Standard-bearer?

Terry Schiavo: Repugnican Poker chip
 
Mortellaro Rises Again...

Oh -- and a pox on the miscreant scum-sucker who would aggrandize himself with the plight of this pathetic women, trade her misery for political gain, use her as a game piece for the prosecution of his psychopathic neo-con agendas, or mint her sorrow for cash and power.  Rot forgotten in hell.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mort:  Boy, when it comes to saving beached whales, we are a terrific bunch of folks. We all get together and do the best we can to save the poor beasts.
 
Lehm:  Given that it is not the beasts supporting wholesale rape of the planet and who are all allowed to expire, ~anyway~, after their plight has served to salve a fickle public interest... it may come as no surprise (to a ~rational~ observer) that even less compassion and concern needs to be paid to any one human being... unless of course that individual can be used as a political chip in your President's corrupt version of "Texas Hold 'Em."  Is it Ms Schiavo holding her breath for the flop?  Has Tom DeLay bottom dealt the turn card?  Is Georgie radiating his trademark smirk with the river card up his duplicitous sleeve?  
 
Mort:  And how about them little white baby seals? Boy are we great! We want to STOP the slaughter, don't we? Whales, little doggies, horses, animals of all kinds ... we cannot see them suffer, can we?
 
Lehm:  25,000 children die on this planet every day, just of starvation... *Doctor*!  Species extinction is at an all time HIGH...*Doctor*!  Babies and hapless adults who can't pay a bill have their plugs pulled and tubes removed, *Doctor*!  A succession of largely Republican governments (assisted by opportunist Dixie-crats!) have eroded the quality of aggregate human life in leaps and bounds, *Doctor*, to provide ~you~ personally (along with a shrinking minority of elitist sociopaths) ill gotten gains of tax relief and protection from criminal prosecution.  I remain unmoved at the fatuous excesses of your crocodile-teared  and patently convenient compassion.  I believe your concern is a fraud, Sir.
 
Mort:  But when it comes to a human life, the silence is deafening.
 
Lehm:  Astonishing!  I don't know what bizarre invention of reality you have fallaciously (...and oh so conveniently?) cobbled together for yourself, but Rense has been talking about this for almost a year and it is now wall to wall excess in explication on any media outlet you care to trot out.  Moreover, a silence can't be deafening if ~you~ contribute to it, *Doctor*.  Where is this petulant concern for Hutu's and Tutsies, for the millions frozen out of due process with Tort reform, hazarded by deregulation, imperiled by rights loss, impoverished by transnationals, and poisoned by same?  You're a fraud, *Doctor*.
 
Mort:  Where, please, are the ACLU, the Womens' Activists, the churches?
 
Lehm:  Is there no end to your senseless duplicity, Sir?  Do you have a scintilla of short-term memory remaining, Sir?  Do you expect to be taken, remotely, seriously, Sir?  If they ~got~ involved, *Doctor*, you'd be the first to whine and moan about ~that~, and have, I think, right here on this board.  You ~are~ a FRAUD, *Doctor*... in my opinion, of course. 
 
Mort:  Where are they? Well, off defending the rights of terrorists.
 
Lehm:  No, *Doctor*.  They are trying to slow our descent into abject tyranny, religious fundamentalism actually worse than the Islamic variety, and creeping fascism.  They ~like~ our Bill of Rights, our checks and balances, and respect for the individual just as it was.  I'm ~not~ surprised you don't.  This is forgetting that more innocent than guilty have been egregiously abused in the lack of accountability you otherwise champion, or how is it that a United States Senator can be denied air-travel... and how many convictions ~have~ there been as a result of 9/11?  You're all yellow bluster and weepy jingoism, *Doctor*, that's all.
 
Mort:  Making certain they are not embarrassed or treated harshly. I mean after all, they are HUMAN beings are they not?
 
Lehm:  That's right, *Doctor*!  One could almost believe your sappy saccharine concern until they remember that this is just another little mechanism you've chosen to attach yourself too, fallaciously, only to point a finger at yourself.  I don't believe you, *Doctor*, as I've written before.  Ms. Schaivo is just another opportunity to ring your noisome little bell, Sir.  Feel Shame!
 
Mort:  Seems to this writer that we've gotten our priorities all out of whack.
 
Lehm:  We'll forget for a moment that we've you and yours to thank, *Doctor*.  We'll return to that later.  I've seen your convenient priorities in action, *Doctor*.  I wonder what Budd Hopkins thinks about your priorities... *Doctor*.  I can testify that I found little of value in them.
 
Mort:  Terri Schiavo apparently does not warrant selection as someone worth saving, someone worth investigating every scrap of evidence to ensure that her rights, not the rights of her estranged husband, are guaranteed.
 
Lehm:  You don't give a ~damn~ about her, *Doctor*.  Moreover, try to remember all this when the World media, state and federal government, and the church are parked out in front of ~your~ house... sticking its feral opportunist's nose into your bedroom, private family business, and core personal affairs.  You'll squeal like a little repugnican ~then~ I'll wager, and resent all the churlish little Mortellaros intruding and commenting, speciously I add, on ~your~ private affairs.  You are an illustration for the word despicable, *Doctor*, in my opinion, of course.
 
Mort:  Wait, before you go ballistic over the use of that word, "Estranged," allow me to tell you a fact and mention a few words which offend me. Here ... estranged because Michael Schiavo has lived with another woman for ten years or so and had two children by her. Cogito, ergo 'estranged.'
 
Lehm:  Cogito, ergo flatulo in your parlance, *Doctor*.  We'll forget that it's none of your damned business right after we finish wondering how long you or your best friend would last if the woman you had married could no longer respond to you because the cognitive portions of her brain had actually liquefied -- turned to spinal fluid.  Besides, ten years with the same woman in other circumstances and you would likely want to pin a medal on him for fidelity.  It's you who is 'estranged' , *Doctor*, from your sensibilities, from your intelligence, and from your common sense. 
 
Mort:  And how about the words which offend me and Terri. Words such as "vegetative state" and "kept alive by extraordinary means," etc. Neither is true and yet the liberal media and liberal judges fail to see the facts in this case. Or at least, fail to recognize the possibility of foul play.
 
Lehm:  No paucity of crap here, *Doctor*.  Dozens of judges have ruled on this, some of them Bush appointees, I'm sure. The last one to rule was George W. (not so ironically) Greer and a more sociopathic mutant of a an intransigent neocon never stalked the Earth in black robes.  Additionally, there is no such thing as a liberal media, *Doctor*.  There is only the "Corporate Media (your favorite kind) ," *liberal* or *conservative* in turns as it suits the "bottom line".  As to "vegetative state" and  "kept alive by extraordinary means," you are competent to decide neither, Sir, and should stop banging your fetid gums together as if to intimate that you, in any way, are.
 
Mort:  Ahah! Another bad word. Liberal. Well, Democrats have failed to win much in the last few years and it's hard for me to understand how the party of John Kennedy, the party of the people, the caring party, has sunk so low as to be the party of Hollywood, Universities and the party of the courts.
 
Lehm:   Oh... I don't know... could it be because a coven of new Repugnicans like Bush & Cheney & Rove lied, cheated, and stole their way into successive terms at the white house?
 
Mort:  See, it's my theory that the reason liberals focus on the judicial system is because it's one of the very few places where they can win. Naturally, it is a fine place on which to concentrate. At least there, with our liberal judicial system, liberals are more or less guaranteed some measure of success.
 
Lehm:   Now I know, exactly, why it's said that some theories are the product of an anal pore.  Be that as it may, yours will be effectively plugged, *Doctor*, as the pendulum swung so hard in it's criminally compassionless direction swings back with ~equal~ ferocity.  Get ready! 
 
Mort:  Terri Schiavo is not in a vegetative state. She is not being kept alive by extraordinary means. She is merely being fed food and drink. That's it. She is responsive to her surroundings and responsive to her relatives.
 
