News to Chew!

I am a liberal. We all are, actually. One has to read just a little bit from moderate textbooks to see how factual that really is. Yes, it is only as a result of individual liberality evolving down through the centuries that we, as I have written many times, are not, STILL... the ignorant serfs of a tedious middle age, tilling three field rotations from dawn to dusk, and gratefully giving up our more comely daughters for the sport of our feared manor lord. Newt Gingrich is a classical liberal even as he is, also, an unheralded daughter *sporter*.

I am a liberal. For my money, through my lens, drawn through my filters...? That just means I have some small courage, a sense of raw history, a reasonable intelligence, a degree of empathy for my fellow humans... a dash of imagination, an unceasing education, a respect for Earth, and a progressive attitude toward a future bearing down on us like an accelerating freight train. ~I'd~ sooner catch this train than have it run me down.

I am a liberal. I believe an individual should never have the religious sensibilities of another legislated to him, imposed on her, or persecuting either of them. I don't feel that one should be compelled to validate another's faith at the point of a sword or the withholding of a paycheck. I ~do~ believe in the absolute ~necessity~... for a separation of church from state, so I am offended and revolted by even the merest suspicion of theocracy. I vociferously refuse to be swayed by Gods we've produced ourselves to do the bidding of an arbitrary few.

I am a liberal. I see the steady erosion of individual rights and freedoms occurring now as a clear and present threat to the unfettered individuality that actually empowers America and contributes to its creative productivity, effortless grace, and cutting edge style. I perceive these erosions plainly all around me, all are effused with the wretched stench of creeping totalitarianism growing stronger with each passing day, and I'm very fearful for my own freedom and quality of life... and for the freedoms/qualities of my children and those around me. Tyranny's rose will smell as sweet.

I am a liberal. I find it problematical that we continue, environmentally, to defecate in our beds and push it down with our abused and disrespected feet. The continued thoughtless, complacent, irresponsible, and smothering overpopulation, airily encouraged by socially retarded religi-oids and other pathological politicos (et al), is obviously not consistent with our species traveling an upwardly respectful path to individual enlightenment and personal satisfaction. Verily, the number of paths to God are likely as infinite as ~she~ is supposed to be.

I am a liberal. I am naturally resistant (by design) to fatuous spins, preconceived notions, bait and switch sensibilities, duplicitous euphemisms, or conveniently biased cants. I resent the manipulating lowest-common-denominator approach of a non-elected leadership, its lap-dog *mainstream* media, and its fraudulent and failing system of *education* more interested in producing credulously docile employees (...and their masters) than it is in encouraging critical thinking individuals. Education becomes a euphemism for DE-education and UN-education.

I am a liberal. I am worried about a justice system with its tiller swung so far and so hard to the reactionary and religious *right* that our ship of state crashes on the harsh hard rocks of attendant lost freedoms and easy tyrannies. Freedom of and freedom from one religion or another, is a cornerstone of real social and spiritual advancement (...and quality individuals...), or history teaches us ~nothing~ at all. History, it seems, is rather taught in a manner that teaches nothing, by design.

I'm a liberal. I'm convinced that the 'reflective' authoritative trumps the 'reflexive' authoritarian, ~always~. I believe the lesser 'authoritarian' should be pointedly discouraged because it hobbles the contribution of the greater 'authoritative'. Because persons used to officious 'authoritarians' take a follow-on 'authoritative' approach for ~weakness~, in reflex, the preferable authoritative's better job becomes a magnitude more ~difficult~ to accomplish. My experience is that this is as true in combat as it is in the classroom.

I am a liberal. I mourn the elevation of untested and too convenient faith (over a hard-won renaissance rationality...) as a return to the "Dark Ages" that the former brand of thinking readily facilitates. Every step one takes back into real history proves, only, that it gets more repressive and restrictive decade by oppressive prior-decade. A return to 1950 is only on the ~way~ to being as bad as it was in 1350, and the Earth's two *greatest* religions, Christianity and Islam, would gleefully take us back, respectively, ~exactly~ there to those points in time. I'd send them back myself if I could.

I am a liberal. I understand that what gets mashed down 'here' only pops up over 'there'... just ~meaner~ for the unjust and disrespectful attention. I feel "reactionary reflex" is decidedly ~not~ superior to "reflective rationality." I don't believe that dissent is always disloyalty. I don't believe that divergence is always discontinuity. I don't believe that diversity is cultural disaster. In fact, I feel that culture is made more enduring, more fully featured, and more creative with the fervent ~embrace~ of these things.

I am a liberal. I lament the shrinkage of the middle class, the expanding poor, and the concentrations of the sociopathic rich. I grieve for a loss of respect, due process, curtailed self-expression, and a discounted individuality. I bemoan the new intolerance, refute the reasons for WAR that never stops, and hate this new *validation* for black and white worldviews which sorely limit our aggregate ability to intellectuallyand creatively "soar and cleave." Reach exceeds grasp, or there is no heaven, the poets say.

I am a liberal. I believe that there should be more marriage and less discrimination, demonization, and derision in it's regard...

I am a liberal. I tell the reader that I'm a liberal, up front, and with no small trepidation in this threatening climate... (but with no ~hesitancy~, either). It is a sorely needed testimony in these trying times that the concept of liberalism is ~not~ dead, ~remains~ in the sensibility of a majority of persons in this western hemisphere (there are more of us than them), and has, decidedly, ~not~ surrendered to the officious and intellectually constipated ultra-neoconservative retro-regressives ... neocons who prosecute their disingenuous and deceitful agendas on a scared, hapless, and credulous populace they manipulate, threaten, and otherwise coerce.

These neoconservatives, promoters of an egregiously dire past, would ~return~ us all to those times the rest of us thought long and thankfully over... by any means available to them. ...AGAIN toiling the three-field rotations on land we can't own under the salacious manor lords mentioned in my first paragraph.

We (I) remain to remind the reader that when folks wake up to the manipulations of these monsters of privileged end-time sensibility and "rapture worship", the liberal will still be here (even if in re-education camps at Guantánamo) to provide a pattern by which they might return to the unavoidable future they would seem to, so complacently, deny.

I ~am~ a liberal. It remains. It endures. It carries on. It's the future.

October 10's History Channel Documentary by Kathleen Quinn regarding "MJ-12" was a remarkable program. I detected an even-handedness and balance rarely seen on television about ufological issues.

I won't be getting into the details of Quinn's doc other than to say that Dr. [immaterial] Joe Nickel, bless his little corn-fed traditionalistic's coal black patrician heart, is credited with putting a true face on the total irrationality that is the whole of CSICOP's "Klasskurtzian" *shtick*... pardon the newly coined word. It's meaning can be drawn, easily, from its context with the forthcoming.

And, in a quick sidebar, you know what? Klasskurtzianism ~is~ about ideologically canted and authoritarian storm-troopers from the biased realms of CSICOPia, after all! Thank you, Doctor Rudiak!

I digress...

Back at the ranch, "Ufologists are, at best, irresponsible," implies an *earnest* Dr. [immaterial] Joe Nickel towards the end of the hour long program. Stanton Freidman is derelict. Richard Dolan is reckless. Richard Hall is an elder scoundrel from an even deeper strata of irresponsibility. Jerry Clark lacks accountability. So do a lot of men and women seriously investigating the single most important eventuality of our time.

The preceding radical seditionists are not *dependable* persons, Nickel feels. They are without *responsibility*. They ~have~ no *liability*... Stop! Nickel's (et al) stuffy pontification is ~so~ much prolapsed and expulsive nonsense... steaming monkey droppings from high up in the canopy. Get to cover!

Moreover, our [immaterial] doctor implores that, "the public should be outraged"! Not because critical information is withheld from interested individuals for spurious and manipulative reasons by an autocratic and authoritarian elite! No. But that Ufologists, those radical funsters and seditious gamesters, actually ~threaten~ America's culture and society by making, "a lot of [us] distrust [our] government" and by "causing invalid suspicions" with regard to currently *worshipped* "historical figures"! And there we have the dieing CSICOPian philosophy completely contained in its moldy nutshell of reproductionist tediousness.

To wit, their "Prime Directive": At all costs to sense and sensibility, maintain the status quo. End of line.

That's it. That's all they've got. Everything else is stentorian proclamation, stretched assumption, and pompously insentient axe grinding.

Pushing 60, a good citizen taxpayer, combat veteran, and intelligent patriot... I find it repugnant to the ~extreme~ that *Governments* can not earn distrust, or that *historical figures* are beyond the suspicions they themselves provoke! ...Even our own governments and historical figures... ~especially~ our own governments and historical figures!

That's not the America I served in a highly decorated military career. That's not the America I described to my immigrant wife and only son! That's not the America I internalized in the freaking Cub Scouts, boys and girls!

Some figures of history have ~more~ than earned our suspicion, and governments, ~abundantly~, our distrust, then AND now! If that is not obvious in extremis... than you're just not keeping up with current events, you're chewing window sills lathered in wet lead paint, or you know the truth and ~choose~ to turn away.

...Misleading, mislead, or mentally ill... "M" cubed. Sound familiar? Feel it deviate your septums, skeptibunky spawn, CSICOPian caperers, and "klasskurtzian" sycophants!

Forget for a moment that it is just ~that~ recognition of provoked *mistrust*, and the *suspicions* that justifiably arise, which ~provide~ for an enlightening reexamination, revision, or more realistic result for an evolving human condition, at ~all~! Understand, first, that the doctor [immaterial] Joe Nickel exposes the CFInistic or CSICOPian "prime directive" in a few chosen words that won't respect individual sensibility and insensiblely supports a status quo continuing only to discredit ~itself~ as it shortchanges ~you~, reader, on a plethora of levels.

