterns in the data and translates them into maps of social relationships. Such maps could be used, for instance, to accurately categorize the people in your address book as friends, family members, acquaintances, or coworkers. In turn, this information could be used to automatically establish privacy settings--for instance, allowing only your family to view your schedule. With location data added in, the phone could predict when you would be near someone in your network. In a paper published last May, ­Pentland and his group showed that cell-phone data enabled them to accurately model the social networks of about 100 MIT students and professors. They could also precisely predict where subjects would meet with members of their networks on any given day of the week.

 

Secrecy, Collusion and Bad Medicine (REDUX 2/27/08)

The drug industry's long and ignoble history of secrecy

In 2004, UK researchers commissioned by Nice to develop guidelines for prescribing antidepressant drugs to children tried to obtain unpublished trials from the drug companies. They were refused. They then contacted the individual researchers who had worked on the trials. Only then did a picture emerge of increased risk of attempted suicide, and a lack of efficacy. Nice concluded by banning the drugs for under-18s with the exception of Prozac.

Yesterday's report suggesting that modern antidepressants offer no significant clinical benefit over placebo has been dismissed by the drug industry as "just one study" which should not be allowed to undermine the wealth of research showing that the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants are effective.

But that is to miss the point. The Hull University researchers have demonstrated how partial access to research can give a distorted view of a drug. The non-disclosure of data on the SSRIs has raised doubts about the trustworthiness of all research on antidepressants.

We should be relieved that the licensing authorities have an absolute right to see all trial data, positive and negative, before approving a drug. But, bizarrely, Nice, with the responsibility for deciding which drugs should be used by the NHS, only gets what the drug companies agree to give it. The Health Select Committee has called for action to remedy this omission. Ministers must respond.

Antidepressant Drugs Don't Work – Official Study (REDUX 2/25/08)

They are among the biggest-selling drugs of all time, the "happiness pills" that supposedly lift the moods of those who suffer depression and are taken by millions of people in the UK every year.

But one of the largest studies of modern antidepressant drugs has found that they have no clinically significant effect. In other words, they don't work.

The finding will send shock waves through the medical profession and patients and raises serious questions about the regulation of the multinational pharmaceutical industry, which was accused yesterday of withholding data on the drugs.

In the study, researchers conducted a meta-analysis of all 47 clinical trials, published and unpublished, submitted to the Food and Drug Administration in the US, made in support of licensing applications for six of the best known antidepressant drugs, including Prozac, Seroxat – which is made by GlaxoSmithKline – and Efexor made by Wyeth. The results showed the drugs were effective only in a very small group of the most extremely depressed.

Two drugs were excluded from the study because of incomplete data. A third drug, chemical name nafazodone, has been withdrawn from the market because of side-effects.

Professor Irving Kirsch of the University of Hull, who led the study published in the online journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) Medicine , said the data submitted to the FDA would also have been submitted to the licensing authorities in Britain and Europe. It showed the drugs produced a "very small" improvement compared with placebo of two points on the 51-point Hamilton depression scale.

That was sufficient to grant the drugs a licence but did not meet the minimum three-point difference required by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) to establish "clinical" significance. Full-monty available here - in tomorrow's UK Independent.