Lehm:  Crap!  She hasn't left her bed in almost two decades, defecates in a diaper and can't swallow on her own.  The ~vast~ amount of doctors involved, *Doctor,* doctors, unlike yourself, competent to make the call, have said such.  The only thing keeping that woman alive are parents who increase her suffering by refusing, selfishly and obstinately, to let go.  Shame on ~them~! 
 
Mort:  That Michael Schiavo may have brought harm to Terri is a possibility. On that basis alone, criminal investigation should have begun long ago.
 
Lehm:  Odd that it didn't!  This seems like one of those eleventh hour distracter mechanisms you neo-Repugnicans are so famous for.  A little late to throw down this card, *Doctor*.  But this is just another thing you are not competent to comment on.
 
Mort:  If Terri is allowed to die, the repercussions for the Democrat party, the liberal judicial system, Hollywood and our University professors and other 'teachers' of the faith of liberalism will see a reaction the likes of which they cannot in their wildest imaginations, expect. At least I hope so.
 
Lehm:  I have hopes, too... I hope your fat head implodes as a result of the vacuum apparently maintained there, the shame that you are incapable of perceiving for your unfettered sociopathy (real irony there), and for reaping finally what ~you~ sow.  Pop!
 
Mort:  Democrats and liberals are digging their own graves. When it comes to death, the liberal takes a strong stand. Death of infants. Death of innocents. Death of the disabled. But when it comes to life, the RIGHT to life, they fail miserably.
 
Lehm:  ...Like I'd take your word for whether the sun was up if I was looking at a 24 hour clock... *Doctor*.  You're the failure.  A failure of ethics, the failure of the conflicted ideologue, and a failure to those who've called you friend.  Your lot won't win unless it lies, cheats, and steals, like your President.
 
Mort:  Long live the liberal culture. For as long as it remains, it shall remind us of what is wrong with our society. Liberalism in it's most exquisitely evil form.
 
Lehm:  Mort means death... a champion of the scurrilous like your double deserting dry-drunk president with delusions of grandeur complicated by an inferiority complex.  You ARE the pot calling the kettle black, *Doctor*. 
 
Mort:  Cogito, ergo ...
 
Lehm:   Push a dirty hospice diaper into that officious hole, *Doctor*.  It calls out for it.  Verily.
 
Mort:  Addendum...
 
Lehm:   No *Doctor* -- insult on top of injury... that's what it is.
 
Mort:  It is, perhaps, a bit unusual for someone to write a comment on his own article, therefore and with Jeff's permission, I would make this an addendum. And it relates to how this piece was perceived by those who responded by email. This piece drew 129 email responses. Half were supportive ... well ... a little less than half. One was extremely correct in the writer's evaluation. And the rest were more than abusive.
 
Lehm:  Yeah!  Put me with ~those~ *Doctor*...  you earn it... and what would you expect given your whining pule, your professional incompetence, and your senseless willingness to comment on subjects outside your limited scope, beyond your own capacity, and above your neo-conic head?
 
Mort:  When one treads on politics and mix in religion and morality, one is in grave danger of becoming the butt of the insane, the butt of those who don't give a damn about the feelings and rights of others.
 
Lehm:  Knowing you as I do, this had me rolling on the floor laughing even as I wondered why you have a seat on the bus, at all.  Others are asking the same question, as you know.  For my money you only describe what you see in your own funhouse mirror.  Who ~are~ you fooling, *Doctor*?  Not me.
 
Mort:  They care only about their own views and close their minds to the needs of the rest of us who may not share their world view.
 
Lehm:  ...Not unlike yourself then?  I'm only surprised that the mirror you're looking into doesn't shatter as a result of the patent hypocrisy.
 
Mort:  It is WE who are anathema to such, not Terri, not the courts ... we who care. In life, there must be a proper mix of all which makes up our culture, our own personal culture.
 
Lehm:  Derisive hoots, raspberries and one finger salutes, *Doctor*.
 
Mort:  What hurts us the most is the fact that in polls I've read, a greater percentage of people in the nation want to see Terri's feeding tube removed. That, kind and gentle readers, is the worst possible scenario.
 
Lehm:   Hundreds of thousands of people in lesser straights than Ms. Schiavo have their plugs pulled and feeding tubes removed every day, *Doctor*, when they can't pay your BILL!  Where is your compassion and weepy sentimentalism for THEM, Sir!  Their only hope is to become a political poker chip as this poor woman, abused by the system you champion and vote for, has.  You make me physically ILL, *Doctor*.
 
Mort:  My wife and I know that Terri Schiavo will likely pass. But we also know that those responsible will pay the ultimate price, ultimately. And further, that legislation will hopefully be enacted which will prevent such tragedies from happening again.
 
Lehm:   That's right *Doctor*.  Get ~ready~ to pay.
 
Mort:  If we are wrong, then we the people are pretty much finished in the USA. We've gone down the tubes. This has been my feeling for quite some time now. And this scenario merely enforces that opinion.
 
Lehm:  Your *opinion* is another product of the aforementioned anal pore, and I suspect things to improve measurably with ~your~ funeral, *Doctor*.
 
Mort:  Last, please pray for Terri. But also, please pray for those without hearts. For those without a connection to their own souls. For those who beat the drum of atheism. For they need prayers more than we. It is they, not Terri Schiavo, who are dying of thirst and hunger.
 
Lehm:   God!  I thought I hated Nixon...That's just pure and unadulterated barnyard flapdoodle further infested by blundering psychopathic bugs... *Doctor*.  This is forgetting that you are not competent to comment on ethics, soul connection, God, ~or~ Terry Schiavo...
 
Mort:  The man in me hopes they perish. The Christian in me hopes they change their ways and not merely see the light, but acknowledge it.
 
Lehm:   Punt before you fumble then step off the field... You are the white whale, Sir, and "I struggle to the last with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee, for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee"!  Thanks for the mawkish reminder regarding why you can't be believed.  Feh!

 

Is Stanton Friedman For Real?

Everyone 'knows' who or what Stanton Friedman is.  He's probably as close as anyone has gotten to being a household name with regard to UFOs.  Even not knowing his name, but seeing his picture, is to automatically go, "Oh yeah... right... ...the 'UFO' guy."

Friedman was recently pilloried, fatuously, along with some undeserving others, on the recent Jennings/ABC flopumentary "exploring" UFOs, where he was faintly accused of behavior so far removed from his actual behavior that it borders on slander.  For my money it crosses the line.  To wit:

Stanton Friedman is an evidential cherry picker, a self-involved fantasist, and an inventive conspiracy monger/hoaxer.  Stanton Friedman is a frustrated old man with delusions of grandeur and a messianic complex.  Stanton Friedman is ~not~ real.

So would say those who speak in persuasive proclamation, *mainstream* declaration, media decree, and 'official' edict.  But hold on.  The thing about proclamations, declarations, decrees, and edicts is that they don't need to be true; they only have to be compelling. They only have to sew a seed of doubt... ironically nourished by the "information void" they help to maintain, it's enough to preclude further action.  The goal, to be blunt.

Let's try some other 'proclamations' on for size...

Stanton Friedman ~is~ real.  Stanton Friedman is a tireless historical scholar and rational humanist.  Stanton Friedman is a portrait of selfless courage, an assiduous researcher, and an unflinching observer/reporter of that which is decidedly and discomfortingly out of the box... but portending our future...

Forgetting, entirely, their opposing character, is there any other difference between these preceding proclamation sets?  Paul Kimball, a serious filmmaker with his own production company, has produced some engaging and instructive documentary films providing the requisite basis for just this kind of supposition.

The well crafted documentaries referenced here include Kimball's "Stanton Friedman Is Real" (a sober examination of Stanton Friedman the 'man') and "Do You Believe In Majic" (A Doc regarding alleged quality documentation indicating, among other astonishing things, ~very~ high levels of official interest in the ExtraTerrestrial Hypothesis... as it pertains to UFOs).  These films show, with some clarity and fairness, where more of the truth in this... very twitchy and ephemeral area... must be! This is forgetting the balanced cameo they provide Stanton Friedman, despite, I do not hesitate to point out, any conflicts of interest possible.  I suspect any conjectured conflicts are abundantly accounted for. 