"Mistrust of government is dangerous and without support". I paraphrase the [immaterial] doctor. "Suspicions regarding the *respected* are dangerous and unsubstantiated." Is it ~any~ wonder which side of the bullhorn our Dr. [immaterial] Nickel prefers to be?

No. Weigh the pros and cons as they were ladled out in last night's surprisingly credible and balanced treatment of the mystery surrounding the controversial MJ-12 documents to see for yourself which is more *nourishing*. Mistrust of government ~is~ justified. Suspicion with regard to historical figures is ~not~ without support. Friedman, Dolan, and Rodeghier were just more convincing, less presumptive, and more authoritative than Kurtz, Klass, or Nickel, who were ~less~ than authoritative, ~entirely~ assumptive, and ~profoundly~ less convincing. The former were credible while the latter were "klasskurtzian," to use that word one more time.

Verily, and in a manner similar to Dan Rather's "Bush Memo" imbroglio, even if the MJ-12 documents ~are~ fakes... they're the likely truth, I'm betting. MJ-12 ~is~ a reality. Suspicion ~is~ validated. Mistrust ~is~ appropriate.

Together they are the true skeptics very ~soul~... and an apparent klasskurtzian antithesis.

alienview@adelphia.net -:¦:-
www.AlienView.net

What about the fakes?

Isn't it true that these strange constructions in our cereal crops are of human construction? Don't they have to be ~entirely~ of human construction for the skeptic's position to have the required validity? Just ONE 'genuine' circle, consider, and the game a'foot is altogether new!

...And Crop Circles get faked. Sure. But, when those 'fakes' occur... don't we, generally, know who the fakers ~are~? Don't THEY tell us who they are? Don't they strut and crow and smirk and patronize?

Aren't they stealthy people haters named "Doug" and "Dave," even as these self-aggrandizing psychopaths die off and evolve, change their names with the years, upgrade their techniques over time, and justify or attempt to legitimize their crass sociopathy... as art? Could it be that these offensive fakers are behind ~all~ the circles? Builders of ~all~ the constructions? Composers of all these glyphs?

Yes?

Then how is it, as Robert Nichol intimates in his compellingly sincere new film documentary "StarDreams", that these alleged 'hoaxers' always finish what they start? Where are the failed attempts? Where do they 'practice' their completeness of vision, this exponential magnitude of astonishing endeavor... this meticulous 'perfection' of flawlessly breathtaking execution and timing... and... ...Where are the 'blunders' in these huge constructions, extant, otherwise abundantly found in other human executions of complicated tasks?

Why are the 'greater' circles never duplicated? Why don't we see a balanced explanation for complex circle construction making it into the "National Geographic" or a Postmodern Art periodical. Spin me a "Catherine's Wheel", again -- 'Doug'! Stomp out an "Adams Grave," for me -- 'Dave'.

Speaking of art and artists, where ~is~ this extremely improbable army of gifted performers "without egos" (astoundingly selfless and undeniably talented men and women), anyway? Flatly, these uncharacteristically secretive persons are REQUIRED to execute (...without the smallest flaw, remember!) the delicate artistic balances of line and curve, light and shadow... amidst other conventions of accomplished artistry (...to include knowledge regarding the sacred or eternal geometrical... or the strict adherence to the enlightened measure, or an educated unity in utility that is an artistic "golden mean"...), and this over a HUGE area on an entirely unique canvas!

These 'artists' ARE the real deal... reader ...And we haven't a ~clue~ who they really are! No. We're too well rewarded by society for not wanting to find out, for not being brave, and for not seeking out those clues. We're punished effectively for obstinately seeking them too... served painful irony in the form of reward for negative back-stepping behavior and punishment for the positive forward-looking pursuit of same.

Verily, WHO hoaxes roughly tens of tens of quality circles a year, world-wide, for the last ten years? Who operates with no professional 'recognition', no lucrative 'pay-off' -- no 'reward' of any kind? Who?

Clearly, few to none. Those who do ~are~ known to us, ply their trade for money, and even have their own trendy flash-fronted websites. No... it becomes obvious as one scratches the surface of this thing that these people are NOT the whole show. Something's hidden behind the official cultural tarp that is our corrupted and duplicitous mainstream...

Moreover, artists produce their work to be associated with it, to be defined by it, to be enriched by it... materially AND intellectually. I'm an artist of small note and legitimate award and I feel that's a fair statement. We won't ordinarily BE the artistic Samaritan (rare creature, THAT!) who disappears from the scene of the artistic 'accident' before they can be celebrated and feted by admiring fellow humans. An artist ~signs~ his work, boyo! It's been that way since the renaissance from the middle ages, reader, and even before that the interested knew who their artists were.

...And those people of the renaissance were baffled by (officially intimidated by) CropCircles then too, remember. Crop circles have ~long~ legs of history.

Let's cut to the chase. Most circles could ~be~ FAKE, respected reader. But MANY are ~not~ I suspect! Nichols suggests in "StarDreams" that this should, at least, give the reader pause... even if it does NOT fuel an ongoing epiphany of boundless optimism for the reader... like it does for ~this~ writer.

Guilty!

This writer wept with joy during the first of what has been (and will continue to be) many viewings of Robert Nichol's documentary. They are cathartic and appreciating tears, astonished and inspired tears... thankful and enlightened tears. They are tears that elevate, reassure, and validate. They are tears that cement conviction, legitimize confidence, and lubricate assurance, too. But assurance for, confidence about, and conviction with regard to... what?

Ok... a few of the high points.

...That reality is more fully featured and abundant than we are otherwise manipulated to believe by our duplicitous culture? That we are not now, have ever been, or will ever ~be~ alone in the unending light and darkness that is the expanding and changing universe? That 'existence' is not so much a 'competition to survive' as it is a 'cooperation to understand'? That we (you and I!) are the entire universe trying to comprehend itself? Finally, that it is the individual understanding (...the understanding individual!) that is truly key?

You ~matter~, reader, forgetting for a moment that I do, too. ~You~, reader, are the person that's reached out to with these crop glyphs. That's the message of "StarDreams". The individual is ~key~.

It's all about people, individual persons, Nichol implies... persons who can open their minds and hearts to an immensity of creative purpose, a plethora of quality potentials, and an infinity of efficacious intellectual productivity...! It's all about people willing to break free, at last, of the attitude we have collectively regarding an aggregate Earth we presently abuse like an unvalued rental property... and return to it the respect the truly intelligent would give ~any~ living creature! We would treat the aggregate Earth (you and I and everything else 'on', 'in', 'about' or 'of' this Earth!) as we ourselves would be efficaciously treated. For this, you and I would inherit the stars! What do we lose? Nothing. What do we gain? Everything. That's not the ~end~ of conviction, confidence, and assurance by any stretch!

Nichol's documentary is filled with individual persons, none of them seeming to scramble for individual recognition regarding the phenomenon, but standing out like individually shining stars for their lack of apparent desire to do so! It is easy to have 'regard' for these people - these individuals. The watcher can bask in the rich warm golden glow of the sincerity and honesty these folks are effused with, and be reassured by their integrity and frankness and openness and truthfulness... These are serious people, intelligent and educated people... scientists, philosophers, researchers, and persons ~without~ a lot of formal education. I found myself loving all these persons in the absolute best and most efficacious sense of that word. ...And ~these~ persons love, without doubt and beyond question, those 'artists' who compose the strange glyphs on a parchment that we can EAT. Think about ~that~.

Is there analogy there? I think Mr. Nichols thinks so. I think so, too.

~Who~ are these anonymous teams of selfless and talented artists manufacturing those compelling images? Who captivates our collective human intelligence so universally and further compels, at the same time, such intelligent love? Well -- they are artists, likely, NOT beholden to human agency, institution, government, culture or religion. They are, likely, NOT artists who celebrate the soulless corporate while they venerate the cloistered celibate! They are likely NOT artists who pander to duplicitous media while they sell their souls to officious and psychopathic sponsors. They are likely NOT artists who would dupe and disrespect you like they were doing you a favor. They are likely NOT 'artists' we would... know.

...It's ironic that they are likely artists we have always known (just forgotten, I'll bet)...

...Be that as it may, their works are charming letters thoughtfully composed, magically engineered, beautifully rendered, and then "slid under the doors" of our consciousness while we're not looking... by 'someone' or some 'thing' who would attempt a communication of some 'type' perhaps as nourishing to us as the grain that the artists compose in, on levels, quite simply, that we are incapable of appreciating, as yet. I'm gratified they take the time... and further gratified that Robert Nichol has produced something about this ...evolving reality... ...so enduring, informational, and prescient... that I'm moved joyful tears. Thank you, sir.

Further information on the film can be accessed at www.stardreams-cropcircles.com . See this film.

...One more illustrative point before I go. Early this century William Gazecki produced an equally fine documentary about Crop Circles (I was ~as~ excited about!) called "Quest for Truth", and I provided, for it, a similar review. On the radio a few weeks ago Robert Nichol was interviewed and pointedly asked a question that compared his film with Gazecki's. I wondered if Nichol would ruffle his feathers, even if only a little bit, that ~his~ was the better film. That didn't happen.

Rather, he embraced Gazecki's film as his own, graciously making indication that both films were short chapters in the same massive non-fiction, the same story that needed to be told. He implied that Gazecki's more pragmatic approach complemented the more metaphysical approach he'd employed and that the films, taken together, made for a more inclusive accounting of the ~more complete~ story... a stepping stone to even MORE inclusive chapters...

No reflexive competition here, good reader. Nichol's reflex, his astonishingly TELLING reflex, was for reflecting cooperation. Is that what the circles do to you? If so, I'll have more of that, thank you. See the sedition?

I've seen both films numerous times, and I can attest that the documentaries complement one another, magnificently. Do not tell yourself that because you have seen one film that you have seen the other. That would be unfortunate and inaccurate. Seriously, I think it would be synergistic if these gentlemen could get together, somehow, and provide both films in a boxed set or package. The films are extremely powerful individually, but together they are, I think, greater than the sum of their parts. See these films and begin to 'understand'.

