Quote:The International Cryptozoology Museum™ in Portland, Maine, includes exhibits about cryptids (beyond Bigfoot & Nessie). We also feature displays about the finds of “living fossils” and other classic animals of discovery — the successful cryptozoological stories. One of the most famous, of course, is the coelacanth, as featured in the ICM logo. We have a 5.5 ft long, life-size model of the first one taken off Africa in 1938 in the museum.

The International Cryptozoology Museum has many rare and unique pieces of remarkable evidence. Some of the items on exhibit are actual hair samples of Abominable Snowmen, Bigfoot, Yowie, and Orang Pendek. A letter from the actor Jimmy Stewart is on display as he is linked to the Pangboche Yeti hand mystery. Fecal matter from a small Yeti was collected by the Tom Slick-F. Kirk Johnson Snowman Expedition of 1959, and the ICM’s sample has been featured on three television series: In Search Of, MonsterQuest, and Mysteries at the Museum. A footprint cast taken in 2001, during an alleged Thylacine encounter, is among the over 10,000 items on exhibit.

The museum is filled with unique items, including the full-sized art sculptures of the Crookston Bigfoot (by Curtis Christensen), Freaky Links’ pterodactyl (by Haxan sfx), P.T. Barnum’s FeeJee Mermaid (above, by Erik Gosselin), the Naden Harbor Caddy (by Lee Murphy), a lifesize bronze of a Thylacine, and other cryptid and new species replicas, evidence, and more. Our fiberglass coelacanth (from Fantastic Fish) is the only life-size exact model of the first 1938 specimen displayed in North America.

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Watching the news and listening to the Democrats it was a day like Pearl Harbor..... except it wasn't..... Just like everything they say take the opposite path they offer and you might actually find the truth.

Good article that sums up our current times towards a New Governance Paradigm.

Quote:The Rise of the Biosecurity Complex

For much of the past 20 years, the West has been mired in a state of quasi-permanent crisis: the post-9/11 terrorism crisis, the post-2008 financial-economic crisis (which in Europe evolved into a specific sub-crisis: the “euro crisis”), the pandemic crisis and, just as the latter seemed to be waning, the ongoing military crisis in Ukraine, which has morphed into a much wider great-power confrontation.

If the future could be imagined, why couldn’t it be scripted?" "We have entered an era in which Western establishments need to constantly invent new nightmares to maintain their power; and when enough people with enough power start to dream the same nightmare, it’s only a matter of time before it comes true.

This is taking place against the backdrop of a wide range of other (partially related) crises: an energy, inflationary, and cost-of-living crisis, a new debt crisis in the making (in Europe), an ever-present social crisis, and a looming climate and ecological crisis—all of which, according to the World Economic Forum, should be understood as components of a singular, massive “polycrisis.” These are largely pan-Western affairs, but there are, of course, countless more localized ones, such as the recurring migrant crisis in certain countries.
....

What’s clear is that by 2020, the biosecurity complex had burgeoned into a mammoth of terrifying power and proportions, encompassing the world’s largest pharma and biotech companies, the biometrics industry, social-media giants, traditional media conglomerates, national security (military and intelligence) apparatuses, global and national public-health organizations such as WHO, the World Bank’s health division, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health and their equivalents in other countries, private philanthropies such as the Gates Foundation, and trans-Atlantic planning groups-cum-think tanks such as the WEF as important intermediaries between the various actors.

Ultimately, the issue of foreknowledge is overshadowed by an even more daunting truth: We have entered an era in which Western establishments need to constantly invent new nightmares to maintain their power; and when enough people with enough power start to dream the same nightmare, it’s only a matter of time before it comes true.

I saw this video the other day and it got me thinking in regards of the manner we're told certain breeds of
animals are no longer with us. 'Experts' -an ambiguous word often used by the media, announced the two
species of wolf on the islands of Japan went extinct in the early part of twentieth century. Hiroshi Yagi, a
mountaineer who often drives the quiet roads through the Chichibu Tama Kai National Park, came across
a creature that had been put in this category.

After Ninurta's images (no longer visible to myself in the archived version of Rogue Nation) showed an overtly
large wolf-like 'something' being picked up on a trail-cam, I can see an argument to counter these establishment
-types decisions to announce extinction.






Or is it a dog?

Quote:Rebuilding U.S. Inventories: Six Critical Systems

As the United States transfers massive amounts of weapons, munitions, and supplies to Ukraine, questions arise about the health of U.S. inventories. Are inventories getting too low? How long will it take to rebuild those inventories? An earlier CSIS commentary identified those inventories that are at risk as a result of transfers to Ukraine. This commentary continues that analysis by examining inventory replacement times. Most inventories, though not all, will take many years to replace. For most items, there are workarounds, but there may be a crisis brewing over artillery ammunition.
Summary

The table below lays out weapons and munitions where concerns have arisen about inventories.



