# Former Israeli Space Security Adviser Says Outer Space Not What It Seems



## narrativus (Apr 6, 2021)

Late last year Former Israeli Space Security Chief claimed that the Americans were in contact with aliens, but also stated that the big secret was in knowing what outer space actually is and what spaceships are. I wonder how a sci-fi mind would unpack this statement. Is the movement of a UFO on our world like passing through outer space rather than an oxygenated, gravitational environment? Does that allow the craft to move in spurts and stops thereby ignoring inertia? What kind of planes could be created? Also, what kind of missiles and bombs? If the bombs can zig zag with pointed direction, would it be even worse than the atom bomb? Also, could we travel to other planets with greater ease? Does this mean that we could mine asteroids even easier? It seems like a simple statement to the layman, but what do sci-fi fans think of it? What are your thoughts?


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## hitmouse (Apr 7, 2021)

Not sure this fits in Technology.


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## J Riff (Apr 7, 2021)

...was gravity uninvented or whaat?


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## hitmouse (Apr 7, 2021)

If you change  _Former Israeli Space Security Chief _to_ David Icke_ this makes more sense.


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## Venusian Broon (Apr 7, 2021)

(from Wikipedia):_ UFO investigator Nick Pope told NBC News (_about the comments from Haim Eshed, the Israeli in question_), "Either this is some sort of practical joke or publicity stunt to help sell his book, perhaps with something having been lost in translation, or someone in the know is breaking ranks."_

Now Mr Pope does his own grandstanding for whatever book he has coming up on the topic, and he is pretty ensconced in the world of UFO woo-woo, so if he is saying this guy is probably doing it as a publicity stunt to sell books, a practical joke and is probably lost in translation, I'd actually go along with him.

However I don't think he is breaking ranks.

Normally I be sceptical of Nick Pope and a bit wary, but this time he's covered the most probable bases.


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## tinkerdan (Apr 7, 2021)

Here is a link








						Former Israeli space chief says aliens exist, and Trump knows about it
					

A "galactic federation" has been waiting for humans to "reach a stage where we will understand... what space and spaceships are," Haim Eshed said.




					www.nbcnews.com
				



At the end of the article it says:
“There are still some missing pieces of the puzzle here,” he said.

I'd agree that something might be missing.



> "They have been waiting until today for humanity to develop and reach a stage where we will understand, in general, what space and spaceships are," Eshed said, referring to the galactic federation.



I think he is saying we understand it now 'until today', so seems there shouldn't be too much more to reveal about space and spaceships.
Though it seems that we haven't changed our understanding a whole lot in quite a number  of years--so how far back is his 'today'.


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## Wayne Mack (Apr 7, 2021)

The US has secretly been working with aliens? Does that mean_ Men in Black_ was actually a documentary?


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## paranoid marvin (Apr 7, 2021)

This assumes we think we know what outer space _is; _we _don't. _Dark energy, dark matter, black holes, quasars etc etc. There's lots of speculation and theorising, but little in the way of hard facts. Could there be folds in space, could there be invisible worlds out there that are staring us in right in the face, but we don't have the knowledge or equipment to know they are there? Could there be unknown elements or differing properties in time and space that we are not yet aware of? If there are ways of controlling time so that it is not linear, or if there are regions of space where time runs differently or even ceases to exist in any way that we know, then distances quickly become irrelevant and the universe suddenly becomes a lot more accessible.

The chances are that as a species, we will never likely know the half of what is possible and what is 'out there'. But not knowing is what makes science fiction so much fun.


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## mosaix (Apr 7, 2021)

Venusian Broon said:


> (from Wikipedia):_ UFO investigator Nick Pope told NBC News (_about the comments from Haim Eshed, the Israeli in question_), "Either this is some sort of practical joke or publicity stunt to help sell his book, perhaps with something having been lost in translation, or someone in the know is breaking ranks."_
> 
> Now Mr Pope does his own grandstanding for whatever book he has coming up on the topic, and he is pretty ensconced in the world of UFO woo-woo, so if he is saying this guy is probably doing it as a publicity stunt to sell books, a practical joke and is probably lost in translation, I'd actually go along with him.
> 
> ...