That's enough -- read on!

Those Men In Black -- A Review of "High Strangeness," Wendy Connors' Second Volume In Her Ongoing Ufological Audio History Series...

On my review of her first captivating volume - "Ufology: A Primer in Audio 1939 - 1959," I wrote that it's not the beginning of the end, or even the end of the beginning -- It's the beginning of the beginning! '... and you are there...,' reader! There was precious little hyperbole in that statement or its parent review.

Ms. Connors Does it again with Volume II and provides some indication (...a very exciting Volume III is already available!) that the end is not even in sight! In this second disc in the series she provides, again, nothing less than the unvarnished aural history of a subject that won't be remotely treated as well anywhere else.

This time, while performing the same service in the same fascinating and convenient way, she gives voice to one of the most unsettlingly dodgy facets of the UFO conundrum -- those cloyingly ubiquitous Men In Black. Why?

Men In Black ARE dodgy and unsettling. They are dodgy because their historical roots are suspect, abstruse, and dominated by the unflattering stories regarding the 'suspected' hoaxes of Gray Barker and Albert K. Bender ...and the 'admitted' ones of CSICOPian John Sherwood (practicing his 'Robertsian' duplicity as one Dr. Richard H. Pratt)... and that all too well known ufological curmudgeon and conflicted commentator, hizzoner James W. Moseley. Even John A. Keel (of "Mothman Prophesies" fame) is listed heavily in this divergent research as a purveyor of alleged MIB hoopla.

The debunking of the MIB is thorough and convincing and might even put an end to the matter, but that the debunking effort is plied by persons of CSICOPian persuasion and so then worthy of, at least, a second look for that reason alone. CSICOPia, as I've argued before, has its axe to grind.

More convincing, regarding these MIB issues, is one UFO researcher decidedly bereft of axes, Jerry Clark, who writes: "First-generation American ufologists' experiences of men in black - as opposed to the MIB who came along later - were the extremely dubious cases of Maury Island and Al Bender, along with the even more questionable Edgar Jarrold "mystery" and Stuart/Wilkinson affair (in both senses of the word "affair"). In retrospect, the bulk of what Gray Barker wrote in the one men-in-black book of the 1950s (They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, 1956) has been discredited. Beyond that, contactee writers such as Adamski and Williamson were using men in black to weave conspiracy theories, based in anti-Semitic literature, about the so-called Silence Group. No wonder sensible ufologists were sensibly suspicious of men-in-black notions."

Why, then, pay attention to MIB stories at all? We pay attention because rational ufology doesn't close the book on them altogether, they may be a device to screen other activity, and (as mentioned before but worth repeating) anything discounted stridently by the CSICOP cult of obdurate personalities deserves a re-look as a matter of standard operating procedure!

Moreover, the history of the phenomena may predate all recent (post 1950) accounting of them and easy dismissal of same! Examples...

In the March 30, 1905, edition of the Barmouth Advertiser, a Welsh newspaper, it was reported that over a period of three nights a "man dressed in black" appeared in the bedroom of an "exceptionally intelligent young woman of the peasant stock.... This figure has delivered a message to the girl which she is frightened to relate..." whatever one may make of that...

In 1864 a gaunt and weirdly accented man, dressed all in black, tried to purchase unusual metal parts dropped from a mysterious flying machine that were only on display and not for sale. He departed, and then the building the 'parts' were stored in subsequently burned to the ground. Ashes, sifted for the parts, failed to turn up them up. The man in black was never seen or heard from again.

In 1730 a 13-year-old Norwegian girl told priestly Inquisitors an astonishing tale. Six years earlier she and her grandmother had flown on the back of a huge pig (?) to attend a meeting with 'Satan'. On the way, the clerics wrote in their report, "they met three men dressed in black whom the grandmother referred to as 'grandfather's boys'. Once arrived at the meeting place, they all went in and sat down at table next to the 'devil'. Her grandmother addressed the demon as 'grandfather'.

These "Three men dressed in black" would be a recurring theme, echoing down to present day. Additionally, prior to the modern automobile, these men in black were sometimes seen to arrive and depart in silent black carriages, an antique precursor to quiet black Cadillacs, perhaps...

John A. Keel has written that MIBs had interacted with such historical figures as Julius Caesar, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon, and Malcolm X. Ominously, Keel has written that "the general descriptions of vampires ... are identical to the 'men in black'." The danger of MIB visitation to those interested in UFOs especially "the neurotic, the gullible, and the immature" he writes, is such, Keel warns, that parents might "forbid their children from becoming involved [with UFOs], and that teachers and other responsible adults should not encourage teenagers to take an interest in the subject." Mr. Keel can't be discounted out of hand. Jerry Clark seems to believe he has a degree of respectable seriousness to him, whatever the debated quality of Mr. Keel's scholarship, on the one hand, and that this writer lost a teaching job for indulging those interests on the other...

MIBs, as previously mentioned, are also... unsettling. Men in black portray an association with the shadow government (?), are the government extant (?), are a black agency of government (?), are ETs who mimic the government (?), or are of a 'larger' government, and 'so', in fact (?), then, a government of some indeterminate and unsuspected kind! I don't mean that, of course, in a good way.

They are indication that individuals, at best, only have the illusion that they captain their own ships? That we can removed from the equations of our societies by unaccountable shadows or excised, by them, without due process of any type? Finally, MIBs are, at least, a face to be put on the arbitrary manipulation and convenient control by shadow agencies of non-admitted and closed institutions we suspect is otherwise going on?

In these days of ever more repressive 'government' - reproductionist, rightist, and religiously fundamentalist ... where liberty dwindles, human rights sublimate, and due process is airily abandoned altogether as a luxury that cannot be afforded... the MIBs are an uneasy metaphor of our troubled times.

They are another kind of metaphor.

They are a metaphor for the hurdles encountered in coming to grips with the ephemeral phenomenon of UFOs and all their related sister subjects. They are of a totalitarian fabric threatening unusual individuals compelled by their rationality (and their experience!) to search behind suffocating curtains for the obligatory (and self serving) wizards we suspect are there!

These aforementioned individuals, by the way, are unusual only in that they have 'encountered' an "unusual"... for which their proud culture refuses to provide an explanation, and in fact punishes them, in some real-world way for their lawful interest! Left to our own devices we grapple with the problem on our own and as we can.

At the same time, these individual persons are sisters and brothers, wives and husbands, parents and children... IF they are not friends and acquaintances, neighbors and fellow citizens, or others persons we'd otherwise hold in respect and regard. They are us, and we are threatened individually. Verily.

Men In Black are an obstacle of indeterminate matter that would glue the blinding scales to our eyes and otherwise buttress our cultural blinders... perhaps for our own good? No, not for our 'good'. Decidedly, no.

Our contrived and over-manipulated corporate-driven culture is just not set up that way, is this writer's contention. Little, if anything, is (and has ever been) 'kept' from us for our own good. Much is kept from us that would advantage us individually at the expense of our present manipulators, is the suspicion. Individuality, personal autonomy, creative freedom, and freedom of expression... these are the bane of an elite and repugnant, reproductionist, reactionary, and intellectually uptight (...intelligence hating, actually!) fundamentalist culture... trying to return us to the thirties in the case of fundamentalist Christianity, or to the thirteen-fifties as is the case with fundamentalist Islam.

Besides, if the 'aliens' were the threat of popular "head-eating" conjecture (or otherwise complicated the elitist's game plan...?), our culture would mobilize us against them the way they have against the (almost as nebulous!), Islamic terrorists! They wouldn't be shy! Consider Pearl Harbor and 9/11.

No. Our culture would have us bristle at THAT brand of alien threat! Instead, our culture (and their lap-dog CSICOPian apologists!) paints an interest in the ufological as the activity of the stupid, the product of the duplicitous, or the production of the mentally ill - as baseless and nonsensical! ...Ironic when the opposite seems to be true: that the "M" cubed misrepresentation of the Misleading corrupting the Mislead into their Mental illness is, ITSELF, baseless and nonsensical!

What UFOs are, really, as Richard M. Dolan has pointed out, is the purest of pure seditions! They are an alternative, and perhaps even better, idea (perhaps decisively so!)! Would you like to find out if that is true? Could you be safer, freer, smarter... stronger?

Yes, of course. The preceding paragraphs are a justification for reviewing Connors 'forbidden index' of forgotten ufological lore! To gain access... to mine that history for facts those folks didn't really know they were giving away, decades ago!

Listening to Wendy Connor's ardent compilation the listener can sift the expressions of the principals on their own regarding the subjects of MIBs and many other themes in the ufological tradition. Grains of ufological truth may surely be gleaned in the exercise! Moreover, Ufology has always had its share of inimitable strangeness, cultivated or otherwise, as it has evolved, and this volume of Connors' aural history is every bit of THAT! Her compilation amply covers the (ufologically silver?) years 1952 to 1976, when hairy anthropoids shambled out of flying saucers (?), Men in Black silenced witnesses to UFOs (?), and other monsters prowled the unsettled countryside.

Something was going on... whatever the debated 'provenance' of all this "high strangeness."
There are lectures, personal experiences recounted, and the fall-out of those early reports linger and compel even today. Listen to the accounts and presentations of Gray Barker, John Keel, Norman Oliver, Stan Gordon, Dr. Herbert Hopkins, Hayden Hewes, Dr. Ivan T. Sanderson and Albert K. Bender (in their own words) as they flesh out the real and imagined activities of MIBs and other monsters found in an all too real ufological reality. You won't be hearing it (or finding it) anywhere else.

Remember, also... it IS the future. Spinning up on the primary references of the past is always a good idea, and provides scant disservice to that future. Truth is better than fiction even if sometimes it's the 'fiction' that IS the truth!

