Jefferson Airplane - Up Against The Wall... (1970 private press) USA 

great psychedelic acid rock/folk

A GENERATION OF BOOMERS 

ARE REVOLUTIONARIES!

PREDATING THEIR REVOLUTIONARY

OFFSPRINGS IN GEN X,?,Z AND MILLENIALS

•May 29, 2021



Veterans Of The Psych Wars

https://wherethebuffaloroam1968.blogs... Recorded live in Avalon ballroom, some sources sais that is 1969-xx-xx but i belive more sources that sais which is from feb-april 1970 Vinyl Rip quality bootleg: 8,8 VG very good, not necesary to repaired but i added some EQ, album was pressed on vinyl as a private press in 1970 and this video is from the vinyl rip The cover of the original bootleg is very good and the Jeffersons are one of the most vindictive bands of the time as well as Thomas Jefferson a revolutionary president, but today's Jefferson airplane has become the same as Pink Floyd and other bands of the style in the actual era that have sided with the establishment and using their music to promote reptilians electoral campaigns, regards to Grace Slick

 

We can be together

 Volunteers 

Eskimo blue day

 Mexico 

Somebody to love

Wooden ships 

Plastic fantastic lover

Emergency 

The ballad of you and me and Pooneil

 Taken from two PBS television specials: Tracks A1,A2,A4-B3 from "Go Ride The Music" recorded on April 2, 1970 at Wally Heider Studio, San Francisco; Tracks A3,B4 from "A Night At Family Dog" recorded on February 4, 1970 at the Family Dog At The Great Highway, San Francisco

 Family Dog are the company which promotes most of the Avalon acts background effects & footages by this channel Enlist psychedelic marines, j0inT mental navy 

FAIR USE "Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use." I am not own the rights to this album, I use it only for promitional-cultural use , if the video was a copyright problem I will immediately delete it

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Jefferson Airplane
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At The Family Dog
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U.N. promotes human rights of elderly with World Elder Abuse Awareness Day

By Kyle Barnett


The United Nations is advocating for the elderly through World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. File Photo by Debbie Hill/UPI | License Photo

June 14 (UPI) -- The United Nations has declared June 15 World Elder Abuse Awareness Day.

The human rights wing of the oversight organization highlighted elderly as being more susceptible to neglect, physical and psychological abuse, as well as more likely to be openly mocked.

The message of newly named independent U.N. expert Claudia Mahler is clear -- not to allow any abuse of the human rights of the elderly.

"Policies based on ageist attitudes cannot be tolerated, and I urge states to monitor and implement measures to avoid ageist approaches," Mahler said in a press release. "Older persons need to have access to accountability mechanisms that provide for remedies and redress when their human rights are violated."

Mahler called on all governments, including the international community, to take action to protect the elderly from psychological and physical abuse.

An uptick in online abuse and discrimination toward the baby boomer generation in particular has been noted.

"Derogatory comments in the media are a direct attack against the dignity of older persons," Mahler said. "The 'boomer remover' hashtag attached to coronavirus posts and media articles calling for older persons to sacrifice themselves to save the economy or to safeguard younger generations by exposing themselves to the virus are clearly reflections of bias against older persons."

The call for proper treatment comes after COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on the elderly community.

The pandemic endangered not only the lives of the elderly, but also their access to medical care and even their pensions.

Around two-thirds of those age 70 and older have at least one underlying condition that puts them at great risk of illness or death from COVID-19.

"While older persons have become more visible in the COVID-19 outbreak, their voices, opinions and concerns remain unheard. Verbal and derogatory online abuse have profound negative effects on the human rights of older persons," Mahler said.

It is predicted that from 2019 to 2030 the number of people 60 and older will grow by 38%, from 1 billion to 1.4 billion.

"Older people have the same rights to life and health as everyone else. Difficult decisions around life-saving medical care must respect the human rights and dignity of all," U.N. chief António Guterres said.

The U.N. is advocating for the elderly to enjoy the same rights and the same medical care.

"No person, young or old, is expendable," Guterres said.

Catholic order that staffed Kamloops residential school refuses to share records families seek

Angela Sterritt, Jennifer Wilson 

CBC NEWS

© Submitted by Bronwyn Shoush Seven of Bronwyn Shoush's aunts and uncles lay in residential school graves in Mission, B.C. For decades she's been searching for answers about how exactly they died.

The order of nuns that taught at the former Kamloops residential school, and others in B.C., continues to withhold important documents that could help tell the story of how Indigenous children died at the schools over the last 150 years.

The Sisters of St. Ann has never approved the release of relevant government records — documents that could relate to deaths at the schools — according to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and the religious order.

"It might be because there were things that weren't relevant to the school system or names of those students, as well as other people like visitors," said Sister Marie Zarowny, a St. Ann spokesperson.

She also said the sisters have provided some documents to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission about the residential school system, but is unwilling to share some records outlining internal workings of the congregation, as well as what is called the school "narrative."

"What is in those documents, why can't I have access to them?" said Bronwyn Shoush, whose father attended St. Mary's residential school in Mission, B.C.

Like Kamloops, it was also staffed by the Sisters of St. Ann and administered by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

Seven of her father's nine siblings lay buried in the residential school cemetery. The children were all in marked graves that have since fallen into disrepair, she says. Yet she knows very little about how they came to die at school. Her father told her one sibling was killed in what he was told was an accident — falling on a pitchfork. Another died suddenly and others from Illness, but Shoush has few other details.

