Funny thing to me is how obvious and simple it is, that the real conspiracy is just congressional leaders telling certain subsets of people what they want to hear, for their political support.
Occam's Razor.
this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2024
271 points (97.5% liked)
Not The Onion
12224 readers
483 users here now
Welcome
We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!
The Rules
Posts must be:
- Links to news stories from...
- ...credible sources, with...
- ...their original headlines, that...
- ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”
Comments must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.
And that’s basically it!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
And certain ufologists doing the same for profit. Disclosure is always just around the corner. In the meantine, here is my book, come visit me at the ufo convention or watch me on my history channel show.
That may have been the case about 5 yrs ago but I'm not so sure now.
"with absolutely no substantiated proof".
"Unsupported claims that ignored contradictory evidence"
It seems like he's more upset about unsubstantiated conspiracy theories rather than conspiracy theories themselves.
Groups of people have worked together to do things in secret(conspiracies), but if there's no proof or contradictory evidence of a particular plan, the continued belief in and resources spent on said unsubstantiated conspiracy is frustrating.
Don’t sufficiently substantiated theories cease to be conspiracy theories?
They technically do, but in practice, the word "conspiracy" often has the connotation of being untrue, regardless of being substantiated or not.
People tend to equivocate conspiracies and conspiracy theories.
A conspiracy can't be true, it's crazy to believe in, until it's substantiated, and then it was always true and never crazy to believe in in the first place, so it becomes referred to and remembered as a mundane footnote instead of a conspiracy.
the continued belief in and resources spent on said unsubstantiated conspiracy is frustrating.
It's very important to note here that the ICIG (Office of Intelligence Inspector General) who far out ranks Kirkipatrick and the AARO rated the whistleblowers claims urgent and credible.
Several Congress members then held a classified meeting with the same ICIG and determined that Gruschs claims have validity.
It's a quite misleading to say this is entirely based on false information and claim it's nothing more than a conspiracy theory that we shouldn't be wasting resources on.
That's a great point I was unaware of, thank you.
Do you have a relevant link?
Unfortunately not many reporters are reporting on this sincerely besides TheHill and Newsweek, although it's slowly becoming more sincere.
Here's an opinion piece that describes the situation when it originally started last year and contains a pretty accurate non biased overview.
Most recently there was a SCIF held on January 10th with the UAP caucus, and the IG regarding the Grusch claims. NY times article where some Congress people substantiating a few of Grusch claims.
Also very important to note, in general this is a very non-partisan issue (Republicans are definitely the most outspoken though). A UAP bill was put forward by Chuck Schumer in December to be included in the NDAA, which would declassify UAP materials that didn't expose national security, and force all UAP materials to be returned to the US Government. It was unfortunately gutted by the House during negotiations (specifically by Congressmen lobbied by defense contractors). Take that as you will, but I think the fact that this is being discussed to be codified in law and not entirely hidden behind the executive branch with zero oversight is great for the public.
Those are both interesting articles, thanks, although the first is written assuming the reader has so much knowledge about what's been going on between the intelligence community and congressional disclosure and oversight that I'll have to read it again a few times to really understand what he's saying.
I also think it's great that the extraterrestrial question is at least being discussed and investigated with some form of earnestness, even if in classified meetings.
Now you listen here guy, just tell us where the UFOs are and nobody has to get hurt.
Sounds exactly like something an alien would say.
~~We~~ They prefer the term "extra terrestrial". Err, so I'm told.
https://www.aaro.mil/AARO-Reporting-Information/
Check out the reporting requirements: You must be a current or former government employee, and you must submit documents that are unclassified and contain no confidential information.
Which means nothing of consequence will ever be reported.
Cue Kirkpatrick:
"As of the time of my departure, none, let me repeat, none of the conspiracy-minded “whistleblowers” in the public eye had elected to come to AARO to provide their “evidence” and statement for the record despite numerous invitations. ”
Hopefully the next director will take the job seriously
Hey I didn't elect those idiots. My idiot believes in... let me check... shootin shit and drinkin wine? Is that really his congressional bio?
“[The Defense Intelligence Agency] concluded that not only did no such material exist, but taxpayer money was being inappropriately spent on paranormal research at Skinwalker Ranch in Utah,” Kirkpatrick said.
If paranormal activity exists anywhere it's at Skinwalker ranch.
Idk, I read that book on skinwalker ranch, and it really seemed like the name was the coolest thing about that place and what kept most of the researchers going the whole time.
Except that one guy who saw portals regularly and knew exactly where they were and when they occurred and could describe them perfectly, but never managed to record a single one even though he had cameras running constantly.
Skeptical author Robert Sheaffer believes the phenomenon at Skinwalker to be "almost certainly illusory", given that NIDsci found no proof after several years of monitoring, and that the previous owners of the property, who had lived there for 60 years, say that no supernatural events of any kind had happened there. Sheaffer considers the "parsimonious explanation" to be that the Sherman family invented the story "prior to selling it to the gullible Bigelow", with many of the more extraordinary claims originating solely from Terry Sherman, who worked as a caretaker after the ranch was sold to Bigelow.[12]
In 1996, skeptic James Randi awarded Bigelow a tongue-in-cheek Pigasus Award for funding the purchase of the ranch and for supporting John E. Mack's and Budd Hopkins' investigations. The award category designated Bigelow as "the funding organization that supported the most useless study of a supernatural, paranormal or occult [claim]".[13]
In 2023, ufologist Barry Greenwood, writing in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, criticized the $22 million research program led by James Lacatski. He emphasized the lack of any documentary evidence from the ranch after many decades of exploration and characterized Skinwalker as "always in the business of selling belief and hope".[14]
While I appreciate the info, I'm 99% sure OP was just making a joke at how creepy the name "Skinwalker Ranch" is.
[x] Doubt