Disclosure or distraction?

To those who (like me) follow the UFO story, Friday's release of formerly classified material from the US government was a bit 'meh'. Yeah, we know most of this stuff. Nothing groundbreaking from this (rather small) data dump that nevertheless is destined to enter UFO lore, and enrich the cultural mythology. Nothing that will shed new light on the UFO phenomenon. Much of what was released was well-known to UFologists, now it's finally been admitted to. So how should we see this: as a further admission from the US government that we share our planet with alien beings? Or as a distraction from the fact that the war Trump started is a mess which he can neither end by either force nor diplomacy, and is driving up the cost of living? 

Or could it be both?

Before diving in, let me start with a few words about terminology. The term 'UFO' – 'unidentified flying object', was devised by the US Air Force in 1952 to supplant 'flying saucer', which by the late 1940s had entered mainstream usage. And, since around 2020, the term 'UFO' is itself being replaced in official sources by 'UAP', or 'unidentified anomalous (sometimes 'aerial') phenomenon'. The word 'phenomenon' is more accurate than 'object', as it also covers non-material occurrences. And 'anomalous' is a broader concept than 'aerial', as it includes everything that cannot readily be explained, wherever it is witnessed – in space, under the water or on the ground.

Similarly, 'non-human intelligence' (NHI) is the new and more accurate term for 'aliens', since there's no evidence that these alleged beings are extraterrestrial. They could be extratemporal (from a future Earth) or extradimensional (from a fifth dimension of which physics is currently unaware). Or cryptoterrestrial – the intelligence associated with these anomalous sightings might co-inhabit the planet with us (under the oceans, for instance).

Having cleared that up – what have we got?

In February, on a TV interview, Barack Obama seemed to admit that aliens were real, prompting Trump to weigh in and say that Obama shouldn't have been giving away classified information. Trump then went on to promise that he'd start declassifying UAP material from Pentagon, FBI, CIA and NASA archives. And so it proved to be. Compared to the Kennedy assassination or Epstein dumps, which numbered into the millions of files, this upload of formerly classified documents was modest.

Let's start by assuming that the Trump administration is not sufficiently smart to make up a lot of CGI/AI videos and upload them to a gullible public. There is track record. There is form. Investigative journalists and researchers in this field know what's out there in the classified world, and simply making up a whole bunch of phony UFO videos wouldn't cut the mustard.

So is this disclosure or acclimatisation? Getting humanity ready to accept, without a mass freak-out, that Homo sapiens is not the only form of intelligent, technological life on Planet Earth, has to a decades-long process, not an overnight announcement. This is another step in confirmation, a confession from (primarily) the US military that there are anomalous phenomena across all four domains – space, sky, land and sea – that it cannot explain, and rather than covering up that they don't know what they don't know, at least to come out and say "here's what we cannot explain".

What do we know, what do they know, what do they pretend they don't know?

The key thing is lore and what is and what isn't accepted in lore.

UAP have been around since the dawn of human history, showing up in the Bible (for example Ezekiel's Wheel), in the Middle Ages, as pixies, elves and fairies; there was a spate of mysterious airship sightings over America in the 1890s. However, the current spate of sightings really began to build up concrete lore around them after WW2 – the Kenneth Arnold sightings and the Roswell incident (1947). Historically, the sightings have been closely correlated to military or civilian nuclear sites. Roswell, for example, was the site of the world's first (and at the time only) base for atomic bombers.

There are four main components to UAP lore. Each is tightly interwoven with eyewitness accounts that corroborate, they have internal narrative structure that's logical and hard to undermine.

1) Earth is being visited by non-human intelligence. This has been going on for millennia, but the visits have become far more frequent since H. sapiens learned to harness the energy of the atom. The visitors may be short bipedal creatures with large heads and big eyes. Or they may be tall, blond, Nordic-looking humanoids, or giant praying mantis-type insects, or ghostly interdimensional 'shadow people' that pop in and out of existence. Lore suggests that multiple alien species may be visiting us, with different agendas, some benign, others not, perhaps even at war with each other.

2) NHI craft have crashed on multiple occasions, the wreckage recovered, and (to a greater or lesser degree of success) reverse-engineered by the US (possibly also by the Russians and Chinese). The testimony of Bob Lazar, who claims to have worked at the classified Area 51 on the Nevada Test and Training Range in the 1980s, has been backed up by other whistleblowers since then. But here the lore is split. Some ufologists claim that the US had long possessed working craft based on reverse-engineered alien tech; others say that science is still a long way off from even understanding the physics behind the alien tech (imagine the top geniuses of the Renaissance trying to reverse-engineer a mobile phone). Especially if it is guided telepathically. 

3) Humans are being abducted by the NHI, possibly with the aim of creating a hybrid species. Alien abduction lore dates back to the early 1960s (Betty and Barney Hill). In the 1980s, academics John E. Mack and David M. Jacobs claimed that alien abductions were a mass phenomenon. Author Whitley Strieber's account of his alleged alien abduction, Communion, topped US non-fiction book sales charts for six months in 1987, and was made into a movie in 1989. By 1991, 3.7 million Americans claimed to have been abducted by aliens.

4) The US government has been covering up all of the above – UFO projects Sign (1947), Grudge (1949) and Blue Book(1952-1969) all ended up saying "nothing to see here". The US government is said to have had contact with alien races since the mid-1950s; a shadowy group (Majestic 12) knows the full truth which only some US presidents have been privy to; the secret is maintained by the men in black who intimidate UFO witnesses. Within the government there are those who press for controlled disclosure, while other groups are intent on keeping the whole thing above top secret. Controlled disclosure means acclimatising humanity to the idea, with a steady drip of media (films such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and official confirmation. [Steven Spielberg's next film, Disclosure Day, premiers on 12 June. Yes, it's about aliens.]

The current UAP era began in December 2017 with the publication in the New York Times of an article by Leslie Kean, Ralph Blumenthal and Helene Cooper (behind paywall). "Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program".The article added vast amount of new information to the corpus of the lore; the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which ran from 2007 to 2012 to analyse classified reports of UAPs from the US military. AATIP came up with the notion of the 'five observables': anti-gravity lift; instantaneous acceleration and manoeuvres; hypersonic velocities without sonic booms or vapour trails; low observability or cloaking; and trans-medium travel (moving seamlessly from space to air to water). 

In December, I was talking to a British lawyer here in Warsaw about UFOs. His reaction to me raising the topic was knee-jerk: "Only nutters believe in that sort of thing". Outright dismissal, a total lack of curiosity. Despite the fact that the US military has whole programmes investigating the phenomenon (currently the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office). Despite the thousands of verified sightings by pilots, radar operators and other trained professionals. It people such as this lawyer that will experience the greatest ontological shock when confronted with solid evidence – scientific proof – that humanity is indeed sharing this planet with another species of intelligent being.

It is likely that newly declassified files and videos will be released soon. The big questions are: will they prove the existence of an NHI presence on Earth? And will following releases be used to distract from ongoing political problems?

This time six years ago:
Things will never be the same again: Pt III – Risk

This time nine years ago:
En Marche! [Polish regional bus 'network']

This time 12 years ago:
Jeziorki spring pictorial

This time 13 years ago:
Kitten time

This time 14 years ago:
Warsaw – Centrum to Jeziorki by train with super-wide lens

This time 15 years ago:
Loose Lips Sink Ships - part II

This time 16 years ago:
Jeziorki in the infra red

This time 17 years ago:
Some rain, at last!
[could do with some right now...]