Kimball's relationship by marriage to Friedman's family has Kimball erring on the side of Friedman's opposition, if anything.  It remains that this writer's gut-sense advises that Kimball is legitimately trying to shoot straight-down-the-middle on the issues.   Too bad for Friedman's opposition.  A 'fair' look makes ~them~ look pretty bad.  Humiliatingly so.

The pros and cons regarding a ufological contribution by Stanton Friedman do not balance in actuality, even as Kimball's films very assiduously give equal time to the positions of both sides... obvious sincerity shown by Kimball, a man trying to arrive at some kind of non-anticipatory conclusion on the matter, or at least a step forward and not back.  Which side of the argument ~does~ succeed in outweighing the other? 

The viewer can make up his or her own mind... but this writer perceives that the 'cons' see far before them what 'pros' leave far behind... The cons have little weight it seems.

Along similar lines, I've heard no protestations from this opposition -- no cries of "foul" or angry wounded remonstrations regarding a misrepresentation of their assumptive, biased, canted, and homocentric views; their convenient attitudes; their conflicted opinions. The point is whittled, admittedly, pretty fine. 

Truly, I've neither read nor heard of same, and both of these films were released some time ago.  Perhaps there will be a late protest...

The presumption is that, to date, the opposition feels that it was fairly characterized by Kimball's films, and that oppositional views, such as they are and have always been (...continue to be!), were squarely portrayed and accurately recounted. One would presume.

The irony is that it ~was~ squarely portrayed and accurately recounted.  They ~got~ their best shot!

In comparison with Stanton Friedman, though, they fall way short -- their meager shell won't even clear the gun tube.  This is ~despite~ the huge amounts of powder provided by the hijacked mainstream to get that round down range. 

This is further illustrated by the ease with which Friedman will dispatch the occasional brave (if haplessly clueless) soul who gathers up the sack required to join the long list of "noisy negativists" crushed, decisively, in debate with him.  There are numerous examples of same on Kimball's films.  Dispute Stanton Friedman on the issues, bunky, and scamper from a righteous fray with your tail tucked between your legs making whipped-puppy-Ned-Beatty noises... I digress.

Flatly, the arguments of Friedman's opposition make assumptions based on contrived ignorance, intellectual infidelity, obstinate illogic, wishful thinking, denied fear, and rank complacency.  They are arguments larded with confident sounding if baseless assertions based on varying tinctures of the preceding six performance indicators, and they only serve to provide for what, in the final analysis, can only be sack-less cowardice -- intellectual and otherwise.  Such is, and has been, the ongoing prosecution of the arguments from the opposition.

Friedman's pompously ignorant and conflicted detractors ascribes humanistic psychological motives to aliens, facilitating a fallacious relegation of them to dismissible myth.  It waxes knowledgably on the physical impossibilities of alien propulsion systems then references their superiority later to preclude us from a possibility of accidentally bringing one of them down... then it blithely leaps back to foregone conclusions on the unlikelihood of alien technologies with which to start.  Astonishing!  They seem unaware of this strange dichotomy, themselves...

It soberly expounds that the already unlikely alien cannot get here because we cannot get there, only inventing a comforting rubric they can use to keep their intellectual distance from them. It is quick to label the ufologically affected individual as a mis-representer of the facts (a LIAR), a mis-understander of the facts (a DOPE), or as one too mentally incapacitated to appreciate the facts (a NUT).  To the opposition, there is, or can be (...of needs!), ~no~ 4th possibility.

To this klasskurtxian and pelicanistic opposition, people who see UFOs are, unquestioningly and absolutely, "M" cubed (Misleading, Mistaken or Mentally ill), and we ~are~ alone in our little corner of the multi-verse. ...Perhaps (...pray hard to your fundamentalist god of choice!), even alone in the whole damn thing... a centerpiece jewel in God's crown of creation, ideally!  Intelligent alien beings might ~possibly~ exist in some other galaxy, or even at the other end of this one... but not here... Oh please, god... not here.

No!

No!  There ~is~ a 4th choice. Verily, there is a plethora... a panoply of 'choices'!  These are choices that must come as a result of following the data where it leads and not where it can be driven.  These are choices that one discovers as one pursues the devil in the details (as Friedman has for four decades!) and still be able to hold that evidentiary demon by reluctantly slippery shirttails!  These are choices that remain after one is able to appreciate the vast amount of evidence extant (as Friedman has) that is physical, historical, photographic, anecdotal, and even personal.   These are choices one can accept when one sees past the end of a conflicted little nose (as Friedman has), removes oneself from ones convenient and unfounded prejudices (as Friedman has), or objects to and rejects ones self-imbued and pettily contrived ignorance (as Friedman has).  Freidman has a long, long history of perspicaciously,  perceptively, and intelligently trying to get it down... right.

We are not alone.  Not now.  Not ever.  Admitting the preceding is to step to the future.  Denying it is an impossible and so disastrous retreat to a lost, and even invented or imagined, past.

Paul Kimball is clear in his films that Friedman is very specific and precise about why he says what he says.  Not content to sit in a comfy spot and airily spew puerile pronouncements of outdated and discredited "conventional wisdom" like his critics, Friedman chases details that squirm and shift in his grasp, details handily discrediting the 'official' version of puzzling events and/or corrupting, otherwise, what should be a cogent record of same.  Rare bird he. We're lucky to have him.

Stanton Friedman is thorough.  His critics are only thorough enough with regard to their assertions to sew a fallacious seed of doubt or allow for a plausible deniability to obscure the ufological issue du jour.  This is not honorable, on any level, and apes the activities of the propagandist, despot, axe-grinder, canted lobbyist, or spin-doctor.

Friedman is organized, objective, constructive, and comprehensive.  His critics are none of these things and are shot down in flames when they meet him in the air for formal argument on the points of it. 

Friedman is flexible, acceptable, specific, and thoughtful regarding the ufological.  His critics prosecute the opposites of these things, and use every fallacious trick they can to discount him, invalidate him, and discredit him.  Even honor and character have been smarmily attacked, reader!

...Et tu, Peter Jennings, and a mark on your legacy, Sir.  Point one finger and risk three back at yourself, boyo!

Contrarily, Kimball's compelling film "Do You Believe In Majic," dismissing the recent Jennings/ABC whitewash as patently false and a mockery of what a documentary (...a "mockumentary"!) should be, is a good case in point.

Every point skeptically raised against the verity of the MJ-12 Documents (...as clear evidence of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis with regard to UFOs, and an admitted high level ufological interest in the ~reality~ of same...) is dissolved, handily, by citation -- chapter and verse.  Truly, these defensively reflexive protests do not hold up upon examination, Kimball is able to show.  They are bluster, illogic, ignorance, complacency, bias, and cant.  Friedman, on the other hand, can provide clear and compelling evidence that the documents are, indeed, real.  His critics have nothing remaining in their moldy corner but strident, officiously vicious, and patently unsupported negativity.

So, in answer to the question asked at the beginning of this essay about differences between the two sets of opposing proclamations, the answer is this:

One set is of 'proclamations' is based on solid reputation, diligent research, pains-taking fact finding, unblemished integrity, tuned intelligence, and verified results.  The other set is based on 'mainstream' flatus or klasskurtxian hot air.  The reader can judge for themselves which is which.  Be that as it may, Stanton Friedman, in a final analysis, ~is~ real, in this writer's view, and one wastes no time, at all, believing in MAJIC.  Step forward to the future, reader, not backward to futility.

Such can be drawn from Paul Kimball's intriguing, concise, and calmly iterated documentaries, here referenced.  More information can be secured from the filmmaker's site at:

http://www.redstarfilm.com/order/index.htm

Read on!

