On April 30, 2001, the National Security Archive issued a statement that read as follows: “In his new exposé of the National Security Agency entitled Body of Secrets, author James Bamford highlights a set of proposals on Cuba by the Joint Chiefs of Staff codenamed OPERATION NORTHWOODS.  This document, titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba” was provided by the JCS to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962, as the key component of Northwoods.” The release continues: “Written in response to a request from the Chief of the Cuba Project, Col. Edward Lansdale, the Top Secret memorandum describes U.S. plans to covertly engineer various pretexts that would justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba.”

To say that these “various pretexts” were controversial is an understatement, as the National Security Archive’s press-release shows: “These proposals – part of a secret anti-Castro program known as Operation Mongoose – included staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United States, developing a fake ‘Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” including “sink[ing] a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated),’ faking a Cuban air force attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting a ‘Remember the Maine’ incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage.  Bamford himself writes that Operation Northwoods ‘may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government.’”

An extract from the highly-classified Operation Northwoods document file states: “The suggested courses of action are based on the premise that US military intervention will result from a period of heightened US-Cuban tensions which place the United States in the position of suffering justifiable grievances. World opinion, and the United Nations forum should be favorably affected by developing the international image of the Cuban government as rash and irresponsible, and as an alarming and unpredictable threat to the peace of the Western Hemisphere.”

The now-declassified document makes it clear that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were gung-ho for the project: “The Joint Chiefs of Staff have considered the attached Memorandum for the Chief of Operations, Cuba Project, which responds to a request of that office for brief but precise description of pretexts which would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba. The Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend that the proposed memorandum be forwarded as a preliminary submission suitable for planning purposes. It is assumed that there will be similar submissions from other agencies and that these inputs will be used as a basis for developing a time-phased plan. Individual projects can then be considered on a case-by-case basis.”

There is also this, from the Operation Northwoods dossier: “Further, It is assumed that a single agency will be given the primary responsibility for developing military and para-military aspects of the basic plan. It is recommended that this responsibility for both overt and covert military operations be assigned the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And, finally, from the Northwoods file, we have this:  “Such a plan would enable a logical build-up of incidents to be combined with other seemingly unrelated events to camouflage the ultimate objective and create the necessary impression of Cuban rashness and irresponsibility on a large scale, directed at other countries as well as the United States. The plan would also properly integrate and time phase the courses of action to be pursued. The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere.”

Clearly, the idea of one day possibly using false flags to try and ensure that Cuba would be perceived as a “threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere” was a highly popular one.

The octopus is already an impressive creature (and probably knows it) and it certainly doesn’t need any help from humans reinforcing that notion. Yet we keep studying them – possibly to prove to ourselves that we really are superior to them. Good luck with that – especially after a new study found that an octopus’ arms can and do operate independently from their brains, making snap decisions on their own. Who’s the sucker now?

“It’s an alternative model for intelligence. It gives us an understanding as to the diversity of cognition in the world, and perhaps the universe.”

Uh-oh. Is Dominic Sivitilli, a graduate student in behavioral neuroscience and astrobiology at the University of Washington in Seattle who presented the new research at the 2019 Astrobiology Science Conference (AbSciCon 2019) hinting that octopuses are from another part of the universe? Perhaps he’s implying that their arms are.

“The octopus’ arms have a neural ring that bypasses the brain, and so the arms can send information to each other without the brain being aware of it. So while the brain isn’t quite sure where the arms are in space, the arms know where each other are and this allows the arms to coordinate during actions like crawling locomotion.”

In a press release for the conference, Sivitilli describes how he watched the Giant Pacific octopus, the world’s largest, and East Pacific red octopuses captured in the Puget Sound off Seattle’s coast as he gave them objects such as cinder blocks, textured rocks, Legos and maze puzzles containing food. with food inside. After recording the arm movements on video, he used a computer program to analyze them. What he found was suckers picking up information from their environment and coordinating movements directly with other suckers, which then worked collectively to create arm movement.

Did he say “collective”?

“What we’re looking at, more than what’s been looked at in the past, is how sensory information is being integrated in this network while the animal is making complicated decisions.”

In other words, while the octopus’s brain is away, the suckers will play. Will they make decisions contrary to what the brain might make given the same data but more time? Good question. Ask an octopus.

