22 Comments

Unfortunately, the regular people of the United States don't run the country, and don't have any say in how it is run. Only the donor class and their lackeys in the government have a say over what the US does with taxpayer's money. Considering the vast sums of money that people like Elon Musk can make by partnering with The Blob, I don't see donors like him backing away from the opportunity to further weaponize orbital satellite capability. In fact, the donors are probably chomping at the bit to get in on the action. Hopefully, more regular people will complain, but that has limited effectiveness against Big Money.

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Indeed. The effectiveness of the regular people is going to have to take the form of a general strike to have any influence over The Blob.

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It has something to do with "CONQUERING SPACE" I think. Like "THE WAR ON DRUGS" and "THE WAR ON POVERTY".

"There's GOLD in them there asteroids"!

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Off topic, did y'all see Ms. Johnstone's post today? Pure Caitlin.

"FYI if you’re a Trump supporter who started reading me for my criticisms of the Biden administration you are going to hate my guts after your guy gets in ... One annoying effect of the assassination attempt has been to cement Trump’s deification in the eyes of his cultists and permanently frame him as an enemy of the deep state, despite his having spent his entire term advancing longstanding CIA/neocon agendas right in front of them. Initiating the pouring of weapons into Ukraine, shredding nuclear treaties and ramping up cold war escalations against Russia, arresting Assange, killing the Iran deal and nearly starting a war there, vetoing attempts to save Yemen from US-backed genocide, openly trying to stage a coup in Venezuela while deliberately starving the people who live there, bombing and sanctioning Syria, escalating against China, supporting all kinds of Israeli murderousness and criminality — these were all longtime goals of the nastiest hawks in Washington and the secretive government agencies in Virginia. But Trump supporters live in some kind of parallel reality where none of that happened and he’s helping Americans take back their country from the deep state. "

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Not Off Topic at all, Tom G. Caitlin seldom is. If ever.

And i was just about to post her latest when i saw that You already had. Thankee.

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"We have to fight 'them' up there, so we won't have to fight 'them' down here."

At some point, space junk/debris will take out the useful commercial satellites faster than we can send up replacements. Or so it seems to me.

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We militarize space because we're so good at in here on earth (sarc): https://www.takimag.com/article/fredwitz-on-war-ii/

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As Whitley Strieber said forty years ago at the end of Communion, the most grossly misnamed book by anyone ever assaulted by aliens, “You’re all going to be very surprised.” The reason we have not been back to the moon is that we were chased off it and told not to come back. I don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to tell you this; no theory is required, we all consent to the thirty year rule. Thirty years of the public being shut out of its own history; more if it’s important. And nothing is more important than gaining air superiority on the battlefield by copying alien technology, militarily sacrosanct and beyond top secret since the Roswell crash in July 1947. Thence the wafer transistor in December 1947, and later the fibre optic for which the development of the right refractive index took until 1955. NASA is the fig leaf for this program. But that’s not the worst. It’s that the aliens have already decided since we became Death, Destroyer of Worlds, not only to stop us expanding but to replace us in situ. Hence the abduction phenomenon, outlined by Budd Hopkins, Dr David Jacobs and Harvard’s John Mack, of which the focus is entirely upon human gametes, used to build an army of late-iteration earth-adapted hybrid aliens using these raw materials at destination, in good NASA style, so as to take over.

By our trying to get off the planet, once a few of these missions have failed due to mysterious glitches, if the ETs are forced to carry on spiking them, these latter will be forced to implement the plan sooner rather than later once the world comes to acknowledge them. It’s supposed to be a surprise perpetrated upon people who don’t know they have an enemy, which is the ultimate in military strategy. Thus, the US military, starting with Reagan’s Star Wars -and we know that Reagan warned at the UN podium that the next war would be with people from other planets - is making attempt to gain air parity with ET itself using Special Access Program contractors. Hence all the spending and the new Space Force. There’s your deep state, by the way.

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Back in the '70s, I was a Whitley Strieber fan, e.g. his book "Wolfen," which was made into a decent movie. "The Hunger" was good too, also made into a movie.

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Is that it, Bill? Those are films of books, made either before (or before he knew he was) abducted. We’re talking existential dread here.

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I know about the alien abduction stuff. Honestly, I'm skeptical. It seems Strieber believes it, that's for sure.

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Roddenberry was an optimist.

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Yes. And a visionary and an idealist.

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True dat.

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Hey I hear Biden dropped out of the race.

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Yes, true. Just saw that too. I'll write something quick.

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Good one, Bill. I, too, remember how we believed NASA could be peaceful and how disappointed I was to learn that all NASA programs were military in nature (no matter what the PR said).

I'm not a Trekkie but your Borg metaphor rings true. A big question for me is: why would Sweden, South Korea et al. want to endanger themselves to help ensure U.S. hegemony in space?

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Yes, NASA, a "civilian" space agency, was informed if not dominated by military concerns, as was the Apollo program.

I think it was only on the last Apollo mission (17) that a "real" civilian scientist got to go to the moon.

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Even with the approximately six 'classified' missions of the Shuttle programs, at least the public was aware of the launches and the program. Now with the automated X37B - given the length of each mission that is fully run by the military - there is little public awareness of the ongoing US militarization of space.

Russia is accused of militarizing space. The question is never asked if they are leading the effort or are responding to a threat they see.

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Good point.

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And now it is all outsourced to the profiteers. "Houston, we have a problem!"

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