"THE TIME HAS come for serious, well-funded, and cutting-edge academic research into the nature of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and their broad cosmological and political implications." So reads a statement appearing on the website of the Sol Foundation, a new California-based think tank that has positioned itself to become "a premier center for UAP research."

Officially launched on August 15, 2023, the nonprofit organization was "established to research the philosophical, policy, and scientific implications of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP)," according to a press release issued last month.

The Foundation is led by Dr. Garry Nolan, a Professor in the Department of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine, along with sociocultural anthropologist Dr. Peter Skafish. Others named among the roster of experts the Sol Foundation is assembling are I. Charles McCullough III, the former Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (IC IG) who will serve as the Foundation's legal counsel, and Diana Walsh Pasulka, an author and professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington who recently announced she will be joining the Foundation as a board member.

Aliens are real, but we live in hyper-reality.
The Mexican Government showed us pictures of 1000-year-old aliens and nobody cared. Nobody ran through the streets in a panic, nobody rioted, and nobody prepared for war... because nobody cared.

Nobody cared about the aliens because we've seen them before. We've already seen the inside of their spaceships and shot them with sniper rifles in video games. We cycled through the sky with one in the basket of our BMX, and then we escaped the authorities to help the little fellow get home. We've watched them nuke the Empire State Building and in return, we hacked the computers of their mothership. We saw them place electrodes in our heads, we were entertained by seeing them skinned alive by Feds in hazmat suits.

That was all decades ago. Decades before that, Orson Welles terrified radio listeners by depicting them invading the earth. It's all an old hackneyed plot that we've seen too many times, and now nobody cares about the aliens.

Another reason nobody cares about the aliens is that nobody believes there are aliens. We've seen that story too. We've seen series about the Government faking aliens, and we've seen series about the Government hiding aliens. We were bored with black-goo plots and human/alien hybrids before the millennium, and we watched every conceivable story arc and documentary featuring pyramids and downed UFOs locked in Arctic ice fields.

We are more familiar with those curiously expressionless and somewhat child-like visages than we are with the features of the goblin shark or platypus. The aliens are not actually alien, because they've been an embedded part of our cultural psyche for at least a century and nobody now cares that they pop up on our screen interfaces once again like Charles Manson, Optimus Prime, or Kylie Minogue.

Aliens are entertainment, they were always entertainment. They were always us — a space-fetus reflecting back to ourselves our own anxieties and existential dreads. They were the Russians during the Cold War, the manifestation of cosmic consciousness when we dreamed of the stars and the unifying hand of God when we entered Globalization. They were always part psy-op, part accurate reflection.

After the millennium, we stopped dreaming or believing because we consumed images instead. Jumbo jets penetrated skyscrapers, which crumpled, withered, and collapsed like paper cups. Naturally, the Government did that too, and suddenly Area 51 seemed quaint and distant, and merely in black and white — it was imagery and narrative from a different time. We were locked in our homes and our families were forcibly vaccinated. That didn't make sense either, and we still don't know why so many people are dying. But there's no time to worry about that now because the planet is dying, and we're killing it. We are the alien plague upon this rock orbiting the sun, and now the sun is going to immunize the planet with its cleansing heat. At least it will try to do so before the nuclear war arrives.

The discovery could "rewrite history," a controversial researcher told officials.

Two supposedly "non-human" mummified alien corpses were displayed to lawmakers in Mexico City on Wednesday by a self-proclaimed UFO expert, who said analysis of the specimens had shown them to not be part of humanity's "terrestrial evolution."

The two diminutive humanoid bodies, which have three-fingered hands and appear to have stereoscopic vision, were discovered in algae mines in Peru, journalist and ufologist Jaime Maussan said as part of the presentation. He added under oath his belief that the corpses, which were carbon-dated as being around 1,000 years old, are not of terrestrial origin.

"These specimens are not part of our terrestrial evolution," Maussan said at the public hearing. "These aren't beings that were found after a UFO wreckage. They were found in [algae] mines, and were later fossilized."