Many years ago I attended a talk by Nick Pope just after he’d left his job of cataloguing and ‘investigating’ (for what it’s worth) UFO sightings. Not sure if he was at the MOD or some other department. 

Anyway, he was quite scathing about the reports and treated the whole thing as a joke. It must have been some time later that he realised he would make more money out of it if he pretended to take it seriously - so he does.


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## Venusian Broon (Apr 7, 2021)

mosaix said:


> Many years ago I attended a talk by Nick Pope just after he’d left his job of cataloguing and ‘investigating’ (for what it’s worth) UFO sightings. Not sure if he was at the MOD or some other department.
> 
> Anyway, he was quite scathing about the reports and treated the whole thing as a joke. It must have been some time later that he realised he would make more money out of it if he pretended to take it seriously - so he does.




 Yeah, he plays up his role as 'X-file' agent a lot. Whether he actually investigated anything at all at the time, I don't know!


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## Dave (Apr 7, 2021)

Did he have a poster in his office that said "I don't want to believe"?


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## Vladd67 (Apr 8, 2021)

Venusian Broon said:


> Yeah, he plays up his role as 'X-file' agent a lot. Whether he actually investigated anything at all at the time, I don't know!


I doubt he ever investigated anything, he was a civil servant with the MOD, I imagine he just collated the reports from other departments.


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## J Riff (Apr 8, 2021)

I asked the ETs and believe me... physics is real !!


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## hitmouse (Apr 8, 2021)

paranoid marvin said:


> This assumes we think we know what outer space _is; _we _don't. _Dark energy, dark matter, black holes, quasars etc etc. There's lots of speculation and theorising, but little in the way of hard facts. Could there be folds in space, could there be invisible worlds out there that are staring us in right in the face, but we don't have the knowledge or equipment to know they are there? Could there be unknown elements or differing properties in time and space that we are not yet aware of? If there are ways of controlling time so that it is not linear, or if there are regions of space where time runs differently or even ceases to exist in any way that we know, then distances quickly become irrelevant and the universe suddenly becomes a lot more accessible.
> 
> The chances are that as a species, we will never likely know the half of what is possible and what is 'out there'. But not knowing is what makes science fiction so much fun.


I will defer to one of our physicists here, but the question has to be: outside the licence of fiction, why would one assume that the more robust principles of physics and astrophysics and chemistry might not apply locally or generally?

Even though there are some very major unanswered questions of cosmology ( dark matter is a biggie) that uncertainty still fits within a general framework of understanding.


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## Dave (Apr 8, 2021)

There are various Physical Constants with fixed values that really cannot change within our universe because if they did the chemical and physical properties of matter would totally change beyond any recognition. Everything would react and behave in a different way. We can observe quite a very long way into space, and so we know these don't change as far as we can measure. Are there parallel universes that have different values for these Physical Constants? Theoretically, I guess there could be, but the universe that we know could only exist with the Physical Constants that we have now. I think it is proposed that they could have been different during the first seconds of formation. However, we have no way of getting from here to any such parallel universe and we couldn't survive within it if we could. Could an advanced technology find a way to travel between parallel universes and so appear to pass through matter as described by the OP? Well, that is certainly delving into the realms of science fiction.


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## Venusian Broon (Apr 8, 2021)

Dave said:


> There are various Physical Constants with fixed values that really cannot change within our universe



There are many respected theorists who have been suggesting/playing with/hypothesising that the physical 'constants' we observe are in fact variable. 

Also there has been some very interesting actual observations that might validate these ideas and claims. (Yes, 
some come from observations from "quite a long way into space") 

Just saying.