It was just a year ago that a different scientific paper proposed that the first octopus on Earth came from “cryopreserved and matrix protected fertilized Octopus eggs” carried on-board a vessel sent here from another planet 270 million years ago. We know that octopuses can edit their own RNA. Now we know their suckers act in a coordinated collective without needing instructions from the Borg Queen brain.

What next? These researchers were having giant Pacific octopuses lift cinder blocks. They’re already smarter than us … do they need to be stronger than us too?

Bottom line … if a talking octopus head comes to your door and says he’s unarmed, check the back door – the Ocean’s Eight appendages are probably breaking in.

In April 1997, William S. Cohen, who was then the U.S. Secretary of Defense when Bill Clinton held the position of President of the United States, made an amazing and controversial statement to a packed audience at the University of Georgia, which is located in Athens. The conference at which the Secretary of Defense was speaking was The Conference on Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and U.S. Strategy. Cohen came straight to the point and told the audience that certain bodies and people – who he elected not to name, which is intriguing – were then presently “…engaging in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of Electro-Magnetic waves. So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations. It’s real.” Yes, it is real. We know that thanks to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. We now have in our possession an amazing – almost sci-fi like – document that details where the U.S. Air Force hopes to be in 2025, on the matter of weather modification and control – and with respect to multiple additional technologies, too. The document was written in 1996 and is amazing enough in content – even though it was written more than two decades ago.  The document is entitled USAF 2025.

Researched and written by the 2025 Support Office at the Air University, Air Education and Training Command, and developed by the Air University Press, Educational Services Directorate, College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research, and Education, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, the document was “designed to comply with a directive from the chief of staff of the Air Force to examine the concepts, capabilities, and technologies the United States will require to remain the dominant air and space force in the future.” The section of the document that we need to focus our attentions upon is titled: Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025. Yes, “owning the weather.”

The U.S. Air Force offered the following, thought-provoking words: “In 2025, US aerospace forces can ‘own the weather’ by capitalizing on emerging technologies and focusing development of those technologies to war-fighting applications. While some segments of society will always be reluctant to examine controversial issues such as weather-modification, the tremendous military capabilities that could result from this field are ignored at our own peril. Weather-modification offers the war fighter a wide-range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary.” The USAF 2025 document adds: “The desirability to modify storms to support military objectives is the most aggressive and controversial type of weather-modification. While offensive weather-modification efforts would certainly be undertaken by U.S. forces with great caution and trepidation, it is clear that we cannot afford to allow an adversary to obtain an exclusive weather-modification capability.”

The Air Force presented a fictional scenario which goes some way towards explaining how, and under what specific circumstances, the weather may become the next weapon of conflict: “Imagine that in 2025 the U.S. is fighting a rich, but now consolidated, politically powerful drug cartel in South America. The cartel has purchased hundreds of Russian-and Chinese-built fighters that have successfully thwarted our attempts to attack their production facilities. With their local numerical superiority and interior lines, the cartel is launching more than 10 aircraft for every one of ours. In addition, the cartel is using the French system probatoire d’ observation de la terre (SPOT) positioning and tracking imagery systems, which in 2025 are capable of transmitting near-real-time, multispectral imagery with 1 meter resolution. The U.S. wishes to engage the enemy on an uneven playing field in order to exploit the full potential of our aircraft and munitions.”

So, steps are taken to engage that same enemy, but in a very strange fashion: “Meteorological analysis reveals that equatorial South America typically has afternoon thunderstorms on a daily basis throughout the year. Our intelligence has confirmed that cartel pilots are reluctant to fly in or near thunderstorms. Therefore, our Weather Force Support Element (WFSE), which is a part of the commander in chief’s (CINC) air operations center (AOC), is tasked to forecast storm paths and trigger or intensify thunderstorm cells over critical target areas that the enemy must defend with their aircraft. Since our aircraft in 2025 have all-weather capability, the thunderstorm threat is minimal to our forces, and we can effectively and decisively control the sky over the target.”

The Weather Force Support Element, the USAF 2025 document reveals, “has the necessary sensor and communication capabilities to observe, detect, and act on weather-modification requirements to support US military objectives. These capabilities, we are told “are part of an advanced battle area system that supports the war-fighting CINC. In our scenario, the CINC tasks the WFSE to conduct storm intensification and concealment operations. The WFSE models the atmospheric conditions to forecast, with 90 percent confidence, the likelihood of successful modification using airborne cloud generation and seeding.” Things then become even more science-fiction-like: “According to USAF 2025, by 2025 uninhabited aerospace vehicles (UAV) are routinely used for weather-modification operations. By cross-referencing desired attack times with wind and thunderstorm forecasts and the SPOT satellite’s projected orbit, the WFSE generates mission profiles for each UAV. The WFSE guides each UAV using near-real-time information from a networked sensor array.

