Tag: Trump

No Longer in the Shadows, Pentagon’s UFO Unit Will Make Some Findings Public

Article by Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean                               July 23, 2020                             (nytimes.com)

• The ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force’ is a program that appears in an unclassified US Senate budget report. Its function, however, which is to research sightings of unexplained aerial vehicles (i.e.: UFOs), is classified. Operating under the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Task Force is the latest incarnation of a previous covert Defense Intelligence Agency UFO research program said to have been ‘disbanded’ in 2012. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has taken notice of this covert program and is requiring the Navy to reveal at least ‘some’ findings to the public as part of the proposed Intelligence Authorization Act.

• Florida Senator Marco Rubio is the acting chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Rubio told CBS Miami that he wanted to get to the bottom of these Navy UFO videos because there are reports of unidentified aircraft over American military bases and we need to know if China or Russia has made “some technological leap”. (see first of three short videos below)

• The former head of the previous DIA UFO research program, known as the ‘Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program’, Luis Elizondo is among a small group of former government officials and scientists with security clearances who say they are convinced that objects of undetermined origin have crashed on Earth and that extraterrestrial material have been retrieved for study. According to participants and unclassified briefing documents, this military UFO program has been briefing congressional committees, aerospace company executives and other government officials.

• Former Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada pushed to fund the previous Pentagon UFO program in 2007. After reviewing reports from that program, Reid came to the conclusion that crashes of objects of unknown origin may have occurred, and “there were actual materials that the government and the private sector had in their possession” that should be studied. As yet, no crash artifacts have been publicly verified as being extraterrestrial in origin.

• Eric W. Davis is an astrophysicist who has worked with these government UFO programs since 2007. Although he could not offer any hard evidence of classified alien artifacts, Davis said that he had provided classified briefings to the DoD as recently as last March about retrievals of “off-world vehicles not made on this Earth.” Davis also gave classified briefings on retrievals of ‘unexplained objects’ to Senate Armed Services Committee staff and to Senate Intelligence Committee staff in October 2019.

• In a June interview, President Trump told his son Donald Jr. that he knew “very interesting” things about Roswell but demurred when asked if he would declassify any information on Roswell. “I’ll have to think about that one,” he said, coyly.

• [Editor’s Note]  Check out the three videos below. The first is a report on acting chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, talking about the ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force’ from ‘Rising with Krystal and Saagar’. The two and a half minute clip features footage of the three famous Navy UFO videos. The second video is a five minute clip from Fox News of Tucker Carlson talking to Leslie Kean, the NY Times article’s co-writer, on how the government is inexplicably indifferent to legitimate UFO sightings. (Can you say “cover-up”?) The third is a five minute video of Dr Michael Salla’s take on the article and Carlson’s interview with Kean. Dr Salla stresses a point made in the article that the US military and private aerospace defense contractors have been successfully reverse-engineering extraterrestrial craft for decades. This is particularly true with the US Air Force’s sizable secret space program.

Dr Salla wonders how the so-called experts in academia, media, government and the military, who have parroted the deep state’s false position that extraterrestrial UFOs simply don’t exist, are feeling now as they are confronted with the reality that they have been kept from knowing the truth all of these years, while they smugly spread their “tin foil hat” disinformation. To quote Dr Salla, “This is very important breakthrough. Millions of people are now waking up to a different reality. This has been a seismic shift.”

 

                 Senator Marco Rubio

Despite Pentagon statements that it disbanded a once-covert program to investigate unidentified flying objects, the effort remains underway —

                 Eric W. Davis

renamed and tucked inside the Office of Naval Intelligence, where officials continue to study mystifying encounters between military pilots and unidentified aerial vehicles.

Pentagon officials will not discuss the program, which is not classified but deals with classified matters. Yet it appeared last month in a Senate committee report outlining spending on the nation’s intelligence agencies for the coming year. The report said the program, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force, was “to standardize collection and reporting” on sightings of unexplained aerial vehicles, and was to report at least some of its findings to the public within 180 days after passage of the intelligence authorization act.