For order information, a table of contents, and brief of same... visit: http://fadeddiscs.com/strangeness.html

Read on!

	-- News that shows* you something...*
		...Far from dead, Nov 3, 2004... I Am A Liberal I am a liberal. We all are, actually. One has to read just a little bit from moderate textbooks to see how factual that really is. Yes, it is only as a result of individual liberality evolving down through the centuries that we, as I have written many times, are not, STILL... the ignorant serfs of a tedious middle age, tilling three field rotations from dawn to dusk, and gratefully giving up our more comely daughters for the sport of our feared manor lord. Newt Gingrich is a classical liberal even as he is, also, an unheralded daughter sporter. I am a liberal. For my money, through my lens, drawn through my filters...? That just means I have some small courage, a sense of raw history, a reasonable intelligence, a degree of empathy for my fellow humans... a dash of imagination, an unceasing education, a respect for Earth, and a progressive attitude toward a future bearing down on us like an accelerating freight train. ~I'd~ sooner catch this train than have it run me down. I am a liberal. I believe an individual should never have the religious sensibilities of another legislated to him, imposed on her, or persecuting either of them. I don't feel that one should be compelled to validate another's faith at the point of a sword or the withholding of a paycheck. I ~do~ believe in the absolute ~necessity~... for a separation of church from state, so I am offended and revolted by even the merest suspicion of theocracy. I vociferously refuse to be swayed by Gods we've produced ourselves to do the bidding of an arbitrary few. I am a liberal. I see the steady erosion of individual rights and freedoms occurring now as a clear and present threat to the unfettered individuality that actually empowers America and contributes to its creative productivity, effortless grace, and cutting edge style. I perceive these erosions plainly all around me, all are effused with the wretched stench of creeping totalitarianism growing stronger with each passing day, and I'm very fearful for my own freedom and quality of life... and for the freedoms/qualities of my children and those around me. Tyranny's rose will smell as sweet. I am a liberal. I find it problematical that we continue, environmentally, to defecate in our beds and push it down with our abused and disrespected feet. The continued thoughtless, complacent, irresponsible, and smothering overpopulation, airily encouraged by socially retarded religi-oids and other pathological politicos (et al), is obviously not consistent with our species traveling an upwardly respectful path to individual enlightenment and personal satisfaction. Verily, the number of paths to God are likely as infinite as ~she~ is supposed to be. I am a liberal. I am naturally resistant (by design) to fatuous spins, preconceived notions, bait and switch sensibilities, duplicitous euphemisms, or conveniently biased cants. I resent the manipulating lowest-common-denominator approach of a non-elected leadership, its lap-dog mainstream media, and its fraudulent and failing system of education more interested in producing credulously docile employees (...and their masters) than it is in encouraging critical thinking individuals. Education becomes a euphemism for DE-education and UN-education. I am a liberal. I am worried about a justice system with its tiller swung so far and so hard to the reactionary and religious right that our ship of state crashes on the harsh hard rocks of attendant lost freedoms and easy tyrannies. Freedom of and freedom from one religion or another, is a cornerstone of real social and spiritual advancement (...and quality individuals...), or history teaches us ~nothing~ at all. History, it seems, is rather taught in a manner that teaches nothing, by design. I'm a liberal. I'm convinced that the 'reflective' authoritative trumps the 'reflexive' authoritarian, ~always~. I believe the lesser 'authoritarian' should be pointedly discouraged because it hobbles the contribution of the greater 'authoritative'. Because persons used to officious 'authoritarians' take a follow-on 'authoritative' approach for ~weakness~, in reflex, the preferable authoritative's better job becomes a magnitude more ~difficult~ to accomplish. My experience is that this is as true in combat as it is in the classroom. I am a liberal. I mourn the elevation of untested and too convenient faith (over a hard-won renaissance rationality...) as a return to the "Dark Ages" that the former brand of thinking readily facilitates. Every step one takes back into real history proves, only, that it gets more repressive and restrictive decade by oppressive prior-decade. A return to 1950 is only on the ~way~ to being as bad as it was in 1350, and the Earth's two greatest religions, Christianity and Islam, would gleefully take us back, respectively, ~exactly~ there to those points in time. I'd send them back myself if I could. I am a liberal. I understand that what gets mashed down 'here' only pops up over 'there'... just ~meaner~ for the unjust and disrespectful attention. I feel "reactionary reflex" is decidedly ~not~ superior to "reflective rationality." I don't believe that dissent is always disloyalty. I don't believe that divergence is always discontinuity. I don't believe that diversity is cultural disaster. In fact, I feel that culture is made more enduring, more fully featured, and more creative with the fervent ~embrace~ of these things. I am a liberal. I lament the shrinkage of the middle class, the expanding poor, and the concentrations of the sociopathic rich. I grieve for a loss of respect, due process, curtailed self-expression, and a discounted individuality. I bemoan the new intolerance, refute the reasons for WAR that never stops, and hate this new validation for black and white worldviews which sorely limit our aggregate ability to intellectuallyand creatively "soar and cleave." Reach exceeds grasp, or there is no heaven, the poets say. I am a liberal. I believe that there should be more marriage and less discrimination, demonization, and derision in it's regard... I am a liberal. I tell the reader that I'm a liberal, up front, and with no small trepidation in this threatening climate... (but with no ~hesitancy~, either). It is a sorely needed testimony in these trying times that the concept of liberalism is ~not~ dead, ~remains~ in the sensibility of a majority of persons in this western hemisphere (there are more of us than them), and has, decidedly, ~not~ surrendered to the officious and intellectually constipated ultra-neoconservative retro-regressives ... neocons who prosecute their disingenuous and deceitful agendas on a scared, hapless, and credulous populace they manipulate, threaten, and otherwise coerce. These neoconservatives, promoters of an egregiously dire past, would ~return~ us all to those times the rest of us thought long and thankfully over... by any means available to them. ...AGAIN toiling the three-field rotations on land we can't own under the salacious manor lords mentioned in my first paragraph. We (I) remain to remind the reader that when folks wake up to the manipulations of these monsters of privileged end-time sensibility and "rapture worship", the liberal will still be here (even if in re-education camps at Guantánamo) to provide a pattern by which they might return to the unavoidable future they would seem to, so complacently, deny. I ~am~ a liberal. It remains. It endures. It carries on. It's the future. ...See you there.
	A TRUE FAKE? The New Klasskurtzian By Alfred Lehmberg October 10's History Channel Documentary by Kathleen Quinn regarding "MJ-12" was a remarkable program. I detected an even-handedness and balance rarely seen on television about ufological issues. I won't be getting into the details of Quinn's doc other than to say that Dr. [immaterial] Joe Nickel, bless his little corn-fed traditionalistic's coal black patrician heart, is credited with putting a true face on the total irrationality that is the whole of CSICOP's "Klasskurtzian" shtick... pardon the newly coined word. It's meaning can be drawn, easily, from its context with the forthcoming. And, in a quick sidebar, you know what? Klasskurtzianism ~is~ about ideologically canted and authoritarian storm-troopers from the biased realms of CSICOPia, after all! Thank you, Doctor Rudiak! I digress... Back at the ranch, "Ufologists are, at best, irresponsible," implies an earnest Dr. [immaterial] Joe Nickel towards the end of the hour long program. Stanton Freidman is derelict. Richard Dolan is reckless. Richard Hall is an elder scoundrel from an even deeper strata of irresponsibility. Jerry Clark lacks accountability. So do a lot of men and women seriously investigating the single most important eventuality of our time. The preceding radical seditionists are not dependable persons, Nickel feels. They are without responsibility. They ~have~ no liability... Stop! Nickel's (et al) stuffy pontification is ~so~ much prolapsed and expulsive nonsense... steaming monkey droppings from high up in the canopy. Get to cover! Moreover, our [immaterial] doctor implores that, "the public should be outraged"! Not because critical information is withheld from interested individuals for spurious and manipulative reasons by an autocratic and authoritarian elite! No. But that Ufologists, those radical funsters and seditious gamesters, actually ~threaten~ America's culture and society by making, "a lot of [us] distrust [our] government" and by "causing invalid suspicions" with regard to currently worshipped "historical figures"! And there we have the dieing CSICOPian philosophy completely contained in its moldy nutshell of reproductionist tediousness. To wit, their "Prime Directive": At all costs to sense and sensibility, maintain the status quo. End of line. That's it. That's all they've got. Everything else is stentorian proclamation, stretched assumption, and pompously insentient axe grinding. Pushing 60, a good citizen taxpayer, combat veteran, and intelligent patriot... I find it repugnant to the ~extreme~ that Governments can not earn distrust, or that historical figures are beyond the suspicions they themselves provoke! ...Even our own governments and historical figures... ~especially~ our own governments and historical figures! That's not the America I served in a highly decorated military career. That's not the America I described to my immigrant wife and only son! That's not the America I internalized in the freaking Cub Scouts, boys and girls! Some figures of history have ~more~ than earned our suspicion, and governments, ~abundantly~, our distrust, then AND now! If that is not obvious in extremis... than you're just not keeping up with current events, you're chewing window sills lathered in wet lead paint, or you know the truth and ~choose~ to turn away. ...Misleading, mislead, or mentally ill... "M" cubed. Sound familiar? Feel it deviate your septums, skeptibunky spawn, CSICOPian caperers, and "klasskurtzian" sycophants! Forget for a moment that it is just ~that~ recognition of provoked mistrust, and the suspicions that justifiably arise, which ~provide~ for an enlightening reexamination, revision, or more realistic result for an evolving human condition, at ~all~! Understand, first, that the doctor [immaterial] Joe Nickel exposes the CFInistic or CSICOPian "prime directive" in a few chosen words that won't respect individual sensibility and insensiblely supports a status quo continuing only to discredit ~itself~ as it shortchanges ~you~, reader, on a plethora of levels. "Mistrust of government is dangerous and without support". I paraphrase the [immaterial] doctor. "Suspicions regarding the respected are dangerous and unsubstantiated." Is it ~any~ wonder which side of the bullhorn our Dr. [immaterial] Nickel prefers to be? No. Weigh the pros and cons as they were ladled out in last night's surprisingly credible and balanced treatment of the mystery surrounding the controversial MJ-12 documents to see for yourself which is more nourishing. Mistrust of government ~is~ justified. Suspicion with regard to historical figures is ~not~ without support. Friedman, Dolan, and Rodeghier were just more convincing, less presumptive, and more authoritative than Kurtz, Klass, or Nickel, who were ~less~ than authoritative, ~entirely~ assumptive, and ~profoundly~ less convincing. The former were credible while the latter were "klasskurtzian," to use that word one more time. Verily, and in a manner similar to Dan Rather's "Bush Memo" imbroglio, even if the MJ-12 documents ~are~ fakes... they're the likely truth, I'm betting. MJ-12 ~is~ a reality. Suspicion ~is~ validated. Mistrust ~is~ appropriate. Together they are the true skeptics very ~soul~... and an apparent klasskurtzian antithesis. alienview@adelphia.net -:¦:- www.AlienView.net
