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US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

thehill.com

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Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every witness says there's not a chance in Hell that UFOs are human. But no one reports seeing aliens except abductees. People desperately want to believe aliens aren't real, and some real mental gymnastics to get there. Like believing "debunking" videos from crackpots and videogame programmers (which real pilots say are nonsensical), or "this one time in the 60s the CIA".

I think you have it backwards. I think anybody who is remotely interested in this topic would love for proof of aliens to come out. It's just such an extraordinary claim, that their skepticism demands extraordinary proof. Eyewitness reports and low-res grainy videos are just never going to be enough, no matter who they come from. And that's how it should be. If there is real proof of aliens, it will be on the front p…

> extraordinary proof

Anti-vaxxers show us there is no such thing.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#472

Ezra Klein just did a long interview with Leslie Kean (a popular author and Coast to Coast AM guest) about her article in "The Debrief" --- where it went, after the Washington Post wouldn't run it on her time schedule --- about David Grusch: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas... It does not make Kean and Grusch's claims sound a lot more credible. Some of Kean's sources are proponents of thin…

it's all people who heard something who heard something People with direct access to such classified materials would not legally be able to divulge details and especially not publicly. It would be a fairly quick trip to prison. This doesn't directly prove the claims of Grusch or anybody else, of course. But it is a decently persausive explanation for why it's always "people who heard something who heard something" an…

It's absolutely true that, if the USG were in possession of extraterrestrial technologic artifacts (ETA's, must credit me for this coinage), it would be illegal for people with firsthand knowledge to disclose them. But lack of firsthand evidence of ETA's does not constitute evidence of the existence of ETA's. It would be illegal for me to disclose the existence of a +4 Wand of Magic Missile, too, if such a thing existed. But regardless of what I say I've heard about DoD custody of D&D items, we both know they don't exist.

The rest of this: I don't care, except that you have to work yourself into contortions to simultaneously argue that all firsthand reporting of ETA's has been stymied by legal threats from DoD, but Grusch's claims are true because they haven't been.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#473

Ezra Klein just did a long interview with Leslie Kean (a popular author and Coast to Coast AM guest) about her article in "The Debrief" --- where it went, after the Washington Post wouldn't run it on her time schedule --- about David Grusch: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas... It does not make Kean and Grusch's claims sound a lot more credible. Some of Kean's sources are proponents of thin…

it's all people who heard something who heard something People with direct access to such classified materials would not legally be able to divulge details and especially not publicly. It would be a fairly quick trip to prison. This doesn't directly prove the claims of Grusch or anybody else, of course. But it is a decently persausive explanation for why it's always "people who heard something who heard something" an…

> People with direct access to such classified materials would not legally be able to divulge details and especially not publicly. It would be a fairly quick trip to prison.

I believe this is no longer strictly true for UAP-related information [1]. Congress has gotten much more serious about offering legal protections to those who have knowledge about UAP programs.

[1] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ufo-whistleblowers-wou...

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#474
post #419

Ezra Klein just did a long interview with Leslie Kean (a popular author and Coast to Coast AM guest) about her article in "The Debrief" --- where it went, after the Washington Post wouldn't run it on her time schedule --- about David Grusch: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas... It does not make Kean and Grusch's claims sound a lot more credible. Some of Kean's sources are proponents of thin…

That was a great podcast, and the entirety of Kean's journalistic research and integrity basically amounts to "I trust Grusch because he seems like a decent guy and I've been told he's trustworthy. But yeah, he's never seen any UFO, just reports and heard people talk about them, but since I trust him, I implicitly trust their words as well." I love how Ezra asks her obvious questions about her research like "how is i…

This thread is full of "I don't want to believe and/or can't".

If it's legit, could people itt put down their confirmation bias and handle that we're not the smartest around, not top of the food chain, that our governments have lied to us and kept it wrapped sealed through compartmentalization/removed from oversight through third party contractors for decades, have hidden clean energy tech from tax payers so private entities could profit, that people have been murdered to hide this tech/reality, among a long long list of other implications?

Of course if true, but from the looks of what's coming down the pipeline, it's no longer "haha little green men believing, xfiles wishing, tinfoil wearers", and more of "criminal acts have been committed out of greed and keeping control. Better get our heads out of the sand".

Pucker up, because this is likely going to flip all of our realities upside down in a weird, maybe even frightful, and extreme way within the next few years.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#475
post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "9/11 Truther" is somebody who disputes the 9/11 Commission's Report. themagician is doing the opposite; men with box cutters crashing planes into buildings is precisely what the 9/11 Commission Report says. Will realizing this change how you feel about the merit of his comment, or will you still feel the same way even though your original reason for feeling this way was completely backwards?