The National Student Memorial Register lists 21 children as having died at St. Mary's, but to add to the confusion, none of her aunts or uncles are named.

"The longer it's locked up and held or destroyed or held in secret, the more you're likely to be very suspicious," Shoush said.

It also goes against the Truth and Reconciliation mandate as set up by the Indian Residential School Settlement agreement.

"This is a concern and remains inconsistent with the actions of the vast majority of other signatories to the Settlement Agreement," reads a statement from Stephanie Scott, executive director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
'Turn over these records immediately"

The Royal B.C. Museum that houses St. Ann's private archival collection has appealed to the nuns to "provide better accessibility of these records to the public — but particularly to Indigenous communities whose members attended residential schools."


Video: Remembering life in the Kamloops residential school (cbc.ca)


Researchers can access the archives by appointment, but some have noted it's not always easy to do so.

The B.C. government also called on Sister of St. Ann, imploring them "to turn over these records immediately."

In the order's defence, Zarowny said St. Ann wanted to be able to fix historical inaccuracies before documents were made public.

But Ry Moran, who guided the creation of the TRC's national archive says having a hodgepodge of the records conceals more important truths.

"The biggest inaccuracy is that kids' own names were robbed from them and replaced with Christian Western names," Moran said.

"We're going back and figuring out what names, lands, territories, identities and villages were actually stolen from kids in the first place."

The sisters taught at St. Mary's, Kamloops, Kuper Island and Lower Post Indian residential schools where children experienced rampant physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

Records can be forced by law

St. Ann is not the only entity to refuse to hand over the documents.

Father Ken Thorson of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate told the CBC that his congregation would not be providing personnel files of the staff at the residential schools citing privacy laws.

Those could include disciplinary records of nuns who treated children poorly.

But the TRC's mandate outlines that "In cases where privacy interests of an individual exist, and subject to and in compliance with applicable privacy legislation and access to information legislation, researchers for the Commission shall have access to the documents."

And it's not just churches who have refused to give up residential school documents.

The federal government has been in court as early as 2020 trying to block the creation of statistical reports on residential school abuse claims.

The Supreme Court of Canada also ruled in 2017 that thousands of records documenting abuse at residential schools should be destroyed.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Crown-Indigenous Relations said, "As per the terms of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, Canada was obligated to disclose all relevant documents to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission."

It added "the courts have consistently found that Canada has met its document disclosure obligations and that no further action is required."

Still, those at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation disagree.

"The federal government and provincial governments also have not shared all the records they agreed to provide to the NCTR. We continue to negotiate acquisition of further records from many settler organizations — both religious and governmental," the statement read.

For those like Shoush who want information about how her relatives died, it could take years of fighting just to find the truth.

Outgoing U.N. aid chief slams G7 for failing on vaccine plan

By Michelle Nichols

© Reuters/DENIS BALIBOUSE 

UN humanitarian coordinator Lowcock attends a news conference in Geneva

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Outgoing U.N. aid chief Mark Lowcock slammed the Group of Seven wealthy nations on Monday for failing to come up with a plan to vaccinate the world against COVID-19, describing the G7 pledge to provide 1 billion doses over the next year as a "small step."

"These sporadic, small-scale, charitable handouts from rich countries to poor countries is not a serious plan and it will not bring the pandemic to an end," Lowcock, who steps down on Friday, told Reuters. "The G7, essentially, completely failed to show the necessary urgency."

The leaders of the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada met in Cornwall, England over the weekend and also agreed to work with the private sector, the Group of 20 industrialized nations and other countries to increase the vaccine contribution over months to come.

Video: Mixed reactions to the G7 vaccine plan (Reuters)


"They took a small step - at that very, very nice resort in Cornwall - but they shouldn't kid themselves it's more than a small step and they have still have a lot to do," Lowcock said.

"What the world needed from the G7 was a plan to vaccinate the world. And what we got was a plan to vaccinate about 10% of the population of low and middle income countries, maybe by a year from now or the second half of next year," he said.

In May, the International Monetary Fund unveiled a $50 billion proposal to end the COVID-19 pandemic by vaccinating at least 40% of the population in all countries by the end of 2021 and at least 60% by the first half of 2022.

"That is the deal of the century," said Lowcock, adding that the G7 could also have done a lot more to provide vital supplies - such as oxygen ventilators, testing kits and protective equipment - to countries who are going to have to wait longer for vaccines.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday urged world leaders to act with more urgency, warning that if developing countries were not vaccinated quickly, the virus would continue to mutate and could become immune to inoculation.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Canada's vaccine donations to COVAX to come only from its COVAX supply: Gould


OTTAWA — Canada's promise to donate almost 13 million vaccine doses to the global vaccine sharing alliance known as COVAX includes none of the 251 million doses of vaccine Canada bought directly from drug companies.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

International Development Minister Karina Gould confirmed in an interview with The Canadian Press Monday that the 13 million doses are the rest of the vaccines Canada would have received from COVAX from a $220 million contract to buy doses from COVAX.

"The remainder of the COVAX, allotments that we have, we will not be accepting anymore in Canada, and so we'll be returning those back to COVAX.," said Gould.

Canada has received about one million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine through two shipments from COVAX so far, and was to get another undetermined shipment of that vaccine this month. In all Canada intends to refuse 1.4 million doses of Johnson & Johnson, 4.1 million AstraZeneca and 7.8 million doses of Novavax, but the latter hasn't been approved for use anywhere yet.