"Seeing Is Believing," Naught?


I saw Peter Jennings on a high-school trip to Sacramento when I was a kid in 1965 or there-abouts. A local-news guy in the California Capital, I think (who cares?), it was pretty obvious, even to a teen-aged, predictable, and oblivious moi, that he was one of "fair-haired lot" on his way up.

Hustled onto buses to see him from our sleepy little town of Elk Grove, I wondered what the big deal was. Verily, when he finished his talk, I still didn't know.

All I heard then was "yadda yadda, blah blah-blah blah... blah."

That's all I heard for two hours last night, too, 40 years later: well traveled, safe, and predicable "yadda" with oppressive overdoses of the conventional "blah." Such was his ballyhooed ABC program on the subject of UFOs.

Flatly, Jennings took the easy way out, reader, fell back on the outmoded and invalidated "conventional wisdoms" exacerbating the cultural hole that we are in, and wiggled his ass for a mainstream as corrupt as it is canted... as irrelevant as it is fraudulent.

What did I expect?

I had ~no~ expectations. Like many, though, I had hopes.

...It all seemed to be coming together. An unusual prime-time news special from the vaunted establishment taken in conjunction with a likely "discovery" of life on Mars, seemed serendipitous... at the very least. Are we, perhaps, being prepared for the more expansive future... I'd wondered.

No. Be not fooled...

...And there will be kinder assessments than mine providing puerile protestations on the validity of ABCs little exercise of manipulative self-affirmation for the status quo. These will celebrate the "loss leader" admissions that ABC duplicitously injected so they could pretend that they were balanced, on balance...

They were not. These loss-leaders only serve to support the big lie. And ABC told the ~big~ lie, Sir and Madam! They contrived the lie of ~Omission~, folks... baldly, bluntly, and with malice aforethought.

Examples?

I was grossly disappointed with the obvious bias shown in several segments, especially the Roswell and Abduction subjects. These were badly handled, poorly chosen, and explicated incompetently with prejudice.

Jennings did no homework. ABC talked extensively, for months, with the ufological principals... Richard Hall, Dr. Swords, Jerry Clark et al... they could make their own comparisons to Dr. Shirmer, Mr. McGaha, Dr. Shostak... and this is ~forgetting~ that the latter have ~ever~ had their HATS handed to them in debate with the former. Jennings and ABC stacked the deck, dealt from the bottom, and changed games in the middle of the play over a huge pot! They implied equity between these conflicting groups, where there IS none!

Then, given a back stepping reliance on 19th Century philosophies/physics, there was ABCs treatment of interstellar travel. Ludicrous, reader! We could travel between stars right NOW if we wanted to. Not a NOD to that.

Moreover, consider the unchallenged nonsense of the SETI "Cultists." Guilty of every conceit and mal-intellectualism they would attribute to a rank "believer," they are studiously blind to that which they would only pretend to seek! ET can be ~anywhere~ reader, except here!

Additionally, one would think ABC could mention that Stanton Friedman is a bona fide scientist, a physicist with many degrees and honors respectably investigating, for over three freaking decades, the very subject of the program on which he is wrongly vilified! Outraged astonishment!

...That Jesse Marcel Jr., who saw saucer parts as a boy, is now a medical doctor, just back from active duty in Iraq as a flight surgeon!

...That Jesse Marcel Sr., the saucer finder, was the ranking Intelligence Officer of the only atomic bombing group in the world! Obviously, not a credulous dummy!

...There was no mention of the literally thousands of physical trace cases, or of the blacked out FOIA documents obfuscating more of the truth, or "radar/visual" sightings... persons watching physical evidence actually being made...

Moreover, indicating that Hynek was the only scientist fighting the battle was patently preposterous... if it was not the very soul of duplicity, too. Dr. James McDonald (et sig al) did far more than Hynek ever did on his ~best~ day...

Why continue ad nauseum. The reader gets the point.

Reader, two of the finest men in the current ufological struggle were made out plainly to be money-grubbing sensationalists and opportunists. They chumped Stanton Friedman in this fashion... and made Peter Davenport look like a freaking nut-ball! More Outrage!

Yes, this Peter Jennings/ABC journalistic apostasy was a complete, if subtle, Hack-Job! It employed all the old discredited prejudices, subtly made out like ufologists operate, doggedly, on conflicted faith and are, most likely, mentally ill, misinformed, or misinforming... ...while Skeptibunkies, on the other hand, are hard nosed realists with the conviction of "real" science behind them! What nonsense this?

All in all, ufologists were given no, hoped for, "hand" at all, except for the back of one...Outrage beyond incredulity!

This program was an opportunity to begin to relearn a trust in government and the media, but the baffled ufological fence-sitter was in no way encouraged to ask difficult questions of Government, Institution, or Agency on this subject. He or she were informed and inculcated otherwise, again by the hijacked mainstream, that ET is a long-shot, credible evidence of interaction does not exist , and ET can't get here anyway, largely because ~we~ can't get ~there~... oh, and all is right with the world... our arrogant hubris is intact. Human Beings remain the center of the universe and the jewel in God's crown...

Crap!

I was completely disgusted with this canted partisan display. No points for Jennings, at all... who should just follow Dan Rather into some journalistic elephant's graveyard and let his tiny tusks bleach in the sun.

I'm not done. I'm just getting started. ABC doesn't know who they trifle with. We're righteous piranha and they're dead in the ufological water. Breaking out of the preceding metaphor, We don't need them... it's ~them~ needs ~us~! As it stands, Peter Jennings and ABC are beneath ~my~ concern, ~my~ consideration and ~my~ contempt.

Read on.

Loathing & Fear?

Hunter S. Thompson Dead At 67
 

Byronically mondo "Gonzo", some will too quickly call him crazy.  But, pushing 60, and as much as a reader can, I grew up with Hunter S. Thompson.  I found him to be more consistently right than wrong in places that count... more places than a reflexive detractor ~can~ admit, contest, or argue. 

Those 'detractors' can push a scurvy sock in it as a result.

Moreover, irony may ~yet~ come to be discovered, Sir and Madam!  It might yet be found that Thompson's life was actually a portrait of a ~sane~ man... a sane man reacting to a ~culture~ going, increasingly, more insane.  That's an irony you'll be able to roll up and smoke, later, I suspect.

...Truly, he leaves far behind what the rest see far before them.  A giant fallen. Scramble up on his shoulders now, folks -- avoid the coming rush.

...Our betraying society?

Pulitzer Pass-ups & A "Flatwoods Monster" Redux

[Book Review: The Braxton County Monster: The Cover-Up of the Flatwoods Monster Revealed by author/investigator Frank C. Feschino, Jr. and published by (New publisher: not yet announced)

Info -- http://www.flatwoodsmonster.com/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On "Strange Days Indeed" with Errol Bruce-Knapp I heard Stanton Friedman say that Frank Feschino's book on the Flatwoods monster would likely never win a Pulitzer. He's likely right.

Only... you'd be taking Friedman well out of contest if you left it there. Maybe it's not for the reason most immediately thought of -- that reason concerning suspiciously judgmental mainstream assessments that it wasn't good enough. Polished enough. Detailed enough. Cited enough...

...Appropriate enough. Pertinent enough...

...Important enough?

I'm betting that's not Mr. Friedman's thinking, either. Verily, he seems to have a key understanding just how important Feschino's book actually is.

Indeed, a close look at Mr. Feschino's book and detailed research begs the question. ~Is~ it good enough?

The reader discovers he doesn't have to squint his eyes very much, at all, to begin to wonder if that might indeed be so. That's right. It might be good enough, after all...

What did Mr. Pulitzer extort the intrepid aspirates for his prize to do, ~anyway~, but:

[a] Unflinchingly ~study~ the social, political, and moral realities of fellow human beings.

[b] Make ~accurate~ records of the expressions regarding the character displayed by these fellow individuals, and...