Deny, distract, dilute

Here's my assessment of the current 'drone flap'. 

Sometime in mid-November, craft of non-human origins began showing up over military bases in the UK and US. These incursions were unprecedented in intensity and duration. The bases have been associated with the storage of nuclear weapons, something that UFOs and Nukes author Robert Hastings says has been happening since the 1940s. These anomalous craft typically show no heat signature detectable to infrared sensors, flying in from the sea in silence, and demonstrating endurance well beyond that of any human-made battery-powered drone, staying aloft for several hours at a time. They were untraceable and unaffected by counter-drone technology. If these are foreign-made drones, the technology is way more advanced than what the US has.

Whereas the UK 'drone' sightings blew over without attracting too much mainstream-media attention, in America, the public, the media and Congress were less willing to let it go. From CNN to Fox News to smaller outlets, right across the political spectrum, the 'drone incursion' story wouldn't fade. It remains in the headlines to this day.

After the first wave of anomalous sightings, the news cycle refuses to move on from on the drone-incursion story. And so, word goes out – flood the fields. 

Air Force, Army and Navy bases start putting their own, identifiable, drones, into the night skies, with transponders off, and where possible, with position lights switched off. Lots of them. Night after night after night. At the same time, the social media is flooded by Travis Trailerhome and Betty Bigbutt posting footage of airliners taking off or landing at night, accompanied by shrieks of "Wow! Unreal! Aliens!". Hobbyist drone jocks practice flying their Black Friday bargains after dark to get in on the act. Amateur CGI enthusiasts of lesser or greater skill levels start posting their clickbait fakery, hoping the algorithm will help monetise their channels. Recordings of spooky sounds emanating from car radios. The more laughable the fake, the better. The more glaringly obvious missightings from America's none-too-bright community, the better. 

And at a joint press conference held on 17 December by the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security , the Federal Aviation Authority and the FBI the message was put forth that: "Having closely examined the technical data and tips from concerned citizens, we assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones. We have not identified anything anomalous and do not assess the activity to date to present a national security or public safety risk". The message from White House national security communications advisor  John Kirby and others is – we know that these are not foreign adversaries. We know that these are not our own craft. But we don't know what they are; however, whatever it is that they are, they're not a threat to our safety and there's nothing to be alarmed about. 

This is frankly laughable. This might serve to allay the concerns of the casual observer, but to anyone thinking critically about the issue, this message does not wash at all.

There is a secret so deep that the US military is willing to look incompetent rather than to come clean with the public. 

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Pain and questions of loss

This time two years ago:
No true beauty without decay

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James Webb Space Telescope launch

This time five years ago:

Driving the Silk Road reviewed 

This time seven years ago:
Snapshots of Lublin dressed for Christmas

This time eight years ago:
The best of Warsaw's Christmas illuminations

This time nine years ago:
Changes on ul. Baletowa

This time ten years ago:
UK migration – don't blame the Poles

This time 11 years ago:
Jacek Hugo Bader's White Fever: A Journey to the Frozen Heart of Siberia

This time 13 years ago 
Thoughts upon the death of the Dear Leader

This time 14 years ago:
Global warming or climate change?

The November-December 2024 UAP flap

These weeks will go down in UFOlogical lore – the unexplained spate of drone sightings across the UK and US that's still ongoing as I write. Since the middle of November, eyewitnesses had been reporting lights in the sky over RAF Mildenhall, RAF Lakenheath and RAF Feltwell in eastern England night after night for 16 days. Though some were aircraft, helicopters or military drones, the majority of what was reported did not fit into any explicable category. This anomalous activity over Britain tailed off after almost three weeks, but since then, there has been even more intense drone activity in the night skies over New Jersey.

The UK government and media had been generally silent over the sightings. In the US, however, it's quite different right now. Mainstream media outlets , from CNN to Fox News, have been all reporting this phenomenon. We see once-sceptical journalists accepting that they're seeing things that are hard to explain, we see law-enforcement officers talking about swarms of lights flying in from the ocean, mayors and legislators are angry that they're not being told what's going on. Pentagon and White House press conferences that try to reassure ("they're not foreign adversary drones, they're not our technology"), but this only serves to deepen the mystery.

Applying Occam's razor to this phenomenon doesn't help. One way or another, it's bad news for America. Russian or Chinese 'sleeper' agents? An Iranian ship launching drones from offshore? Malicious hoaxers and pranksters? Black-budget projects from rogue groups within the government? The failure of anyone in authority to suggest any plausible explanation as they try to play down the seriousness of the situation in which a nation's airspace security is so evidently compromised, is a major concern for the public.

Meanwhile, social media is full of testimonies and footage of anomalous lights in the sky, and plenty of conspiratorial theories and warnings of doom. A strange, unreal atmosphere (especially on X).

"Because something is happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Jones"

A likely outcome once this is over is that like the mass sightings over Washington DC (1952), in the Hudson Valley (1983-84), Gulf Breeze (1987-88), Phoenix (1997), it will just fizzle out. A suitable explanation will be found (Doug and Dave, the British crop-circle makers; the Gulf Breeze UFO model found in an attic; military exercises; flares; top-secret high-altitude balloon experiments, sensor/equipment faults or mass hallucinations. The word will go out via trustworthy journalists, newspaper articles and TV items will appear, and in the end Johnny Sixpack and Eddie Punchclock will shrug their shoulders and say, "well that's been debunked then – it was swamp gas all along" before going back to their favourite show.

It's just that it doesn't feel like it right now.

[Update 15 December: BBC website summary of the story so far here.]

This time last year:
Impressions of Zielona Góra

This time two years ago:
Kraków to Jakubowizna in the snow

This time three years ago:
Frustration for the local wozidupek community

This time four years ago:
Small local milestones, Chynów station

This time five years ago:

Brexit: what next?
[UK economy's screwed – that's what]

This time eight years ago:
Kick out against change - or accept it?

This time nine years ago:
Warwick University alumni meet in Warsaw

This time ten years ago:
Pluses and minuses of PKP InterCity

This time 11 years ago:
When transportation breaks down

This time 16 years ago:
Full moon closest to Earth

Imminent? I don't think so.

Launched on 20 August, Luis Elizondo's Imminent is already No. 1 in Amazon's Astrophysics and Space Science category, and No. 2 across all book categories. Lue Elizondo is currently busy on the podcast and video circuit; for those aspiring to have a well-visited channel in the UFO category, he is a must-have guest. Or at least Imminent must feature as this week's lead topic.

The blurb: "Former head of the Pentagon program investigating UFOs—now known as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP)—reveals long-hidden truths with profound implications for not only national security but our understanding of the universe."

Is his story true? What's convincing about it, and what isn't? These are not the deluded ramblings of a New Ager wanting to sell some healing merch off the back of the book sales. Lue Elizondo, who came to the public's attention after the New York Times bombshell article in December 2017, is a serious man from the US national security establishment, as are Garry Nolan, Christopher Mellon, Hal Putoff, Eric Davies, Jay Stratton, James Lacatski, David Fravor, David Grusch.

Mr Elizondo's message to the US government is – "you owe it to humanity to come into the open about what you know of the presence of non-human intelligence among us". 

But could we cope with this knowledge? 

I think not. 

