Explorer, author, and documentary filmmaker, Robert Young Pelton is an iconoclast known for his entry into most of the world's conflicts over the last twenty-five years. In the first half, he discussed changes in US foreign policy over the past two years which are setting the stage for future conflicts, as well as how the spread of ISIS resulted in the terrorist bombing in Sri Lanka. "ISIS is metastasizing," he declared, and while the US was focused on eradicating the group from Syria, "we hadn't been paying attention to the franchising or spread of [them]" everywhere from the Philippines to copycat or inspired attacks in France, and even America. In areas where ISIS has infiltrated, they function as a "self-funding insurgency group," he explained, collecting taxes from businesses by using threats of extreme violence.
The Trump administration, he said, made a mistake by encouraging Saudi Arabia to fight America's adversaries in the Middle East through selling them US-made defense weapons and technology, and giving them training. What's happened, he reported, "is this technology is being used [by Saudis] to hunt down young kids, mostly Shia or mostly dissidents who don't like that they live in a dictatorship." Pelton also talked about how Putin is using a kind of "hybrid warfare"-- an asymmetrical combination of diplomacy, banking, mercenaries, investment-- to foster Russia's expansion into African countries like Mozambique.
----------------------
In the latter half, professor of religious studies Diana Walsh Pasulka spoke about her interviews with successful and influential scientists, professionals, and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who believe in extraterrestrial or alien intelligence. One of the people she befriended was a Baptist minister named Chris who had a number of UFO sightings and contacts. She discovered that various scientists were interviewing Chris as well as other UFO experiencers to obtain information from them about the alien technology they observed. To her surprise, Pasulka concluded that some scientists had actually created new forms of technology based on details they gleaned from these experiencers.
A lot of these scientists had military affiliations, and were either experiencers themselves or had seen things, she stated. They often could "download" large amounts of information and then "operationalize" it into actual technologies, she revealed. The UFO experience has been around for a long time, and has been called different things throughout history, Pasulka noted. For instance, some of the mystical or ecstatic experiences of St. Teresa of Avila look like something out of John Mack's Abduction book, she commented. Some involved in the early history of the US space program like Jack Parsons believed they were in contact with a non-human intelligence, she added.
News segment guests: Dr. Peter Breggin, Steve Kates