Note: The table is built from DOD sources plus estimates based on administration statements, news reports, interviews with officials, and the author's experience in the military as an artillery officer and with acquisition in the Pentagon. The number transferred to Ukraine comes from periodic DOD fact sheets. Production rates come from DOD budget documents, particularly the Army's procurement justification books for missiles and ammunition. "Recent" production reflects levels funded in the last few years. "Surge" reflects higher rates where DOD has said it would increase production. This higher rate is either the "1-8-5" or "MAX" level depending on where current production is. It takes one to two years to get to this higher level. For munitions, the production applied to rebuilding inventories is reduced to account for U.S. peacetime training and stockpile testing. “Manufacturing lead time” is the period between when a contract is signed and when the first item arrives. This interval is typically about 24 months but varies by system. “Production time” is how long it would take to produce all the required inventory. “Total time to rebuild” includes both manufacturing lead time and production time. The color code indicates the difficulty of the rebuilding effort.
....

Causes for Optimism and Pessimism

Optimism – Most inventories are okay. These six systems do not represent the full spectrum of U.S. inventories. Most items provided to Ukraine have been in small numbers, or from areas that have large inventories or production capacities. For example, the United States has provided 108 million rounds of small arms ammunition, but U.S. production is about 8.6 billion rounds per year, so this transfer is easy to accommodate. The United States provided 300 M113 armored personnel carriers but has thousands available because the Army is moving to a different system.

Pessimism – Not enough data to assess. Replacement times for several important systems cannot be calculated because not enough data is publicly available. For example, DOD cites sending Ukraine over 46,000 “other anti-armor systems” (not Javelin but types not specified), over 50 counter-artillery radars (various kinds), laser-guided rocket systems, unmanned aerial systems, and unmanned coastal defense vessels. It might be that some of these systems have inventory challenges, but the data are insufficient to make a judgment.

What Does the Future Hold?

As the September commentary noted, low inventories do not mean the end of equipment transfers. They do mean that the United States will need to pursue other mechanisms. DOD has, indeed, been pursuing all these but will need to intensify its work as the flow of aid becomes a multi-year operation.

The bottom line is that military aid will continue, and Ukraine will still be able to resist, but inventory replenishment will become an increasingly pressing problem. DOD has many tools to mitigate the problem of “empty bins” and will need to use all of them to avoid a slackening of military support to Ukraine.

Quote:Department of the Navy Releases Strategic Blueprint for a Blue Arctic

Greater access is further opening new Arctic undersea fiber optic cable routes linking Europe, Asia, and North America. Nation-states and other actors are mounting cyberattacks on Arctic ship-building, energy, and shipping sectors–especially the researchn and development communities that underpin them.

The People’s Republic of China views the Arctic Region as a critical link in its One Belt One Road initiative.

The state of Maine which you rarely ever hear about will play an increasing strategic role:

Public-private partnerships and innovative solutions, such as NavalX tech bridges, leveraging relevant civilian expertise within the reserve components, and the Alaska Regional Collaboration for Technology Innovation and Commercialization (ARCTIC) led by the Office of Naval Research will help transform the operating abilities – and regional understanding – of naval forces. Maine has taken bold steps to advance their Arctic connection, including recent participation in The Arctic Circle Assembly and relationship with Eimskip, an Icelandic international shipping company, which has a regional hub in Portland.

Quote:In the last few weeks, I’ve found myself writing columns that touch on the rapid advance of artificial intelligence, the mystery of unidentified flying objects haunting American skies and the enthusiasm in certain circles for taking mind-altering substances that yield a feeling, illusory or not, of contact with supernatural-seeming entities.

These are very different stories, in a way. The A.I. revolution belongs to the realm of serious and lavishly funded science. The U.F.O. phenomenon hovers on the paranormal and pseudoscientific fringe. The spiritual dimensions explored by users of drugs like DMT belong primarily to the terrain of psychology and religion — either as manifestations of some sort of Jungian unconscious or else, well, as actual spiritual dimensions.

But there is a shared spirit in these stories, a common impulse to the quests: the desire to encounter or invent some sort of nonhuman consciousness that might help us toward leaps that we can’t make on our own.