[c] Report, equally unflinchingly, on the principles of the aggregate world condition as it is, and has been, reflected by the persons ~employing~ these principles.

I submit that a case could be made that Mr. Feschino has abundantly addressed each of the preceding points in turn... and in spades. That's right.

...But he'll never win a Pulitzer. He can't. To recognize Frank Feschino for a Pulitzer is to knock a supporting cornerstone from the edifice of a stagnant, officious, and largely illegitimate "status quo" we all continue to endure. Feschino can't get a Pulitzer, flatly, because the establishment lacks the sack it needs to cut its own throat to ~give~ him one.

I won't pretend that this is ~enough~ justification for an establishment's reluctance to take its own life. Some throats, very likely, ~should~ be cut, I suspect, but I digress.

Be much of that as it may, Frank Feschino took more than 15 years of his life to rationally actualize on one startling set of very unsettling conclusions. These were conclusions sensibly kindled by a chance serendipitous interview he'd made near the start of his remarkable quest, an interview ~startling~ ...even during a ~first~ investigative wash. After that interview the data would accumulate steeply over the next decade and change what began as a garden variety school project... and turned it into a life's work and consuming occupation.

In this investigative effort he was, again, ~unflinching~ in a study of the sociopolitical realities revealed to him. He was made aware of moral and ethical sub-realities that these larger realities further implied. Indeed 'Reality' was revealed, considered, and then assiduously chronicled by him. In the final analysis (and we'd have never heard about it otherwise, good reader), Feschino came, he saw, and he wrote it down.

The data ~are~ revealing. Feschino reports them to us in detail. Indeed, we weren't in 'Kansas' any more after 1952... and may not, I submit (remembering a wealth of old history indicating same), have ~ever~ been in 'Kansas'.

...We're not in 'Kansas'... now. Get used to it.

That aforementioned tumultuous "interview", an interview with the ranking military person peculiarly involved with the Flatwoods affair (...a hard as nails hero of the second world war...) occurred in a moment of idle interest born of distracted and tentative conjecture on the part of an ~unassuming~ Mr. Feschino. Mr. Feschino's initial interest, actually, was with regard to a little film documentary he might put together about the Flatwoods "myth," for school. What it turned into would be a taproot into the most important events of our (or any other) time, or... yes...

...Even ~more~ compelling evidence that we are not alone in billions of years of space, time, and surface area... a googleplex of alien surface areas and maybe even a googleplex of aliens to inhabit them! More than the reader ~can~ imagine is hidden behind a grain of sand held at arms length, sir or madam. The warm breath of unguessed infinity is only the beginning of the beginning for all of us.

We are not alone, folks. An antithesis is ludicrous. Moreover, all the major propeller heads, a few of the high-domes, and a smattering of leading-edge, vetted, and credentialed intelligentsia think it's ludicrous, too. I digress, again. Sorry.

Something occurred in Braxton County, West Virginia September 12, 1952. The data are beyond convincing. Something occurred as surely as flying saucers came close to landing on the White House lawn in July of the same year... and they ~did~ come close to landing on the lawn, reader. Believe that, too.

In the town of Flatwoods, Braxton county West Virginia... on a warm Indian Summer evening and interrupting playing children and relaxing adults at the end of their day... multiple objects interacted with multiple witnesses, people were made ill, and a dog ran home in gibbering fright... then subsequently died. None of the participants were ever the same again.

Justifying a Pulitzer, Mr. Feschino makes a durable record of the expressions of character displayed by ~dozens~ of individuals concerned with, and material to, this affair... people both guilty and innocent in the affair... by persons both truth telling and glibly ~lying~ regarding the affair... by folks both brave and cowardly, warm and cold, by persons encountered on a foggy 'audit trail' Feschino was compelled to plod... a trail rife with dead ends, detours, and official double-dealings. It's quite a ride. Mr. Toad has nothing on Mr. Feschino.

Moreover, the satisfied requirements for Mr. Feschino's Pulitzer seem to steadily resolve.

Verily, Mr. Feschino risked bodily harm on numerous occasions during his investigation. This threat would come, ironically, as a result of the very persons from which he'd have to draw his story. Consider.

In fourteen years Mr. Feschino was too often mistaken for the same kind of cheap-shot reporter or faux-journalist investigator who'd glutted the area since that fateful night, axe-grinding skeptibunkers coyly generating the disdain, the derision, and the patent disrespect stalwart Flatwoods witnesses had had to ~endure~ for half a century -- an unwarranted contempt and ridicule imposed that innocent people unjustly suffered... punished by their own society for having the temerity to stand up and report the highly strange account they had all had on that bizarre September night. The "Mothman Mechanism" at work again.

I suspect Feschino had his shirt-front grabbed more that a few times by this angry group of betrayed citizenry. He was so threatened on more than one occasion.

Again, with regard to Pulitzer, the questions remain begged. Has not Mr. Feschino reported on the principles of the aggregate world and the condition reflected by them? Has he not spent many years tirelessly trying to ferret out important details that would have gone undiscovered and unreported but for his painstaking research and unflinching perseverance? Has he not validated a couple of generations of innocent persons trying to come to grips with the inexplicable thrust upon them? Has he not vindicated these people to some extent and alleviated some of their suffering as a result of his work? Such a person may have earned ~more~ than a mere Pulitzer at the denouement.

Does 'Nobel' have a category that applies?

All things equal? Feschino earns his Pulitzer. He has more sack than ~many~ who've aspired to that prize, I suspect. Moreover, I'll bet Mr. Friedman agrees with me. He wins ~my~ award, at any rate.

Along those same lines, Mr. Feschino can not be faulted for his brave attempt to fill the societally imposed "information void" (he suffers with the rest of us) by starting at the end of an incredible story ~rife~ with suspicious details and curious facts... and then working arduously -- modeling, graphing, and plotting backwards on that stark trail... trying, thoughtfully, to connect these ephemeral dots... flesh out one ~more~ 'official' story that won't add up from the 'official' account... This is a key concept, folks.

Indeed, his admitted speculations and clearly identified personal beliefs may actually add up, ironically, to the astonishing conjectures he reports in his book. It just may be, reader, that there ~was~ an aerial battle with ET out in the Atlantic that night in 1952. It may be that 8 to 10 American jets ~were~ destroyed in that struggle, their crews lost. Perhaps one Lt. Jones and crew, valiantly sacrificing themselves, even ~rammed~ one of the UFOs, bravely, with his plane in the one-sided fight ~we~ likely provoked...

Given that a postwar American military was aggressively over-touchy and otherwise spring-loaded on the balls of their very twitchy feet... especially after the repeated over-flights of prohibited airspace in Washington D.C. the previous July... it's ~not~ that much of a stretch that it would react decisively to multiple UFO's and their blithe transgressions of an imaginary fighting line on the coastal ADIZ (Air Defense Identification Zone) with folding-fin rockets and exploding 50 caliber machine gun fire! Further, Feschino's speculation is not unreasonable given the statement by Benjamin Chidlaw, a four star general commanding the very high profile "Air Defense Command", to wit: that many "planes and crews" had been "lost" trying to "intercept UFOs"... these are his words, it's reported.

Mr. Feschino is not making the story up, at any rate, I'm confident. Mr. Feschino is trying to make sense of the very real story that is already there. Extant is a ~sincerity~ in his book, as a result, that ~this~ writer can relate to and find some substance in.

Additionally, I don't believe, especially after having spoken with him for a couple of hours (where I asked some pretty pointed questions), that Mr. Feschino has it in him to write a sociopathic fiction, fobbed off to the credulous as fact, to crab their dollars... then smirk at that reader's "nose-bubble credulity" as he orders up goth hookers and greasy cheeseburgers. No, Feschino's only telling you the credible story he knows, or... he is otherwise hanging some 'substance' on the astonishing facts that he has uncovered.