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## paranoid marvin (Apr 8, 2021)

I guess that I don't have too much faith in science and what we 'know' about how the universe operates. If you'd had faith in the science of the 1600s or 1800s - which was based on what was known data - then things would have been very different. Who is to say that what we know is true now won't be disproved or superceded by the next breakthrough? How has our understanding been changed by the discovery of dark energy and matter (of which we know very little), and how might a better understanding of these phenomenon help shape our understanding of other things?

I just think that there is too much that is unknown, and perhaps even beyond our comprehension, to be able to take anything at more than speculative value.


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## Dave (Apr 8, 2021)

The changing of Physical Constants would not just mean that Gravity might be a little less, or more, or that kind of difference. It would fundamentally change the properties of matter. The periodic table might have a different shape, as some elements might not exist and other elements would have fundamentally different chemical properties. Think about if Carbon could no longer form long chains. Think about if compounds like Water didn't have the same properties. Our body's biochemistry wouldn't work. The matter that makes up our bodies would not exist where those constants were changed.

So, that is what would inform my scepticism that variable values for constants could exist within the same universe, even at the far edges, because what would happen at the interfaces? Different universes could have different fixed values, but how could we visit them without being disassembled sub-atomically at the transition. How could we even observe them with probes?

But yes, I can accept that a sufficiently advanced technology might find some way around theses problems that currently would seem like magic.

I'm just not sold on his idea that we have already met beings with a sufficiently advanced technology and it has been covered up.


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## Saiyali (Apr 8, 2021)

I can't see why anyone would travel tens or more likely hundreds of light years just to meet us. Assuming they had even 'heard' us, assuming they even knew we were here, and assuming it's even possible to travel fast enough to make interstellar journeys feasable. We're not exactly at the heart of things, in galactic terms. Who would bother (assuming a RL lack of warp drive, hyperspace, wormholes or long-distance teleportation etc)?

For now, I for one assume getting from planet to planet in reality will essentially involve accelerating to halfway then decelerating. How fast the acceleration can occur will depend on physical needs, but 1G would mean pretty fast acceleration .. and then there's the risk of hitting an unseen asteroid at a hundred million metres per second, which would spice things up.

So, is it worth the risk, the time, the expense (however any alien species might judge that)? Or, there's the 'drifting drum' idea, travel slow and make your own gravity with a spin. That's obviously for any species that has many generations dedicated to the journey. So then it had better be worth it and to a known destination.

No wait .. unless they want our nickel-iron core, and our water .. and_ we are_ the reward...
Everybody, sshh!

I want to add that when I was younger and partaking in errr better medication, I and certain friends got really into the idea that Atlantis was an alien spaceship parked in the ocean, and that the 'great flood' was caused by it leaving.
Ahh happy days.


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## Venusian Broon (Apr 8, 2021)

Dave said:


> The changing of Physical Constants would not just mean that Gravity might be a little less, or more, or that kind of difference. It would fundamentally change the properties of matter. The periodic table might have a different shape, as some elements might not exist and other elements would have fundamentally different chemical properties. Think about if Carbon could no longer form long chains. Think about if compounds like Water didn't have the same properties. Our body's biochemistry wouldn't work. The matter that makes up our bodies would not exist where those constants were changed.
> 
> So, that is what would inform my scepticism that variable values for constants could exist within the same universe, even at the far edges, because what would happen at the interfaces? Different universes could have different fixed values, but how could we visit them without being disassembled sub-atomically at the transition. How could we even observe them with probes?



Looking at observations at great distance from us is not looking "at the far edges" - as I am sure you are aware the universe as best we know it, does not have one - it is looking back far into_ time. _And things could be subtely different far in the past and still have chemistry very close to ours. Which was what one of the actual observations seemed to hint at. 

A contender, the fine-structure constant, alpha, which which quantifies the strength of the electromagnetic interaction between charged particles, has been suggested might be variable and given that it's pretty important for processes involving carbon, even a miniscule change in the past may have had subtle but important differences in the early universe. Yes, perhaps even with what we'd call standard chemistry, who knows? Perhaps carbon-based life _was _impossible because of this in the first 8 billion years of the universes expansion? And when life became possible as alpha 'tuned' into the "right" value, Earth was formed at just the right time for the first life to appear on the young surface? (Might also make a good solution to the Fermi paradox). 