“Prior to the attack, which is coordinated with forecasted weather conditions, the UAVs begin cloud generation and seeding operations. UAVs disperse a cirrus shield to deny enemy visual and infrared (IR) surveillance. Simultaneously, microwave heaters create localized scintillation to disrupt active sensing via synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems such as the commercially available Canadian search and rescue satellite-aided tracking (SARSAT) that will be widely available in 2025. Other cloud seeding operations cause a developing thunderstorm to intensify over the target, severely limiting the enemy’s capability to defend. The WFSE monitors the entire operation in real-time and notes the successful completion of another very important but routine weather-modification mission.”

While the military stated that this scenario might be viewed by some as being “far-fetched,” it was as sure as it could be that “technological advances in meteorology and the demand for more precise weather information by global businesses will lead to the successful identification and parameterization of the major variables that affect weather.” The USAF 2025 peoplethen did a bit of digging into the future, which, one suspects, will not be too far off of the mark: “By 2025, advances in computational capability, modeling techniques, and atmospheric information tracking will produce a highly accurate and reliable weather prediction capability, validated against real-world weather. In the following decade, population densities put pressure on the worldwide availability and cost of food and usable water. Massive life and property losses associated with natural weather disasters become increasingly unacceptable.

“These pressures prompt governments and/or other organizations who are able to capitalize on the technological advances of the previous 20 years to pursue a highly accurate and reasonably precise weather-modification capability. The increasing urgency to realize the benefits of this capability stimulates laws and treaties, and some unilateral actions, making the risks required to validate and refine it acceptable.” Less than a decade from now, we can suggest, our planet may not resemble the world in which we live today. After all, consider the following from the Air Force, who are confident that they will be able to “shape local weather patterns by influencing the factors that affect climate, precipitation, storms and their effects, fog, and near space. These highly accurate and reasonably precise civil applications of weather-modification technology have obvious military implications. This is particularly true for aerospace forces, for while weather may affect all mediums of operation, it operates in ours.”

The military recommended that, “the DOD explore the many opportunities (and also the ramifications) resulting from development of a capability to influence precipitation or conducting ‘selective precipitation modification.’ Although the capability to influence precipitation over the long term (i.e., for more than several days) is still not fully understood. By 2025 we will certainly be capable of increasing or decreasing precipitation over the short term in a localized area.” Perhaps most important and relevant of all is the way in which the United States was guaranteed to benefit, strategically, from the deployment of such technologies in areas of hostility:  “Before discussing research in this area, it is important to describe the benefits of such a capability. While many military operations may be influenced by precipitation, ground mobility is most affected. Influencing precipitation could prove useful in two ways. First, enhancing precipitation could decrease the enemy’s trafficability by muddying terrain, while also affecting their morale. Second, suppressing precipitation could increase friendly trafficability by drying out an otherwise muddied area.”

As for the matter of not just creating storms – but definitive super-storms – that might decimate entire landscapes, and without even a bullet or a missile fired, the Air Force’s report makes things acutely obvious that it is this area, perhaps more than any other, which presents the biggest strategic gains: “The desirability to modify storms to support military objectives is the most aggressive and controversial type of weather-modification. The damage caused by storms is indeed horrendous. For instance, a tropical storm has an energy equal to 10,000 one-megaton hydrogen bombs, and in 1992 Hurricane Andrew totally destroyed Homestead AFB, Florida, caused the evacuation of most military aircraft in the southeastern US, and resulted in $15.5 billion of damage.”

On the matter of manufactured storms, we are also told: “At any instant there are approximately 2,000 thunderstorms taking place. In fact 45,000 thunderstorms, which contain heavy rain, hail, microbursts, wind shear, and lightning form daily. Anyone who has flown frequently on commercial aircraft has probably noticed the extremes that pilots will go to avoid thunderstorms. The danger of thunderstorms was clearly shown in August 1985 when a jumbo jet crashed killing 137 people after encountering microburst wind shears during a rain squall. These forces of nature impact all aircraft and even the most advanced fighters of 1996 make every attempt to avoid a thunderstorm.”