As I have been watching the interviews and reading the reviews, I have been thinking long and hard about the unintended consequences of mankind suddenly learning – officially, and in an unfalsifiable matter – that we are not the apex predator on this planet. That we are not the apex technological species on our planet. That non-human intelligences with superior technologies come and go as they wish. That they abduct humans. That they are interested in our nuclear programmes. That we have no clues as to their motives or purpose here.

Coincidentally, while watching the latest in the Rest is History series about the fate of the Plains Indians in 19th century America, the following quote by Dominic Sandbrook leapt out as relevant: "When Columbus landed on Hispaniola and the Spaniards started arriving, the Taíno – the indigenous people – were wiped out by disease and cruelty. There were descriptions of them just sitting down, staring into space, baffled that everything they had taken for granted, the rhythm of their life, their faith, their sense of what the world was, what the human condition was, had just been utterly destroyed." 

I could imagine that such a fate befalling mankind upon suddenly coming receiving indubitable proof that we are not alone. Ontological shock. Are the visitors benevolent – or are they an existential threat to our species? How would our spiritual views be affected by the knowledge that a higher intelligence has mastered, say, time travel, or faster-than-light travel, or inter-dimensional travel? That has harnessed energy sources beyond our understanding of physics? We would grasp the truth: we have been living in Plato's cave all along.

So – is there a disclosure agenda? Is there one faction within the Washington establishment pushing for UFO disclosure, competing with rival factions that want to continue the cover-up for as long as possible?

Acclimatisation – the steady drip-drip-drip of insinuation, rumours, ambiguous footage, pop-culture tropes – means that as a species, as a civilisation, we are more ready today to accept that we are not alone in the universe, not alone as an intelligent species on our planet that 100 years ago. UFOs-as-entertainment is here. The History Channel with its shows that leave viewers wondering whether there isn't a grain of truth among the bullshit.

I would suggest that it will still take many generations, and that Disclosure will happen within eight billion minds one by one. Each mind will be prepared, and changed, at their own pace, as quickly or as slowly as it takes for them to accept as much, or as little, as they can cope with.

So many questions. Mine focus on the spiritual, on the hierarchy of spiritual evolution and where our  consciousnesses, the souls of which our bodies are containers, lie on the continuum from zero to one. And where on that spiritual continuum those extraterrestrial – or extradimensional, or extratemporal – beings are to be found. My greatest fear would be to discover that we are more spiritually developed than these beings, even though they are greatly advanced technologically.

This time last year:
Dawn tourism – the sights without the crowds

This time two years ago:
Bike-ride to the past

This time four years ago:

Muscle memory

This time six years ago:
The journey there, and the journey back again

This time seven years ago:
Sandomierz - another outstanding Polish town to see

This time nine years ago:
Food hygiene and lies as Russian foreign policy tools

This time ten years ago:
Asphalt for ul. Poloneza (to Krasnowolska at least)

This time 11 years ago:
A welcome splash of colour to a drab car park 

This time 12 years ago:
To Hel and back in 36 hours

This time 14 years ago:
Honing the Art of the Written Word

This time 15 years ago:
Of castles, dams and brass bands

UFO/UAP disclosure - current state, end-2023

It has been a momentous year in terms of UFO disclosure.

But before getting into recent events, let me start by examining the 'social contagion' scenario, which I'll admit holds some water... 

I'll skip decades of UFO history and begin with Robert Bigelow. The Nevada-based entrepreneur made hundreds of millions of dollars developing a chain of motels before moving into aerospace defence contracting. Bigelow has a deep interest in UFOs, as he does in in consciousness and its survival after death. Now, Bigelow was friends with Nevada senator Harry Reid, who went on to be Senate Majority (the later Minority) Leader. Bigelow persuaded Reid (who died in December 2021) to set up the first (officially recognised) UFO programme within the Pentagon since 1969. This was the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), initiated in 2007 by Reid when he was Senate Majority Leader. With a $22m budget, the AATIP contract was awarded to Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies. It was led by Luis (Lu) Elizondo, its task was to collect and classify encounters with UFOs made by the US military in a systematic manner. A further important figure here is Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. It was Elizondo and Mellon who secured the now-famous 'Tic Tac' video from the US Navy, recorded in 2004, which was published by the New York Times six years ago today. The story, by Leslie Kean, Ralph Blumenthal and Helene Cooper, also acknowledged the existence and budget of AATIP. The US Navy did not deny nor attempt to explain away the videos.

So - up to the start of 2023, the social contagion scenario might have been sufficient to knock the whole current UFO story on the head (accepting that the Tic Tac footage was no more that sensor error, parallax or other forms of optical distortion). From this nexus of contagion centred on Bigelow, Elizondo and Mellon, others like Harvard astronomy professor, Avi Loeb, or Stanford immunology professor, Garry Nolan, had just got in with the wrong crowd. 

But so much has happened this year to have pushed matters closer towards some form of disclosure.

None of what has happened would have happened without legislation starting with the Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act passed in late 2021, which made it easier for whistleblowers to come forward to tell Congress what they know about UFOs (or, as the new term by then termed them, unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP) without fear of reprisal. On the basis of this whistleblower protection legislation, former intelligence officer and decorated serviceman, David Grusch, stepped forward in May of this year, to reveal to Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, not only that the UFO phenomenon was real, but that the US had possession of craft and beings of non-human origin. This led directly to the historic Congressional hearing on 26 July 2023 of the US House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, entitled Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety and Government Transparency. 

Grusch's testimony, under oath, is compelling. It is hard to undermine; he is clearly a highly intelligent, articulate man who knows what he is talking about. All the debunkers could say by way od rebuttal was "he showed us no proof". And he also knows where to draw the line in terms of national security.

The Congressional hearing, at which Grusch was accompanied by Commander David Fravor, who encountered the Tic Tac-shaped UFO in 2004, and Lt Ryan Graves, another US Navy fighter pilot whose squadron had many UFO sightings in 2014/15, led to the Schumer-Rounds amendment to the 2024 NDAA.

The draft amendment, proposed by Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer - who had taken on Harry Reid's mantle - had bipartisan support, being jointly proposed by Republican Mike Rounds, as well as Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand. Sixty-four pages long, the original version of the amendment would have forced private aerospace contractors, who are said to hold craft and 'biologics' of non-human origin, to hand them over to Congressional oversight. Full text of the original draft, passed by the Senate, here. If enacted, the legislation would have compelled the National Archives to collect all federal government records on UFO sightings and make them available to the public. It would have forced government agencies, such as the Department of Defense, the CIA, the Department of Energy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency etc, to submit their UAP data to an Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records Collection, and it would have given the government powers of eminent domain over non-human craft and biologics held by private industry.

The draft amendment was passed by the Senate before moving to the House of Representatives, where it was effectively neutered. Influential voices with links to major aerospace facilities, such as Representatives Mike Turner (Dayton, Ohio, home to the Wright-Patterson Airforce Base) and Mike Rogers (whose largest campaign contributor was Lockheed Martin), helped water down the language in the legislation. Currently awaiting President Biden's signature, the 2024 NDAA no longer calls for an independent, Senate-confirmed review board with subpoena powers to be set up, nor for a professional staff to search out records, nor for meaningful resources with which to carry out such as task. Also missing is the 'eminent domain' clause, which means that the US government could legally take control of such non-human craft and beings as are in the hands of the defence contractors.