Note that stars, galaxies, quasars and all the like could still form and shine even if alpha was a little different from today's value. 

Of course getting to the past to check out what was there is (as far as we know, impossible ) but we can interpret the ancient radiation of various objects from billions of light years away. 

Now I'm not saying this is true - more and better observations are required - and a deeper understanding would be needed. I'm not totally compelled by the evidence, but with a heathly sceptical and open mind, I find it very interesting.


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## Dave (Apr 8, 2021)

But I answered the question that @hitmouse asked, "why would one assume that the more robust principles of physics and astrophysics and chemistry might not apply locally or generally?" The fact that they were variable to begin with, and then very quickly (in relation to the age of the universe) became fixed, I have no dispute with at all. The possibility that they might suddenly change again now is one that would concern me greatly. Yes, some values probably wouldn't make a great difference to anything. And, yes it is great to speculate on these things.


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## Dave (Apr 9, 2021)

I've been thinking on this further overnight,  and on the OP questions, because there is a likely an SF story in this idea. 

So, what we are considering is that a very highly technological race of aliens from another dimension has the advanced technology able to change and vary those physical constants, thereby altering the properties of space and matter, allowing them to travel into our universe and to survive here. I have questions that I cannot answer:
1. Would we be able to observe them or their spacecraft? They would still have the properties consistent with their own universe, and so wouldn't they pass through our universe unseen by us, as if in the ether? Isn't that the whole point of this method of travel? So, it could not explain sightings of alien greys or flying saucers because they seem quite substantial to me.
2. By altering our universe as they pass through, wouldn't they destroy the space and matter as they went, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake that we would observe? It is a little like that episode of _Star Trek: TNG - Force of Nature_ where sustained Warp drive is found to be destroying the fabric of space. When we observed space we'd see the equivalent of aircraft chemtrails.


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## Serendipity (Apr 9, 2021)

Dave said:


> I've been thinking on this further overnight,  and on the OP questions, because there is a likely an SF story in this idea.
> 
> So, what we are considering is that a very highly technological race of aliens from another dimension has the advanced technology able to change and vary those physical constants, thereby altering the properties of space and matter, allowing them to travel into our universe and to survive here. I have questions that I cannot answer:
> 1. Would we be able to observe them or their spacecraft? They would still have the properties consistent with their own universe, and so wouldn't they pass through our universe unseen by us, as if in the ether? Isn't that the whole point of this method of travel? So, it could not explain sightings of alien greys or flying saucers because they seem quite substantial to me.
> 2. By altering our universe as they pass through, wouldn't they destroy the space and matter as they went, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake that we would observe? It is a little like that episode of _Star Trek: TNG - Force of Nature_ where sustained Warp drive is found to be destroying the fabric of space. When we observed space we'd see the equivalent of aircraft chemtrails.


Have you been reading Sarah Hovarka's story - Of Buggies and Behemoths in Etaerio SF?


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## Dave (Apr 9, 2021)

No, can you tell more? You could put inside spoiler quotes.


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## Venusian Broon (Apr 9, 2021)

Dave said:


> I've been thinking on this further overnight,  and on the OP questions, because there is a likely an SF story in this idea.
> 
> So, what we are considering is that a very highly technological race of aliens from another dimension has the advanced technology able to change and vary those physical constants, thereby altering the properties of space and matter, allowing them to travel into our universe and to survive here. I have questions that I cannot answer:
> 1. Would we be able to observe them or their spacecraft? They would still have the properties consistent with their own universe, and so wouldn't they pass through our universe unseen by us, as if in the ether? Isn't that the whole point of this method of travel? So, it could not explain sightings of alien greys or flying saucers because they seem quite substantial to me.
> 2. By altering our universe as they pass through, wouldn't they destroy the space and matter as they went, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake that we would observe? It is a little like that episode of _Star Trek: TNG - Force of Nature_ where sustained Warp drive is found to be destroying the fabric of space. When we observed space we'd see the equivalent of aircraft chemtrails.