He added: "Whether they are aliens or not, we don't know, but they were intelligent and they lived with us. They should rewrite history."

People are going missing in national parks and North American wilderness areas. A 2019 documentary, Missing 411: The Hunted, reports as many as 1,200 individuals have disappeared, but also admits that number may be under-reported.

David Paulides, a former police detective turned private investigator, is the author of the popular Missing 411 series and documentaries of the same name, as well as the CanAm Missing Project. He said, "We don't know how many people go missing from these locations because the USFS [United States Forest Service] and NPS [National Park Service] refuse to release a list of these missing people."

Several Hundred Cases a Year

Paulides is dedicated to investigating missing persons in national parks and forests. When asked how many cases he typically researches in a year, he responded, "We probably research several hundred people per year."

One thing is certain: people who hike and camp in national parks or hunt in national forests and wilderness areas have vanished. These sobering stories are documented in Paulides' latest documentary, Missing 411: The UFO Connection (2022).

Space is not what we see at night or what NASA has shown us for years. In the midst of stars, planets, and other celestial bodies, there are much more vivid, bizarre, and strange things hidden from our eyes. There are several astronauts who strongly believe in the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations including Gordon Cooper, Buzz Aldrin, and Story Musgrave.

Many conspiracy theorists believe that NASA knew that Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong had an encounter with aliens, that is why they erased 40 rolls of film from the Apollo 11 mission. It was claimed by Bob Dean, a United States Army Command Sergeant Major.

According to a report shared by Gaia, there is a transcript between Aldrin and Armstrong where the two had witnessed extraterrestrial activities on Moon during the Apollo 11 mission.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was provided a classified memo on the subject of "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP)" in February, CTV News has learned.

Obtained through a freedom of information request, the heavily redacted document offers a glimpse into how the Canadian government responded to the unidentified object that was detected and shot down over northern Canada's Yukon territory on Feb. 11. According to the "Secret" memo, the Yukon object was the 23rd so-called "UAP" tracked over North America in the first few weeks of 2023.

"NORAD numbers objects on a sequential basis, per year, to track every detected object that is not immediately identified; upon cross-examination most objects are found to be innocuous and do not meet the threshold for higher reporting or engagement," the memo explained. "Object #23's function, method of propulsion, or affiliation to any nation-state remains unverified."

Four people in Michigan recently reported seeing a UFO being chased by two fighter jets.

According to a report filed with the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), the eyewitnesses saw two F-16 fighter jets "dogfighting" something the man couldn't see at first. However, the report states that it was clear that the jets were "looking intently for something" and, soon, a "white/metallic disc" appeared.

The NUFORC report states:

"The UAP was extremely fast it was capable of overtaking and outmaneuvering the fighter jets with extreme ease. It would overtake a jet, stop suddenly and seemed to turn toward the incoming jet like spin in their direction without moving."

The eyewitness said:

"The jets then began shooting anti-missile flares like it was under direct attack. The UAP was also comfortable to just spin again and make the next jet flanking shoot its anti missile flares! There was clear distress."

According to the witness, this cat-and-mouse game went on for three rounds before the jets took off in "an ear-shattering retreat."

The alien program and alien presence continues into this century. Here, at the twilight of my career, I think about what kind of future might be left.
In 1901 at the beginning of the twentieth century, the great African-American political theoretician and activist W.E.B. Du Bois said in his The Souls of Black Folk, that the problem of the twentieth century will be the problem of the "color line." By that he meant that the problems that had yet to be worked out will be related to the historical and sociological effects of racism in the United States. Indeed, he was in large part right. The history of America in the 20th and 21st centuries has indeed been the continuous struggle for civil rights and equality. The great struggles that encompassed America after the Depression were once believed to be its confrontation with Fascism abroad and racism at home. Today those two evils have seemingly multiplied on U.S. soil.