If you feel the need to dive in deeper, the original version is here (64 pages), and the emasculated current version is here (21 pages).

But still - if there's nothing to see - if there's no such thing as non-human craft zipping around our atmosphere while being recorded by the US military's myriad sensors, why did congressmen linked to aerospace contractors fight so hard to water down the legislation's wording? If there are no craft of non-human origin sitting on those contractors' premises - what's their problem?

We come round again to the notion of ontological shock and mankind being emotionally, intellectually, and indeed, spiritually ready to accept the fact that we are not alone as intelligent species in our solar system. The process of acclimatising humanity is one that should be gradual. 

I mentioned Garry Nolan. He is a founder of the Sol Foundation, which held its first conference last month. A presentation was made here by Lt Col. Karl Nell, former deputy chief of staff for strategic planning at the U.S. Army Reserve, about how disclosure should be handled over a ten-year time scale. He presented a phase-by-phase plan as to how acceptance by science and society would be reached, avoiding 'catastrophic disclosure'. This, I think is crucial. By January 2035, it will all be out in the open. How will you cope? I for one will have questions of a deeply spiritual and philosophical nature...

This time eight years ago:
A tiny bit of pavement for Karczunkowska

This time 11 years ago:
Welcome to the machine, Mr Kaczyński

This time 13 years ago:
'F' is for 'Franco', not 'Fascist' [Prescient post!]

This time 15 years ago:
Christmas lights: all in the best possible taste

This time 16 years ago:
Letter from Russia

Farewell to the old, comfortable certainties

We are moving faster and faster towards disclosure. We are not alone. Either there's some monumental four-dimensional chess-style psyop going on, or a crazy idea's gone viral because of social contagion at the highest level, or we are indeed being visited (and has been for some long while) by beings that are not of our world.

Today's hearing of the US House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety and Government Transparency, will go down in history as a significant milestone along the road towards accepting that a technological non-human intelligence is here on Earth.

Those who have been paying attention to the UFO (or UAP to use modern parlance) story will already be familiar with the testimonies of the witnesses, David Grusch, David Fravor and Ryan Graves. All three military men with unimpeachable credentials. To hear them being cross-examined under oath by representatives, giving as authoritative answers as their security clearances allow, shows that this is as serious as it gets. The representatives posing the questions were well briefed on the subject, knowing what to ask. And it is clearly a bipartisan issue.

Today's hearing was entirely different to the May 2022 hearing of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence. The subcommittee heard from Scott Bray, Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence, and Ronald S. Moultrie, Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, who continued the old story that UFO sightings are usually results no more than airborne clutter or natural atmospheric phenomena, but that the Pentagon does investigate reports with possible national security implications. In other words - a 'nothingburger'.

But today's hearing was vastly different. The witnesses were not career bureaucrats trying to calm choppy waters. From the government-transparency point of view, the issue that irked representatives most was the one about secret projects to reverse-engineering downed non-human craft - the black budgets, the unaccounted spending going (presumably) to private-sector aerospace companies, for many decades.

David Grusch confirmed what he had already said to the media - that this has been going on since the 1940s, and that the US military not only recovered multiple craft, but also 'biologics' - the bodies of non-human entities found with the craft. And the craft have been placed in the hands of defence contractors, to avoid government oversight. The fact that he, a respected figure from the US military intelligence community, said this under oath to a Congressional hearing is huge. Of course, he was pressed for more details - he repeatedly answered that he could give representatives with the right access full details in SCIFs (sensitive compartmentalized information facilities). 

While disappointing those who naively expected everything to come out about where the craft are, which corporations are holding them and what the non-human 'biologics' look like, Grusch's responses were guarded. "I can't discuss that publicly, but I did provide information to the intel committees and to the Inspector-General."

As a whistle-blower, Grusch said that he had felt threatened by certain elements that presumably want the story kept secret, while former Navy pilots Fravor and Graves denied that they had ever felt any pressure not to go public with their testimonies, nor had they faced any sort of retribution for doing so.

There are many UFO enthusiasts who expect nothing more than President Biden addressing the peoples of the world alongside an alien against a backdrop of a giant flying saucer; this is not how it will happen. Today's Congressional hearing is part of a long and slow process; I don't want to sound conspiratorial, but I do believe that change must be transitioned gently. The Copernican revolution, which ended the geocentric paradigm, took over a century to gain general acceptance among astronomers. 

"If this has been going on for seventy-plus years, how come it hasn't leaked?"

It has leaked - many times - and the stories tend to corroborate. The strategy of ridicule - devised in the early 1950s - has been the best form of maintaining secrecy. Discrediting whistleblowers has also worked in the past, but David Grusch's impeccable credentials and flawless professional behaviour have made him a hard target for the secrecy group and debunkers alike.

"There are billions of camera-equipped smartphones around today - where are the photos?"

Someone uploads blurry, grainy, footage of a point of light moving about in the sky. It proves nothing. Besides, NHIs (non-human intelligences) that have the technology to accelerate from 0 to 10,000 mph and execute 90-degree turns at that speed, leaving no exhaust plume, and needing no wings or rotors presumably also have the technology to cloak. The eyewitness evidence of military pilots, backed up by multiple sensor platforms on jet fighters, early-warning planes, aircraft carriers and guided missile cruisers is hard to undermine.

So - here it is - the full hearing. Over two and half hours. Watched by half a million people within five hours.

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Gloucestershire, 1830 and Ohio, 1946: automatic writing

This time two years ago:
New phone, new laptop, Part II

This time three years ago:
Two images from my early childhood

This time four years ago:
How PKP PLK's planners should treat pedestrian station users.

This time five years ago:
Foreign exchange: don't get diddled!
[for the saps who pay £250 for €200 at the airport]

This time seven years ago:
Defining my Sublime Aesthetic

This time nine years ago:
Porth Ceiriad on the Llyn Peninsula

This time 11 years ago:
Jeziorki sunset, late July

This time 12 years ago:
Jeziorki sunset, after the storm

This time 15 years ago:
Rural suburbias - the ideal place to live?

Speak Through Me About Disclosure

I woke from a dream at quarter to six. I was in a grand Art Deco style government office - a cross between Acton's Town Hall and the Bromyard Avenue offices further down the Uxbridge Road. (Same location and style as the Town Hall building, but bigger.) A cavernous interior; dark, lit only with small uplighters along the walls, a zigzag patterned carpet on the floor. At the top of the carpeted staircase, a landing; on the landing a desk, Civil Service-style. Polished wood. A tall silver-haired man sits behind it. Facing him on the other side a family - mum, dad and three small kids. They are freaking out. The civil servant has heard it all before. It's his job to explain. In simple terms. To act as a mentor. The smallest child is crying. The father is getting angry. The civil servant is patiently telling the family something from an approved script. There are more people on the staircase, queuing in a state of unease. It's evening; the office will soon shut. People want to know.

This is a few days after Disclosure. The world has learnt that flying saucers are real. Aliens are real. They are here. They have spoken. We have proof. Everything has changed. Governments are trying to cope. Media messaging is not enough; people need to hear the new truth live, from a person in authority - not a media personality; and face to face, not via a screen or speaker. So these consultation points have been set up; if you want to talk to someone from government and ask them to explain it to you, come along. Come one, come all.

Below left: originally the Ministry of Pensions building, Bromyard Avenue, Acton, London W3. Below right: originally Acton Town Hall, Acton. Both buildings completed in the 1920s; both buildings now converted into flats.