		...A REAL TRAGEDY Dr. James E. McDonald & The ETH Wendy Connors is a wonderland. She ~continues~ to produce the quality ufological goods at her usual prodigious, if worryingly race-running pace. Additionally, if beside the point (...which is the truly monumental ufological contribution of Dr. James E. McDonald, plus some cogent but alternant thinking on the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis...), she puts in ~this~ iteration of her foundational ufological history series a high ornament on the tree symbolizing her ever expanding contribution to it! She illustrates (by accident or design), in an unspoken sidebar, every reason one needs to have... for detesting the scurrilous activities of Philip J. Klass (et al), arch skeptibunky, uber-menchen CSICOP storm-trooper, and specious agenda grinder. Hyperbole and histrionics? In my opinion, decidedly, no. Philip Klass, by way of quick explanation, and forgetting that he is at the tap-root of every less-than-constructive attitude our hijacked mainstream communicates with regard to UFOs... was socially instrumental to, and so holds, in my too humble opinion, ~some~ responsibility... for the tragic suicide (...~if~ that's what it was...!) of the this review's hinge pin, nascent ufologist Dr. James E. McDonald. I think it can be argued, reader, that there is metaphoric blood on Mr. Klass' hands. Among portentously outrageous others, Klass' clever blindsiding, completely immaterial, totally baseless, absolutely fraudulent, and patently disingenuous attacks on the competence, character, intelligence, and integrity of Dr. McDonald are well known and require no citation. James McDonald, indeed, was an early victim of a conjectured "Mothman Futility Mechanism." The sufferer of this mechanism is a rational person who encounters an aspect of the highly strange, and, in a passionate investigation of that very real strangeness, ends up paying an awful price for the pursuit of that enigma's challenge... as it's demanded by the enforcement arm (Klass et al) of the jealous non-elected... "them". ...And please ask me who "they" are... please. Please. This story transcends mere tragedy, good reader. McDonald lost a shining-star career, followed by his family (A wife and six kids), and then finally his life... when he walked out into a lonely desert, hounded by the capering trolls and ardent apologists of a disingenuous and corrupted mainstream (Klass, et al)... and fired a 38 caliber bullet into his brain. ... To his credit, the memory of Dr. McDonald is lauded by ALL the quality ufological proponents, and studiously ignored, unless pressed, by the opponents of same. To the discomfiting chagrin of the latter, Dr. McDonald actually ~was~ what most mainstream scientists and researchers only pretend to be: data driven explorers of the brave unknown and courageous surveyors of our inevitable and fast approaching future ... incisive scouts and pioneers on a four-fold path of experience, knowledge, wisdom, and enlightenment! A result of Wendy Connors' tireless diligence, Dr. McDonald provides the listener another "real deal": a ~private~ audience where he lays out, in a cogent, practical, and compelling manner, [One]: the case for UFOs and the extraterrestrial hypothesis... [Two]: the abject failure of Science, Agency, Institution or Government (SAIG) to address UFOs in a ~remotely~ intelligent manner... and [three]: the incompetent, biased, and sullenly canted official investigations of UFOs ~extant~... and referenced today... inexplicably, still! One begins to sense the awful magnitude of the terrible forces (SAIG!) that would be arrayed unjustly against our intrepid Doctor... Just so we'll understand who we're dealing with here, James Edward McDonald held a respected Doctorate in physics from Iowa State University in the early fifties. He had worked there, briefly, as an assistant professor in meteorology. Additionally, he was a research physicist in the University of Chicago's department of meteorology. A member of the University of Arizona faculty, he was first an associate professor, then a ~full~ professor in the real-world department of meteorology. Full professorships in moneyed academic departments from world-class Universities are not handed out like happy meals. McDonald was also a senior physicist in the University's Institute of Atmospheric Physics, served as both associate director and scientific director where he was a preferred advisor to numerous federal agencies, including the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Environmental Science Service Administration. If he'd been for sale to a foreign government, the price tag would have been in the high seven figures. This individual was a world-class act of trained intelligence, a top drawer scientist, a hard-nosed researcher, and was "afraid of nothing," ... he'd also, along with his wife, seen a UFO! It's no stretch he was the Klansman skeptibunky's worst nightmare. He was a brave and talented intellectual, 'a man of, zeotropic, color' with age, experience, and reputation. He could say, and very well, exactly what he meant! ...And... he held the "ace river card", good reader... he wore an academic badge! It's no wonder that he would have to be destroyed. ...And he was. Verily. Thank ~you~, Mr. Klass (...et al living and dead...). Again -- Dr. McDonald was an articulate, engaging, and compelling speaker with a fine sense of humor as reported by seminal ufologist Richard Hall, and, as the listener will discover, constructively humorous. He was even able to make his audience ~laugh~ at his opposition (likely his most unforgivable sin, on reflection, against his back-shooting, corner-sniping and tres-cowardly opponents) as he exemplifies, even today, the totality of their collective failure to pursue ~real~ science with reasonable examples, faultless logic, and illustrative parables... or pertinent conjectures based on facts and truly scientific thinking... like Dr. McDonald was legend to be able to do... Listeners are enabled to hear that for themselves... McDonald produced no books on the subject of UFOs, unfortunately, but did produce several short pieces on his series of lectures and presentations made to learned colleagues and other professional persons. These talks included explications on: Our Science in Default ... a paper detailing 22 Years of Inadequate UFO Investigations The "Problem" of Unidentified Flying Objects ... thoughts on perceiving a cover-up. Meteorological Factors in Unidentified Radar Returns UFOs And The Condon Report ... A Scientist's Critique on Condon's validity and procedure. Statement on UFOs ... Hearings Before The Committee on Science. Debunking the debunkers. This is a hint of what the listener is treated to... sober and intelligent reflections on the reality of UFOs. No hyperbole or histrionics... just straight science as pure as the garden variety skeptibunky (Klass et al) would ~purport to~ want to have it! Verily! Weigh Dr. McDonald's concise speech of even ~yesterday~ against the state of the art skeptibunker's duplicitous pule of today, and be not too surprised with regard to who arrives the proverbial day-late-and-dollar-short! All the senseless faux-skepticisms still trotted out currently with insentient and numbing regularity were asked and answered, proffered and discredited... suggested and invalidated decades ago by James E. McDonald! Wendy Connors, indeed, provides you with a primary reference proof you can hold in your hands! UFOs ~are~ real! ...That's not ~all~ that will be found on Wendy's current compilation! ...There's Edward R. Murrow, one of the last few media journalists who had respect for the sensibilities of news consumers and who believed that an ~informed~ public was the one best served. Not resorting to cheap-shots, easy sensationalism or degrading comedy, he puts the subject of UFOs squarely in the street during an incisive thirty minute radio program... as valid today as it was in 1950! ...There's Air Chief Marshall, Lord Hugh Dowding, dead in 1970, a British Royal Air Force Chief of Staff, who relates his belief in the ETH (a belief maintained until the end of his life) on August 9, 1954. ...There's a copy of "Open Mind Debate" ~ A public affairs program from 1960 where Professor Eric F. Goldman of Princeton University moderates an ~astonishing~ program on the subject of UFOs. The subject, "Are Flying Saucers Only Science Fiction"?... is debated by guests: Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Dr. Donald H. Menzel, Dr. Ronald Leonard Sprinkle, Dr. Frank Saltzburg and researcher John G. Fuller. Be amazed how cagey, obfuscating, evasive, and ~guarded~ Dr. Menzel can be... and wonder why. Reflect on why he would be the ~only~ panel member to get angry... Do scientists ~really~ do as they want? That's not all! General Douglas MacArthur holds forth on UFOs and extraterrestrials! Dr. Adolph G. Dittmar explicates on them! Dr. Ivan T. Sanderson lectures about them! Robert Coe Gardner cogitates in their regard... out loud! Dr. Willy Ley compellingly expounds! Wow! That's, still, not all! Twelve hours less change, total time, awaits the open mind and courageous heart of a curious listener. ...And ~be~ curious... good reader! Curious, you increase our aggregate bravery to challenge the unknown; by becoming more brave; you expand and elevate our society; you help to re-take our hijacked mainstream! Additionally, you invalidate the specious pronouncements of Philip Klass (et al) and his capering coterie of cultish apologists, men who have always resorted to character assassination, baseless innuendo, and duplicitous mechanism... when they can't debate their worthy opponents competently on the issue at hand and are keen, only, upon grinding their own duplicitous axes... ...And who can blame them... standing tall only insures their demise... real debate hastens their destruction... real dialogue only provides for the righteous invalidations they have earned! But, then, I don't ~care~ what their reasons are for their obfuscation! They are not shared with ~me~, and so are then unacceptable, on spec! That these threadbare and disingenuous pelicanists stand in the way of human progression with their senseless and obstinate obliviousness, that they ignore recorded history, or that they connive to despoil, degrade, and destroy their betters... are reasons enough to discredit them -- provide for ~their~ professional demise... dismiss ~their~ legacy, such as it is! Yea and Verily! Wendy Connors provides, in my opinion, ample historical evidence for the validity of all the preceding contentions in her latest compilation, "James E. McDonald & The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis." The listener should not be disappointed... More info and purchase information can be found contacting Wendy Connors at: wendy@fadeddiscs.com ... Read on!