   Fmr Senator Harry Reid

While retired officials involved with the effort — including Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader — hope the program will seek evidence of vehicles from other worlds, its main focus is on discovering whether another nation, especially any potential adversary, is using breakout aviation technology that could threaten the United States.

Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who is the acting chairman of the Senate Select Committee on

                         Luis Elizondo

Intelligence, told a CBS affiliate in Miami this month that he was primarily concerned about reports of unidentified aircraft over American military bases — and that it was in the government’s interest to find out who was responsible.

He expressed concerns that China or Russia or some other adversary had made “some technological leap” that “allows them to conduct this sort of activity.”

Mr. Rubio said some of the unidentified aerial vehicles over U.S. bases possibly exhibited technologies not in the American arsenal. But he also noted: “Maybe there is a completely, sort of, boring explanation for it. But we need to find out.”

In 2017, The New York Times disclosed the existence of a predecessor unit, called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Defense Department officials said at the time that the unit and its $22 million in funding had lapsed after 2012.

People working with the program, however, said it was still in operation in 2017 and beyond, statements later confirmed by the Defense Department.

The program was begun in 2007 under the Defense Intelligence Agency and was then placed within the office of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, which remains responsible for its oversight. But its coordination with the intelligence community will be carried out by the Office of Naval Intelligence, as described in the Senate budget bill. The program never lapsed in those years, but little was disclosed about the post-2017 operations.

2:31 minute clip from ‘Krystal and Saagar’ on Marco Rubio and Navy UFOs (‘The Hill’ YouTube)

 

5:04 minute video of Tucker Carlson and Leslie Kean on legit UFOs (‘Wise Wanderer’ YouTube)

 

5:14 minute video of Dr Michael Salla’s take on the NYT article (‘Michael Salla’ YouTube)

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Tom DeLonge on Releasing UFO Videos: ‘I Can’t Believe We Pulled This Off’

Article by Patrick Doyle                              May 7, 2020                           (rollingstone.com)

• In late April, the US Department of Defense declassified three videos of UFOs taken by Navy jets – one over the Pacific Ocean off of San Diego in 2004, and two others over the Atlantic Ocean off of Florida and Virginia in 2015. These were the same videos that were published in December 2017 by the New York Times, and provided by ‘To the Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences’, a UFO research organization headed by rock guitarist Tom DeLonge (pictured above). And these are the same videos which the US Navy acknowledged in 2019 that they were indeed real and not fabricated.

• DeLonge sees this official government release as the culmination of a long journey that began when he walked away from his band, Blink-182, in 2015 to spend more time developing ‘To the Stars’ as a “transmedia” experience working with former intelligence officials to uncover information about unidentified aerial phenomena. DeLonge feels that the government acknowledged the videos because of the investigative work his team is doing. “I can’t believe we pulled this off,” he said. “It’s a big deal, and so much more is coming. I think people need to buckle up.”

• DeLonge was struck by how many people somehow missed the original release of the videos in 2017 or the Navy’s acknowledgment of them in 2019. At the time that the New York Times published the videos, they also revealed that until 2012, the Pentagon had a program to study UFOs as well. “I think it’s something we should all be focusing on right now, because it’s a big, big thing that’s gonna change the world as we know it,” said DeLonge.

• DeLonge points out that the government works for us, the people. There were leaks at the Pentagon, “… and basically we caught them dealing with something, and now they’re forced to recognize it and acknowledge it.” So the government is like, ‘Alright it’s time to start talking about it because Tom and his rascals are putting our feet to the fire,’ you know?”

• The Gimbal UFO video that was recorded by Navy jets from the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier battle group off of Florida in 2015 is DeLonge’s favorite. * When he first saw the video, all he could say was, “’Oh my God, this is the real deal.’ I have never seen a UFO that clear before.” “[Y]ou can see the plasma on the bottom, you can see the blurry edges. You see all the things that are just absolutely impossible with any technology that we know of,” says DeLonge.

• “Steve Justice, who runs our aerospace division, was one of the top guys at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works,” said DeLonge. “Steve is looking at this going, ‘Wow, this is not something anyone can do on earth right now.’ But the scarier part could be if Russia or China or someone else did create something that could do that, that’s a big deal. It’s a game changer and we should be all over it. So either way, we need to focus on this.”