Moreover, his book publisher, predictably weighing size against profit, winnowed down the manuscript to 350 pages, about a third of its former size. There is more there, more to the story, than you get in the published book, reader... witnesses you don't hear from... unsolicited and credible reports about other involvements, other sightings in the area, and still other startling corroborations of fact and circumstance attendant to the whole astonishing affair! It's breathtaking, actually.

Also, it's all very hard to discount. Increasingly so.

An extraterrestrial being (or artifact of et intelligence) arrived Earth-side in a damaged craft... rightly or wrongly terrorized an entire town of good, sober, and horse-sensed people in September of 1952, and then the government worked furiously, if deceptively, to cover it all up... impugning the honor of the aforementioned citizenry (and ourselves!) in the process... Tragic and needless sadness.

As Feschino wrote to me in the inscription of the review copy he sent:

"The questions and answers I have provided in this book are only the beginning..."

I suspect that quote comes up as a bit of an understatement from Mr. Feschino. But that's my feeling. I'm comfortable going with it. I submit you can too.

Get more info about Mr. Feschino's book at:
http://www.flatwoodsmonster.com/

Read on!

Ameri~ka The Brutish Rule?

The wife is a wee bit angry with me presently.  She's flat going to hit the ceiling upon finding out about the present controversy I'd engage, or otherwise whack with an outraged literary stick.  But hey, as you'll come to see, I really love her... so could do nothing less and still be a proper husband. 

My wife ~is~ an innocent in all this.  She's never been to a paranormal chat room, surfed internet fringe forums, made on online friend, constructed a website, or contributed to a special interest internet group.  The technology only very peripherally exists in her world.  She has other, more traditional, interests.

She is ambivalent to UFOs,  a moderate/centrist politically, and she's blissfully unaware regarding the affect (sic) of an *internet* upon the collective sensibilities of the people who choose to plug themselves into it. Seriously, if I don't tell her myself, she'll likely never even hear of this essay.  Her internet innocence is that complete.

Additionally, to further ornament the point, she's spent well over a quarter of a century as the valued wife of a military officer and, currently, drives a bus for a federally funded school system.  In that referenced time she went out of her way to pay her taxes, was always clean, forever thrifty, gracefully respectful, and certainly brave.  She still is.  ~She~ hasn't changed.

More point ornamentation.  Her husband had had many top-secret military clearances whilst on active duty as a career flight officer, so, as a German National, she'd been through numerous Government Intel sieves in her own right over the years. She'd had to jump a huge hurdle agency-wise when we were married, 30 years ago, to get the clean bill of intelligence-health she obviously enjoyed.  To wit: I was _never_ denied clearance of any type for any reason.

So what did I do to turn her crank so hard?  I make it sound like I must be using or trafficking in controlled substances, be part of some radical political effort, involved with a terrorist cell, or cultivating some kind of twitchy online internet sexual activity...

Well...  no, no, no, and (...Let me think...) no.  At this point evidence for any of the preceding or remotely similar activity would have to be ~planted~, frankly.  Put a ~fine~ point on that, reader.  It may come up again.

What did I do, then? 

Well, in a nut-shell, I wrote recently here for Rense.com that our certainly faux-mandated, apparently vote-thieving, and obviously ethically bankrupt CIC George W. Bush (...so there's ~no~ mistake...) was a "dumb-assed-dry-drunk-double-deserter with an inferiority complex, a paucity of intellect, and delusions of dangerous grandeur." 

That scares her.  She ~is~ scared.  Should she be?

Here's the rest of the story.

She's a German national, remember.  She was born and raised in West Germany to a maturity decidedly foreign, if acceptably so, to the sensibility of a garden-variety American citizen.  Her father was a German artillery Captain and her mother worked in photo intelligence and image interpretation during the war.  Nothing twitchy there, then, or later... nothing that precluded, at any rate, the top military clearances I've already mentioned.

Let's cut to the chase... 

Her mother and father told her many of the dark stories about what it was like in Germany prior to and during the loathsome war years.  Her still living second father, keenly edged at 86 and a retired Regional Finance Minister (a survivor of the winter war in Russia additionally), is able to draw... comparisons.  Others, numerous friends and relatives of contemporary and advanced years that she regularly talks to over there in the "old world", are making the same unsettling... comparisons.  Is there a comparison?

Their concern,  fretfully reflected in the apprehension of my wife, is that the United States seems to be aping the same kinds of *attitudes*, *behaviors*, *predilections*, and *activities* they'd seen before -- the same kinds of hateful emotional fire, political irrationality, and nationalistic malevolence.  The same kinds of blurring of church and state.  The same kinds of voter fraud.  The same kinds of rights reduction. 

The *same* kinds?

The same (...much worse, actually!) intelligence surveillance.  The same Machiavellianism.  The same unilateralism.  The same predatory corporatism.  The same institutional duplicity.  The same gnawing and depressing fear... 

The same kinds of hell, reader... as was provided by Nazi Germany's Fascists of last Century.  Is it the same?

I report that they see in us the rise of what they themselves endured in the previous 30's and 40's, can sense the same approaching catastrophe that that behavior traditionally precipitates, and feel that their concern is more that appropriately justified.  Is their fear justified?

My wife is fearful of an eventual Bush-league *Gestapo*, cheerfully facilitated by a powerful and sizable minority of adoring if deluded and terrorized sycophants, breaking down our door and dragging us away for re-education camps, imprisonment/torture, or even arbitrary execution. 

She's worried about the continuance of our hard won military pension upon which we must depend.  She's worried about the falsely punitive attentions of predatory institutions, corrupt agencies, and a rogue government hijacked by demonstrable criminal elements.  She's worried about future persecutions imposed upon us at the whim of lawless sociopaths and their willing functionaries.

She's worried about us being falsely identified as an enemy of a 21st Century fascist state, and dealt with accordingly, outside any law, so with the obligatory extreme prejudice.  A true innocent in every respect, should she be worried?

Fascism is defined as a system of *government* marked by centralization of authority under a *dictator* (preferred figurehead), harshly stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of even lawful opposition through crafted terror, and the use of manipulating censorship or propaganda. It is typically characterized by belligerent nationalism or some kind of baseless racism. Ultimately, it is a whole political philosophy or movement based upon or advocating such a sorry system for even sorrier government.

Moreover, it has a penchant for an oppressively dictatorial control mechanism that is ~passionately~, even joyfully, prosecuted.  It ~likes~ what it does.

It puts corporate entities in charge of government, combines state and church into a *sturch* or *chate* resembling neither, and it is the jealous enemy of an individual's freedom.  It engages in adventurous wars of empire, as it profits from them, and it lavishly rewards the predatory few at the terrible expense of the manufactured many.  It is a singular and perfidious evil in all ways, all matters, and at all levels.

It HATES liberalism and egalitarianism.  It ~abhors~ a bill of individual rights.  It ~detests~ due process and equality under the law.   It ~loathes~ independent thinking.  Do we begin to resemble any part of the preceding?

I'm a writer of admitted small talent, but a writer nonetheless.  I'm also an educated, tax-paying, law-abiding citizen/retired soldier/officer.  I'm placed medially near the top of the aggregate bell curve... nothing really special or pointedly seditious about me according to the references I'd mentioned (forgetting a proudly admitted cant to liberal philosophies) ... but ~I'm~ detecting a resemblance. 

Friends of mine far smarter than myself and more professionally experienced and educated than myself detect a resemblance.  Persons abundantly experienced with the full-blown ~examples~ of same... detect a resemblance.  Some of us have to squint the eye a little harder than others, thank your God of choice, but a resemblance seems plain, regardless.  Is there a resemblance?

Why would I shoot off my mouth and tempt fate, then, if there were?  The answer is obvious.

How could I ~not~, reader?  How could I close my eyes and harden my heart to something I know, historically, would threaten me (and mine) right along with you (and yours)... something that would ponderously grow, eventually and certainly (!), to metastasize like the foulest national cancer, later (soon!), if ~not~ now? 