	Invisible Ballots? INVISIBLE BALLOTS -- A Review Of William Gazecki's New Film Documentary Of The Same Name I am going to make a rather shameful disclosure to you, reader. I've been casually disrespecting the foundations of a federal republic I'd presumed (a result of ceaseless but duplicitous inculcation) was in better shape than it ~was~. And it is decidedly ~not~ in good shape I have very fearfully discovered. It is much, much more troubled than I would have dared think! The shameful disclosure? I have ~never~ VOTED, sir or madam, not at the State, Local, ~or~ Federal level. My last vote was for a rally chairman in high school circa 1965. Up until just recently, a fierce independent and ardent individualist, I was rather of proud of that. I even thought I could justify it... No more. Retired military, I too conveniently rationalized that I served my country in other ways, never served in one stateside spot long enough to feel responsible, and never got excited about the choices I was offered, anyway! It always seemed to me that our two party system only presented alternate heads of the same beast. I still believe the latter to a degree. I digress. What's changed? In a nutshell, it seems the electoral ballots we cast in our elections... Local, State, And Federal, begin to fade to an awful and seeming inexorable "invisibility", as we speak. That's not a metaphor, folks. Our individual vote ~is~ dissolving to an insubstantial nothingness... a valueless nothingness. An insidious nothingness. The ballots we cast in our elections, our exercise of rights in what ~could~ be a glorious republic... have quietly (...so ~without~ appropriate fanfare!) begun to discorporate from a physical reality that can be checked and verified... into an electronic ~virtual~ reality that ~cannot~ be checked and verified... Electronic TouchScreen Voting. It should stand the hair on the back of your neck, reader! I had always thought that the vote, as it was ~supposed~ to be practiced in the United States of America, actually ~meant~ something! I felt well served with that. Insulated. In the fashion that ones vote was presumed recorded, tallied, and otherwise counted (~recounted~ if necessary!)..., it was an action taken by an individual in this country that ~actually~ moved a counting tumbler... somewhere... in the direction that a voter had indicated that it should go... given the choices available to make. That ~was~ the presumption. This electoral count, as ultimately meaningless as it ~may~ have been (given the proscribed choices), ~was~ effected by an action the individual took... or did not take. I felt safe ...not... voting, given an egalitarian system of ~some~ ethics in the process where an individual had a snowball's chance to be heard, to have impact, however small. A person, an individual..., I'd always presumed, ~could~ participate in the process of how they were governed, even if it ~was~ only an illusion of participation. A vote DID count for ~something~... an either/or of limited choices... but a ~choice~ none the less! ...So I thought! This, very likely, may no longer be, remotely, the case, reader! It ~may~ be that your effort taken to indicate a vote ~might~ be as meaningless as a puff of flatulent air! Your individually consequential vote may be in danger of being rendered (...by canted neo-cons one discovers, apart from the focus of the film reviewed...) into a ~complete~ illusion... even if it was only a virtual illusion before. Be that as it may... the always tenuous "popular" vote has likely ~already~ been hijacked and is in the egregiously stealthy process of being rendered meaningless... ~your~ will and choice negated to a worthless exercise in pathetic futility! Oscar Nominated Filmmaker William Gazecki has completed another compelling documentary giving ~every~ indication that it is as bad as all that! What Mr. Gazecki outlines (in a compelling montage of vetted experts...) is an ~outrage~ of pointed disrespect that is bereft of ~all~ hyperbole! Gazecki outlines a clear and active threat to any SEMBLANCE of continuing to live in a free society for any one of us! Additionally, he alludes to an unwarranted, unwelcome, and unnecessary partisan holding arbitrary sway... a monstrously conflicted and non constructive intrusion on that free society (...with regard to the biased and otherwise documented spiritual convictions of the, too few, owners)! Who owns democracy? Does not an owned democracy cease to be? Gazecki does not go into the neo-conic proprietary ownership (near monopoly!) of our national voting mechanism in his film, but it is well known. His contention, instead and even ~more~ significant actually, is that a proprietary ownership of the voting mechanism by ANY single private entity is a bad thing. ...A VERY bad thing! ...Very bad... Why is that, you ask? Well... here's just a taste: Because it doesn't work! Because it can't be checked! Because it is too needlessly (and duplicitously!) complicated! Because it is needlessly or horrifically expensive! Because there's no paper record produced by it! Because it renders a vote "recount" impossible and meaningless! Because there is no indisputable audit trail for the maintenance of the hardware and software! Because it is "overwhelming" to most poorly trained election workers! Because some of the persons officiating the corporate aspect of it... are criminals! Because it is effortlessly ~easy~ to stealthily defeat or hack! Because there is no independent oversight! Because it is difficult to set up and run! Because its software is patched with unauthorized and undocumented fixes! Because we can't INSPECT the nature of the software code (...which can say ~anything~!) or the hardware machines (...which can be secretly TOLD to say ~anything~)! ...Because it is turning our system of government wholly over into the hands of non-accountable and elitist corporate sociopaths! Enough? At best, all this is hobbling and socially regressive! At worst it's culturally dangerous... a short detour to the cruelest fascism! Among too many other valid criticisms to list, it is socially static and unrewarding, and it is without any respect for the individual ~concerned~ about the quality of his individual vote -- its ~biggest~ injury/insult, in my opinion. Your civil rights are discounted, nullified, and retired! You (..,You!) are betrayed. This evil betrayal of our republic spits in ~your~ face, reader. Feel rankly dreadful viscous-ness drool down your cheek and into your open mouth... with my apologies. Sorry if that revolted your sensibilities. It had to be said. ...Everybody take a deep breath... I won't do that again. Gazecki's 90 minute film, a concerned clarion cry of cultural warning, provides the individual with a cogent stream of competent professional people, university professors, United States Representatives, Election workers, Investigative journalists, systems engineers, research consultants, software experts... and significant others et al ... ALL suggesting a very strong potential for a dire threat to our representative government and free republic! No hype and histrionics here, sir or madam! In one instance, for example, a radical conservative owned the proprietary rights to the suspect and dodgy touch-screen electronic voting machines... that put him in office! ~Presuming~ ethical behavior (...which has a damned good chance of going the other way, and south, ~fast~... good reader!) is not remotely wise, forgetting that it is a clear conflict of rational interest that cannot be allowed... or ~remotely~ tolerated... from ~anyone~! Christ himself! Verily! Allowing the henhouse keys to indicted ~foxes~ already raping this country is patent lunacy, folks! You'd stop it if you could, if you knew about it... and you can. I'd mentioned that some of the key officiators were convicted confidence men... history will look back on ~you~ reader, and wonder... "What the hell was she THINKING"!?! Gazecki makes no sociological call on any of this, himself, remember, but showcases the facts for ready inspection by the viewer, regardless. In all honesty ~this~ time... he reports; you decide. I'd suggest that this -abomination- of biased CONTROL through -our- (...public! You can bet we paid for it!) voting software and hardware (by an -extremely- canted and partisan minority!), is an affront to our nation constitutionally, morally and ethically, and it is a clear disregard of the public interest that should otherwise be served! That's why I'm voting this time, for the first time ~ever~, folks, "absentee", so there is a paper record (...recommended for all reading this review!) which can still be counted and remains bereft of the Ballot Invisibility William Gazecki very convincingly describes in his landmark film. My vote (...that I had shamefully taken for granted...) becomes precious to me when it is threatened to become a ~complete~ charade! The bastards in non-elected leadership should have remained content just dictating the overall choice I could make. They err in trying to absolve ~my~ choice completely. Al-Qaeda is preferable to these SOBs! If you've never voted, reader, or are comfortable with aggregate election machinery that is privately owned, secretly officiated and arbitrarily controlled... get a copy of this film before not a ~shred~ of democracy remains! VOTE, friends and neighbors! Now more than ever. Oh -- the fix? That's easy! Faster ain't ~always~ better, folks! What price fast if you can't trust it? We take the ~time~ and spend less money (In the long run) to do a ~hands-on~ job (...with a troglodyte's paper trail!), RIGHT! A hanging chad is at least VISIBLE, friend! It trumps an "Invisible Ballot" seven ways to Sunday! Lastly, Congress made this happen, folks! They can make it "un-happen"! Sweat the bastards! I'm going to! See -- it's simple. We got into it, simply, in the dark. We can get out of it, simply (using old, verifiable, technology!) in the light. To bad if heads have to roll. We'd have had too many real heads roll... innocent heads... later on, allowing this insanity to continue... Contact www.williamgazecki.com or http://www.invisibleballots.com/ for more info and details. If you saw only one video this year, I've no doubt that this is the one it should be... Read on, but vote absentee.