It's quarter to six, too early to rise, so I drift back to sleep, but have my notebook and pen by my bedside. I am tuning in; I am ready to channel.

"To let your readers know that you are channelling, use the { curly brackets } to denote that this is a spontaneously channelled message, and not a construct of your own thinking."

"Will do."

And so...

{ Science has failed to make meaningful progress with our technology in the eight decades since Homo sapiens came across it. The planet is now in danger of overheating because of your greenhouse gas emissions. This is not good for us, not good for you, not good for the planet. You have not made use of the technology that could have transitioned your society and your economy away from fossil fuel. The greed of a few, the unwillingness to change paradigms, yes. Torpid resistance. But the biggest error you made was to stovepipe the knowledge. Keep it in silos, away from your greatest minds. Non-terrestrial physics requires a higher level of understanding. Need-to-know secrecy has compartmentalised the science. You won't make the required breakthrough in time. You need a prompt nudge. Now! }

I write this down, and drift off. Suddenly:

{ James Clerk Maxwell. Rivendell. }

WHAT?!? James Clerk Maxwell (below) - OK, unifying the electromagnetic forces back in the 1860s... but Tolkien's Rivendell? Heroic quest's starting point? Place of sanctuary? No further clues... I drift off again and then...

{ You must break out of the chrysalis that is the human ego; the caterpillar inches along the ground - but the butterfly can flutter high above! It is the human ego that holds H. sapiens back. Assign a hypothesis a day until your science has cracked it. Donald Hoffman is close... spacetime is not fundamental, consciousness is. Science will not progress until it accepts the primacy of consciousness over matter. }

I am reminded of the time two years ago when I asked for the secret of nuclear fusion and was told, immediately, { Have a look at anomalous data from experiments conducted in March 1970 }. This came back to me this morning, along with an old one-liner from American stand-up comedian Stephen Wright (when told he was wearing odd socks): "I don't judge socks by their colour, but by their thickness."

And here it starts getting weird: { Make it a misery to measure, like with Fentanyl. When he saw UFOs from the flowing position. The link between nuclear fusion and consciousness. Number six is non-recitive. } The channelling ceased; I fell asleep, and woke up at quarter past nine!

This time last year:
Drinking on the move

This time five years ago:
Grodzisk Mazowiecki revisited

This time six years ago:
S7 extension - last summer of quiet (not true, as it happened!)

This time seven years ago:
Getting out of Mordor

This time 13 years ago:
Ćwilin, conquered

This time 14 years ago:
Sunset across the tracks, Nowa Iwiczna

This time 15 years ago:
The storm the forecasters missed

This time 16 years ago:
Peacocks in the Park

We Are Not Alone: ontological shocks are due

Those of you following the UAP disclosure process as it unfolds will be aware that there are currently several (three? four?) whistleblowers ready to testify under oath to the US Congress in open (and closed) hearings about recovered non-human craft. This is now serious shit - not crazy tales told by the mentally unstable. On US news media, from Politico to The Hill, from News Nation to CNBC, the buzz is right there - presenters no longer snigger and chuckle as they utter the word 'alien'.

Craft? How many? Twelve? Fifteen? It's clear from the rumours around Washington that the UAP issue is being taken seriously by American legislators and the US media. Four separate pieces of legislation have been passed since 2020 ensuring protection for whistleblowers coming forward to Congress with details of unacknowledged special-access programmes concerning reverse engineered off-world technology. Both the National Defense Appropriation Act for 2024, and Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 are mandating those who know about such programmes to come forward within 60 days.

From the latter:

(d) Notification And Reporting.—Any person currently or formerly under contract with the Federal Government that has in their possession material or information provided by or derived from the Federal Government relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena that formerly or currently is protected by any form of special access or restricted access shall—

(1) not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, notify the Director of such possession; and

(2) not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, make available to the Director for assessment, analysis, and inspection—

(A) all such material and information; and

(B) a comprehensive list of all non-earth origin or exotic unidentified anomalous phenomena material.

Wow. This is not tin-foil-hat-wearing crank conspiracy - this is the text of US legislation currently before Congress. 

Humanity is much closer than ever before to an admission that non-human intelligence is real, and that Homo sapiens is not the only technologically advanced species on this planet.

Are we ready for it? Will we be able to cope with the ontological shock?

Alien craft? Alien bodies? Alien abductions? Just imagine that this is real. Roll it around in your mind. What are you feeling?

Science won't be prepared for it. Possession by governments of alien craft - alien technology - perhaps even alien biology - would mean our scientists having to dismantle their current understanding of how the physical world functions, from subatomic particles to far-flung galaxies; the nature of time; spatial dimensions; and the history of our planet, our Cosmos and our species. Faster-than-light travel? Intergalactic travel? Time travel? Inter-dimensional travel? Anti-gravity technology?

The social implications of this are huge. In our post-truth world, we won't know what or whom to believe. Until one consistent narrative is formed, presented and generally accepted, all forms of lunacy can be taken as honest coinage. It may be that the narratives differ from country to country. From communist China to religious India, from credulous Russia to down-to-earth Australia. How long before we are all following the same story?

There's so much to ask.

How many forms of non-human intelligence share our planet with us? 

Where are they? Why do we only very rarely see any traces of them?

Are they benign, malevolent or neutral? What are their long-term plans?

What technology of theirs does mankind possess - and what have we managed to reverse-engineer?  What science do they know that we don't? How does that knowledge impact the current state of cosmology? How does this affect our human status hierarchy? How will it affect mental health?

Is there a metaphysical realm - consciousness (the soul) - life after death? The implications of learning 100% that there is would be a huge boost to religions, but they would have to radically alter their theologies to adapt. But - I would argue - it is easier to alter a theology than it would be to abandon hardcore materialism and adopt a metaphysical worldview that can encompass, for example, non-local consciousness or telepathy.

"Sit down and listen. Everything you've been taught is wrong. Here's the new paradigm. We are not alone. Several non-human species are also on this planet; this has been known for many decades, but humanity had been judged unprepared for the news. Who are they? Their biology is different. That's all I can say at this time. Their understanding of physics is way beyond ours.  What do they want from us? What is our ultimate fate as a species? We don't know." [Or we do know, but can't tell you. Those who believed us when we said there are no such things as flying saucers, so you'll believe this too.]

Local craft brewery, Browar Perun from Budzyszyn (6km away) has brewed an American Pale Ale for the occasion - First Contact.

This time last year:

Consciousness, Space and Time

This time last year:
Midsummer photo catch-up

This time three years ago:
Stormy high summer

This time four years ago:

The opening of the Raffles/Europejski hotel, Warsaw

This time seven years ago:
The ballad of Heniek and Ziutek

This time eight years ago:
Yorkshire's yellow bicycles

This time 13 years ago:
Horse-drawn in the Tatras

This time 14 years ago:
Rain, wind and fire

This time 15 years ago:
The Road beckons

A date for the history books

The road to UAP disclosure is long (I've said that it will take humanity 300 years to fully acclimatise to the fact that non-human intelligences are on our planet, and we're only some 80 years into the journey). Getting to grips with the notion that Homo sapiens isn't the most technologically advanced species upon our Planet Earth will not be easy, especially for the scientific community.