This impulse is an ancient one: The idea that one might bind a djinn, create a golem or manipulate a god or fairy to do your bidding is inscribed deep in the human imagination. Once upon a time this magician’s art seemed like a plausible rival to scientific technique, or a complementary means of mastery over nature; indeed, the scientist and the magician were often overlapping figures in the early modern imagination, blurring together in vocations like alchemy and characters like Dr. Faustus.

They separated primarily because the scientific method simply worked in a way that magical conjuring did not. Or as C.S. Lewis put it 80 years ago, in “The Abolition of Man,” “The serious magical endeavor and the serious scientific endeavor are twins: One was sickly and died, the other strong and throve.”

But now we are in an era when people talk increasingly about the limits of the scientific endeavor — the increasing impediments to discovering new ideas, the absence of low-hanging scientific fruit, the near impossibility, given the laws of physics as we understand them, of ever spreading human civilization beyond our lonely planet or beyond our isolated solar system. Meanwhile, the speculations of scientific theorists and philosophers are reaching beyond the very confines of our universe — to an ever-multiplying multiverse whose branches never touch, or an infinite-seeming hall of simulations run by some civilization with godlike capacities relative to ours.

So it’s not surprising, in this age of frustration and re-mystification, that our thoughts and efforts might turn back to the magician’s art, in search of powers that might help us escape the limits of our island planet, our paltry life span, the crooked timber of our nature. But not simply back to the old magic of spells and incantations (though there is a lot of that these days as well). Instead in the U.F.O. fascination and the A.I. enthusiasm and the drug-enabled “psychonaut” explorations, we see attempts to link magic to science, or to deploy science to do magic, using telescopes or chemicals or vast computing powers to discover or create what the old magicians tried to conjure — namely, beings that can enlighten us, elevate us, serve us and usher in the Age of Aquarius, the Singularity or both.

The hardheaded reader will object that one of these examples isn’t like the others. Simple common sense tells us that the U.F.O. speculators are probably not about to get in touch with extraplanetary aliens. The materialist premises of modern science reassure us that our hallucinogen-ingesting psychonauts are not actually in touch ‌‌with the originals of Titania and Oberon, Jupiter or Odin. Whereas the A.I. project seems to be advancing rapidly, with no speculative leaps required to see its promise. So why lump it in with the dubious and paranormal? Why invoke sorcery to explain a straightforward scientific triumph?

Stipulate for the sake of argument that the A.I. project is more likely to have immediate practical effects than the search for extraterrestrial life or any drug-aided communion with the spirit realm. There are still good reasons to analyze its efforts in terms of djinns, golems and the like.

First, because this is how its own enthusiasts talk. Here’s Scott Aaronson, a computer scientist at the University of Texas, Austin, and one of the most accessible online writers on issues related to computer intelligence, on his own reaction to the new chatbots:

Quote:An alien has awoken — admittedly, an alien of our own fashioning, a golem, more the embodied spirit of all the words on the internet than a coherent self with independent goals. How could our eyes not pop with eagerness to learn everything this alien has to teach? If the alien sometimes struggles with arithmetic or logic puzzles, if its eerie flashes of brilliance are intermixed with stupidity, hallucinations, and misplaced confidence … well then, all the more interesting! Could the alien ever cross the line into sentience, to feeling anger and jealousy and infatuation and the rest rather than just convincingly playacting them? Who knows? And suppose not: is a p-zombie, shambling out of the philosophy seminar room into actual existence, any less fascinating?

Or consider a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed essay by Henry Kissinger, the former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher of MIT, which effectively repurposes Arthur C. Clarke’s admonition that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” as a kind of boast. With the emergent forms of A.I., they argue, we have created an intelligence that can yield answers the way an oracle might, or a magic 8-ball: through processes that are invisible to us, permanently beyond our understanding, so complex as to be indistinguishable from action in a supernatural mind.through processes that are invisible to us, beyond our understanding, so complex as to be indistinguishable from action in a supernatural mind.

As such, they argue, the A.I. revolution represents a fundamental break with Enlightenment science, which “was trusted because each step of replicable experimental processes was also tested, hence trusted.” The knowledge granted us by “generative AI” will be far more mysterious; its truth will need to be “justified by entirely different methods, and it may never become similarly absolute.” Their vision of the human-to-AI relationship evokes Delphic priestesses channeling Apollo or mediums reaching through the veil: “We will have to ask continuously: What about the machine has not yet been revealed to us? What obscure knowledge is it hiding?”

And this kind of magical language mostly describes A.I. as an answer machine, Aaronson’s “embodied spirit of all the words on the internet.” It doesn’t even get into the question of whether an A.I. can actually attain consciousness, where the sorcerous aspect of this project is even more explicit.