• When people say, “oh, it could be anything.” No. The definition is incredible with these Navy jet cameras. “[I]t literally is like taking a black and white photo with the exact amount of clarity,” says DeLonge. “That’s why the pilots were so animated. They knew that this was a special event.”

• When skeptics claim that the Navy’s UFO videos could be the result of “bugs in the imaging code” of the fighter jet video recorders, DeLonge points out that there wasn’t just video footage. There were trained observers who saw it. There was also radar data from the absolute top radar systems that have ever been invented. This is coupled with satellite data. There was a DoD investigation. “So we’re not saying, ‘Hey, this is an unidentified aerial object because one guy saw something.’ We’re saying it because it’s been captured on so many systems and been confirmed by so many different groups, so I think it’s a really big deal.” “For someone just to say it’s a bug or a glitch is literally pure ignorance,” says DeLonge. “[I]t just shows the close-mindedness of people that are supposed to be some of the smarter people here. It just blows my mind. I hold these guys up to a higher standard than that.”

• “To the Stars Academy made all the noise,” says DeLonge. “We’ve been working tirelessly to get all the senators and congressman briefed… (and making) sure the info is getting passed around. We’ve been giving advice on national security policy… and basically have all the data flow up to the proper think tanks.” “Now that the cat is out of the bag, …what you’re seeing is them having meetings and saying, ‘What are we going to do? Are we going to try to act like this isn’t real? I’m not going to be the guy… that has to get hauled before Congress and be deposed on CNN live.”

• Trump has “talked about the fact that he’s had a (Navy UFO) briefing,” DeLonge says. “I tend to wonder when he says things like, “I don’t particularly know if these are real or not.” “I don’t talk to the President. I just know that he got briefed…. I think whatever his reasons are for saying the things he’s saying are probably because behind the scenes, there’s a lot more discussions on how to best handle this with the public. So you know, I’m excited that he mentioned it again, because I think it helps.”

 

Last week, the Department of Defense released three declassified videos of “unexplained aerial phenomena.” The videos — filmed by Navy pilots in 2004 and 2015 — show “objects hurtling through the sky, one rotating against the wind, and pilots can be heard expressing confusion and awe,” wrote the New York Times, who published two of the videos in 2017 at the same time as To the Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences, a company that researches unidentified aerial phenomena co-founded by Tom DeLonge, the original singer-guitarist of Blink-182. A third video, of a 2015 incident off the East Coast, was released by To the Stars the following year. Though the Navy acknowledged that the videos were not fabricated in 2019, for people still in doubt, the Department of Defense officially released the videos last week and made them available for download “to clear up any misconceptions by the public.”

While the Pentagon did not offer any more hints on what we are looking at, DeLonge saw the official government acknowledgment as the culmination of a long journey — one that began when he walked away from his band in 2015 to spend more time developing To the Stars, a “transmedia” experience for music, books, films, and UFO research. DeLonge works alongside former intelligence officials to uncover information about unidentified aerial phenomena, and helped expose the Pentagon’s mysterious UFO program in 2017.

“It’s wild,” says DeLonge, who feels that the government released the statement because of the investigative work his team is doing. “I can’t believe we pulled this off. It’s a big deal, and so much more is coming. I think people need to buckle up.” We talked to DeLonge — whose History Channel show Unidentified is gearing up for its second season — about the UFO videos, his life in isolation, and the possibility of a reunion with Blink-182.

What was your reaction when the government officially released these videos?

My first reaction was how many people didn’t see when the Navy acknowledged the videos were real, the objects were real, and UFOs were real. That all happened a year ago. And then before that, the New York Times blasted out that UFOs were real and the Pentagon was studying them, so it’s funny that this came out now, with the Department of Defense, which is obviously higher than the Navy. It just shows you how much news is out there and how many people are out there, and how much work we have to do.