Yesterday's revelation by David Charles Grusch marked a massive milestone. In the clip below, he is being interviewed by Ross Coulthart for NewsNation, which broke the story on the same day as the Leslie Kean/Ralph Blumenthal piece for the Debrief. [Update October 2023: This is not the original clip, which has since been taken down, but a report about the interview aired later.]

Grusch's decision to step forward and blow the whistle is the direct consequence of the amendment to the U.S. National Defense Authorization Act 2022, which protects would-be UAP whistleblowers from reprisals. This stems from pressure from American citizens on their congressional representatives, leading to pressure from Congress on the machinery of power. From the 2017 disclosure of the US Navy aerial footage of the so-called 'Tic Tac' UFO in the New York Times, to  journey towards UAP disclosure has accelerated in recent years. It's been a long time coming, but the atmosphere around Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena today is quite different today than it was back in the 1990s or 1960s. With credible people like Lue Elizondo, Christopher Mellon, Garry Nolan on board and speaking out - and slightly more sceptical but open-minded scientists like Avi Loeb, Robin Hanson or Eric Weinstein - this is no longer a fringe topic attracting loopy conspiracy theorists. The 'pseudoscience' tag cannot be applied to any of the above names.

So... imagine yourself in a hangar on a US Air Force base (reputedly Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio, or Area 51 in Nevada), in the presence of an object which, on your close inspection, has evidently not been made by human beings. But has it come from another solar system? Another galaxy? Another time? Another dimension? Serious commentators refuse to speculate. So no one's talking about 'extraterrestrials' - the term is 'non-human intelligences'.

It is clear from analysis of sightings of anomalous phenomena over the years that whilst the vast majority (95%? 98%?) can be explained away, there remain those which cannot be dismissed as Venus low in the sky, a distant lighthouse, a Bart Simpson balloon or swamp gas - those which are more than mere missightings or fabrications. UFO sightings work like the Drake Equation; you start with a huge number of reports, and boil down from them just a tiny number of cases that stubbornly defy explanation. Over time, a consistent picture builds up from eye witness accounts, corroborated sometimes by sensor data (civilian or military radars, cameras etc). 

What we have here is a US intelligence-community insider corroborating rumours that have been circulating since WW2.

Those who've followed the UFO story (as I have since childhood, when my father borrowed a few flying saucer books for me from Ealing Public Libraries in the 1960s), will be familiar with everything David Grusch says. For those new to UFO lore, this is all incredible, dismissible.

For those who have followed the story - consider this analogy. You are a member of the jury. You have been on this case, on and off, for 30+ years. You've sat through countless witness testimonies, some clearly crackpots, others telling very credible stories. You've been asked to consider vast amounts of evidence, mostly in writing, some on video. The basic story is falling into place. Some crazy hypotheses are being re-examined; some rejected out of hand; others are slowly becoming accepted by fellow jury members. There's still no smoking gun, but the foreman of the jury asks you to consider the balance of evidence - and on that basis - what do you say?

Applying Occam's Razor, what else could it be? A disinfo/PsyOps project aimed primarily at China, to let the Chinese Communist Party wonder about how much alien tech the US and its private-sector defence contractors could have reverse-engineered since the alleged UFO crashes at Trinity (1945) and Roswell (1947)? A message to Putin and friends not to f*ck around?

I suspect it will be easier for spiritually inclined people to readjust to a new paradigm in which we are not alone in the universe. I have felt this for decades, so it's not the great ontological shock it will be to scientists whose neat Standard Model will start to unravel at the seams. Science is set to have some of its fundamental beliefs shaken to the core.

This time two years ago:
WinterCity/SummerCountry

This time three years ago:
Homage to Americana

This time four years ago:
This land is my land

This time eight years ago:

The day, seized.

This time 11 years ago:
Classic British cars for British week

This time 12 years ago:
Cara al Sol - a short story

This time 13 years ago:
Pumping out the floodwater

This time 14 years ago:
To Góra Kalwaria and beyond

This time 15 years ago:
Developments in Warsaw's exurbs

We are all Sentinelese – Lent 2023: Day 24

North Sentinel Island is part of the Andaman archipelago, belonging to India, in the Bay of Bengal. The island is home to the Sentinelese, an indigenous people strictly isolated from the rest of humanity. They are protected by Indian law, and any approach to the island closer than five nautical miles (9km) is prohibited. This is to protect the tribal community (estimated to be up to 400 strong) from contact with infectious diseases. The area is patrolled by the Indian Navy, which maintains the strict no-contact policy with threat of force.

The Sentinelese have attacked vessels that stray too close to the shore with arrows, as well as firing them at low-flying helicopters. In 2018 an American Christian missionary, John Allen Chau, was killed by the islanders after bribing local fishermen to take him there. Responding to Chau's death, the Indian government implemented even stricter regulations to protect the isolation of the Sentinelese and prevent any further attempts at contact. The Indian government has made it clear that the Sentinelese people should be left alone and that any attempts to make contact with them are illegal.

I mention the Sentinelese in the context of alien life in our galaxy and Fermi's Paradox. This is the 'zoo hypothesis', which states that alien life intentionally avoids contact with humans to allow for our natural evolution and sociocultural development, and avoiding interplanetary contamination. This is the most widely posited theory explaining the apparent absence of extraterrestrial life on Earth, despite its mathematical likelihood (see the Drake Equation).

The North Sentinel Island metaphor is useful; casting ourselves – a technologically advanced civilisation thousands of years ahead of this indigenous tribe – in the role of interstellar (or perhaps interdimensional or time-travelling) non-human intelligence. Flip this on its head and you see it from the aliens' point of view.

Despite our technological superiority – are we qualitatively better than the Sentinelese? We can only assume that their lives are shorter, less comfortable and more brutish than ours – but are material luxuries the only things that count in our human lives? It would be fascinating to learn about Sentinelese spiritual beliefs and practices; how they see the world around them – those white lines drawn high above them by winged craft in the blue sky, the distant, giant ships at sea, the stars in the heavens at night. 

But we won't – and it's for their good. 

Contact with more-advanced and less-advanced peoples does not end well for the latter.

The most benign form of contact with the Sentinelese that I can imagine would entail not so much technology transfer, but transfer of best practices suited to their current technological level; improved hygiene using nothing more than what they have to hand, improved agricultural and animal-husbandry practices, improved social interaction based on the notion of win-win and improving trust (assuming they don't have this already). But not flooding them with consumer goods and providing them with electricity and household goods. Such contact would require specific protocols to be deployed, standard procedures for ensuring no unintended long-term harm. Certainly spreading the word of Jesus Christ, or any other theological or ideological construct would not be allowed.

Now, returning to any advanced space-faring civilisation that might view us as we view the Sentinelese, I consider it highly likely that some form of 'no-contact' policy is in place with regards our species.

The only form of contact that I could posit would be in the form of consciousness-to-consciousness communication, non-physical – indeed metaphysical – which would grow in frequency, regularity and intensity over centuries or indeed millennia. All the while, Homo sapiens would develop technologically and spiritually, evolving away from a bipedal mammal prone to anger and territorial warfare towards a more angelic being.

Lent 2022: Day 24
Memory, identity and reincarnation

Lent 2021: Day 24
Reconciling science and spirituality

Lent 2020: Day 24
Refutation (II)

The Spirituality of Cosmic Life - Lent 2023: Day 23

Given the vastness of the Universe - not just our own galaxy, the Milky Way, but across all galaxies to the furthest fringes of what we can observe - there simply must be life.