Alastair Reynolds in _Chasm City _has aliens that, from memory, manipulate the Higgs field and do quite weird things. They are not from another "dimension" though, just using this as tech.

Dimension is a bad word here from what you are talking about, I think you mean "other universe" in your musings. This is because one could easily imagine that a universe like ours but has four or more 'open' dimensions that would quite happily exist with our basic three dimensional part of it, as actually there have been a number of theories that use multiple dimensions that make up our universe. In some versions of M-theory they posit that our 3-D universe is interaction of two higher dimensional branes, and other theories speculate that gravity is special and 'weaker' than the other forces because it can leak into other dimensions that we can't currently observe.

Thus why not have other matter that can freely use all four (or more!), instead of being constrained to the three we use? In this case this more general matter, which is happy to live in our universe everywhere could quite easily 'hide' from us as there would be an infinite amount of space for this 4D+ matter (and aliens made from such matter) to live in, only occasionally popping into existence to us 'flatlanders'. A four dimensional object - even one that was just dumb matter - would behave amazingly to us 3-D'ers. It could pop in and out of existence, appearing substantial one minute, then alter shape in a snap in ways that we would deem impossible.

Could it also be that the constants and laws of nature are a result of our 3-D universe interacting with this bigger multi-dimensional space? And that physics in the higher dimensions could make it possible to alter our more limited 3-D physics by altering something close to our feeble plane?

Maybe such events do leave a mark? (I'm looking at you Cosmic Microwave Background cold spot.)

You don't necessarily need to invoke destruction of space and matter in these models either, so spotting such intrusions would be difficult.

Anyway pure speculation. Keeping it SF, I do remember Greg Bear writing a couple of nice stories about 4D aliens.


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## Serendipity (Apr 9, 2021)

Dave said:


> No, can you tell more? You could put inside spoiler quotes.


It does an interesting take on humans not being able to able perceive all the universe and why.



Venusian Broon said:


> Alastair Reynolds in _Chasm City _has aliens that, from memory, manipulate the Higgs field and do quite weird things. They are not from another "dimension" though, just using this as tech.
> 
> Dimension is a bad word here from what you are talking about, I think you mean "other universe" in your musings. This is because one could easily imagine that a universe like ours but has four or more 'open' dimensions that would quite happily exist with our basic three dimensional part of it, as actually there have been a number of theories that use multiple dimensions that make up our universe. In some versions of M-theory they posit that our 3-D universe is interaction of two higher dimensional branes, and other theories speculate that gravity is special and 'weaker' than the other forces because it can leak into other dimensions that we can't currently observe.
> 
> ...



A long long time ago I did an extensive blog on what properties you could expect to see demonstrated when 4-D space was available. If I remember correctly Greg Bear's 4-d story was entitled Tangents for which he won a Hugo. However, when I started playing around 4-D just to see what could be done with it, I ended up being rather put out. Why? Because there are a whole host of effects you would expect from 4-D that don't seem to appear anywhere in the 4-D stories I could lay my paws on. In fact 'put out' is understating my reaction by several parsecs. This is a science fiction area ripe for writing new stuff.

Postscript - bit surprised Reynolds uses a Higgs field as that is basically a minimised property.


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## paranoid marvin (Apr 9, 2021)

Just wait until they invent an improbability engine. What are the chances of that?


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## narrativus (Apr 9, 2021)

Actually, I posted this because I wondered how the official UFO propaganda is really science fiction and therefore, no one but a sci-fi fan could pick it apart for its inaccuracies. I mean a "Galactic Federation" is the Star Trek's United Federation of Planets. But the space and starships comment. I mean, in our stock of sci-fi stories, where have we heard this before? Has anyone? Because these guys are creating a UFO narrative based on our sci-fi playbook.