I did not see it coming, but I do know some of the inside leaks that are happening at the Pentagon. And they’re not allowed to lie, and basically we caught them dealing with something, and now they’re forced to recognize it and acknowledge it. They do work for us. They’re like, “Alright it’s time to start talking about it because Tom and his rascals are putting our feet to the fire,” you know? I think it’s something we should all be focusing on right now, because it’s a big, big thing that’s gonna change the world as we know it.

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China In Space: Does the US Contest Or Cooperate?

Article by Theresa Hitchens                           May 04, 2020                            (breakingdefense.com)

• In an April 2020 Brookings Institution Report entitled “Managing China’s Rise In Outer Space” (see Brookings Report here), author Frank Rose asserts that “The United States faces a fundamental dilemma as it attempts to effectively manage China’s rise as a major actor in outer space.” The U.S. must find a balance between countering China’s anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons efforts and cooperating with China to address the key challenges facing the outer space environment, namely orbital debris and the rise of mega constellations.

• With over 120 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites in orbit, China is second only to the U.S. This includes 14 Gaofen satellites, China’s most advanced class of high resolution imagery satellites launched since July 2018. China also operates 34 communication satellites, four of which are dedicated exclusively for the military. China’s BeiDou ‘precision, navigation, and timing’ system (similar to the U.S.’s GPS system) will this year reach its goal of global coverage. The report notes that this will lessen China’s dependence on our GPS system, making it less vulnerable to U.S. interference, especially “during a crisis”.

• In the Brookings Report, Rose, who was Assistant Secretary for Arms Control in the Obama State Department, says that the US must live with the fact that China will be a peer in space, both militarily and in the civil and commercial spheres. While the U.S. needs to deter China’s growing ASAT capabilities, it also must also boost languishing diplomatic relations with Beijing on space issues. Rose accuses Trump of failing to continue the “robust period of dialogue during the Obama administration.” The bilateral US-China dialogue on space security has been largely neglected in the Trump administration,” the report says. The only inroads that Trump has pursued with China have been over the legal status of commercial mining of the Moon and asteroids.

• Rose believes a diplomatic strategy should include: deterrence against Chinese anti-satellite weaponry; reinvigorating bilateral dialogue on space security and civil policies; developing norms of behavior for outer space; and overcoming Congressional limitations on cooperative civil space projects with China.

• A recent study by the Secure World Foundation (see SWF study, “Global Counterspace Capabilities”, here) stated that China’s premier SC-19 mobile-launched ballistic missile can destroy “low earth orbit” satellites up to 2,000 kilometres (1,240 miles) in altitude – the altitude of most “observation” satellites.

• Another March study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (see CSIS study, “Space Threat Assessment 2020”, here) says that China has already started training specialized units of the Strategic Space Force in the use of “direct-ascent kinetic” anti-satellite weaponry. The studies found open-source evidence of a variety of Chinese efforts to develop counterspace-related technology from radio-frequency jamming to lasers for blinding satellites to ground-based missiles to on-orbit ‘killer satellite’ techniques.

• [Editor’s Note]  In a a recent ExoArticle (see “The Truth Behind Russia’s Mystery ASAT Launch – ‘Not Operational’” here), director of the ‘Russian Nuclear Forces Project’ and senior research fellow at the ‘United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research’, Pavel Podvig pointed out that the Russian anti-satellite ‘Nudol’ interceptor can target satellites up to 1,240 miles in low earth orbit. Most U.S. spy satellites are in geostationary orbits of about 22,200 miles above the earth. “[I]t’s hard to imagine a military mission in which this capability would be useful,” said Podvig. The Chinese ASAT weapons mentioned here have a range of only about 2,000 kilometers (or 1,240 miles) as well.

Once again however, I fear that all of this hand-wringing over Chinese and Russian ground-to-space ballistic missiles being able to reach our low earth orbit ‘observation’ and GPS satellite constellation is a smokescreen hiding the real space race going on among the respective nation’s secret space programs.

Dr Michael Salla has just published a new book entitled Rise of the Red Dragon: Origins & Threat of China’s Secret Space Program (see here for book info) which looks behind the curtain of China’s secret space program. I reached out to Dr Salla to comment on the concerns and military threats that Frank Rose presents in the foregoing Brookings Institute Report.