It also believes the $575 million it donated in cash to COVAX should be able to buy between 72 million and 85 million doses.

NDP health critic Don Davies said Canada's suggestion it is donating up to 100 million doses to COVAX is a "shell game" where most is cash to buy doses that don't exist in a global supply shortage, and more than half of the actual doses Canada is donating are a vaccine that isn't in use.

"Like what kind of flim-flam game is this?" he asked.

So really, Davies said Canada's "generous contribution" is six million doses that we never should have been taking from COVAX in the first place.

COVAX was created in 2020 to try and pool the scarce but crucial global supplies of vaccine, and distribute them equitably around the world. Wealthy nations were asked to buy doses through COVAX and donate money to buy doses for countries that weren't able to afford them on their own.

Instead, most wealthy countries agreed to donate to COVAX but also signed dozens of direct contract deals with vaccine makers to ensure their own supply of vaccines.


Video: Officials say COVID-19 vaccine donations won’t affect Canada’s rollout (Global News)


Steven Hoffman, a professor of global health, law and political science at York University in Toronto, told the House of Commons health committee Monday that the self-interested vaccine hoarding of wealthier nations is breeding resentment and undermining global co-operation.

Canada has fully vaccinated more than one in 10 people already, and partially vaccinated more than two in three. Hoffman said even with G7 donations of a billion doses in the next year, only about one in 20 people in a low-income country will be vaccinated by the end of December.

"That means that as we prepare to go back to normal, nearly everyone in poorer countries knows that won't be their reality in 2021, and probably not in 2022, either," he said.

Canada is among the countries that joined both sides of COVAX — buying $220 million of vaccines from CVOAX suppliers and donating $575 million to buy and distribute vaccines to others.

It also signed private deals to buy at least 251 million doses of seven different vaccines, more than three times what it needs to fully vaccinate every Canadian. The deals were made before it was clear which vaccines would work and be authorized.

Four of the seven have been authorized for use. Novavax intends to request approval in the summer, after reporting positive results from a Phase 3 trial Monday. Medicago and Sanofi are still doing Phase 3 trials and hope to be ready for authorization before Christmas.

Canada should have at least 50 million excess doses of Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and J&J by the end of the year, and eventually up to 124 million of the other three either this year or in 2022.

Gould said Canada will donate the extra doses it has but isn't promising any yet because so many things have already gone wrong in the world of pandemic vaccine making.

"You know, a number of issues arise with vaccine production, as we've seen over the past year," she said.

"We are just wanting to be as open and honest and transparent as the process unfolds, to ensure that once we do have those extra vaccines, we can give as clear an answer as possible and a timeline."

An Angus Reid Forum survey taken the first week of June suggests the government is doing what a majority of Canadians want. The survey, which can't be given a margin of error because it was taken online, found 72 per cent of those polled want Canada to vaccinate all Canadians first and then share doses globally.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 14, 2021.

Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version incorrectly suggested Canada had only received one shipment from COVAX so far. It has received two.

MNI WICONI WATER IS LIFE

Minnesota court affirms approval of Line 3 oil pipeline


ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — The Minnesota Court of Appeals on Monday affirmed state regulators' key approvals of Enbridge Energy’s Line 3 oil pipeline replacement project, in a dispute that drew over 1,000 protesters to northern Minnesota last week.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

A three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that the state’s independent Public Utilities Commission correctly granted Enbridge the certificate of need and route permit that the Canadian-based company needed to begin construction on the 337-mile (542-kilometer) Minnesota segment of a larger project to replace a 1960s-era crude oil pipeline that has deteriorated and can run at only half capacity.

Pipeline opponents said they are considering an appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court, but that their main focus is trying to persuade President Joe Biden to intervene and the continuing protests. The Biden administration hasn't taken a clear position on Line 3, but a legal challenge is pending in federal court on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' approval of a wetlands permit that activists say should be withdrawn.

Tribal and climate change groups, plus the state Department of Commerce, had asked the appeals court to reject the approvals. They argued that Enbridge’s oil demand projections failed to meet the legal requirements. But the court said there was reasonable evidence to support the PUC's decision.

“With an existing, deteriorating pipeline carrying crude oil through Minnesota, there was no option without environmental consequences,” wrote Judge Lucinda Jesson, joined by Judge Michael Kirk. “The challenge: to balance those harms. There was no option without impacts on the rights of Indigenous peoples. The challenge: to alleviate those harms to the extent possible. And there was no crystal ball to forecast demand for crude oil in this ever-changing environment."

But Judge Peter Reyes dissented, agreeing with opponents that the oil demand forecast was flawed. He said the project benefits Canadian oil producers but would have negative consequences for the hunting, fishing, and other rights of the Red Lake and White Earth tribes, and would provide no benefit to Minnesota.

“Such a decision cannot stand. Enbridge needs Minnesota for its new pipeline," Reyes wrote. "But Enbridge has not shown that Minnesota needs the pipeline.”

Tribal and environmental groups welcomed Reyes' dissent and vowed to keep fighting. They said their primary strategy going forward won't hinge on appeals, given they could take nine months to a year. Enbridge hopes to put the line into service in the fourth quarter.

“There's a good chance we'll appeal because we should ... but I don't think a remedy's going to come out of it that's going to be meaningful for us,” said Frank Bibeau, an attorney for the White Earth Band of Ojibwe and other pipeline opponents.

