Episode 2 – User Illusion with SW Hammond

They weren’t aliens, they were mutilated children with down syndrome. The horrific account of what actually happened at Area 51. Stalin's black propaganda campaign and human experimentation on disabled children.

In Part 2 of the podcast, I discuss the limitations of language and how it affects the way we think. Language develops, survives, and evolves the exact same way viruses do; by infecting a host and then jumping from person to person with use of the new word. The word only survives if it’s continually used.

Link to Annie Jacobsen on Joe Rogan's podcast where she discusses her interview in detail with the head scientist / engineer at Area 51: https://youtu.be/5VoVIpIzj_c

This video is not sponsored. However, please use the affiliate links below when ordering Annie Jacobsen's and Daniel Dennett's books. You pay the normal price and I’ll receive a small commission:

Annie Jacobsen - Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base

Annie Jacobsen - Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists To America

Annie Jacobsen's Catalog

Daniel Dennett - From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds

Transcript

I can’t shake the story Annie Jacobsen told on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Every single day now for weeks, her reporting of what went on at Area 51 after the Roswell UFO incident, has eaten at the back of mind. It’s a real life horror-story where it’s probable truth steals your breath and condemns our collective conscience.

I don’t know a lot about Annie Jacobsen. I do know she’s a reporter and author, I know she’s always seems to be involved with investigating coverups, conspiracies, and the dark corners of our government and history that few dare go. I know she’s a Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times best selling author. The people who read her tend to wear tinfoil hats, however, that’s not a reflection of her work. Her reporting is ethical, substantiated, and vetted—at least as much as it can be when investigating highly classified and morally horrific acts.

So this is how the story goes. I have not read Annie’s book—though I plan to if I can gain the stomach for it—I’m simply recounting the story she told on Joe Rogan. This story was told to her by a top level scientist who broke his silence late in life, and he has recently died—to know more about him, his relationship with Jacobsen, and why she feels that he’s a credible source, read her book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base or listen to her explanation on Joe Rogan. There’s a lot I’m leaving out here, so if you find this interesting—go check out her book and listen to her direct conversation with Joe Rogan. Links will be included in description and transcript of this podcast.

So, we’ve all heard the tale of an alien spaceship crashing in the New Mexican desert out by Roswell. This happens in 1947 and a rancher stumbles upon the wreckage, gathers some of it, and drives it to the Sheriff’s Office in Roswell. No one knows what it is, so the sheriff contacts someone at the Army Airfield. Word spreads around town and the local paper runs the story, “RAAF (Roswell Army Air Field) Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell” and within the article the reporter states, “The intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment Group at Roswell Army Air Field accounted at noon today, that the field has come into the possession of a Flying Saucer.”

Ultimately, the government sealed off the area, gathered the wreckage, and the next day the War Department in Washington claimed that the debris collected were from a weather balloon. Basically the balloon was part of some top-secret project, later known as Project Mogul, and these balloons were used for surveillance of Russia.

That’s the story as we know it—however, since the event occurred there has been tons of skepticism and holes where the facts don’t line up. I don’t know the details, because I’m not a UFO guy, but either at this crash site or perhaps a second site relatively close, remains were found—assumed alien remains—and these bodies were then transported to a government installation in Nevada, later becoming Area 51. And so the legend begins—all of your Area 51 alien prison stories, alien autopsy stories, Bob Lazar adding fuel to the fire by speaking out about working on extraterrestrial spacecraft in the late 80s and so on.

Okay, so now this is Annie’s story. This is what was told to her by the head scientist that worked directly on this Roswell crash site project, was a head engineer of the Manhattan Project, and supposedly many other projects during his long career out on Area 51.

Post World War II and at the height of the atomic age, the Cold War begins with Russia. Tensions are super high, trust is at an all time low, and both sides are doing anything they can get a leg-up or sabotage the other. According to Jacobsen, Area 51 was created to “beat” Joseph Stalin at his “Black Propaganda” campaign. Stalin was actively trying to hoax the American public into War of the Worlds scenario. He wanted the American public to believe that we were being attacked by aliens, which would cause tremendous instability, riots, total upheaval of society and government so that we would collapse from the inside—he could then easily come along and sweep up the pieces.

If he was able to pull the hoax off, it would prove that Russian technology was more advanced than American technology, and that his propaganda department was far better than American’s. Area 51 was created in direct response to this, and became a test site to dismantle and reverse-engineer Russian technology and at the same time develop our own.

Okay, so this is where it turns horrific. Stalin rounded up a bunch of disabled people, presumably children with down syndrome. He then had them extensively surgically modified, so much so that they didn’t even appear to human any more. He then stuck them in a flying saucer that was being towed by high-altitude aircraft over Mexico, and cut the chord so that the saucer would drift over the border into the New Mexico / Texas area and smash into the ground. He wanted the wreckage to be found, he wanted the disfigured bodies to be found and mistaken for aliens, and thus start an alien invasion panic.