“The threat posed by China’s expansion into space is far greater than it simply developing anti-satellite weapons systems to neutralize the US military’s extensive satellite grid,” said Dr Salla. “China has been developing a secret space program with electromagnetic propulsion and weapons systems that have been developed through the acquisition of foreign technologies gained through espionage and corporate theft. Perhaps even more significant has been China’s secretive reverse-engineering programs of off-world technologies. These advanced space technologies are being enhanced through China’s unrestrained adoption of Artificial Intelligence for communications and control systems. China is devoting significant resources into the expansion of its secret space program as part of the asymmetric “Assassin’s Mace” strategy of countering US hegemony on Earth and in space.”

“The long term strategy of China’s ruling Communist Party is to exceed US space capabilities by 2030, and it will exploit the vagaries of international law and space law to advance its hegemonic aspirations. There needs to be full disclosure of the capabilities and technologies all major space powers to prevent a future Space Pearl Harbor as China expands its military presence in space.”

 

WASHINGTON: The US must find a balance between countering China’s antisatellite (ASAT) weapons efforts and cooperating with it to stave off broader risks to the space operational environment, says a new Brookings Institution report.

          Frank Rose

“The United States faces a fundamental dilemma as it attempts to effectively manage China’s rise as a major actor in outer space,” says author Frank Rose,,State Department assistant secretary for arms control under President Barack Obama. “On one hand, China’s development of anti-satellite weapons represents a direct threat to U.S. and allied space systems. On the other hand, it is difficult to see how the United States and the international community will be able to address the key challenges facing the outer space environment — i.e., the growth of orbital debris and the rise of mega constellations — without engaging with China.”

“Managing China’s Rise In Outer Space” says the US must live with the fact that China will be a peer in space, both militarily and in the civil and commercial spheres. For example, the report points out that China is second only to the US in the number of military and commercial remote sensing satellites it operates.

While the US needs to deter China’s growing ASAT capabilities, it also must boost languishing diplomatic relations with Beijing on space issues that are, by necessity and physics, of mutual concern.

Such a strategy should include:
 “Enhancing deterrence and increasing resiliency against Chinese ASAT threats;
 Reinvigorating the U.S.-China bilateral dialogue on space security issues;
 Continuing the U.S.-China Civil Space Dialogue;
 Developing bilateral and multilateral norms of behavior for outer space;
 Identifying ways to cooperate with China on pragmatic civil space projects; and,
 Reviewing current congressional limitations on civil space cooperation with China.”

Rose notes that, while the Trump administration has taken efforts to counter Chinese ASAT capabilities, it has also allowed diplomatic efforts to languish.

“After a robust period of dialogue during the Obama administration, the bilateral U.S.-China dialogue on space security has been largely neglected in the Trump administration,” the paper says.

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Newly Released Incident Reports Detail Navy’s ‘UFO’ Encounters

Article by Ryan Browne and Mike Conte                              May 14, 2020                              (cnn.com)

• On May 13th, CNN newly released Navy Safety Center “hazard reports” (see here) detailing potentially hazardous encounters between Navy jets and UFOs, or “unidentified aerial phenomena” as the military has taken to calling them. Such concerns were reinforced when the Pentagon officially declassified videos of three encounters late last month. The newly released reports describe the UFOs as “Unmanned Aerial Systems,” or drones. The reports were obtained through a FOIA request filed by the website ‘the Drive’.

• Videos of UFOs recorded by Navy jet infrared cameras show rapidly moving objects and Navy aviators reacting in awe to them. One report describes an incident from March 26, 2014 states that an “unknown aircraft appeared to be small in size, approximately the size of a suitcase, and silver in color” passed within 1000 feet of a Navy F/A-18 jet. The US Navy pilot “attempted to regain visual contact with the aircraft, but was unable.”

• Another incident report describes an incident from November 2013 in which a Navy F/A-18 pilot “was able to visually acquire a small aircraft. The aircraft had an approximately 5 foot wingspan and was colored white with no other distinguishable features.” An indecent from June 27, 2013 described a Navy jet’s encounter with an aircraft that “was white in color and approximately the size and shape of a drone or missile.”