USAF 2025 then asked an important question, one which has a bearing everyone who flies – regularly or occasionally: “Will bad weather remain an aviation hazard in 2025?” In answering its very own question, the Air Force said: “The answer, unfortunately, is ‘yes,’ but projected advances in technology over the next 30 years will diminish the hazard potential. Computer-controlled flight systems will be able to ‘autopilot’ aircraft through rapidly changing winds. Aircraft will also have highly accurate, onboard sensing systems that can instantaneously ‘map’ and automatically guide the aircraft through the safest portion of a storm cell. Aircraft are envisioned to have hardened electronics that can withstand the effects of lightning strikes and may also have the capability to generate a surrounding electropotential field that will neutralize or repel lightning strikes. Assuming that the U.S. achieves some or all of the above outlined aircraft technical advances and    maintains the technological ‘weather edge’ over its potential adversaries, we can next look at how we could modify the battlespace weather to make the best use of our technical advantage.”

The technology and science surrounding the issue of turning weather into weapons was further explored: “Weather-modification technologies might involve techniques that would increase latent heat release in the atmosphere, provide additional water vapor for cloud cell development, and provide additional surface and lower atmospheric heating to increase atmospheric instability.” Paramount to the success of any attempt to ignite a storm cell, noted the authors, “…is the pre-existing atmospheric conditions locally and regionally.”

In essence, that means the Earth’s atmosphere must be deemed “conditionally unstable and the large-scale dynamics must be supportive of vertical cloud development. The focus of the weather-modification effort would be to provide additional ‘conditions’ that would make the atmosphere unstable enough to generate cloud and eventually storm cell development. The path of storm cells once developed or enhanced is dependent not only on the mesoscale dynamics of the storm but the regional and synoptic (global) scale atmospheric wind flow patterns in the area which are currently not subject to human control.”

The Air Force admitted that “the technical hurdles for storm development in support of military operations are obviously greater than enhancing precipitation or dispersing fog as described earlier. One area of storm research that would significantly benefit military operations is lightning modification. Most research efforts are being conducted to develop techniques to lessen the occurrence or hazards associated with lightning. This is important research for military operations and resource protection, but some offensive military benefit could be obtained by doing research on increasing the potential and intensity of lightning.”

Let’s now take a look at the final words on this particular issue: “The lessons of history indicate a real weather-modification capability will eventually exist despite the risk. The drive exists. People have always wanted to control the weather and their desire will compel them to collectively and continuously pursue their goal. The motivation exists. The potential benefits and power are extremely lucrative and alluring for those who have the resources to develop it. This combination of drive, motivation, and resources will eventually produce the technology. History also teaches that we cannot afford to be without a weather-modification capability once the technology is developed and used by others. Even if we have no intention of using it, others will. To call upon the atomic weapon analogy again, we need to be able to deter or counter their capability with our own. Therefore, the weather and intelligence communities must keep abreast of the actions of others.

“Weather-modification is a force multiplier with tremendous power that could be exploited across the full spectrum of war-fighting environments. From enhancing friendly operations or disrupting those of the enemy via small-scale tailoring of natural weather patterns to complete dominance of global communications and counter-space control, weather-modification offers the war fighter a wide-range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary. But, while offensive weather-modification efforts would certainly be undertaken by US forces with great caution and trepidation, it is clear that we cannot afford to allow an adversary to obtain an exclusive weather-modification capability.”

2025 is not that far way at all. It will be interesting to see if by that year we will have perfected weather-based weaponry to a highly significant degree.

Based on a new study (which can be read here), NASA announced that they found evidence of sodium chloride – which is a huge component found in sea salt and table salt – located on the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. This means that the subsurface ocean on Europa is quite similar to the oceans found right here on Earth.

Even though Europa’s ocean is underneath an icy crust, the sodium chloride can still be found on the surface of the moon because of cracks or even potential geysers. Although it was previously thought that magnesium sulfates were present on the moon’s surface, scientists used a visible-wavelength spectroscopy to detect the sodium chloride.

In order to prove that what they viewed was in fact sodium chloride, testing was conducted on similar ocean salts from here on Earth. The ocean salts were introduced to the same airless atmosphere that’s on Europa, as well as the same amount of radiation. What happened was that the salt changed to a yellowish color – the same color that was found on an area of Europa called Tara Regio.

There is another possible explanation and it’s that the sodium chloride could be part of different layers that were formed on the moon’s surface, meaning that it didn’t come from the subsurface ocean. More studies will have to be conducted in order to find out for sure where the sodium chloride came from. If it did in fact come from the subsurface ocean that would mean that the ocean floor remains hydrothermally active. And if it is hydrothermally active, there could possibly be living organisms there.