Enbridge said in a statement that the court's decision is confirmation that the commission thoroughly reviewed the project and gave the appropriate approvals.

“Line 3 has passed every test through six years of regulatory and permitting review, including 70 public comment meetings, appellate review and reaffirmation of a 13,500-page (environmental impact statement), four separate reviews by administrative law judges, 320 route modifications in response to stakeholder input, and multiple reviews and approvals by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission for the project’s certificate of need and route permit."

At least 1,000 activists from across the country gathered at construction sites near the headwaters of the Mississippi River last week. They urged Biden to cancel the project, as he did the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office. Nearly 250 people were arrested, in addition to more than 250 arrests since construction began in December. A smaller group marched Thursday to the Minneapolis office of Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

The Line 3 replacement would carry Canadian tar sands oil and regular crude from Alberta to Enbridge's terminal in Superior, Wisconsin. The project is nearly done except for the Minnesota leg, which is about 60% complete.

Opponents of the more than $7 billion project say the heavy oil would accelerate climate change and risk spills in areas where Native Americans harvest wild rice, hunt, fish, gather medicinal plants and claim treaty rights.

Enbridge says the replacement Line 3 will be made of stronger steel and will better protect the environment while restoring its capacity to carry oil and ensure reliable deliveries to U.S. refineries.

Activists are vowing to keep up a summer of resistance against the project amid the escalating battle over energy projects and rising awareness that racial minorities suffer disproportionate harm from environmental damage. And they're drawing parallels with the fight over the Dakota Access pipeline, which was the subject of major protests near the Standing Rock Reservation in the Dakotas in 2016 and 2017.

“Our resistance is clearly growing. We cannot stop and we will not stop,” said Tara Houska, founder of the Giniw Collective, one of the Indigenous groups behind last week's protests.

Steve Karnowski, The Associated Press

'Diamond rush' grips South African village after discovery of unidentified stones

More than 1,000 fortune seekers on Monday flocked to the village of KwaHlathi in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province in search of what they believed to be diamonds after a discovery of unidentified stones in the area.

A man shows an unidentified stone as fortune seekers flock to the village after pictures and videos were shared on social media showing people celebrating after finding what they believe to be diamonds, in the village of KwaHlathi outside Ladysmith, in KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa, June 14, 2021. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Story by Reuters 

The people traveled from across South Africa to join villagers who have been digging since Saturday, after a herd man who dug up the first stone on an open field, which some believe to be quartz crystals, put out the word.

The discovery was a life changer, said one digger Mendo Sabelo as he held a handful of tiny stones.

"This means our lives will change because no one had a proper job, I do odd jobs. When I returned home with them, (the family was) really overjoyed," said the 27-year-old father of two.

Unemployed Skhumbuzo Mbhele concurred, adding: "I hadn't seen or touched a diamond in my life. It's my first time touching it here."

The mines department said on Monday it was sending a team comprising of geological and mining experts to the site to collect samples and conduct an analysis.

A formal technical report will be issued in due course, the department said.

The lack of an analysis of the stones has not deterred the fortune seekers as long lines of parked cars on both sides of the gravel road could be seen just a few metres from the open field, where the young, old, female and male dug through the soil with picks, shovels and forks to find riches.

South Africa's economy has long suffered from extremely high levels of unemployment, trapping millions in poverty and contributing to stark inequalities that persist nearly three decades after the end of apartheid in 1994. The coronavirus pandemic has made it worse.

Some people have started selling the stones, with the starting price ranging from 100 rand ($7.29) to 300 rand.

The provincial government has since requested all those involved to leave the site to allow authorities to conduct a proper inspection, amid fears the people digging at the site could potentially be spreading the coronavirus.


© Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters Fortune seekers flock to the village of KwaHlathi, in KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa, in search of what they believe to be diamonds.

Biden should channel Reagan, 

ask Putin about UFOs at summit

Marik von Rennenkampff, Opinion Contributor 

In a little-known historical twist, a lighthearted comment about UFOs and alien invasions helped bring the Cold War to a peaceful end

.

© Getty Images Biden should channel Reagan, ask Putin about UFOs at summit

Winter, 1985. Tensions are high between the United States and the Soviet Union. President Ronald Reagan and new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agree to hold their first summit in Geneva, Switzerland.

As a series of lengthy meetings grinds on, Reagan and Gorbachev slip out for a private walk. Reagan, an avid science fiction fan, spontaneously asks the Soviet leader, "What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?"

"No doubt about it," Gorbachev responds, to which Reagan says, "We too."

"So that's interesting," Gorbachev remarks as the two leaders share a chuckle.

After decades of mistrust, such lighthearted exchanges build confidence between the two leaders, upon which Reagan and Gorbachev develop a deep and enduring friendship.

Ultimately, the rapport that the two leaders build in Geneva alters the course of history.

In the years after the summit, Reagan softens his harsh rhetoric towards the Soviet Union. Reduced hostilities help Gorbachev ignore the Kremlin hardliners demanding larger Soviet military budgets to match Reagan's defense buildup. More importantly, the détente gives Gorbachev the political latitude to enact the economic and political reforms that usher in a peaceful end to the Cold War.

Thirty-six years after Reagan and Gorbachev's first summit meeting, a new American president is set to meet his Russian counterpart. The setting, once again, is Geneva. As in 1985, tensions between the two nuclear-armed powers run high.