After all, we don’t really understand our own consciousness, we haven’t even begun to solve the so-called hard problem of the mind and its relationship to matter. Yet here we are telling ourselves, in hope and also fear, that these machines whose workings we don’t fully understand might make the leap to self-awareness if only we keep making their processes more sophisticated, more beyond our ken.

In this sense what we’re doing resembles a complex incantation, a calling of spirits from Shakespeare’s “vasty deep.” Build a system that imitates human intelligence, make it talk like a person and answer questions like an encyclopedia and solve problems through leaps we can’t quite follow, and wait expectantly to see if something infuses itself into the mysterious space where the leaps are happening, summoned by the inviting home that we have made.

Such a summoning is most feared by A.I. alarmists, at present, because the spirit might be disobedient, destructive, a rampaging Skynet bent on our extermination.

But the old stories of the magicians and their bargains, of Faust and his Mephistopheles, suggest that we would be wise to fear apparent obedience as well.

Quote:AI’s capacities are not static but expand exponentially as the technology advances. Recently, the complexity of AI models has been doubling every few months. Therefore generative AI systems have capabilities that remain undisclosed even to their inventors. With each new AI system, they are building new capacities without understanding their origin or destination. As a result, our future now holds an entirely novel element of mystery, risk and surprise.

In the Age of AI, riddles are solved by processes that remain unknown. This disorienting paradox makes mysteries unmysterious but also unexplainable. Inherently, highly complex AI furthers human knowledge but not human understanding—a phenomenon contrary to almost all of post-Enlightenment modernity. Yet at the same time AI, when coupled with human reason, stands to be a more powerful means of discovery than human reason alone.

The essential difference between the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of AI is thus not technological but cognitive. After the Enlightenment, philosophy accompanied science.

Generative AI is similarly poised to generate a new form of human consciousness. As yet, however, the opportunity exists in colors for which we have no spectrum and in directions for which we have no compass. No political or philosophical leadership has formed to explain and guide this novel relationship between man and machine, leaving society relatively unmoored.

The lack of citations in ChatGPT’s answers makes it difficult to discern truth from misinformation. We know already that malicious actors are injecting reams of manufactured “facts,” and increasingly convincing deepfake images and videos, into the internet—that is to say, into ChatGPT’s present and future learning set.

We must include one caveat to this prediction: What happens if this technology cannot be completely controlled? What if there will always be ways to generate falsehoods, false pictures and fake videos, and people will never learn to disbelieve what they see and hear? Humans are taught from birth to believe what we see and hear, and that may well no longer be true as a result of generative AI. Even if the big platforms, by custom and regulation, work hard to mark and sort bad content, we know that content once seen cannot be unseen. The ability to manage and control global distributed content fully is a serious and unsolved problem.

The answers that ChatGPT gives to these issues are evocative only in the sense that they raise more questions than conclusions. For now, we have a novel and spectacular achievement that stands as a glory to the human mind as AI. We have not yet evolved a destination for it. As we become Homo technicus, we hold an imperative to define the purpose of our species. It is up to us to provide the real answers.

Fox News


That purpose was to make money doing what they've always done as cheaply and efficiently as possible. Synthetics like fentanyl are so much easier and cheaper to produce than other drugs that the only surprising thing is that it didn't take off until 2014.

If you're wondering if 80,000 customers dying a year is bad for business, the answer is no because they're making more money selling pills than they ever made from heroin because people think pills are safer and fentanyl only lasts a couple of hours so customers buy more of it. The DOJ is playing this card for geopolitical reasons. Same with the FBI now supporting the lab leak from China theory on COVID. There is nothing serious at all when it comes to the US Govt agencies, everything is propaganda in service to the big game.




U.S. Government Helped Rise of Mexican Drug Cartel: Report



CIA Assets and the Rise of the Guadalajara Connection



House Hearing, 111 Congress

As of Dec 2017, Augustine Carstens is the current Int'l banking cartel boss of bosses over in the tower of Basel, aka Bank for International Settlements (BIS) leading the global charge for CBDCs.

From summer 2021, 1 min esplainer straight from Agustin Carstens, the head of the BIS:

Israel's new government has a proposal to overturn some of the past supreme court rulings the present coalition government does not like. I find it interesting that a population where so many are armed; not a shot was fired by the protestors as there have been some serious protest going on.

Welcome Chiefsmom, we were starting to worry!!

 

The following video discusses Israel's relation with Russia and the why some of the things we read about are going on. I found the discussion on Syria interesting along with how many Russians live in Israel. I knew that in the old days the Mossad was made up of many X-pat Russians or second and third generation Russians..