Europa

NASA’s Cassini mission collected data from Saturn’s moon Enceladus and it is believed that it also has hydrothermal vents on the ocean’s floor. In fact, based on water vapor samples collected by the spacecraft, they found salts and several organic molecules in Enceladus’ ocean. Future space missions will focus on possibly finding life on Enceladus as well as Europa.

It’s incredible to think that moons so far away from us could have oceans that are very similar to our own. Not to mention that there could be a tiny possibility that living organisms could be present on those moons.

In France, they’re called “cercles de culture,” although a better name might be “cercles de ooh la la” after a couple was found naked in one by the farmer whose field had already been trampled once by whatever it is that’s making these crop circles that have suddenly started cropping up all over the French countryside. The count is up to at least six and there may be many more now that one group has revealed how they made theirs. No, it wasn’t “extraterrestres,” although the juries are still out on the other five circles.

The first French cercle de culture appeared early in the growing season on June 6 in Baillet-en-France in northern France. It was spotted by a pilot in the Enghien-Moisselles flying club and posted on their Facebook page. The club reported that the pictures got more views than any other posts on their page and other pilots saw plenty of spectators – but no naked couples trying to get into the Crop Circle Club. As can be seen in the pictures, it was a fairly simple design.

Baillet-en-France. C’est un pilote de l’aéroclub d’Enghien-Moisselles qui a repéré le dessin. Frédérick Blacher

The second crop circle was the big one found on June 12 in Saint-Hippolyte in northeastern France near the German border where the farmer found the nude couple doing the crop circle strut. That one was much larger – covering  parts of two fields – but still fairly simple in shape. (See it here.)

Agroglifo em Saint Hippolyte, França. Reportado em 12 de Junho, 2019. 
Créditos: Ilona Bonjean

The next one was reported on June 14 in a ‘cereal’ field at Menetou-Salon in central France. The owner of the field said it could have been there for up to two weeks because some of the crop was sprouting again in the paths that he believed were created by humans using tractors and boards. Again, a typical set of circles and lines and fairly plain. (See it here.)

That can also be said of one in the field of a man of La Manche on the English Channel in the northwest coast of France. The circles and crescents found on June 13 cross multiple tractor paths that could have been used for access. The count was now up to four – twice as many crop circles as had been seen in a single year in France. Whoever or whatever was making them may have been new at it because the patterns were simple in comparison to many of those that appear annually in England. (See it here.)

That changed somewhat on June 17 with a small but elaborate tight cluster of circles and triangles in a field in St-Jean of Bassel in northeast France. It was only 20 meters across (a third the size of some of the others) but geometrically pleasant. Even casual observers can see the tractor path leading up to its side. (See it here.)

That brings us full circle to the last one (for now) which was discovered on June 17 in Blaesheim in northeastern France on the German border near cercle de culture found in Saint-Hippolyte. This had a more elaborate design than the rest (see it here) 

… and a good reason why. DNA.fr reported almost immediately that the circle was created by local students from the Jean Sturm Gymnasium in Strasbourg as a geometry project. Their math teacher contacted the local mayor and his brother who were also owners of a farm – thus getting both a field and access in one call. The students used the classic ropes-and-stakes crop circle strategy seen in many instructional videos and were successful in creating a nice one, that was quickly photographed by a pilot and uploaded to the Internet.

This better get me an A

The math teacher of the students in Blaesheim said they were inspired by the crop circle in Saint-Hippolyte (for purely geometric reasons – not to attract naked couples). Is imitation the reason for the crop circle-palooza in France this summer? The simple designs, obvious tractor marks and occasional confessions push the skeptic needle towards that side, although the honesty of the students keeps the needle from plunging into the deep red ‘hoax’ area. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting phenomena.

Will it continue through the summer? Will anyone else join the French Crop Circle Club? Do the French really need crop circles for a naked rendezvous?