The odds of a Reagan-Gorbachev-style breakthrough are slim. For one, Russian President Vladimir Putin is not the pragmatic leader that Gorbachev was. President Biden, for his part, has sent stern pre-summit messages to Putin. Moreover, a litany of thorny issues is on the agenda.

But Gorbachev and Reagan showed that bitter adversaries can set aside hostile rhetoric and mistrust to cooperate on critical global security matters.

While the threat of nuclear war loomed large in 1985, the Biden-Putin summit comes as the U.S. government grapples with a perplexing national security issue.

Intelligence analysts and scientists appear genuinely stumped by more than 100 encounters with mysterious objects, many flying in restricted airspace. According to a former top intelligence official, some of the unidentified craft move in ways that "we don't have the technology for."

The U.S. government has reportedly ruled out the possibility that the objects are highly classified American aircraft. Moreover, at least one former top official believes that ultra-advanced Russian or Chinese spy planes are not plausible explanations for the more perplexing incidents observed by the military.

Analysts and NASA scientists also appear to doubt that mundane factors are behind many of the encounters. According to reports, several objects were observed by multiple sensors - such as satellite, radar, infrared and optical platforms - making balloons, distant jetliners or equipment malfunctions unlikely explanations for some of the phenomena.

To be sure, a highly anticipated report on these incidents appears to have found no evidence that aliens are visiting earth. But the fact that the U.S. government, with its near-unlimited investigatory capabilities, is considering "non-human technology" as a plausible explanation for some of the incidents is a remarkable development.

Recent comments by former presidents Obama and Clinton heightened speculation that the government is entertaining extraordinary theories about these phenomena. When asked about the encounters, Obama and Clinton openly speculated about extraterrestrial life. Similarly, Obama's CIA director mused about "different form[s] of life" when discussing the incidents.

Make no mistake: Former presidents and CIA directors - who continue to receive top-level intelligence briefings - do not suddenly speculate about aliens on a whim. Indeed, one can safely assume that Clinton and Obama asked their intelligence briefers some probing questions about what is known about UFOs before speaking publicly about otherworldly life.

Moreover, according to President Trump's former director of national intelligence, such encounters are occurring "all over the world."

Following revelations that China is "overwhelmed" by similar sightings, this phenomenon appears to have global implications. To that end, Biden must raise the issue with Putin.

Amid what promises to be a tense summit in Geneva, a lighthearted, Reagan-style question or comment about UFOs from Biden may yield a surprising response from the Russian leader. It might even alter the course of history.

Marik von Rennenkampff served as an analyst with the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, as well as an Obama administration appointee at the U.S. Department of Defense. Follow him on Twitter @MvonRen.

Joe Biden knows about the existence of aliens and UFOs ...

https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/1442009/joe-biden-aliens-ufo...

1:36

2021-05-28 · President Biden was recently asked by the press whether he knows about the existence of UFOs. While the current White House incumbent did not reveal the rumours to be true, he also did not deny them.

• Author: Sean Martin
• 
  

Joe Biden Has Hilarious Response To Fox News Question ...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-fox-news-ufo-question_n_60a...

0:43

2021-05-22 · Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy attempted to ask Joe Biden about UFOs, and the president’s response might best be termed a “Uniformly Funny Observation.”. Doocy’s question came up because of recent …

• Author: David Moye

As UFO buzz enthralls D.C., believers and skeptics agree: The truth is out there

Stephen Bassett
Alex Seitz-Wald
Sun, June 13, 2021

WASHINGTON — Stephen Bassett and Mick West don’t agree on much. Bassett has devoted much of his adult life to proving UFOs are helmed by aliens, and West has devoted much of his to proving they are not.

But they both agree on one thing: It’s good that, after nearly 75 years of taboo and ridicule going back to Roswell, New Mexico, serious people are finally talking seriously about the unidentified flying objects people see in the skies.

“If you look at the level of public interest, then I think it becomes important to actually look into these things,” said West, a former video game programmer turned UFO debunker. “Right now, there is a lot of suspicion that the government is hiding evidence of UFOs, which is quite understandable because there's this wall of secrecy. It leads to suspicion and distrust of the government, which, as we’ve seen, can be quite dangerous.”

Later this month, the Pentagon is expected to deliver a report to Congress from a task force it established last year to collect information about what officials now call "unexplained aerial phenomena," or UAPs, from across the government after pilots came forward with captivating videos that appear to show objects moving in ways that defy known laws of physics.

While those who dabble in the unknowns of outer space are hoping for alien evidence, many others in government hope the report will settle whether the objects might be spy operations from neighbors on Earth, like the Chinese or Russians.

The highly anticipated report is expected to settle little, finding no evidence of extraterrestrial activity while not ruling it out either, according to officials, but it will jumpstart a long-suppressed conversation and open new possibilities for research and discovery and perhaps defense contracts.

“If you step back and look at the larger context of how we've learned stuff about the larger nature of reality, some of it does come from studying things that might seem ridiculous or unbelievable,” Caleb Scharf, an astronomer who runs the Astrobiology Center at Columbia University.

Suddenly, senators and scientists, the Pentagon and presidents, former CIA directors and NASA officials, Wall Street executives and Silicon Valley investors are starting to talk openly about an issue that would previously be discussed only in whispers, if at all.

