Hitler was a bot

 

- LOL, the humans actually think there were
no psy-opses before somebody invented AI!

This is just a moral panic. Nothing new have been disclosed here. 

Secret experiment on Reddit users, creepy results 

Guilt by association or kook by any standard?

 

This is one of the guys who claims to have located hidden chambers below the pyramids at Giza. He´s evidently something of a kook. Apparently, Corrado Malanga believes that reptilian aliens abduct humans. One of them looks like a snake but has the face of a crocodile. This has been going on for 500,000 years. The establishment knows the TRUTH but are hiding it. 

Brother Malanga also knows the agenda behind the abductions. Humans have three souls (a male, a female and an androgyne) and the aliens want one of them, since they lack it themselves. This part of the presentation wasn´t entirely obvious. I assume it´s the female one? The Metatron (i.e. the content-creator who uses that moniker) believes that Malanga´s ideas are a blend of Scientology and sollipsism. Not sure why he doesn´t mention a certain David Icke!

Now, I suppose it´s possible that this is just "guilt by association" and that a UFO cultist might make sensational archeological discoveries with the help of state-of-the-art technology.

But probably not.   

Axiom

 

- Shit, it´s Bigfoot! Nobody will believe us!!
- Don´t worry, human, I´m a purely naturalist entity...

Richard Carrier on the attack again. I suppose I should have held this over until "Materialist Monday" (LOL), but here goes. 

Main thesis: naturalism (materialism) is not a dogma or prior axiom, but the empirical *result* of centuries of science. So *today*, we can say with a high degree of confidence that ontological naturalism is true. Nor is it unfalsifiable. The baseline of any scientific proposition is whether or not it´s based on publicly available data (regardless of their alleged ontological status). And no such data has ever been proven to be supernatural. And yes, the naturalism of science really is ontological, not just "methodological". As I long argued myself. "But Huston, science is scientism". 

Here are the pertinent paragraphs: 

>>>Dawes then rightly argues that this means scientists and historians are really, for all their hemming and hawing, actually de facto metaphysical naturalists. They aren’t really just “methodological” naturalists; saying they are is more of a soft way to avoid having to anger their believing peers; or for believers working at secular universities to avoid getting fired for being a kook or denounced as atheists by their believing peers. 

(...)

>>>Hence, “It follows that if” their arguments “were generally accepted as sound arguments, the existence of spiritual beings would become part of our science.” Ergo, the only reason such entities haven’t become part of our science is that there aren’t sound arguments for them. 

>>>I would suggest this is a harsher thing to admit to, uncomfortable for any ardent believer, and awkward even for the secularist—for admitting it would offend too many friends and peers, and plunge them into endless arguments with what are really, honestly, cranks; an exercise most professionals would rightly prefer to avoid as a waste of their time. 

>>>So to avoid this blowup, they invent nonsense about “Oh, don’t worry, I’m just a methodological naturalist.” Just to quiet the kooks down.

Personally, I might be just a tad bit kookish myself, so make of this material what you wish. 

Naturalism is not an axiom of the sciences, but a conclusion of them

Blood atonement

 

Is this a joke? Or is somebody trolling the Muslim scholar? Or is he into some kind of "kook control"?

The title of the video is "Committed adultery. How can I receive punishment of stoning to death 2 cleanse my sin Assim al hakeem". 

It´s not click bait. Some wacko actually asked the scholar this question...and he actually answers. Yes, somebody *asked to be executed* for the supposed sin of adultery?! 

Wtf.  

No forests on Flat Earth?

 

Content creator Emma Thorne (a former conspiracy theorist turned basic left-liberal) comments a bizarre flat earth video, which is apparently something of a classic. 

I assume the original version is titled "No Forests on Flat Earth", but there is also a dubbed version called "No Trees on Flat Earth". Emma is commenting the original, narrated by a guy with a heavy Russian or East European accent. 