May 22, 1949 was the date on which the first U.S. Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, died. Specifically at 1:50 a.m. As will quickly become apparent, the circumstances surrounding Forrestal’s final hours are swamped in controversy. All that we know with absolute certainty is that in the early hours of the 22^nd, Forrestal’s body was found on a third-floor canopy of the Bethesda Naval Hospital, Maryland. Did he take a fatal leap out of the window of the 13^th floor of the hospital, his mind in turmoil and suicide on his mind? Was it an accident? Or, was Forrestal terminated? Let’s have a look at this strange and disturbing affair. We’ll begin with a bit of background on the man himself. Forrestal was born just eight years before the dawning of the 20^th century, in Dutchess County, New York. After after completing his education at Princeton University, he took a job with a Wall Street-based company, William A. Read and Co. A skilled figure in the field of economics, Forrestal quickly made for himself a significant amount of money. At the age of thirty-four he got married, to a journalist with Vogue, Josephine Ogden. It was hardly the ideal situation. Ogden was an alcoholic and someone who flew off the handle at just about any given moment. Forrestal had his flaws too. He was a very unemotional person: for Forrestal, getting close to people was incredibly difficult. To the point where he pretty much gave up trying. In 1940, however, things changed for Forrestal; massively so.

It was in that year that Forrestal decided to take his career in a very different direction: with the U.S. government. Amazingly, it wasn’t too long before he was offered the prestigious position of Under-Secretary of the Navy. Hardly surprisingly, Forrestal quickly accepted the prestigious position. From there, things really took off: he was soon given the job of Secretary of the Navy. Things were taken to an even greater scale when, in 1947 – the year in which the National Security Act was passed and the CIA was created – Forrestal was approached by the presidential office no less, to take on the role of Secretary of Defense; in fact, the very first U.S. Secretary of Defense ever. President Harry S. Truman was more than happy with his choice for the position. Matters soon began to change, however, and not at all in a good way – to say the very least.

President Truman presents a Medal of Merit to Secretary of Defense James Forrestal in the Oval Office

It wasn’t long at all before Forrestal began to exhibit psychological problems. Depression, caused by his huge workloads, were said to have been the main cause. Matters only got worse: the depression deepened, anxiety attacks kicked in, and a notable dose of paranoia overwhelmed him. For the U.S. government, Secretary of Defense Forrestal was a major asset to the infrastructure of the United States. His psychological issues, however, had him secretly marked by President Truman as a potential danger to the orderly running of the Department of Defense. Bit by bit, and throughout 1948, Forrestal’s state got even worse. Eventually, action had to be taken. And, it was. Forrestal was relieved of his job as the Secretary of Defense. The next thing for the government was to try and help Forrestal get well. So, a decision was taken to have Forrestal admitted to the aforementioned Bethesda Naval Hospital. Most worrying for Truman’s team, however, was the genuine fear that a destabilized Forrestal just might go off the rails and spill the beans on some of the U.S. government’s most guarded secrets. It was a dangerous and unpredictable time. It would soon turn deadly.

April 2, 1949 was the date on which Forrestal was taken to the hospital – for his good and that of the government too. It was apparent to the doctors and nurses that Forrestal was in a dangerous state. Forrestal suspected – in fact, he was absolutely sure – that dangerous characters were watching his every move. Who those same characters might have been all very much depended on Forrestal’s frame of mind: sometimes it was Russian agents. On other occasions it was spies in the U.S. government. As for the latter, Forrestal thought it was J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. Forrestal’s mind was spinning – and far from in a good way. On top of that, Forrestal stopped eating for a while. Not a good sign. It’s important to note that when Forrestal was admitted to Bethesda he was in what amounted to solitary confinement, and the windows of the room were modified so they couldn’t be opened. Notably, when Forrestal’s family inquired why such actions had been taken, Captain George N. Raines, the chief psychiatrist at Bethesda, said it was to prevent Forrestal from leaping out of the windows and killing himself – which, some believe, is exactly what happened on the fateful night that Forrestal’s life met its end.

After a few weeks in the hospital, there was a clear, welcome, improvement for Forrestal. Both the doctors and the nurses concurred. On top of that, his appetite started to return. To the point where – in the presence of Rear Admiral Morton Willcutts, who had come to see his old friend – Forrestal chowed down a huge steak. It really did appear that good times were finally ahead. That all changed, however, only two days later. Or, rather, two nights. Death was just around the corner. It was a death shrouded in mystery. Let’s see what we know for sure about those final hours for the man who held some of the U.S. government’s most important secrets. The man assigned to keep a careful watch on Forrestal was Edward Prise. He was a U.S. Navy corpsman. Such was the length of their time spent together, the pair became good friends. As the night got longer, Forrestal told Prise that he didn’t need a sleeping pill and was going to dig into a book for a while. That too was a good thing. Or, at least, it seemed to be. After Prise’s shift was over, he was replaced by another military man, Robert Wayne Harrison, Jr.Forrestal’s end was almost upon him.