It's likely because I misparsed the meaning of this sentence: "I would not be surprised in the least to find out that the 9/11 conspiracies were funded by the DoD" thinking that the person I was responding to was suggesting the DoD may have funded the terrorists (a "conspiracy" is a secret plan to do something unlawful). After re-reading, I see now the claim is that the DoD may have funded the truthers- which I know…

By the way, you might be interested to know that recent reporting [0] (by Rolling Stone contributing editor Seth Hettena on the Substack SpyTalk, the media project run by veteran former Newsweek national security reporter Jeff Stein), based on legal filings in Guantanamo Bay cases against 9/11 plotters, suggests that the FBI believes the CIA did fund some of the 9/11 terrorists, in the sense that they were cultivating them as intelligence sources. The mundane explanation is not that they sanctioned or even knew about the 9/11 plot, but rather that they failed to share intelligence with the rest of the intelligence community because they didn't want to compromise their source. But there is credible evidence to suggest that the terrorists were not only on the radar of the CIA, but were being actively developed as sources.

[0] https://www.spytalk.co/p/exclusive-fbi-agents-accuse-cia-of

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every witness says there's not a chance in Hell that UFOs are human. But no one reports seeing aliens except abductees. People desperately want to believe aliens aren't real, and some real mental gymnastics to get there. Like believing "debunking" videos from crackpots and videogame programmers (which real pilots say are nonsensical), or "this one time in the 60s the CIA".

I think you have it backwards. I think anybody who is remotely interested in this topic would love for proof of aliens to come out. It's just such an extraordinary claim, that their skepticism demands extraordinary proof. Eyewitness reports and low-res grainy videos are just never going to be enough, no matter who they come from. And that's how it should be. If there is real proof of aliens, it will be on the front p…

> think you have it backwards. I think anybody who is remotely interested in this topic would love for proof of aliens to come out. It's just such an extraordinary claim, that their skepticism demands extraordinary proof. Eyewitness reports and low-res grainy videos are just never going to be enough, no matter who they come from. And that's how it should be. If there is real proof of aliens, it will be on the front page of every newspaper in the world, because it would be the most important discovery of all human history. It will be corroborated with physical evidence that has been examined by multiple experts and professionals. Until that happens, most people are going to be skeptical, and rightly so.

Exactly. I firmly believe that extraterrestrial life exists. My belief comes from the abundance of CHON (Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen) in the universe, combined with extremely long time scales and basic chemistry.

Simple/single-celled (or some analog) extraterrestrial life seems almost inevitable based on our understanding of how the universe works.

That said, such a belief doesn't include intelligent extraterrestrial life with technological civilizations that might create interstellar spacecraft which regularly visit our little corner of the galaxy. For me to believe that, I'd need a "Klaatu barads nicto"[0] moment.

I could be wrong, but there's no compelling evidence that I am. To channel Carl Sagan: "Claims require evidence and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Earth_Stood_Still

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#478
I just realized why this is bullshit. If such crafts existed, they wouldn't only seem to appear in the USA, and somebody in some backwater somewhere on earth would have leaked proof about them by now.

But there's never clear pictures or videos or physical evidence provided. This is just another scam.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#479

Ezra Klein just did a long interview with Leslie Kean (a popular author and Coast to Coast AM guest) about her article in "The Debrief" --- where it went, after the Washington Post wouldn't run it on her time schedule --- about David Grusch: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas... It does not make Kean and Grusch's claims sound a lot more credible. Some of Kean's sources are proponents of thin…

"so you can't blame Rubio for indulging it." He's got access to a lot more than us. This isn't just some congressman indulging it for the lulz. It's so funny to see the mental gymnastics people here make to discredit some of our most elite intelligence officials. Even Rubio is having trouble believing it but he's now admitting to have talked to people with direct access to the program. Grusch is as credible as it get…

Hold on. We know the program exists (until very recently, it was a barely funded side hustle for a small group of enthusiasts inside the DoD). We know the DoD is investigating "unexplained aerial phenomenon" (a name they had to come up with because as soon as you use the term "UFO", everybody loses their shit and stops doing engineering and science, including scientists).

The claims being made here go far beyond the existence of these programs: they claim the US is in possession of technological artifacts of non-human origin (TAONHOs, must credit me for this coinage). That is a huge leap from "the DoD has records of an uptick of weird things that happened on cameras that just happens to correspond with a massive increase in the amount of video telemetry we collect".

People like Kean are counting on their audience to read the acknowledgement of these DoD groups as shocking admissions, which is then leveraged to add credibility to the claims of people like Grusch.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#480

I just realized why this is bullshit. If such crafts existed, they wouldn't only seem to appear in the USA, and somebody in some backwater somewhere on earth would have leaked proof about them by now. But there's never clear pictures or videos or physical evidence provided. This is just another scam.

Most UFO movies take place in the US, ergo most UFOs must be visiting the US. (/s)
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