“What is true, and I'm actually being serious here, is that there is footage and records of objects in the skies that we don't know exactly what they are," former President Barack Obama told late-night TV host James Corden.

The omertà has been broken thanks to a new generation of more professional activists with more compelling evidence, a few key allies in government and the lack of compelling national security justification for maintaining the official silence, which has failed to tamp down interest in UFOs.

In a deeply polarized country where conspiracy theories have ripped apart American politics, belief in a UFO coverup seems relatively quaint and apolitical.
'Truth embargo'

Interest in UFOs waxes and wanes in American culture, but millions have questions and about one-third of Americans think we have been visited by alien spacecraft, according to Gallup.

But those questions have been met with silence or laughter from authorities and the academy, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by conspiracy theorists, hoaxsters and amateur investigators.

West, the skeptic, thinks the recent videos that kicked off the latest UFO craze, including three published by the New York Times and CBS’ “60 Minutes,” can be explained by optical camera effects. But he would like to see the U.S. government thoroughly investigate and explain UFOs.

The government has examined UFOs in the past but often in secret or narrow ways, and the current Pentagon task force is thought to be relatively limited in its mission and resources.

In a new, leaked video, an unidentified object flies around a Navy ship off the coast of San Diego. (U.S. Navy via Jeremy Corbell)

West pointed to models from other countries like Argentina, where an official government agency investigates sightings and publishes its findings, the overwhelming majority of which are traced to unusual weather, human objects like planes or optical effects.

“This is something that we could do here,” West said. “But right now we're left with people like me, who are just enthusiasts.”

John Podesta, a Democratic poobah who has held top jobs in several White Houses, has called on President Joe Biden’s White House to establish a new dedicated office in the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, which would help get the issue out of the shadows of the military and intelligence community.

Podesta, who has harbored an interest in UFOs since at least his days as Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, recently told Politico, “It was kind of career-ending to basically talk about this subject. That has clearly switched, and that's a good thing.”

Believers are unsurprisingly thrilled by the culture shift.

“The ‘truth embargo’ is coming to an end now,” said Bassett, the executive director of Paradigm Research Group and the only registered lobbyist in Washington dedicated to UFO disclosure. “I am elated to finally see this movement achieving its moment.”

Bassett is convinced the government is covering up proof of extraterrestrial life and that everything happening now is elaborate political theater to make that information public in the least disruptive way possible — a view, of course, not supported by evidence or most experts.

“This is the most profound event in human history that's about to be taking place,” he said.

But you don’t have to be a believer to believe that poorly understood things should be investigated, not ignored.

"We don't know if it's extraterrestrial. We don't know if it's an enemy. We don't know if it's an optical phenomenon," said new NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, a former astronaut and Florida senator, in a recent CNN interview. “And so the bottom line is, we want to know."

Two former CIA directors — John Brennan, who served under Obama, and James Woolsey, who served under Clinton — recently said in separate podcast interviews that they’ve seen evidence of aerial phenomena they can’t explain. John Ratcliffe, who was the director of national intelligence under then-President Donald Trump, told Fox News in March there were “a lot more sightings than have been made public.”
Cold War and fish farts

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, pushed the government to conduct the UFO report. For him, it’s a question of national security and understanding whether rivals like China or Russia have developed advanced technology we don’t know about.

“I want us to take it seriously and have a process to take it seriously,” Rubio told “60 Minutes.”

For others, like Ravi Kopparapu, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and Jacob Haqq-Misra, a research scientist with the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, it’s about discovery.

"For too long, the scientific study of unidentified flying objects and aerial phenomena — UFOs and UAPs, in the shorthand — has been taboo," they wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. "If we want to understand what UAP are, then we need to engage the mainstream scientific community in a concerted effort to study them."

Scharf looks for life on other planets and is a bit tired of people asking him if alien life has visited us on ours, but he said looking more at the skies could yield information about how our own world works.

A mysterious object hovers over a Navy ship in night vision video. (U.S. Navy via @JeremyCorbell)

“Stuff like this has a scientific interest not because we're necessarily thinking we're going to find aliens, but maybe there's an unknown phenomenon or a collection of phenomena that are giving rise to some of these sightings,” he said. “There's never been a systematic effort to categorize and catalog stuff that people see, and from the past, we know that some of this stuff sometimes turns out to be interesting.”

The history of science is filled with accidental discoveries and incidents where the hubris of religious or scientific authorities dismissed something as ridiculous that later proved true. Scientists didn’t believe meteorites really came from space until the early 1800s, for instance.

Government secrecy can lead to confusion and misunderstanding that might be cleared up with the help of a wider circle of experts and investigators.

Sweden spent years futilely chasing what it thought were Russian submarines off its coast. But when the navy let civilian researchers listen to a recording of the alleged submarine, they figured out it was actually the sound of schools of fish farting.

Important people have had an interest in UFOs for a long time; they just didn’t really talk about it.

Former President Jimmy Carter claimed to have seen a UFO while he was governor of Georgia and even filed two formal reports of his observations. Former President Ronald Reagan allegedly told people he saw one too while riding in a small plane, according to the pilot, who was quoted in a book by John Alexander, the former Army colonel whose paranormal investigations were featured in the book and movie “The Men Who Stare at Goats.”

As the Cold War intensified in the 1950s, U.S. officials worried the Soviet Union would use a UFO hoax to drum up fear in the American public. Civilians started seeing what they believed were UFOs but were actually secret spy planes, like the U-2, so the government settled on a policy of silence and denial.