• But the military has been unable to identify who was operating the drones, presenting a major safety and security challenge to the Navy jets training in the restricted military training airspace off the east coast of Virginia. “I feel it may only be a matter of time before one of our F/A-18 aircraft has a mid-air collision with an unidentified UAS,” a report warned. “In many ways, (drones) pose a greater midair risk than manned aircraft. They are often less visually significant and less radar apparent than manned aircraft.”

• There is also the possibility that the drones could be operated by an adversary such as Russia or China seeking to collect information on US military operations. But the former head of a classified Pentagon UFO research program, Luis Elizondo, told CNN in 2017 that he personally believes “there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone.” Elizondo says the UFOs display “characteristics that are not currently within the US inventory nor in any foreign inventory that we are aware of.”

• For his part, President Trump called the recently “officially” released Pentagon videos a “hell of a video”. “I just wonder if it’s real,” Trump said.

 

Washington (CNN)  Newly released “hazard reports” detailing encounters between US Navy aircraft and “unidentified aerial phenomena” reveal details about incidents that were thrust into the spotlight when the Pentagon officially declassified and released videos of three encounters late last month.
“The unknown aircraft appeared to be small in size, approximately the size of a suitcase, and silver in color,” one report describing an incident from March 26, 2014, said.

During that encounter one of the Navy F/A-18 jets “passed within 1000′ of the object, but was unable to positively determine the identity of the aircraft,” the report added, saying the US Navy pilot “attempted to regain visual contact with the aircraft, but was unable.”

CNN on Wednesday obtained the Navy Safety Center documents, which were previously labeled “For Official Use Only.” They follow the Pentagon’s official release late last month of three short videos showing “unidentified aerial phenomena” that had previously been made public by a private company.

The reports were first published by the Drive, a website covering auto news and military issues, which obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The videos show what appear to be unidentified flying objects rapidly moving while recorded by infrared cameras. Two of the videos contain Naval aviators reacting in awe at how quickly the objects are moving. One voice speculates that it could be a drone.

Objects could be drones

The newly released reports appear to share this assessment, describing many of the unidentified aircraft as “Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS),” the Pentagon’s official name for drone aircraft.

According to another incident report from November 2013 a Navy F/A-18 pilot “was able to visually acquire a small aircraft. The aircraft had an approximately 5 foot wingspan and was colored white with no other distinguishable features.”

“Due to the small size, the aircraft was determined to be a UAS,” the report said.

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Sorry America, We’re Not Going Back To The Moon

by Ethan Siegel       December 19, 2017        (forbes.com)

  • On Dec 11th, President Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1, proclaiming, “This time, we will not only plant our flag and leave our footprint, we will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars and, perhaps someday, to many worlds beyond.”

  • Trump’s vision, which he laid out earlier this year, is simply to build a lunar space station orbiting the Moon. It has nothing to do with planting another flag on the Moon or a footprint on Mars.

  • When we chose to go to the Moon in the 1960’s, we devoted upwards of 5% of the federal budget to the endeavor. Today this figure is 0.4% of the budget. This is less than 1/10th of what we invested in NASA the last time we sent humans to the Moon.

  • If President Trump really intends to go to Mars, it would take a sustained investment totaling somewhere in the ballpark of $50-$150 billion, spread out over the course of ten years. The plan would involve landing a slew of equipment on the Martian surface, along with robots and rovers designed to self-assemble stations and habitats, and then a crew of human beings, who would stay for anywhere from 6 to 18 months before returning home.

  • Our ambitions to venture beyond low-Earth orbit are achievable, but only if we make it so. Unless there’s a plan to increase NASA’s funding to sufficient levels to send humans to worlds beyond our own, America is never going to get there.

  • [Editor’s Note] Alternatively, might President Trump be aware of a secret space program that is already visiting the Moon and Mars?