Yet all we know for certain is that the Big Bang, the origin of all we see in the night sky, happened 13.8 billion years ago, and that life has emerged here on our planet. 

In our feeble attempts to define 'God', a supernatural or metaphysical reason and purpose for Everything, we must acknowledge that were the Universe more than just a random thing that exists, God must indeed be universal. Like the laws of physics - present in the same way across the Cosmos.

Our understanding of the fringes of the observable universe are filtered by the fact that we're seeing how it looked billions of years ago, before our solar system was even born. So the development of sentient life, and then civilisations, outside our own galaxy is not something we can observe  in anything like real time. And remember, the Milky Way is but one of around 200 billion galaxies that we can observe.

The panpsychists' notion of consciousness connecting all matter requires it to act superluminally (faster than the speed of light) - indeed supercausally. This requires a leap of faith, abandoning the accepted limit that nothing with rest mass can be accelerated to the speed of light, with massless photons being the only particles capable of travel at that speed. Accelerating matter to speeds approaching those of light requires increasing amounts of energy that would approach infinity. 

But the panpsychist's consciousness is by its nature massless, like a proton or (unconfirmed) graviton. That would match my intuition. A universal substrate upon which, through which, matter moves, interacting with it. As I say, this is nothing more than a hunch, but an idea I'd like to see taken further.

Assuming that consciousness is universal, massless and superluminal and indeed supercausal, it must affect all sentient life on whatever planet of whatever star system of whatever galaxy it finds itself. And indeed, on interstellar (or interdimensional or intertemporal) craft.

Can interstellar craft travel faster than light? Well, there is the Alcubierre drive, a theoretical idea in which space is warped (compressed ahead of the craft, expanded behind it). Objects can't accelerate to lightspeed within normal spacetime so the Alcubierre drive shifts space around an object so that it arrives at its destination more quickly than light would in normal space, without breaking any physical laws. This would of course break the laws of causality; the craft would arrive at its destination before it had even departed. Literature about UFOs frequently mentions propulsion systems based on electrogravitics or anti-gravity, or other ideas from science fiction. 

But even if superluminal speeds were the ultimate barrier, any civilisation that was, say, a billion years advanced compared to us, has still had time to explore the galaxy using robotic self-replicating probes (as posited by John von Neumann as early as 1948) travelling at a small fraction of lightspeed. These ought to be everywhere by now - except they're not - or we've not seen them. There are many explanations to the Fermi Paradox (given how much life there should be out there - where is everybody?); two possibilities are the Zoo Hypothesis ('don't interfere with creatures less evolved than you') and the Shadow Biosphere Hypothesis (they are here, but we humans don't see them).

So - whether aliens are here or not, there is a vastly more likelihood that intelligent life exists across the Cosmos; the next question is - how does that life refer to the question of spirituality?

If could ask an alien one question, it would be regarding its worldview - ultimately reductionist-materialist, or spiritual? Does all sentient life in the Universe share one God - one reason, one purpose?

[Today marks the halfway point of Lent.]

Lent 2022: Day 23
Matter and materialism

Lent 2021: Day 23
Near-death experiences and the Afterlife

Lent 2020: Day 23
Refutation I

God, Aliens and the Unfolding Universe - Lent 2023: Day 22

These are just my half-baked thoughts on the subject. The vastness of our observable Universe - the sheer number of stars and exoplanets - and the relative youth of our industrial civilisation, lead me to believe that there are many advanced civilisation in our corner of the galaxy, and that some at least have visited us. Or that there are other dimensions of time and/or of space, from which aliens visit.

Science mocks such assertions (less so today than in the past); the consensus will state that we are alone on our planet.For many with an interest in the subject, it is clear that it's not something that can be brushed off or laughed at. The sheer volume of eyewitness accounts over the past 80 years, from all over the world, suggests that there's something going on, but we don't know what it is.

Individual cases, individual witnesses, can be debunked, ignored or derided. But when so many testimonies exist, it's hard to dismiss it all. [If you are interested, watching films on the Eyes on Cinema YouTube channel is required viewing. These span many years and many countries, and what grabs me is the consistency of the reports, the seriousness and credibility of the witness, who include police officers and pilots.]

Over the decades, saucer-shaped and cigar-shaped craft have given way to black triangles and glowing orbs; in the small percentage of cases where aliens are observed, they are either small grey beings with large heads or tall humanoids. 

Documents purportedly from the US government that have surfaced as a result of the Freedom of Information Act suggest retrieved alien craft and unsuccessful attempt to reengineer the technology, which seems to be guided by consciousness, with propulsion systems that our physics cannot fathom. And most worrying are the testimonies of those who claim to have been abducted by aliens and subject to invasive medical procedures.

I've never seen one, so I don't wish to speculate, but looking at well-documented cases going back decades - the ones that still bear up to scrutiny and haven't been rejected out of hand as hoaxes or misidentifications - it's clear that this phenomenon should be taken seriously.

Personally, I don't think that we as a society, as a species, are ready for the existential shock of learning that we are being visited, so I can understand why governments are not keen to let the cat out of the bag. Rather, I believe that we are being slowly - over generations - being acclimatised to the notion; in the words of Dark Skies creator and UFO podcast host Bryce Zabel, disclosure in the form of a slow dissolve rather than a jump-cut. No rush.

The ontological repercussions of knowing (not just speculating) that advanced beings from another world are here with us would be shocking to science, technology, business, society and religions.

If such beings exist - would they have a God? How much more Godlike would they be than us - not just in their ability to do things beyond our understanding of physics - but in how they see the Cosmos, its past and its future.

Earthly religions would cope in different ways - fundamentally, the split would go within faiths rather than between them. Anyone who believed in the literal word of their religion's holy book would have huge problems in dealing with this new reality. Those who saw their scriptures as a metaphor, something that needs interpreting and adapting to our modern reality might find it easier. Those who see religions in a metaphysical sense, seeing their highest common factors, will cope best.

I intend to delve further into this topic during this, the fourth week of Lent, in an attempt to define a Supreme Purpose in the Universe - one that would apply to all forms of sentience across the Cosmos.

More ufological spirituality tomorrow!

Lent 2022: Day 22
The Good Lord and the Environment

Lent 2021: Day 22
Muscle Memory, Mindfulness and Metaphysics

Lent 2020: Day 22
Repeatable Metaphysical Experiences

Disclosure day tomorrow?

The United States National Defense Authorization Act, passed late last year, stipulates that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence presents a report to Congress no later than October 31, 2022, about what the ODNI has learned about unidentified aerial phenomena. Previously known as unidentified flying objects, these terms (UAP and UFO) were created by the military to obfuscate the popularly used phrase 'flying saucer' in common use around the world.

So - tomorrow's the day. What will we learn? There are many scenarios. One is that the day will come and go without any announcement. [If there is one, it will appear on this site.] After all, the New York Times ran a story on Friday that 'many military UFO reports' are just aerial trash, foreign reconnaissance drones, or misidentifications of prosaic phenomena. Fair enough. Many - but all? We'd be worried if an unfriendly foreign power had drones that could fly at hypersonic speeds without visible means of propulsion, silently, without leaving vapour trails, do 90-degree turns imposing G-forces that would break apart any known earthly craft, and move effortlessly from space through air and into water. And cloak themselves effectively.

