Like any normal person, I’m spending my Saturday morning watching a UFO podcast — specifically, the Need to Know podcast with Ross Coulthart and Bryce Zabel. Both men are accomplished professionals in their fields; Ross is an award-winning investigative journalist for the biggest news network in Australia who has appeared on programs like that country’s version of 60 minutes, and Bryce is a former Hollywood producer-turned-journalist who has taken an interest in UFO disclosure. Both men have authored books on the UFO phenomenon; Coulthart’s is called In Plain Sight: An Investigation into UFOs and Impossible Science. Zabel has two: Project Disclosure: Revealing Government Secrets and Breaking the Truth Embargo (Conspiracies and Cover-ups), and After Disclosure: When the Government Finally Reveals the Truth About Alien Contact.
Although it’s not what this post is about, the two collaborated last month to produce a brief documentary on the topic that’s a good briefing on the current state of the UFO topic:
What this post IS about is that podcast I’m listening to right now. Coulthart caught something I wanted to share, because I agree with him: “it’s very, very important.”
The podcast is below. The relevant section begins at 22:29. If you don’t have time to watch it, I’ll block quote the pertinent bit after the video player:
Coulthart says:
In an addendum to the US Intelligence Authorization Act for the fiscal year 2023...Congress has made two quite astonishing claims in that legislation.
The first is: 'cross-domain trans-medium threats to United States' national security are expanding exponentially.' That's a big claim! And the second is that Congress is now distinguishing between UFOs/UAPs that are human in origin, and those that are not.
'Temporary non-attributed objects, or those that are positively identified as man-made after analysis will be passed to appropriate offices and should not be considered under the definition as unidentified aerospace/undersea phenomena' the document says.
Now that's really quite important. I know it sounds as dry as dust, but it's very, very important.
I agree. This is the kind of language that makes you sit up and take notice — and wonder what is being shown in those classified briefings.
Dr. Jacque Vallee, the French astrophysicist and computer expert was the first to accurately map Mars and contributed to the development of the internet. He broke ranks with many/most other scientists years ago in openly researching the UAP phenomenon. Spielberg paid tribute to him with his character Lacombe in "Close Encounters". He long ago concluded that this phenomenon is not a simple case of extraterrestrial visitation. It has been with us throughout recorded history and taken many forms. Yet, an underlying unity between these forms is evident. Absurdity and strangeness are among these. Vallee believes the phenomenon has impacted culture, religion and other human realities throughout the centuries.
It's still possible this turns into a nothingburger, the way things in this sad world will do. But that is coming to seem a less likely outcome now, isn't it?
I think it'd be really neat to encounter an extraterrestrial civilization. But in another sense, the reading of this phenomenon that has UAPs as off-world spaceships is almost the least interesting interpretation other than "weather balloon." I'd rather they be a kind of animal who dwells in the etheric realms right on the border of physical reality which has been venturing across the frontier more often of late, or time-travelers, or the astral projections of dreaming human beings, or interdimensional beings from a reality richer and more mysterious than we had admitted before.
Angels are aesthetically more appealing, who can only be encountered if one has contact with a plane of _depth_ and _value_, but these UAPs are poised to make the nightly news and impinge on reality in a concrete and undeniable way, even on the flat surface of things. Curious.
I am a little put out that the framing of the story around UAPs has the government and the military as central players. As much as I respect our folks in uniform, the State, with its secrecy and power and investment in maintaining control, are the last people I’d want mediating contact with a new horizon of reality. A UFO cult that bowed down and worshiped these as gods wouldn’t be the answer either, but I frankly hope that the phenomenon reaches a point where it is at once undeniable, highly strange, and inexplicable, and not a cat that anyone can keep in the bag, because that might just force epistemic humility on the human race. We should learn to live with mystery again.
Unless these really are just jerks from another solar system who are here to exploit the earth, and the only thing buying us time is realpolitik and the ethical gray areas that the government has been willing to explore while making deals with these beings. “You can abduct a certain number of human beings and use them in your hybrid breeding program, in exchange for advanced technology and not blowing up the White House.”
But imagine these are just the plague of etheric locusts that are going to consume the tired old trappings of post-industrial reality and force Pharaoh to let us go and be human beings again before God and nature.
I know this comment sounds loony, but I'm ok with that.