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## hitmouse (Apr 9, 2021)

paranoid marvin said:


> I guess that I don't have too much faith in science and what we 'know' about how the universe operates. If you'd had faith in the science of the 1600s or 1800s - which was based on what was known data - then things would have been very different. Who is to say that what we know is true now won't be disproved or superceded by the next breakthrough? How has our understanding been changed by the discovery of dark energy and matter (of which we know very little), and how might a better understanding of these phenomenon help shape our understanding of other things?
> 
> I just think that there is too much that is unknown, and perhaps even beyond our comprehension, to be able to take anything at more than speculative value.


Science today is qualitatively and quantitatively different from the 19th century and earlier. Not just in terms of experimental technology, computing, etc, but in terms of transparency and rigour: the unknowns and uncertainties are out there for debate and discussion. There is also the minor detail of experimental evidence for relativity, quantum theory etc, and the fact that applied science has allowed us to stick robots on Mars, send probes through the solar system, build electron microscopes, CERN, fly jet planes around the world, look for pics of Pamela Anderson on Google Images, etc.


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## paranoid marvin (Apr 10, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> Science today is qualitatively and quantitatively different from the 19th century and earlier. Not just in terms of experimental technology, computing, etc, but in terms of transparency and rigour: the unknowns and uncertainties are out there for debate and discussion. There is also the minor detail of experimental evidence for relativity, quantum theory etc, and the fact that applied science has allowed us to stick robots on Mars, send probes through the solar system, build electron microscopes, CERN, fly jet planes around the world, look for pics of Pamela Anderson on Google Images, etc.




I agree with what you are saying , but wouldn't the scientists and astronomers of the 19th century have been saying something similar about those of ancient Egypt or Greece (for example) ? How confident are we that in another 200 years the same won't be said of science at the start of the 21st century?


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## Danny McG (Apr 10, 2021)

*Snorts at the concept of stars*

Look, everybody knows there are no stars, those lights in the sky are the breathing holes in our box


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## J Riff (Apr 10, 2021)

heh heh.


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## hitmouse (Apr 10, 2021)

Danny McG said:


> *Snorts at the concept of stars*
> 
> Look, everybody knows there are no stars, those lights in the sky are the breathing holes in our box


What Danny said. Lets all go to the pub.


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## paranoid marvin (Apr 10, 2021)

The OP is kind of correct. Space isn't what it appears to be. It's (likely) not vast areas of empty space with nothing in them, it's full of dark matter, dark energy, black holes and probably other stuff of which we are not yet aware. And alien spaceships are also not what they seem, because they are (likely) natural/manmade objects or tricks of the light/imagination and not visitors from other planets.


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## narrativus (Apr 10, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> If you change  _Former Israeli Space Security Chief _to_ David Icke_ this makes more sense.


Interestingly enough all the media said he was a reputable teacher and advisor but doubted that reputation would survive this announcement.


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## narrativus (Apr 10, 2021)

I think they're trying to change the UFO narrative. I mean, it's an intriguing topic because some believe that starships are interdimensional and not physical at all. As if time and space intersect with the mind at some level like in Forbidden Planet.

Either UFOs are real and Haisam is breaking ranks or he's still propping up the UFO legend by starting a new chapter. Straight out of X-Files, we have a deathbed confession that looks like a reveal but it really creates more questions than answers. Another wild goose chase for an otherwise flailing UFO narrative that must evolve or give way to exposing military espionage.

But watch for it: After he said this, notice how the UFO community will change their narrative about who the aliens are and where they come from. I'm interested in the topic and can say that many have already talked about this for years and now the powers-that-be are going with it. It's becoming canon. They need it to keep everyone interested.

It's like Reality TV meets science fiction.


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## J Riff (Apr 11, 2021)

heh HeH !!


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## BigBadBob141 (May 11, 2021)

Nurse, nurse, he's out of bed again!


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