The New York Times story is not the ODNI's report that ufologists are waiting for. This seems to be a planted piece (it's not behind a paywall) that has a deeper purpose - the timing is not accidental. We shall see tomorrow if there will be some new disclosure coming from the US Government - though I doubt that there will be much. It's likely that there will be a few more revelations, maybe a video or two, some photos of craft of unknown origin, some hints of 'other worldly provenance' but nothing more.

The process of 'acclimation' - being accustomed, adapted or hardened to some new environment - will take decades longer. Current conditions - Russia's war in Ukraine, accelerating climate change, economic and political turmoil around the world - might make a bolder step toward disclosure a useful psy-ops play on the part of the US Government...

And so another scenario - a big announcement. Yes, there are craft, we have no idea where they come from, who pilots them, why they are here or what they want. But they have been reported by US military since the 1940s, and recorded on film, on radar and on multiple digital sensor platforms. The bigger one would be the above, plus "and we have in our possession crashed craft that we have unsuccessfully being trying to reverse engineer." The long-standing stories about the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico, would be acknowledged as true.

Being told from no less an authority than the US Government that mankind is not the only sentient and technological species of life form on this planet has the potential to freak people out. Are they friendly? Do they abduct humans? If so, why? Is there one species of alien on our planet or several? The 'who they are, why they are here, what they want - and how they got here' questions will not go away. Science, in particular will be keen to learn about anti-gravitic propulsion, zero-point energy, superluminal interstellar travel or indeed interdimensional travel. Religions will be keen to learn how their theology fits into a new understanding of the cosmos necessary to accommodate non-human technological sentience.

But hang on a second. Step back and apply Occam's Razor.

Individual cases of UFO sightings can be debunked, one by one, with rational explanations that sound way more plausible than the idea of craft piloted by intelligent beings from other worlds. But taken en mass, as a body of phenomena that has occurred worldwide over the past 80 years, phenomena displaying a large degree of commonality as to the characteristics of the craft - and in some cases their occupants - is impossible to dismiss lightly. When you hear hundreds of testimonies of eye witnesses speaking plausibly about what they have experienced, you begin to see the UFO issue differently. What do make of this, for example? Warminster, Wiltshire, 1965...

Are we reaching a tipping point in human history in which a new paradigm will open to us? We shall find out tomorrow. Personally - I don't think we'll get there tomorrow. Maybe a few new bits of information, but no bombshell. More tomorrow.

UPDATE 31 OCTOBER.

Here's the news; the Daily Mail runs this exclusive. A classified report was delivered to Congress. Rumours are that a redacted version will appear later this week.

This time last year:
Coping with time change (go to bed an hour earlier!)

This time two years ago:
A sustainable food system for rural Poland

This time three years ago:
Sifting through a life

This time five years ago:
Throwing It All Away

This time six| years ago:
Hammer of Darkness falls on us again

This time seven years ago:
The working week with the clocks gone back

This time nine years:
Slowly on the mend after calf injury

This time ten years ago:
Thorunium the Gothick

This time 11 years ago:
Łódź Widzew or Widź Łódzew 

This time 13 years ago:
A touch of frost in the garden

'High-functioning savants', UFOs and psychic abilities

An increasing number of scientists are prepared to speak openly about the UFO phenomenon, saying that it's worthy of serious scientific inquiry. "There is something unexplainable out there, we need more data" is now becoming the usual response, rather than "it's just a handful of maladjusted attention-seekers - of course there are no visitors from other worlds." Mockery of the subject as 'flaky woo-woo' is evaporating as more and more big names make appearances on the social media to posit their latest theories. The new name, 'unidentified aerial phenomena' (UAP) seems to draw an official line under the terms 'UFO' and 'flying saucers' - UAP we can talk about.

One scientist who has been at the forefront of academic UAP research for some while is immunologist Garry P. Nolan, professor of pathology at Stanford - an academic with a rock-solid track record of published research, patented technology and commercial start-ups. Following his debunking of the Atacama skeleton in 2018, Prof Nolan was approached by the CIA to look at cases of military personnel who had claimed to have seen flying saucers. 

He has since helped investigate the brains of around 100 patients, mostly defence or government personnel or aerospace industry employees "related to supposed interactions with an anomalous craft". The majority have had their brains scanned with an fMRI scanner. Preliminary findings suggested that the basal ganglia within numerous individuals in the group had been somehow "damaged". Subsequent inquiry, however, showed what they first took to be "damage" was actually an "over-connection of neurons between the head of the caudate and the putamen," disproportionate in this cohort compared to the general population." The role of the caudate is linked to intelligence and planning. For at least multiple individuals of this subset, this brain characteristic was something that the people were born with. And indeed, further research showed family links - a clear genetic component. And there is also, says Prof Nolan, a tendency for those with this characteristic to marry and breed with others who have it.

I have watched and read several interviews with Prof Nolan, who, along with his collaborator at the CIA, Dr Kit Green, consider members of this group to be 'high-functioning savants' - words traditionally associated with autism spectrum disorder. A trait of savantism is known as RRBI - restricted, repetitive behaviours and interests - an intense focus on a narrow range of interests, which, paradoxically is essential in science (Einstein, Newton and many other geniuses showed elements of it).

So now we come to the crunch question: are close encounters with UAP linked to a specific configuration of the brain seen only in few people? Or are these people - because their brains are physically different to those of the rest of the population - more prone to imagine such encounters? People who feel themselves to be in some way special, or different, to the majority of humans? ['Starseeds' is one term I've come across in the social media]

The family links make it more interesting. A defence contractor, for instance, who claims to have seen three glowing orbs close-up, has the tell-tale fMRI signature. But then... so does his father! This would tend to make sceptics say - "Aha - I told you so. I bet the father never saw those glowing orbs." Hard to refute, as is the observation that many people who report UFO sightings have been interested in the subject since childhood, and often have a savant-like knowledge of cases, places, dates and people involved. A link between an attraction to science fiction as a genre and interest in UFOs is quite clear.

The genetic aspect serves to intrigue me further - bolder hypotheses (not necessarily propounded by Prof Nolan), posit that only certain people have 'mystical visions', 'supernatural powers' or 'psychic abilities', and that these powers are the products of anomalies within the brain. A genetic element to this is fascinating too, suggesting evolutionary processes. Spiritual evolution or alien-human hybridisation?

Neuroscience and genetics, however, are both in their infancy and you can't (yet) google any papers into the connection between anomalous connections within the brain and claimed paranormal abilities. However, the Pentagon is now obliged (as of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act) to provide unclassified annual reports to Congress and classified semi-annual briefings on UAP incidents, specifically mentioning any health-related effects - which suggests that research is on its way.

As though to underline my opening point - here's Dr Robin Hanson (Oxford University, DARPA, Lockheed, NASA - an intellectual heavyweight) in conversation today with Lex Fridman, about UFO sightings. Part of a rolling programme of managed dissemination, to quote former CIA officer John Ramirez?

This time last year:
A proud moment

This time two years ago
Rail progress - Krężel to Chynów

This time eight years ago:

Aberdeen, dour city

This time ten years ago:
Fans fly in for the football

This time 11 years ago:
Cara al Sol - part II

This time 12 years ago:
Still struggling with the floodwaters

This time 13 years ago:
European elections - and I buy used D40

The time 14 years ago:
To the Vistula, by bike

This time 15 years ago:
Poppy profusion