 

Last week, President Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1, designed to refocus NASA’s mission on human exploration and spaceflight. Proclaiming, “This time, we will not only plant our flag and leave our footprint, we will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars and, perhaps someday, to many worlds beyond,” Trump made a promise that should sound familiar to American citizens, as many incoming presidents (including Obama and both Bushes) have made similar plans and proclamations. Like all plans, to bring this one to fruition will require a tremendous investment of resources: in people, in equipment and facilities, in research and development, and in terms of money as well. With no plans for adequate, additional funding to support these ambitions, these dreams will simply evaporate, as they have so many times before.

If you look at the percent of the federal budget currently being invested in NASA, you’ll find that you have to go all the way back to 1959, the first full year of NASA’s existence, to encounter a time where we invested less in the agency than we do today. When we chose to go to the Moon, it was accompanied by a tremendous increase in the resources we devoted to the endeavor: up to nearly 5% of the federal budget. Today, that figure sits at just 0.4% of the budget (0.11% of our GDP), or less than one-tenth of what we invested in NASA the last time we sent humans to the Moon.

NASA’s crewed spaceflight missions since the end of Apollo have focused on low-Earth orbit. But if the goal is to explore the Universe, and to take humanity deeper and farther into the cosmic sea than we’ve ever gone, a return to the Moon won’t accomplish that. The vision of the Trump administration, laid out earlier this year, involves a shocking proposal, to build a lunar space station orbiting the Moon. In no way, shape, or form does a lunar space station prepare us or aid us in going to either the Moon or Mars. Instead, it’s a project that merely serves to:
• provide a use for the Space Launch System (SLS) that’s already developed,
• provide a potential application of the Orion capsule system,
• and provide potential partnership opportunities with Russia on an orbiter and Europe/Japan on the habitation modules.

It’s a proposal that should make you furious. If you want to go to the Moon, you design a system to put humans on the Moon. If you want to go to a different world, you design a system to put human beings on that world. If you want to go to deep space, you figure out what you need to go to deep space — and you go. Instead, the plan will spend a great deal of money without yielding appreciable results. If you want to accomplish something great, you don’t look at the technology you’ve already developed and ask, “what can we do with it?” Instead, you must look at the goal you want to achieve and ask, “what will it take to accomplish this?” You also have to provide funding for it, and plan it on a realistically short timescale.

If the goal is to go to Mars, we’ve already done extensive research into how much it would cost and what type of technological development it would require. To do it safely and responsibly, it would take a sustained investment totaling somewhere in the ballpark of $50-$150 billion, spread out over the course of approximately 10 years. The plan would involve landing a slew of equipment on the Martian surface, along with robots and rovers designed to self-assemble stations and habitats, and then a crew of human beings, who would stay for anywhere from 6 to 18 months before returning home. The largest and heaviest things ever landed on the Martian surface are far lighter than what a crewed mission would require, and the only way you ensure the safety of the crew on such an endeavor is through practice.

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Big Pharma’s Big Connections: Congress Exposed as Protecting Drug Companies While Opioid Problem Worsens

by Kalee Brown         October 19, 2017        (collective-evolution.com)

• American is experiencing a major opioid crisis that is killing people every day from an opioid or heroin overdose.

• Opium is first removed from the poppy plant, which is then refined into morphine, and can then be further refined into heroin. Some opiates are entirely synthetic, and others are a cross between the two.

• Big Pharma companies ensure that their market grows by creating products that are addictive and have negative side effects so they can keep people sick and take more drugs.

• During the Vietnam War, the CIA worked with Laotian general Vang Pao in smuggling heroin via “Air America” to create a world hub for heroin in Southeastern Asian countries.

• In the 1980’s, Afghanistan had become the largest suppier of poppies for opium production. The CIA trained, armed, and funded Afghan “rebels” and supplied them with trucks and mules to transport the opium. Then the Taliban moved in and eradicated 90% of the world’s heroin supply. After 9/11, the US military occupied Afghanistan, and under US “protection”, opium production skyrocketed.

• Back in America, doctors were being paid by Big Pharma to prescribe opioids. Through formidable lobbying efforts, the US Congress, led by Pennsylvania Republican Tom Marino, passed laws that weakened the DEA’s ability to stop excessive drug distribution. Corrupt doctors and pharmacists were able to prescribe more pain killers and introduce them into the black market. Big Pharma paid at least $1.5 million to the 23 lawmakers who sponsored or co-sponsored the bills.