Bethesda Tower

At some point into his shift, Harrison, Jr. left the room to run an errand. From that point onward, everything very much becomes murky and unclear – and probably something that will never be fully resolved to the satisfaction of everyone. When Harrison, Jr. got back to the room he was shocked to the core to see that Forrestal was not in his bed. And, the room’s windows were open. Harrison, Jr. raced to the window: the cord of Forrestal’s dressing-gown was tied to the radiator near the window. Clearly, the goal was death by strangulation. It turned out, however, that Forrestal’s weight caused the cord to snap and Forrestal fell ten floors to his death; something that absolutely no-one could survive. The official theory is that Forrestal – left alone – took his own life, possibly in a brief moment when his mind swung back to that state of depression and anxiety. The big question, however, is: could Forrestal have been pushed? The reason: to make sure he could never, ever reveal what he may have been exposed to in government.

It should be stressed that at the time of his death Forrestal was in one of his best states of mind of the last few months. Moreover, Edward Prise revealed that Forrestal had told him he would like Prise to take on the job of his, Forrestal’s, personal driver. In other words, Forrestal seemed to be making plans for a good future – and not plans for the end of his life. Then, there’s the matter of Forrestal’s brother, Henry. On the day of Forrestal’s death, Henry marched into the hospital, demanding that Forrestal be released into his, Henry’s, care. If someone on “the inside” wanted Forrestal dead, then allowing Henry Forrestal to take his brother home would have been disastrous. Forrestal would have been totally out of the control of those who may have wanted him dead; something that powerful players may not have wanted. It is, then, rather telling that Forrestal died the very night before Henry was due to take his brother back to his house. That’s not all, though: there’s also the matter of why, precisely, Robert Wayne Harrison, Jr., left the room. That was completely against the grain: official orders were that Forrestal was never, ever to be left alone. And, yet, on the very night that Forrestal died, he was left alone. Henry Forrestal was deeply concerned about the circumstances surrounding his brother’s death, to the point that he came to believe that his brother had indeed been murdered.

Seventy years later, the mystery remains precisely that: a mystery.

While Navy pilots and politicians are looking on Earth for UFOs and evidence of extraterrestrial life forms (unless they’ve already found them and aren’t telling us – that’s a different article and conspiracy theory), astronomers continue to scan the skies for what they believe is the best sign of other life forms – those mysterious fast radio bursts of cosmic radio waves. Only 85 have been picked up since the first ones were discovered in 2007 and most have been single bursts, making it impossible to trace them back to their source galaxy. That changed recently when a new technology allowed astronomers to catch a burst in the act of bursting and follow it back to its home. Yes, this is a REALLY big deal.

“This is the big breakthrough that the field has been waiting for since astronomers discovered fast radio bursts in 2007.”

In a press release announcing the publication of the details in the journal Science, lead author Dr. Keith Bannister described how astronomers in Australia used the new CISRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope in Western Australia that had been equipped with even newer technology to freeze and save the telescope’s data less than a second after a burst was detected. The fast radio burst was named FRB 180924 and the team fed the captured data into three of the world’s largest optical telescopes at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the Gemini South telescope in Chile and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), also in Chile. Those three monsters followed the burst back to the edge of the DES J214425.25?405400.81 galaxy, a Milky Way-sized formation about 3.6 billion light-years away.

No, that’s not it.

How did they do it? ASKAP is an array of dish antennas, which means the burst traveled a slightly different distance to reach each one. The technology was able to split the differences and determine not only the galaxy the FRB came from but the origin’s distance from the galaxy’s center – about 13,000 light-years.

“It comes from a massive galaxy that is forming relatively few stars. This suggests that fast radio bursts can be produced in a variety of environments, or that the seemingly one-off bursts detected so far by ASKAP are generated by a different mechanism to the repeater.”

Dr Adam Deller of Swinburne University of Technology points out another of the revolutionary discoveries about this FRB – that the bursts can originate from any type of galaxy. The “repeater” he refers to is the only other FRB – in this case, a group of repeating bursts – that has been traced back to its galaxy, which was a tiny one that was generating a lot of stars.

No, that wasn’t it either.

Why else is this a big deal? Fast radio bursts are altered by the matter they encounter in space. By tracing them back their source, astronomers can more accurately measure the amount of matter in space. Still not impressed? Here’s Dr. Bannister describing the accuracy of these billions of light years measurements:

“If we were to stand on the Moon and look down at the Earth with this precision, we would be able to tell not only which city the burst came from, but which postcode – and even which city block.” Dr Bannister said.