You have to remember how communication worked in the late 1940s and the immense reverence the public had for our government fresh out of the War. Before information of the crash was widely spread and a national panic ensures, our government gathered up the crash site, the bodies, and transports it all to Area 51—while at the same time cranking up its own propaganda machine by dismissing the whole thing as a weather balloon accident.

Okay, so now it gets worse. Our government gets ahold of these creatures discovered at the crash site. As the story goes, all of these creatures were dead but autopsies are conducted and eventually it’s discovered that these aliens are actually humans. Stop and think about that—that’s how badly these children with down syndrome were disfigured—scientists didn’t even know that they were human until an autopsy was conducted.

And sadly, the question on all these scientist and military officials mind’s was not “how could the Soviet Union do this?” but “how did the Soviet Union do this?” According to Jacobsen’s source—this top scientist in a direct and explicit conversation with her explained that in 1951 our government began rounding up children with disabilities—presumably the most vulnerable and least noticed—and then this man began experimenting on the children with radiation, hormones, and surgery to recreate Stalin’s aliens.

…I just…I can’t even. The worst part of this story is that it’s probably true. if you remove all your bias, all of the things you’ve heard, and all of the things you want aliens to be—so many people want to believe that aliens exist, and they probably do—but that doesn’t mean they exist in the Nevada desert.

In this particular case, the overall odds and probability that this account of the Roswell crash is the true account is statistically far more likely than visitors from another planet. This horrific account about down syndrome children is the most rational explanation for what happened out in that New Mexican desert and then deep within the mountains of Nevada—and because of that, this horrific account has a greater cause and reasons for coverup than any alien crash landing. This horrific account puts our government, with human experimentation and disregard of life, right next to what the Nazi’s were doing.

In fact, Operation Paperclip was just that—after World War II the United States brought over 1,400 confirmed Nazi scientists to America to continue to conduct their research. Nothing changed—these Nazi’s just continued doing their work only under our flag. Jacobsen wrote another whole book on Operation Paperclip, all of which has been declassified and publicly released.

I’ve had a really hard time with this story. Like all of us, I don’t know if it’s true or not—to be honest, if it’s a choice between disfiguring disabled kids and aliens, I truly hope it was aliens—but something inside says it wasn’t. This, to me, is the most believable account I’ve heard about the whole thing. If it is true, even though these events took place 70 years ago, I think it’s going to be quite a while longer before our government goes on record and acknowledges it.

During my teenage years and early twenties, I spent a great deal of time working with severely mentally and physically disabled children. It was originally what I went to school for—I wanted to be a special education teacher. That didn’t happen, but every job I’ve had since—whether it’s doing what I’m doing now, homebuilding, Sony Music, or Major League Baseball—I’ve made it a point to get involved with these children. There was a time when I lived with a family who had a down syndrome child. What’s so crushing to me is that these people exude emotion in its purest form—when they are happy, you know it without question. When they scared or sad, there is no mask to conceal it. I can’t begin to imagine what went on deep within that desert… Or maybe I can and that’s why tears me up so badly.

I recently lived in Las Vegas for about two and half years. As you may know, I have a Jeep and like to go adventuring and camping. I went up to the north desert of Area 51 a few times, got right up to the signs that say Restricted Area, No Trespassing. It’s quite intimidating, I got as close as I wanted to get.

I also did the giant loop out of Las Vegas—you drive north on 95 to Tonopah, then 6 over to Warm Springs, and then you take 375 south to Rachel—otherwise appropriately named The Extraterrestrial Highway—serious, the State actually renamed it. I’ve been to a lot of places where I’ve seen a lot of nothing, but this area of the country takes the cake. The night sky is incredible though, no light pollution to ruin it. I did the whole loop in one day and I wish I would have broken it into several. It’s almost a 500 mile drive, so I was basically in the car the entire time. A little perspective, New York City to Washington D.C. is about 230 miles—so this is area of desert is very big area out there. However, there’s not much to see or stop at, obviously you can get close to anything except the hokey alien gas stations—which you must stop and fill up at because there are long, long stretches without any services.

I don’t know why I’m telling you this other than that it’s a really weird place out there. It seems absolutely perfect for nuclear testing—there is truly nothing in that desert, it’s indescribable. Sage brush doesn’t even grow, it’s literally just dirt and rocks. I’m sure there’s a few tiny critters roaming around—lizards, snakes, maybe some ground squirrels, but the reality is that nuclear weapons, power, and technologies exists, and there needs to be somewhere on the planet to test them and store their waste—and this place is perfect for that. I’m sure everyone in Vegas is gasping at the thought, but I truly hope Yuca Mountain gets the nation’s entire nuclear landfill. There will be consequences anywhere waste is stored, but doing it here seems the most appropriate.

Area 51, all of Nevada’s testing grounds, I’m sure we’ll never know the truth of what went on out there in my lifetime. I understand that to be a global leader and the world’s most powerful nation, we must stay ahead of the curve. I understand that morally questionable decisions that flirt with ethics need to be made, and I understand that morality is fluid. However, I’d like to think we gained our pole position in the world because there was a line that we as people understood that couldn’t be crossed. We sacrificed greatly during World War II to correct a tragic wrong and win a morally just war. To lose that conviction immediately upon gaining power and to become the very thing we fought against is… unacceptable.