''Over half of all U.F.O. reports from the late 1950s through the 1960s were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights,” according to a secret CIA study that was declassified in the late 1990s, The New York Times reported then. ''This led the Air Force to make misleading and deceptive statements to the public in order to allay public fears and to protect an extraordinarily sensitive national security project.''

The very real government stonewalling fed bogus conspiracy theories, which came to dominate the study of UFOs and made the topic even more off-putting to serious scholars.

A new generation

In recent years, though, a newer generation of activists has been at center of recent high-profile disclosures thanks to a more professional, careful and credible approach. They include people with serious national security credentials like Christopher Mellon, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, and Luis Elizondo, the former Army counterintelligence special agent who led an earlier Pentagon team to investigate UFOs.

The budget for Elizondo’s team — a modest $22 million in the scheme of defense spending — was secured by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, a powerful ally who has helped drive the resurgence of interest in UFOs.

An unidentified aerial phenomenon in a U.S. military video. 

(DoD via To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science)

The newer activists have worked with mainstream news outlets to deliver evidence and eye witnesses that meet their high editorial standards and are careful when speaking to general audiences to avoid talking about aliens — though Mellon and Elizondo have appeared on controversial podcaster Joe Rogan’s show as well as "Coast to Coast A.M.," a long-running radio program devoted to conspiracies and the paranormal.

Both the skeptics and the believers don’t expect the Pentagon report to settle anything. Instead, they hope it will start something new.

“The idea of some super powerful aliens coming to visit us is a very compelling story,” West said. “So if you get even a tiny little taste of something like that, it really spices up the story.”

UFOs and search for alien life: Science and popular culture take on the mission

By Gregory McNamee, CNN

If you're ever studied astronomy, you've probably been exposed to something called the Drake equation

.

© Department of Defense/AP This image from 2015 video provided by the Department of Defense, labeled Gimbal, shows an unexplained object at the center.

One side of the equation posits the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which it might be possible to communicate. The other side gives all the variables that add up to that number, including the average rate of star formation, the number of planets around those stars that have developed intelligent life and the ability to send radio signals.

© Alistair Heap/Alamy Stock Photo UFO spotters use flashlights to look for stars and aliens in the night sky in South Wales, Australia, in 2008.

"Depending on how you calculate it, the answer can be none, or it can be a billion," said theoretical cosmologist Katie Mack, author of the recent book "The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)."

© NASA Does Martian soil hold proof of life on other planets? We've sent the Perseverance rover to find clues.

Astrophysicist Frank Drake, who formulated the equation way back in 1961, said it's really a way of showing "all the things you needed to know to predict how hard it's going to be to detect extraterrestrial life."

Mack put it more directly: "The point of the equation is really to show how little we know."

If it's hard for professional scientists to run the numbers, it's harder still for us mere-mortal Earthlings to do the work.

That's where the imagination comes in. So for generations we've been putting our creative minds to work in guessing if extraterrestrials exist, what they might look like and how we've going to greet them and they us, whether with a sign of peace or a ray gun.

© Mike Windle/Getty Images Frank Drake speaks at a conference exploring the possibility of life on other planets at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco on October 7, 2015.

UFOs: Have we been visited?

"It's a curious thing that for as long as we've imagined extraterrestrials, they look pretty much just like us," observed Chris Impey, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona.

"A couple of centuries ago, they came in galleons in the sky. When zeppelins were invented, the aliens flew in dirigibles. After World War II, they came in flying saucers, the latest and greatest technology we could imagine."

© 1982 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved. While we're waiting on the science about UFOs and signs of alien life, entertainment fills the gaps with movies such as "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial."

The anthropomorphism — putting things that are not human in human form — is a constant. So, too, is the belief in alien life forms to begin with.


Strong beliefs in alien visitations


Video: Astrophysicist on UFO sightings: It looks terrestrial, not alien (CNN)




According to a 2018 Chapman University study, 41.4% of Americans believe that extraterrestrials have visited Earth at some time or another, and 35.1% believe that they have done so in recent times.


There are understandable reasons for such beliefs, Impey noted.

For decades, some people have been convinced that the US government has been harboring secrets about visitors from afar ever since 1947, when they believe an alien spacecraft supposedly crashed near Roswell, New Mexico.

"When you know that people aren't telling you everything they know, you start filling in the blanks yourself," said Impey. "The videos, the stories of Air Force and Navy pilots seeing mystery spacecraft, all of these things add up. It's just that people connect the dots way too quickly."

Both scientists and many civilians hold to the maxim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

As a recent CNN story revealed, for years government and military officials alike ignored sightings of UFOs reported by both military and civilian pilots — just the sort of extraordinary evidence that might substantiate the reality of ETs. The Pentagon, which refers to UFOs as unidentified aerial phenomena, has confirmed the authenticity of videos and photographs accompanying those reports.

Before that recent and still-unfolding news appeared, though, a hard-to-penetrate cone of silence has surrounded the whole question of UFOs, at least as far as the US government and military have been concerned.


Fiction fills in the gaps

Popular culture filled in the blanks, giving expression to UFOs and their otherworldly passengers in vehicles such as ComicCon, movies such as "Independence Day" and "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" and the classic television series "Star Trek" with its bold search for new life and new civilizations.