		...Abduction? One can hardly run out of superlatives regarding Wendy Connors and her stunning compilations of aural ufological history. I won't run out of them here. She is solely responsible with regard to providing what is... just ~not~ going to be found... in any one place... anywhere-else-in-the-known-universe! I refer, of course, to the (...very nearly lost!) recorded expressions of those most ~pivotal~ in the study of that which may very likely foretell an exciting, intellectually profitable, and expansively efficacious future... for ~all~ of us in the rank and file. That's my feeling, at any rate... Take it with a salt mine if required. On her ~fourth~ disc of vintage recordings (...including three times the material of any of her previous compilations!) one finds the same kinds of discovery and is provoked towards the same kinds of ufological inspiration as the previous three. This iteration is called CE-IV, or "Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind" -- An Audio History of Alien Abduction and Animal Mutilation 1957 - 1976. ...The abduction phenomenon... ...It may ~be~ that people (...you know!) are being abducted by alien beings for purposes that are... well... ~not~ being vigorously investigated, reader! Digress a bit. Who would profit as a result of this 'process' of... non-investigation? Answer that to zip confidently down the ufological rabbit hole, reader, to intellectual emancipation. It's a question folks can ask themselves as they survey the twenty-six (plus!) hours that Connors' disc contains. A rich and stunning history of the abduction phenomenon is contained therein, folks, spanning decades! Additionally, there is no contesting that any true understanding of the flesh and bones of this abduction thing will have to include some familiarity with the history of it. Good thing, then, Ms. Connors is on the scene! But for her we would all be relegated to current distortions, convenient interpretations, and conventional wisdoms... facilitated, of course, by closed-minded individuals, corrupt institutions, shadow-born agencies, and conveniently authoritarian governments... no... rather kingdoms! Does the reader think he has the low-down on Betty and Barney Hill? Think again. All the reader knows about Betty and Barney Hill are a distorted legend and a few grainy photographs proffered by ~conflicted~ persons powering the preceding paragraph. A portrait of the Hills as composed by reactionary skeptibunkies, noisy negativists , and knee-jerk ufological denialists paints a picture of a dodgy working class "interracial" couple (always pointed out)... two people who very likely made the entire story ~up~ out of whole cloth, solely for purposes of some late-night time in the loony limelight, presumably. But that all too convenient assessment is blown away, decisively, when one listens to Connors' compilation. Truth is decidedly ~stranger~ than the official fiction. Interviews and accounts recorded from key persons, at the time, indicate that there was much, much more that was going on with regard to abductions... than can be accounted for in the so called 'record' maintained by our duplicitous mainstream. Barney Hill, a mail-handler, homeowner, and tax-payer was a very uncomplicated man with a degree of New England seriousness and an abundance of personal bravery... or tell me that interracial marriages were ~celebrated~ in the United States circa 1950... even if he and his equally brave wife DID reside in the Northeast United States. These recordings on the disc actually let the listener get to ~know~ Betty and Barney more than their detractors are comfortable with. One discovers, upon listening, that Betty and Barney are simple persons, uncomplicated persons, decidedly non-silly persons... innocently guileless persons... but persons who had a complicated, otherwise convoluted, and decidedly bizarre experience the 'high-domes' and 'propeller-heads' are unable to adequately explain. Betty and Barney were ~reluctant~ reporters, reader, and they endured a ~lot~ of abuse, then and now, for having the bravery to make their astonishing report, or tell their inexplicable tale. In support of the Hill's story, moreover, are the recorded analysis of quality clinicians, researchers, and scientists like Richard Hall, Dr. Benjamin Simon - MD, John H. Luttrell, Dr. James E. McDonald, Dr. R. Leo Sprinkle, Dr. Carl Sagan (...before toeing the obligatory party line?), Dr. Leon Jerrif, and Mr. Edward Eddleson... et al. Marjorie Fish is included with the above for a very interesting reason... Her meticulous astronomical work vis a vis the Hill case is actually a real show-stopper and despite its startling merit being clearly pointed out, most notably by Stanton Friedman (heard on the disc), it remains a reason ~furtively~ marginalized, fringe-ified, and too airily ridiculed by the palsied lions, bluffing tigers, and tedious bears of non-reflecting and reactionary 'debunker-dom'... ...Betty Hill's intriguing and astonishing ~Starmap~ ! During one of Betty's adventurous ordeals the aliens allegedly showed her a screen that displayed a map of the local transit lanes between our sun and other star systems. Hypnotically regressed, Betty reproduced a pen and ink version of it. That sketch ~still~ causes trouble. The disparaging hue and cry of the skeptibunkies was predictable and lamentable, but the aforementioned astronomer Marjorie Fish (...heard on disc...) wanted to be a little more scientific than that. She constructed a wire and bead model of the universe local to our own sun (still in use in college classrooms) and against all odds (...contrary to what the noisy negativist is going to thoughtlessly try to feed you!) found a convincing correlation between Betty's sketch and the physical reality! Moreover, not only are the stars in the correct locations as related by Betty Hill, the stars are all of a type similar to our own, medium yellow second generation stars, the type postulated by science to be the most forgiving of carbon based life evolving around it! This was something not widely known, if at all, at the time... Now -- how the hell did child welfare worker Betty Hill confabulate all that? Put together 20 plus stars actually in the positions that Betty sketched with the subsequently discovered fact that the stars were of the type to be friendly to evolving life... and you have the makings for a wonder that raises the hair on the back of ones neck! How did Betty know? Give the White Rabbit your ticket stub, reader, and go on in. There is more on the disc, of course. I can't discuss the whole 26 hours here. Everything from the first recorded abduction case (the Hills were ~not~ the first), through learned explications by Stanton Friedman, to lectures by David M. Jacobs are covered. I've just hit a ~few~ of the high points. Cattle mutilation is explored. Travis Walton is interviewed. Professional law officers give testimony. Cleve Baxter cleanly bitch-slaps our esteemed Philip Klass for an added treat! Dr. James Harder lectures on conjectured Alien Communication and Dr. Leo Sprinkle investigates the prophesy of abductees... be assured that somethin's shakin' in the tall grass, friends and neighbors, and it ain't Andy Roberts. This is real. For more detail, a synopsis of the disc contents, and order info -- visit: http://fadeddiscs.com/ceiv.html ... and get ready for more of Wendy Connors ufological Rock & Roll. She's not done by a long shot. Read on.
	...who are the artists? Letters Under Our Door -- A review of Robert Nichol's "StarDreams," a revealing new CropCircle Documentary. What about the fakes? Isn't it true that these strange constructions in our cereal crops are of human construction? Don't they have to be ~entirely~ of human construction for the skeptic's position to have the required validity? Just ONE 'genuine' circle, consider, and the game a'foot is altogether new! ...And Crop Circles get faked. Sure. But, when those 'fakes' occur... don't we, generally, know who the fakers ~are~? Don't THEY tell us who they are? Don't they strut and crow and smirk and patronize? Aren't they stealthy people haters named "Doug" and "Dave," even as these self-aggrandizing psychopaths die off and evolve, change their names with the years, upgrade their techniques over time, and justify or attempt to legitimize their crass sociopathy... as art? Could it be that these offensive fakers are behind ~all~ the circles? Builders of ~all~ the constructions? Composers of all these glyphs? Yes? Then how is it, as Robert Nichol intimates in his compellingly sincere new film documentary "StarDreams", that these alleged 'hoaxers' always finish what they start? Where are the failed attempts? Where do they 'practice' their completeness of vision, this exponential magnitude of astonishing endeavor... this meticulous 'perfection' of flawlessly breathtaking execution and timing... and... ...Where are the 'blunders' in these huge constructions, extant, otherwise abundantly found in other human executions of complicated tasks? Why are the 'greater' circles never duplicated? Why don't we see a balanced explanation for complex circle construction making it into the "National Geographic" or a Postmodern Art periodical. Spin me a "Catherine's Wheel", again -- 'Doug'! Stomp out an "Adams Grave," for me -- 'Dave'. Speaking of art and artists, where ~is~ this extremely improbable army of gifted performers "without egos" (astoundingly selfless and undeniably talented men and women), anyway? Flatly, these uncharacteristically secretive persons are REQUIRED to execute (...without the smallest flaw, remember!) the delicate artistic balances of line and curve, light and shadow... amidst other conventions of accomplished artistry (...to include knowledge regarding the sacred or eternal geometrical... or the strict adherence to the enlightened measure, or an educated unity in utility that is an artistic "golden mean"...), and this over a HUGE area on an entirely unique canvas! These 'artists' ARE the real deal... reader ...And we haven't a ~clue~ who they really are! No. We're too well rewarded by society for not wanting to find out, for not being brave, and for not seeking out those clues. We're punished effectively for obstinately seeking them too... served painful irony in the form of reward for negative back-stepping behavior and punishment for the positive forward-looking pursuit of same. Verily, WHO hoaxes roughly tens of tens of quality circles a year, world-wide, for the last ten years? Who operates with no professional 'recognition', no lucrative 'pay-off' -- no 'reward' of any kind? Who? Clearly, few to none. Those who do ~are~ known to us, ply their trade for money, and even have their own trendy flash-fronted websites. No... it becomes obvious as one scratches the surface of this thing that these people are NOT the whole show. Something's hidden behind the official cultural tarp that is our corrupted and duplicitous mainstream... Moreover, artists produce their work to be associated with it, to be defined by it, to be enriched by it... materially AND intellectually. I'm an artist of small note and legitimate award and I feel that's a fair statement. We won't ordinarily BE the artistic Samaritan (rare creature, THAT!) who disappears from the scene of the artistic 'accident' before they can be celebrated and feted by admiring fellow humans. An artist ~signs~ his work, boyo! It's been that way since the renaissance from the middle ages, reader, and even before that the interested knew who their artists were. ...And those people of the renaissance were baffled by (officially intimidated by) CropCircles then too, remember. Crop circles have ~long~ legs of history. Let's cut to the chase. Most circles could ~be~ FAKE, respected reader. But MANY are ~not~ I suspect! Nichols suggests in "StarDreams" that this should, at least, give the reader pause... even if it does NOT fuel an ongoing epiphany of boundless optimism for the reader... like it does for ~this~ writer. Guilty! This writer wept with joy during the first of what has been (and will continue to be) many viewings of Robert Nichol's documentary. They are cathartic and appreciating tears, astonished and inspired tears... thankful and enlightened tears. They are tears that elevate, reassure, and validate. They are tears that cement conviction, legitimize confidence, and lubricate assurance, too. But assurance for, confidence about, and conviction with regard