But I must remember that we’ve never been a righteous nation, but we have always been an opportunist nation. We didn’t enter World War II because it was the morally right thing to do—we did it because we had the most to gain—and it just happened to work out that both coincided.

What have done to every group of people that has stood in the way of our progress— what we did to the Native Americans, slaves, Hawaiians, and Mexicans and the rest of the world with Manifest Destiny, was certainly not the right thing to do but we did it because we had the most to gain form it. And that same opportunistic spirit that brought the world to its knees with the hydrogen bomb is the same spirit that panicked when it saw that Stalin knew how to do something that we didn’t. We were missing out on an opportunity to acquire more global leverage and God be damned if a few retarded kids were going to stand in the way of the Soviet Union one-upping us.

Annie Jacobsen is a treasure simply because she’s extremely thought provoking. There’s lots of people that try to discredit her and her work—I can’t tell you what the truth is. It’s up to you to decide for yourself, but I highly recommend that you read or listen to her books directly before making a decision. I know I’m going to be looking at them more closely because what she has to say is worth being considered. Again, links to her work will be down in the description.

Part 2: Language Is A Virus That Limits The Way You Think

Moving on to Part Two of the podcast, which there’s no good way to do: Language Is A Virus That Limits The Way You Think

There is a lot of information packed into this short article and the response can be difficult to understand if you’re not familiar with Dennett’s work. However, it’s extremely interesting to think of language as an organism separate from humans. Language develops, survives, and evolves the exact same way viruses do, by infecting a host and then jumping from person to person with use of the new word. The word only survives if it’s continually used.

The thing that really stood out to me about this idea is how constricting language can be. It is almost an insurmountable task to have a thought without language attributed to it. Have you ever had a feeling, or perhaps and inkling of something so true or something that you completely understand but don’t have the words to express it?

You start scraping at the edges of furthermost thought—deep philosophical issues and scientific theory of reality: physics, metaphysics—there are no words. They literally haven’t been created yet, so the scientist or philosopher is trying to explain their new profound understanding but they are limited in their explanation—their ability to communicate—by only being able to use the words that currently exist. But none of these words are doing an adequate job of expressing exactly what is is that the philosopher is thinking. But that’s how the scientific process starts, is with a theory. If your theory doesn’t even have words yet, it makes it almost impossible to express that idea to someone else.

This is where we are with a lot of deep science and cutting edge theories—words haven’t been invented to explain what these people are thinking, and that’s why things like math and binary code are so important. The languages of math allow you construct a theory without words. Of course, within this construct you’re now limited to the rules of math, just as when speaking you’re limited to grammar and the rules of English, but it’s an additional way to express the thought. The more languages we develop, say with colors—blue means cool and orange means warm—you could flash a package of transitioning colors and in doing so communicate an entire paragraph of ideas.

The point is that with more ways we have to express ideas, the more ideas we can express and the more profound and accelerated our communication becomes. The more advanced our communication becomes, the more extraordinary our scientific and philosophical theories can become.

The only reason we don’t know how to travel at the speed of light or faster is because we don’t possess the language to express it properly.

Shit, are you guys tired of thinking yet? I am! This has been a heavy podcast. I need some bubblegum fluff. Speaking of which, not much has taken place with The Ballad of Stevie Pearl lately. I’ve taken some time off of writing. I became consumed with building and finishing this little recording studio, and now that it’s done I’ve been busy with recording. Once I get caught up with all of the videos and podcasts, probably another week or two, I have a schedule in mind that sets aside time for writing. I should then be pretty balanced to work on both.

A little secret I learned about podcasting, at least if you’re a one-man crew like me, it’s best when starting a new show to release four or five episodes all at once. That way people can binge and get to know you right away. I also like to have another three to five episodes in the can in case life happens—that way there’s a buffer and the world thinks I keep a consistent schedule even if I miss a week of recording. That means I need to get like 10 of these episodes done before I even launch.

We’ll see. We’ll see how this all really works once it gets rolling. Poor Stevie, Alex, Celeste, and Franklin have been neglected lately! They’re all characters from the new book. I miss them! I think I’ve said this before, but I wish they were real. I’m not sure who my favorite is—maybe Celeste? She’s such a badass and her wit is fantastic, all she does is give Alex shit. I love how they each have so much depth though. You think you know who they are, but then they continue to surprise you—at least they do in my mind. I hope it translates to paper.

Like, subscribe, share, donate, buy my books, buy Annie Jacobsen’s books—I know that’s a lot to ask. Maybe just head over to my website, swhammond.com and check things out. The site has been changed up a little bit so it would be good to get some feedback.

Tell me what you think about Area 51. Is this scientist full of shit? Leave some comments and make me feel better about life. That’s it for User Illusion—until next time.