The whole thing could be a troll, perhaps a parody of flat earthism. Or it could be a real kook. This far out on a limb, it´s impossible to tell. Nor is it overtly obvious how any of the weird factoids in the video proves that the Earth is flat?! But sure, the claims that Devils Tower is the petrified stump of a truly gigantic tree, that Grand Canyon is a quarry, or that a secret nuclear war was fought between 1780 and 1815, do have a certain intrinsic charm. 

There are other whackadillos and wingnuts out there who claim that dinosaurs never existed, that Stonehenge is a modern fake, that the US Socialist Workers Party killed Trotsky, that many insects are robotic UFOs...you get the picture. However, I know for a fact that the claim that birds are really drones covered in plumage is parody, and I strongly suspect it´s the same with the girl who believes the cicadas in her backyard are harbingers of the apocalypse. 

But, as any paranoiac will tell ya, that´s exactly what They *want* you to believe!

Under investigation

The Australian TV news show "60 Minutes" recently discussed the UFO disclosures made by the US military last year (see clip above). Under the monikers "Under Investigation" and "The Unidentified", reporter Liz Hayes interviews a number of talking heads about this strange new development (almost stranger than the actual UFOs). For decades, the US military denied any knowledge of or interest in UFOs. Now, they made a sudden volte-face, and claim that the UAPs (as they have chosen to call the flying saucers) are real and probably of earthly origins, although an extraterrestrial explanation can´t be ruled out.

I admit that I haven´t really looked into this (yet), and that I´m skeptical to the UFO phenomenon in general. Some kind of intelligence community psy-op certainly can´t be ruled out, and if so, the present "disclosure" might simply be another wave of disinformation. Maybe its a deliberate hoax directed at the Russians and the Chinese? No idea, frankly. Or maybe *that´s* the point. Nobody is supposed to have any clue as to what is going on. Sounds familiar...?

"60 Minutes" claims that the mysterious objects closely follow American military aircraft during large scale exercises, as if they were monitoring US defenses. The UFOs have not just been spotted on radar, but also on infrared cameras (confirming they are solid) and even visually. One UFO looked like a cube within a sphere! One of the talking heads finds this to be perplexing in the extreme - why would somebody place a non-aerodynamic object (the cube) inside an aerodynamic one (the sphere)? Well, why would anyone place a human inside an aircraft? The idea that Russia and China has developed advanced drone technology is mentioned, but UFOs with similar bizarre patterns of flight were observed already during the 1950´s. Were they also Russian (Soviet) or Chinese? Interestingly, the former fighter pilot interviewed assumed that the UAP´s he observed were some kind of secret American military project! Unless, of course, he has been instructed by his superiors to say precisely this...

A more tantalizing possibility, of course, is that the flying saurcers really do come from another world. "60 Minutes" have interviewed Avi Loeb, the Harvard scientist who believes that the weird interstellar object called ´Oumuamua wasn´t a comet or asteroid, but an artificial craft (or strictly speaking a "solar sail") built by an alien civilization. So far, support from his scientific collegues have been lukewarm at best. 

Maybe I´m out on a limb here, but for some reason, I´m not particularly interested in UFOs and aliens. It feels to "retro" somehow. My guess is that we are dealing with a some kind of complex psy-op scenario, and that nothing will happen. We will still be at exactly the same spot in 2032 as we are now. More blurred pictures, military mixed messages, ghost stories...

But sure, I could be wrong. We *do* live in "interesting times"! 

Kooks and spooks

"UFO" is a recent four-part sort-of-documentary about the UFO phenomenon, made by J J Abrams, a succesful US film-maker involved in both the "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" franchises. It´s extremely confusing, jumping back and forth between different topics for four episodes straight. Is it meant to confuse? I couldn´t help wondering, since the truth (the real truth) about UFOs *is* mentioned in the third episode... 

However, that truth is surrounded by all the usual bunk and myth-making. UFO cases extensively discussed include the observations made by the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group, the Chicago O´Hare International Airport case, and the almost proverbial Phoenix Lights (yes, we get to see Fife Symington´s alien buddie again). We are also taken on a long but very disjointed and non-chronological excursion through UFO la-la-land from Kenneth Arnold, Roswell, "The Day the Earth Stod Still" and the Hill abduction case, all the way to Budd Hopkins and John Mack (but, alas, not Whitley Strieber). Even Richard Doty, the man who fed disinfo to UFO-logist Paul Bennewitz, agreed to appear on camera (and continued lying, as usual). 