• President Trump chose none other than Tom Marino to serve as his “drug czar” to lead the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Marino wisely declined the nomination.

• In response to a renewed crack-down by the DEA, Big Pharma poached 46 top DEA officials and hired them to devise new ways to avoid the DEA’s enforcement.

• [Editor’s Note]  It is quite apparent that the CIA relies heavily on the revenue derived from Big Pharma’s legal and illegal sale of opiates to fund its’ hidden Deep State agenda.

 

Many people often picture drug dealers as these scary individuals selling pills on street corners, but when it comes to the opioid epidemic, these drug pushers don’t exactly fit the stereotype. The true “drug dealers” largely responsible for America’s opioid epidemic aren’t thugs, they’re doctors and members of the U.S. government.

As former DEA agent Joe Rannazzisi put it, “They weren’t slinging crack on the corner… These were professionals who were doing it. They were just drug dealers in lab coats.”

You have physicians heavily pushing and marketing opioids, you’ve got countless doctors being paid by Big Pharma to prescribe opioids, and then you have the U.S. government overseeing the opium trade. This isn’t news to many people, as the reality of America’s war on drugs has lain exposed for decades, but mainstream media has been honing in on the deep ties the people we’re expected to trust share with Big Pharma.

An in-depth investigation into the opioid epidemic and the U.S. government’s ties to it was recently conducted by The Washington Post and 60 Minutes, revealing how U.S. Congress effectively weakened the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) ability to go after drug distributors, despite the worsening opioid epidemic.

The Washington Post‘s report on the opioid epidemic focused on one bill in particular that protected some major drug companies, allowing the flow of opioids to reach more people and creating more profit for their producers in turn. The law was presented as a more “industry-friendly” approach to law enforcement, but it undermined the DEA’s ability to monitor the flow of opioids.

So, corrupt doctors and pharmacists were able to effectively prescribe more pain killers and introduce them into the black market. Big Pharma funded this through lobbying efforts, worked closely with a handful of Congressmen, and even made some hefty donations to political campaigns (to the tune of millions of dollars) to ensure this bill came into fruition.

The Washington Post stated that the key member of Congress who paved the path for this bill was Pennsylvania Republican Tom Marino, as he allegedly spent years attempting to push this bill. The law Marino so desperately wanted to succeed basically acts as a protective barrier between Big Pharma and the DEA, preventing the DEA from freezing suspicious shipments from companies.

Why was Marino so supportive of this particular bill? Though we clearly do not have the full picture, we do know that he received $100,000 by “political actions committees representing the industry” for his efforts. Marino wasn’t the only lawmaker to accept payments though, as the industry paid a collective $1.5 million to 23 lawmakers who sponsored or co-sponsored the bill (and these are only the known amounts).

“The drug industry, the manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors and chain drugstores, have an influence over Congress that has never been seen before,” explained the former head of the DEA’s division responsible for regulating the drug industry, Joseph T. Rannazzisi. “I mean, to get Congress to pass a bill to protect their interests in the height of an opioid epidemic just shows me how much influence they have.”

As per how this bill truly got passed, it remains a mystery. Yes, Big Pharma and Congressman Marino clearly played a huge role, but how did the DEA and Department of Justice accept this? Were they unaware of the effects this would have on the opioid epidemic? Former President Barack Obama, who was responsible for the final sign-off of the bill in 2016, and multiple DEA officials declined to comment on this matter to the Post.

In addition, the DEA and Justice Department refused or delayed requests made by the Post and 60 Minutes for files under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that could provide more information on the law that passed. A number of these FOIA requests have been pending for a year and a half, and so the Post is now suing the Justice Department in hopes of obtaining these files.

DEA Chief Administrative Law Judge John J. Mulrooney II commented on the law, stating that because of it being passed, it’s “all but logically impossible” for the DEA to suspend a Big Pharma company’s operations even when they do not comply with federal law. How can drug companies continue to operate when they’re not even operating under federal law? This is the power that Big Pharma holds over the U.S. government.

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