Beyond that, there's a host of conspiracy theories — some benign, some full of foreboding — with dark warnings of abductions and unwanted experiments.

Impey called the question of UFOs "a cultural phenomenon, not a scientific one."

For all that, he cited the late astronomer Carl Sagan's call for all sides in the discussion to keep an open mind — "but not so open," as Sagan said, that "your brains fall out."


Searching the skies

"From time immemorial, humans have wondered about whether we're alone," said Stephen Strom, former associate director of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory.

Just because the popular imagination diverges from the scientific one doesn't invalidate our hope to encounter lifeforms from other worlds.

After all, the question isn't just whether we're alone, but also whether other civilizations have done a better job of taking care of their planets than we have of taking care of Earth.

It's a matter, then, of "whether it is possible for putative complex civilizations to avoid self-destruction," as Strom put it, and whether we can learn from them before it's too late. Those are among the most pressing questions we can ask these days.

Granted, most space scientists don't share the view that extraterrestrial life is going to arrive on Earth via spacecraft in humanoid form. One who did, the late cosmologist Stephen Hawking, worried that if ETs did arrive that way, they'd likely be on a mission to destroy us.

That doesn't mean that space scientists aren't serious in their search for extraterrestrial life.

"Do we think aliens are out there?" asked Mack. "We don't know where, but there almost certainly are.

"It's very unlikely that life has evolved in only one place in the entirety of the cosmos — the sorts of physical processes that had to occur on the early Earth are probably things that have happened countless other times on distant worlds."

We're likely to learn about other life forms from rovers, spectrometers and chemical analyses of distant atmospheres, she added. When we do, the news will spread fast.

As Mack said, "People really do want to know."

AP Interview: ICC prosecutor sees 'reset' under Biden
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said Monday that the global tribunal’s relationship with the United States — plunged into the deep freeze by former President Donald Trump — is undergoing a “reset” under his successor, Joe Biden.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda made the comments in an interview with The Associated Press, on the day Biden was meeting NATO allies in Brussels to reaffirm Washington’s commitment to the military alliance — in another break from the Trump era of deep skepticism toward multilateralism.

Bensouda spoke to AP at the court’s headquarters in The Hague on the eve of leaving office after her nine-year term as the ICC’s chief prosecutor. Her successor, British lawyer Karim Khan, takes office on Wednesday.

The Trump administration hit Bensouda with sanctions for pressing ahead with investigations into the U.S. and its allies, notably Israel, for alleged war crimes. She was subjected to a travel ban in March 2019, and 18 months later a freeze on her U.S.-based assets.

“I do believe that it was wrong. Really, a red line has been crossed,” Bensouda said of the sanctions.

Biden lifted the sanctions in April but Secretary of State Antony Blinken stressed that Washington still strongly disagreed with some actions by the court.

“We believe, however, that our concerns about these cases would be better addressed” through diplomacy “rather than through the imposition of sanctions,” Blinken wrote.

Bensouda welcomed the change of tone.

“We are at a more helpful place now because the Biden administration has decided to lift those sanctions and both the administration and ourselves, we are working on some kind of a reset that is the relationship between the ICC and the US administration,” she said.

The court is investigating allegations of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity by U.S. troops and foreign intelligence operatives, as part of a wide-ranging investigation into the Afghanistan conflict that also covers alleged crimes by Afghan government forces and the Taliban.

Afghan authorities have asked the court to take over the probe.

Bensouda met with Afghan Foreign Minister Haneef Atmar last month to discuss the case.

Atmar said after the meeting that “we are confident that with full cooperation with the Prosecutor, we can jointly advance the cause of justice for all of the victims of the long and devastating conflict.”

Bensouda said Afghan authorities need to show the court that they are investigating the same alleged crimes identified by the ICC probe.

“If they are able to provide us with this information that they are conducting these cases, then of course, we will have to take a step back and look at what they are doing and monitor that,” she said.

Bensouda launched another politically charged investigation in March, into alleged crimes by both Israel and Hamas on Palestinian territories dating back to mid-2014. Israel has harshly condemned the probe.

Bensouda warned both sides during the recent 11-day Gaza war that that she was watching their actions, which could be included in her ongoing investigation if they appeared to amount to possible crimes within the court’s jurisdiction.

During the conflict, Israel destroyed a 12-story building housing media organizations including The Associated Press and Al Jazeera. The Israeli military, which gave AP journalists and other tenants about an hour to evacuate, claimed Hamas used the building for a military intelligence office and weapons development.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders asked the International Criminal Court to investigate the bombing as a possible war crime. AP has called for an independent investigation of the attack.

Bensouda did not say that her office is specifically looking at the attack, but said of the 11-day conflict: “We are not ignoring anything.”

Asked whether Israel has provided any evidence to the court about the incident, she said: “Definitely we have not had anything come from Israel about this.”

Bensouda has signaled that she would attempt to round off a series of preliminary investigations before she leaves office. On Monday, she announced that she has sought judges’ authorization to open an investigation into the Philippine government’s so-called “war on drugs.”

Before leaving office, she also urged the court’s member states to adequately fund the institution, and the international community to help it by arresting suspects. The court itself does not have a police force to carry out arrests.

She said funding for her office has not kept up with the soaring demand for investigations around the world.

“If really we’re serious about international criminal justice, if we are serious about bringing justice to the victims, we also need to provide the court with the resources that it needs to do that work,” Bensouda said.

Mike Corder, The Associated Press