The docu series takes the US government faux disclosure of the UFO phenomenon earlier this year as its point of departure. Or rather the beginning of the story on 16 December 2017, when the New York Times published an article revealing the existence of a secret group (called AATIP) within the Pentagon tasked with investigating UFOs. The price tag: 22 million dollars. The NYT also released the now famous Pentagon UFO videos. What the documentary shows, perhaps inadvertently, is that the whole thing is probably a psy op or black op by the Pentagon, and that the NYT has been fed the information by certain interested parties. Probably the same guys who were behind the "secret UFO research" in the first place...

The truth is disclosed in the third episode, with some context provided in the second. So what is the truth? Here´s a hint: I´m not saying its the government, but it´s the government. There are no alien space craft. People are seeing top secret American military test flights: spy balloons, stealth planes, high-altitude blimps, and (these days) advanced drones. Obviously, the military can´t admit that they exist. Here, the widespread belief in UFOs come in handy as a smoke screen or sleight-of-hand. The proper authorities are encouraging belief in aliens and military cover-ups of aliens, making everyone look the other way, not noticing the real cover-up (of the secret military craft). To this end, UFO researchers must be controlled. AATIP tried to "buy" MUFON, according to a former director of the organization interviewed in the documentary. Another example is the previously mentioned Bennewitz case, where the military clearly applied the principle "keep your friends close, and the kooks even closer". (I review Greg Bishop´s book on the case, "Project Beta", elsewhere on this blog.) And yes, the NYT´s own exposé is probably just another example of UFO researchers being "played" by forces they can´t or won´t understand (unless they too are part of the kook op). And it continues: the NYT´s main source, Luis Elizondo of the AATIP, later worked for "To the Stars", a pro-ufology group largely made up of "former" CIA agents and such! 

I think it´s rather obvious that the Phoenix Lights were military test flights - one proposal made in "UFO" is that it was a high alitude blimp known as the Ascender - while the weird craft seen by the Nimitz pilots may have been drones. It´s quite frankly *weird* that so few people have thought of this possibility, but as the ex-MUFON guy points out, you really can´t argue against a true believer. UFOs and aliens are like a religion to them! 

One name that turns up quite often is that of Robert Bigelow, a multi-millionaire who may have a quite serious interest in UFOs and the paranormal. Bigelow´s business is part of the US space industry, and he has excellent political contacts. Indeed, it seems to have been Bigelow who headed AATIP, the secret team tasked with "investigating UFOs" (and take over MUFON). It´s possible that AATIP did *something*, since the US black budget sometimes does fund exotic research ranging all the way from parapsychology to the military training of cats or dolphins. Bigelow & Co were looking into topics such as "can you travel in outer space through worm holes" and so on. Probably absurd, but if you can just print the money and send the bills to the tax-payers, why the heck not? Before his stint for Pentagon, Bigelow carried out research at the so-called Skinwalker ranch in Utah, where a plethora of bizarre paranormal phenomena had been reported. (See my review of Colm Kelleher´s and George Knapp´s "Hunt for the Skinwalker".) 

Several of the true believers on this show point out - quite correctly - that strange phenomena in the skies and elsewhere have been observed since ancient times, and that "alien abductions" are a very old thing, too. It´s certainly possible that some of these events were truly paranormal. But that doesn´t contradict the fact that the modern UFO phenomenon is to a large extent driven by science fiction, quasi-religious fanaticism and (surprise) American spooks trying to cover-up very human gizmos. 

I´m frankly surprised that the UFO phenomenon has managed to survive for this long. One person in the docu suggests that it´s because of deliberate government policy. Every time the public gets less interested in UFOs, some new "revelation" is published in the media, making the thing go center stage again. If true, then new "disclosures" will continue happening until our earthly high technology is permanently taken off line around the year 2100 or so, making disinformation about it pointless...