Sorry, it’s not proof of extraterrestrials … yet. But it’s definitely a REALLY big deal.

This week, the Moscow Times has reported that the Russian military has developed bizarre ‘cyborg’ drones shaped like snowy owls. The avian drone was unveiled at the Russian Defense Ministry’s annual military expo in Moscow this week. Images of the drone shared by the Moscow Times show a massive, menacing owl with a creepy dome-shaped lens where its beak should be. According to the Defense Ministry, the owl drone can be equipped with cameras and other surveillance equipment as well as lasers to help guide artillery and guided air-to-surface weapons.

Snowy Owl in flight. Or is it a cyborg owl spying on us? It may soon be impossible to tell.

While the owl is sure to fool absolutely nobody with normal vision up close, at a distance the drone could easily be mistaken for an owl gliding in flight. The drone owls weigh just 5 kilograms (11 pounds) and have a range of 20 kilometers (12 miles). The body of the owl can also be swapped out for different bird species such as falcons, making it adaptable for different environments.

While this ‘cyborg’ spy owl may just seem like a kooky prototype, these drones likely represent the future of surveillance and reconaissance, at least in some small part. If the Russians and the Chinese have developed these robotic bird-shaped drones, rest assured that other nations have as well. The U.S. military has been testing their own bird drones since at least 2013. Last year, the South China Morning Postreported on the development of creepy dove-shaped dronesbeing used by the Chinese Communist Party to spy on Chinese citizens in at least five different Chinese provinces. 

As if snowy owls weren’t already terrifying enough.

Just wait until these things go full-on biohybrid. In 2016, some of the biggest biomedical engineering stories concerned half biological, half robotic creatures which combined living flesh and cells with electronics. How much longer until these bird-shaped drones are actually ‘wrapped’ in actual bird blood and guts or other types of biomimicry?

The world’s superpowers already have a long history of attempting to use animals as spies. It now seems as if we can no longer trust any of our seemingly feathered friends flying overhead. Is it time to start shooting every bird out of the sky?

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Just off the northeastern coast of the United States is a huge freshwater aquifer underneath the Atlantic Ocean. The exact size of the aquifer is still unknown, but what is known is that it stretches from Massachusetts to the southern part of New Jersey and includes the coastlines of New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. And around 670 cubic miles of it could possibly contain a bit of salty water.

It is believed that the freshwater aquifer came from the last Ice Age. Back in the 1970s when several companies were drilling for oil off the coast, they occasionally hit pockets of freshwater. However, at that time, they were unclear as to whether they were just small pockets or if they were part of a much larger area of fresh water.

Study co-researcher Kerry Key (the study can be read here), helped oil companies find oil hotspots around twenty years ago by using electromagnetic imaging on the bottom of the ocean’s floor.

Recently, he decided to change the technology in order to detect underground pools of fresh water. And in 2015, he and his study co-researcher, Rob Evans, went out into the waters off the coast of southern New Jersey and Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts to examine the areas with fresh water. They put equipment into the water that measured the electromagnetic fields to find out which areas had salt water and fresh water.

What they found was that the fresh water began at the shoreline and ended up 75 miles offshore in some places, meaning that there definitely weren’t pockets that were scattered around, but instead one large uninterrupted area. It’s also quite deep, beginning at around 600 feet under the floor of the ocean and finishing at approximately 1,200 feet under the seafloor.

As for how the freshwater aquifer ended up beneath the ocean, it probably happened during the last Ice Age. Since a lot of the planet’s water was made up of glaciers around 20,000 to 15,000 years ago, the water levels were quite a bit lower than they are today. When Earth’s temperatures finally got warmer, the ice which covered the land melted which meant that much of the water washed away large amounts of sediments, forming river deltas. When the fresh water from the glaciers melted, it got trapped in the river deltas. So when the sea levels began to rise, the fresh water was stuck underneath the ocean.

Since the aquifer mixes with seawater slowly over time, the further away it is, the saltier it becomes. While the water would need to be desalinated prior to people using it, it would still be less expensive than trying to purify normal salt water. Key explained, “We probably don’t need to do that in this region, but if we can show there are large aquifers in other regions, that might potentially represent a resource” for dry locations around the planet, such as the Mideast, Saharan Africa, Australia, or Southern California.