How could I have any respect for myself, feel confident about the quality of life for my children and grandchildren, or live a proudly valued life on my own... if I didn't speak up now before our seeming national wretchedness was a foregone and egregious conclusion?  How could I remain silent if I recognized that the present day was quickly becoming the ~antithesis~ of everything I had learned in school, defended in combat, and internalized in college about these glorious United States and the brave grace of its ~conjectured~ contribution to progressive civilization?  How could I ~not~ speak up, reader?

I'm a writer like I said.  I've a spotless record, top drawer references, decorations, citations, and awards...  I'm a quality citizen, an intelligent patriot, and I have given my life in service to our nation as a career military officer and certified ([s]...if underemployed... [/s]) special education teacher.  I've been a proper *boy scout*, reader, as I've written before, if one with teeth.

No, I've not changed in the interim, become traitorous, or gone, in any way, bad. I've been consistent.  Not so my nation, seemingly.

Conversely, it seems to be my Nation, threateningly and unsettlingly, which changes, worryingly, around ~me~!  It's taken a hard right turn to convenient and authoritarian ~brutishness~ I can neither respect, rationally support, or remotely admire.

Truly, my nation seems to abandon me, not me it.  Hijacked by an apparently if ironically ~faithless~ gang of politically malignant radicals scurrilously bent on using our democracy to ~destroy~ our democracy... (another talent of the fascist), these co-opted mechanisms of government betray ~me~, deceive ~me~, are disloyal to ~me~! 

...Who the hell am I?

I am ~you~, reader!  I'm another guy on ~site~ heating our culture's boiler water.  I'm one of the ones, along with you, paying the big freight in blood, sweat, and time!  I'm one of the ones, along with you, at the whim of powerful sociopaths hard-wired to discount us, and so by ready extension, ~you~,  reader!  This is regardless where you think you come down for a political positioning left or right of center.  Still -- to an ironically vast ~minority~... you're just another steer in the herd they prey upon even as they pretend to lead your prayer.

I look around myself and see wide-spread and pointedly unheralded voter fraud (!), political murderousness (!), and life/career-destroying dirty tricks!  I see hijacked mainstreams, roll backs of middle-class nurturing New Deal social programs, and insentient journalists pretending to be oblivious to it all!  I see murdered investigative reporters, mindless network TV programs, rampant censorship, and the easy/ignorant complacency of the dumb-downed. 

I see docile-herd-producing educational systems, insultingly banal text books, and all of this atrocity of patent disrespect is officiated by brain-dead reproductionist teachers numbingly teaching too many students with too little resources.  I see managed illness, multinational corporations without the remotest civil responsibility, and the business of America as only unrestricted, and therefore historically dangerous, business.  

Verily, I see hungry men jailed for stealing metaphoric bread while rich men are rewarded for stealing factories producing same...I see no ~less~ than the death of our national soul, the corruption of our finest ideals,  and the radical rightwing degradation of all the better principles and ethics to which we should adhere, or why have ~Abortions~ gone demonstrably UP during a Bush League watch by a percentage recorded in double digits? 

I'm not the only one seeing such.  Given a conjectured potential for it I won't be the only one persecuted for reporting it either, presumably.  ...If I am to be persecuted.  ~Am~ I to be persecuted?

Yes, my wife is scared and angry with me for stirring this unsettling mess with my equally scared but outraged literary stick.  But it remains... maybe if I'm just a little-bit brave now, raise my voice with others, now... others seeing the same kind of wrongness and egregiousness, NOW... 

...Maybe I won't have to be consummately brave (...brave to death!) later on.  That's my hope; however, wishful; that's my wish; however, hopeful...

I'll keep you posted.  If things start getting dicey for me, if it looks like I'm getting singled out for  Special High Intensity Trouble of a persecutorial nature, I'll try to let you know.  I mean there shouldn't be any trouble, you know?  It's still America, isn't it?

Or is it?  Is it Ameri~ka, and we just have yet to cop to it? 

I wonder...  "America the beautiful" or "Ameri~ka, the brutish rule"?  How hard do you have to squint ~your~ eye, reader?  How scared are you?  How afraid? 

Be very afraid, frankly, and speak out.  It just might save us all.  The country you'd save ~would~ be your own. 

We've a new year, Readers.  Let's ~make~ it new.

Read on.

Betrayed?

Firestorm 

Ann Druffel's Biography of Ufologist James McDonald -- A Review


Dr. James E. McDonald, seminal ufologist and a man of undeniably objective science, was a man who might be observed at two, seemingly disparate, levels.  On one level he was exactly what our suspect society stridently proclaims it prefers in its citizenship: Intelligence, Courage, Self-Improvement, Civic Involvement, Sterling Productivity -- he was an asset in every form and a total benefit to humankind's elevation and advancement on every level...  On the other hand he was a hapless fool,
~however~ magnificent...

I think both observations are correct as strongly as I believe that he can
be congratulated and otherwise lauded at both of these levels.  At once, Dr.
McDonald's story ~is~ a hard lesson and a much needed, certainly gainful,
inspiration to us all.

This is what was drawn from Anne Druffel's  powerful, informative, and very
well woven... excitingly readable... biography of James McDonald, entitled
"Firestorm".

Dr. McDonald, by way of introduction, was a good man, a kind man, a
renaissance man, and a family man; he was a man instrumental, key actually,
in elevating the status of aggregate ufology to the level of seriousness
that it remotely enjoys... against ~all~ odds... today.  Yet, today, he is
almost totally unknown even by those with more than a passing interest in
the field.

This is a tragedy beyond debate.  Ms. Druffel, in a near peerless effort,
would put that error aright.

Ms. Druffel portrays the Physicist James E. McDonald, accurately it would
seem, as a highly respected world class research scientist and much beloved
teacher, academic coach, and educator.  A renowned atmospheric physicist, he
was a nascent prototypical ecologist, an incisive social scientist, and a
master of diverse multiple subjects - a brilliant man in ~every~ regard.  He
changed the minds of hostile governments, steered academic boards, chaired
lofty research sections, and headed significant causes. Then he got
interested in UFOs...

I've written before about an insidious social aspect of our hijacked society
I tentatively call the "Mothman Futility Mechanism."   The sufferer of this
mechanism is an otherwise rational person innocently encountering an aspect
of the 'highly strange'.  In a justifiably passionate investigation of that
very ~real~ strangeness, this person is destroyed, in one way or another, as
a result of paying an awful and inevitable (...and unfair!) 'penalty' for
the pursuit of that enigma's teasing challenge... imposed by that
non-elected leadership mentioned before. Such was Dr. McDonald.

Ms. Druffle writes a compelling cameo, indeed, for the "Mechanism" in
action.  It is portrayed, exceptionally well, in the heartbreaking (and
heart broken) subject of her startling biography.

This fine man, by step, increment, and seeming design was progressively
failed by society, its 'science', and by those closest to him.  He would pay
more than most for his provoked 'transgression'.  He would be (...perhaps
deliberately!) aggravated to suffer deeply un-mitigating depressions he
found, at last, that he could no longer endure.  Indeed, Druffel succinctly
conveys how he would be inexorably driven over the cliffs of the blackest
despair.  He would be goaded, lead actually - drawn out on a precarious limb
after years of government duplicity, institutional subterfuge, and agency
chicanery... and then sawn off.

With great deliberation and at the nadir of this abject hopelessness, he
took his own life?  Only perhaps...

His ~was~ the kind of intelligent effort and efficacious artifice the
aforementioned agencies, institutions, and governments would want to finesse
for a managed failure and conveniently thwarted success, one might suspect
when reading between Druffel's lines. Indeed, I recall that many of the
major players on the ufological scene have been documented as being drawn
down the same kinds of primrose path ending so tragically for Dr. McDonald,
a reason why his story is a pointed lesson for the observer of it.

Vallee wrote about Linda Moulton Howe and Stanton Friedman being played.
Hynek and Ruppelt wrote about the many hundreds of credible witnesses who
initiate a report and then, abruptly, don't follow up on their testimony.
Dolan and Jacobs make rationally credible cases for an unelected
government's ufological interference and manipulation... and worse things.