We are now two decades into the new millennium and yet our speculative powers seem to have only diminished in the face of unprecedented social, environmental, and political turbulence. Like Du Bois, many commentators have speculated about what the future will bring. Most who prognosticate on the future tend to concentrate on the coming wonders (or salvation) of technology. They have discussed the new and wonderful breakthroughs that await us in the biological and medical sciences - the coming cure for cancer, heart disease, and other physiological problems. They have talked about the new genetics in which gene editing technologies like CRSPR will make humankind perfect by eliminating faulty genes and improving upon others. Scholars now wonder whether our average lifespans can be extended to 150 years while others muse about the far-off possibilities of immortality. Astronomers have discovered potentially Earth-like planets orbiting far star systems, and physicists have provided proof for the existence of subatomic particles as they work towards a completely new model of the universe. Advances in quantum mechanics have opened avenues towards multiverses, dimensional travel, teleportation, and other advances once thought only the realm of science fiction. Computers have already fundamentally altered society, but artificial intelligence technologies, built around sophisticated machine learning algorithms may upend our world the way that the internet has done over the last twenty years.

All these speculations have an optimistic aura about them. Indeed, the 20th and 21st century have statistically been the greatest centuries for human life ever. More people are living better and longer than ever before. There are now more democratic nations than ever before. There is less hunger than ever. But darkness clings to the door lintels. Millions of people still live in grinding poverty. Famines and starvation are not uncommon. Fascist and white supremacist movements, clothed in misinformation, have brainwashed millions into believing despicable lies. U.S. politics have been so deformed as to become fractured. In Europe, these same political tactics are threatening to shred the continent apart. On top of all of this, it has been evident for decades that human activity has been damaging every habitat on Earth, decimating the world's biodiversity at a record pace, and directly contributing to the rise greenhouse gas emissions that are producing the most dramatic environmental change this planet has seen in 10,000 years. Today a global environmental catastrophe seems all but assured.

These are all our problems to solve. But positive change will be extremely difficult. This, of course, says nothing about the human propensity for war and killing that has been a fundamental aspect of human society since its beginning. After all, we are only 70 years away from the bloodiest war in human history. Like petulant teenagers, we now possess the power to totally and completely affect every atom on Earth, without yet the maturity to wisely use it.

In separate discussions over the last week, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks and a Pentagon spokesperson briefed DefenseScoop on the near-term vision for the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks recently moved to personally oversee the Pentagon's unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) investigation team formally known as the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, DefenseScoop has exclusively learned. And a new website will soon be launched where incidents can be reported.

Hicks now holds regular meetings with AARO's inaugural director, Sean Kirkpatrick — who she's also repositioned to report directly to her.

The Pentagon's second-in-charge took action late last month, partly to help speed up AARO's development and launch of a congressionally mandated public website where the organization will be expected to disclose its unclassified work and findings and offer a secure mechanism via which users can submit their own reports of possible UAP observances.

In separate discussions over the last week, Hicks and Pentagon spokesperson Eric Pahon briefed DefenseScoop on new details regarding the deputy secretary's near-term vision for AARO — and the latest status of the new website and reporting mechanism ahead of an official announcement from the Defense Department expected on Thursday.

Across a storied 45-year career as a New York Times staff reporter, Ralph Blumenthal had extensively covered weighty topics like the Italian Mafia and Nazi war criminals. But never suspected alien spaceships.

That changed in 2017 when Blumenthal, by that time a retired contributor for the Times, connected with investigative journalist Leslie Kean, who had come across an extraordinary tip.

Kean, who has long reported on UFOs, was able to attend a confidential meeting that October where she learned of a top-secret Pentagon program that had for years operated in the shadows. Its mission? To investigate reported sighting of mysterious objects in the skies.

The discovery was monumental, not least because it directly undermined the government's public position of more than 50 years that unidentified flying objects were not worth studying.

Naturally, Blumenthal was intrigued.

"The government always took the position that there's nothing to this, that these are all hoaxes or hallucinations, but nothing real," Blumenthal told USA TODAY in a phone interview. "This was a pretty good story, I thought - a great story."