...~Worse~ things, reader...

Given today's realities one could surmise many reasons why someone of Dr.
McDonald's caliber and propitious drive would have to be 'stopped'... one
way or another.  The mechanisms used against the good doctor are obvious and
not so obvious, Druffle more than intimates.

Not the least of these jealous mechanisms of a hostile mainstream were the
scurvy tactics of otherwise inexplicable persons such as Philip Klass and
Edward Condon et al, Druffel informs ~this~ reader.  These were shallow men
without imagination and courage, at best. At worst, they were drunk on their
own baseless hubris and perhaps even cooperating drones for the conjectured
unelected leadership already mentioned.

Both were two-faced authoritarian murmurers with a predilection for whisper
campaigning, name-calling, hate mongering, and the yellowest of yellow
presses.  ~They~ were the hackish agents of stupefying misrepresentation and
the instruments of crass deception or misinformation.  ~They~ were the
blindsiding back-shooters and the artless shadow-snipers.  ~They~ are the
reason the rest of us are reluctant to be bold!

These, and others like them (known and unknown), were the cowardly hurdles
that Dr. McDonald was compelled to clear.  ~They~ were the cheaters.  ~They~
were the liars.  ~They~, themselves (!), were what they were pretending to
warn us against.

Dr. McDonald, on the other hand Druffel writes, was only a genuine scientist
of the first water made aware, as a result of his researches, that a
significant number of UFO reports could ~not~ have prosaic explanations!  He
was intrigued. He was also demonstrably and justifiably ~aghast~ that his
much revered science, in the person of the military and the scientists it
employed, was not taking a remotely competent look at it.  That UFOs should
be exhaustively investigated was abundantly obvious to Dr. McDonald, along
with few significant others.  He understood, all too clearly, that they were
~not~ properly investigated.

So, he readily took up, as a man who is not a coward ~will~, the campaign to
bring mainstream science on line for that competent investigation.  We are
well served, ultimately, that he did.

For his trouble, Druffel notes, he was "bait and switched", drawn out over
empty air with high-level and well connected promises of financial support
necessary for a quality investigation (which, carrot-like, ~never~
materialized), and he (along with his family) was phone-tapped and
threateningly followed in ~obvious~ ways.  Concurrently, even as McDonald is
hobbled and persecuted in his ~righteous~ study of the problem, Edward
Condon throws ~away~ a half million dollars in government grants for a
negatively biased foregone conclusion regarding UFOs... that he would later
foist on the scientific community and a hapless public, very nearly ruining
the whole ufological enterprise with his patent obfuscation of it, out of
hand!  The bastard!  Verily.

Condon and Klass, et al, were too little, too late for a complete
destruction of the nascent ufology, it seems, as Druffel points out with
ready alacrity. Condon was clearly and auspiciously identified, by McDonald,
even before the formal 'report' was released (!) as a duplicitous ax-grinder
who apparently had not even read the report which he chaired and for which
he was writing the conclusion!

McDonald also made decisively short work of Philip Klass' ludicrous
expository, too. Klass was, summarily, inarguably, and effortlessly
~dismissed~!

But for McDonald's sterling science, faultless logic, expansive
intelligence, and stalwart bravery, the bucket of cold water that was poured
on UFOs by these two might have snuffed out the interest in them,
altogether!  McDonald was, truly, ~key~ in keeping them alive for subsequent
generations. Druffel makes this clear.

Oh, but what McDonald might have done with the half million dollars that
Condon just pissed away on his fake 'study'...  I don't think it unlikely
that humanity couldn't already be living expressive lives in the asteroid
belt as a result... a living ring of humanity around our sun... a glittering
halo of progressive humankind living between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
I digress...

Why was Dr. McDonald a fool, then?  Everything expressed thus far would seem
to indicate that he was a fool's very antithesis, and he was, good reader,
he was.

...But he was also a boy scout and a believer.  Not a 'believer' in the
paranormal or a 'believer' in UFOs, but a believer in a Government of the
people, by the people, and for the people as a working reality.  He had a
boy scout's confidence in an institution of science that went where the data
went and not where it could, itself, be driven.  He believed in
~demonstrable~ right and the courage of ~tested~ convictions, not easy
convenience, untested faith, and profitable complacency!  He believed in the
rule of law, the rationality of due process, and the efficacious profits of
professional behavior; he believed in the inevitable elevations and
advancements discovered in frank open-mindedness, and he believed in the
certain ultimate rewards found in a passionate investigation for the
TRUTH... truth though heavens fall...

McDonald's 'belief' was that his society was an accurate reflection of the
preceding.  It was not then.  It is not now.

Dr. McDonald, astonishingly (...even as he can't really be blamed, one
discovers!), believed he fought his scientific battles on a field that was
remotely ~level~!  The monumentally magnificent ~fool~, reader... forgetting
for a moment that it is exactly that kind of fool that ~this~ writer, and
Ms. Druffel I suspect, aspire to be and always admire... the only
'foolishness' we'd insist upon!  Fairness, Rationality, Forthcoming-ness,
Progressiveness, Consistency, Intelligence, and Individual Respect one could
take for granted!

...That ~any~ other path... is back-stepping inane insanity...

...Apparent foolishnesses, all, given the state of the 'union' today and
half a century's ufological denial, extra-normal dismissal, and
thoughtlessly executed and canted denunciation by profit taking
pelicanists...

These were the presumptions Dr. McDonald held, writing off the
inconsistencies of science he witnessed as a monumental cock-up of crass
incompetence... not what it more than likely was... a monumental cover-up of
crafted duplicity!

...And one not in our best interests I'd suspect, nor, I predict, would Ms
Druffel.  Those who 'have' would keep on 'having' ~without~ regard to the
sensibilities of those who 'have' not.

Would that McDonald had been better able to take stock of his culture's
duplicity, he might have proceeded along more successful lines.  Druffle
points out a few occasions where information held out on him by
knowledgeable authority provoked assumptions he was making regarding the
veracity of professional persons he was otherwise forced to deal with...
more encouragement outwards on that precipitous limb.  These were the
officious anti-intellectuals and ethically bankrupt authoritarian toads such
as Klass, Condon, Menzel, a host of intelligence operatives, wind-sensing
(and passing!) politicians, and timid academic functionaries... betrayers of
truth, all!

Verily -- Ann Druffel is clear that Dr. McDonald was a fine, upstanding, and
intelligent man of ethical consistency and rare courage who was betrayed by
persons closest to him... betrayed when those persons ~knew~ he was on the
right track, ~doing~ the right thing, and doing it in ~exactly~ the right
way!

Where was the doctor's wife when he had the future by the shirttails and
enigma by the scruff?  Where were his learned colleagues who knew he was
right (!) when McDonald was blindsided by the convenient bias of pompous
detractors who'd have to scale a ladder to buff his shoe-tops? Where were
his friends?  What had ~they~ done in the aftermath to keep Dr. McDonald
alive, then and for the future?

Dr. McDonald's story is a hard lesson because we are reminded of the prices
that are sometimes demanded for the pursuit of human advancement, and he is
a wonderful inspiration when we recall that his name will be remembered long
after the names of Klass and Condon and Menzel are less than ignoble dust.

In closing... this is a book of such power, intelligence, and accuracy that
it has compelled this writer to reassess all of Ms. Druffle's past work in a
new, more interested and attentive light.  It is that kind of book.  Not to
diminish the volume in any way, it could be a dazzling film featuring Leam
Neeson or Russell Crowe.  They might do Mac justice...

"Firestorm"!  The very title of Ann Druffel's book is an astonishing hint to
just how close McDonald may have been to putting us in the asteroid belt to
which I'd alluded earlier...

Be that as it may, I am improved, fortified, and emboldened with the reading
of it.  I'd suggest you would be, too. See
http://www.5thworld.com/Firestorm/  for more details.