to... what? Ok... a few of the high points. ...That reality is more fully featured and abundant than we are otherwise manipulated to believe by our duplicitous culture? That we are not now, have ever been, or will ever ~be~ alone in the unending light and darkness that is the expanding and changing universe? That 'existence' is not so much a 'competition to survive' as it is a 'cooperation to understand'? That we (you and I!) are the entire universe trying to comprehend itself? Finally, that it is the individual understanding (...the understanding individual!) that is truly key? You ~matter~, reader, forgetting for a moment that I do, too. ~You~, reader, are the person that's reached out to with these crop glyphs. That's the message of "StarDreams". The individual is ~key~. It's all about people, individual persons, Nichol implies... persons who can open their minds and hearts to an immensity of creative purpose, a plethora of quality potentials, and an infinity of efficacious intellectual productivity...! It's all about people willing to break free, at last, of the attitude we have collectively regarding an aggregate Earth we presently abuse like an unvalued rental property... and return to it the respect the truly intelligent would give ~any~ living creature! We would treat the aggregate Earth (you and I and everything else 'on', 'in', 'about' or 'of' this Earth!) as we ourselves would be efficaciously treated. For this, you and I would inherit the stars! What do we lose? Nothing. What do we gain? Everything. That's not the ~end~ of conviction, confidence, and assurance by any stretch! Nichol's documentary is filled with individual persons, none of them seeming to scramble for individual recognition regarding the phenomenon, but standing out like individually shining stars for their lack of apparent desire to do so! It is easy to have 'regard' for these people - these individuals. The watcher can bask in the rich warm golden glow of the sincerity and honesty these folks are effused with, and be reassured by their integrity and frankness and openness and truthfulness... These are serious people, intelligent and educated people... scientists, philosophers, researchers, and persons ~without~ a lot of formal education. I found myself loving all these persons in the absolute best and most efficacious sense of that word. ...And ~these~ persons love, without doubt and beyond question, those 'artists' who compose the strange glyphs on a parchment that we can EAT. Think about ~that~. Is there analogy there? I think Mr. Nichols thinks so. I think so, too. ~Who~ are these anonymous teams of selfless and talented artists manufacturing those compelling images? Who captivates our collective human intelligence so universally and further compels, at the same time, such intelligent love? Well -- they are artists, likely, NOT beholden to human agency, institution, government, culture or religion. They are, likely, NOT artists who celebrate the soulless corporate while they venerate the cloistered celibate! They are likely NOT artists who pander to duplicitous media while they sell their souls to officious and psychopathic sponsors. They are likely NOT artists who would dupe and disrespect you like they were doing you a favor. They are likely NOT 'artists' we would... know. ...It's ironic that they are likely artists we have always known (just forgotten, I'll bet)... ...Be that as it may, their works are charming letters thoughtfully composed, magically engineered, beautifully rendered, and then "slid under the doors" of our consciousness while we're not looking... by 'someone' or some 'thing' who would attempt a communication of some 'type' perhaps as nourishing to us as the grain that the artists compose in, on levels, quite simply, that we are incapable of appreciating, as yet. I'm gratified they take the time... and further gratified that Robert Nichol has produced something about this ...evolving reality... ...so enduring, informational, and prescient... that I'm moved joyful tears. Thank you, sir. Further information on the film can be accessed at www.stardreams-cropcircles.com . See this film. ...One more illustrative point before I go. Early this century William Gazecki produced an equally fine documentary about Crop Circles (I was ~as~ excited about!) called "Quest for Truth", and I provided, for it, a similar review. On the radio a few weeks ago Robert Nichol was interviewed and pointedly asked a question that compared his film with Gazecki's. I wondered if Nichol would ruffle his feathers, even if only a little bit, that ~his~ was the better film. That didn't happen. Rather, he embraced Gazecki's film as his own, graciously making indication that both films were short chapters in the same massive non-fiction, the same story that needed to be told. He implied that Gazecki's more pragmatic approach complemented the more metaphysical approach he'd employed and that the films, taken together, made for a more inclusive accounting of the ~more complete~ story... a stepping stone to even MORE inclusive chapters... No reflexive competition here, good reader. Nichol's reflex, his astonishingly TELLING reflex, was for reflecting cooperation. Is that what the circles do to you? If so, I'll have more of that, thank you. See the sedition? I've seen both films numerous times, and I can attest that the documentaries complement one another, magnificently. Do not tell yourself that because you have seen one film that you have seen the other. That would be unfortunate and inaccurate. Seriously, I think it would be synergistic if these gentlemen could get together, somehow, and provide both films in a boxed set or package. The films are extremely powerful individually, but together they are, I think, greater than the sum of their parts. See these films and begin to 'understand'. That's enough -- read on!
		...UFO History Lives! Ms. Wendy Connors raises the contributory bar on her newest compilation of Ufological history, AGAIN! "PROJECT MAGNET -- Wilbert Brockhouse Smith and Canada's Search for Flying Saucers," is the latest contribution to ufological history rescued by Ms Connors from the complacently ignored and quickly disintegrating past. On this collection of vintage recordings we explore the thinking of a hero of modern ufology that few have heard of and many have forgotten. The irony is that he may be key to an understanding... of the... highly strange 'matters' perceived all around us. W.B. Smith -- Listen to him 'cold' and he was just another dodgy bowl of strained ufological Fruit Loops. He even sounds a little loopy. Indeed, he fairly snapped, crackled, and popped an oddly unsettling litany of new sciences, encounters of seeming science fiction , and alien philosophies... all in his eerily precise and pedantic monotone... He will, at first blush, not insure the confidence of the ardent skeptibunky or even the interested fence sitter, consequently. His thinking on UFOs 'seems' to embrace the now much lampooned contactee, the "benevolent", "all wise", and "all knowing" aliens ~not~ of this Earth, plus a blood relation to them on top of all that! There is even a tangential relationship to Billy Meier... (via the philosophy of "Quadrature") Tough to swallow for the abused, betrayed, and manipulated masses... But start swallowing, folks, or choke. Verily. Consider, given how far Smith strays from the box of 'accepted' thinking, how it might still be possible that we, one, understand the "doctrine of non-interference (The StarTrek Prime Directive)" as it is understood in the archetypes of popular culture presently, two, that we are familiar with the evolved ethics that would require its application (and predict that behavior from sentient 'others'), and, three, that we gain the insight that is inherited with the realization that current 21st Century problems, presently endured, have their scurrilous roots in our failure to employ the very precepts of same! W.B. Smith seems to have been ~first~ to reveal all those things to us, not Gene Roddenberry. Fruit Loops? The cold listener, astonishingly enough, would be the ~only~ one to think so... Dr. J. Allen Hynek (a ufologist's dean), in his very rational and thoughtful book, "The UFO Experience -- A Scientific Inquiry," made an interesting analogy which can be brought to bear on the credibility, personal character, and veracity of W.B. Smith despite how far off the wall Smith seemed to ricochet! Hynek compared people to calibrated scientific instruments in his very telling analogy and proved his logic, handily, in this telling thought experiment... which makes perfect sense on reflection. "In science," he wrote, "It is standard practice to calibrate ones instruments. No astronomer, for instance, would accept measures of the velocities of distant galaxies obtained by the means of an un-calibrated spectrograph. However, if such an instrument had given consistently good results in the past, had frequently been tested and had not recently experienced any jarring shocks, the observer would usually accept its results without any further checking..." Hynek continues, "...The parallel for us is, of course, obvious: if our UFO reporter has, by his past actions and performance, shown a high degree of reliability and responsibility and is known to be stable and not 'out of adjustment,' then we have no a priori reason to distrust his coherent report, particularly when it is given in concert with several other 'human instruments,' also of acceptable reliability." ...Turns out? W.B. Smith was ~just~ such an instrument, of ~just~ such a calibration, and of ~just~ such a reliability. He'd given consistently good results in the past, had been frequently 'tested', and seemed resistant enough to jarring shocks. Even if it is unwise to cease further checking, it may be that his testimony has enough verity for follow-on researchers to accept his observations... even if his conclusions ~are~ uncomfortable to the researcher. Smith was a GOOD instrument. His outré assertions, therefore, are not so easily discarded! Sure, he might have gone 'crazy'. But that's too quick a dodge back to the unsettled coward's complacent comfort zone, folks! Besides, there was no one that thought so ~then~, and no one (with any intellectual courage!) who thinks so ~now~. It ~remains~, sir and madam, that he had it on ~excellent~ authority that: 1. ...UFOs exist! 2. ...Their modus operandi is unknown, but concentrated effort is being made by a small group headed by Dr. Vannevar Bush, (Of 'MJ12' fame)! 3. ...The matter of UFOs was the most highly classified subject in the US -- rating higher than the H-bomb! 4. ...The entire matter is considered by US authorities to be of tremendous significance (All Points from a memo to Smith's chief in November of 1950)! Moreover, there are other quality persons (even if unwilling to embrace ~all~ the implications and assertions of Mr. Smith), persons abundantly convinced that there are films, notes, and hardware extant ~enough~ to justify a refined and concerted research into the areas that Smith testified he'd been made aware of... by aliens from space... not to put too fine a point on it. Listen to Connors' ~current~ forward thinking compilation to get an intimation of what Smith may have been trying to tell us... and... ...Did Wilburt Brockhouse Smith, in 1952 'invent' the "The Prime Directive" as it's presently understood, that ethical non-interference code against meddling with an inferior or immature culture? And if he did... how did he do it? He said he got it from the aliens... As far as we're concerned (the proof is there) the concept is his and not Gene Roddenberry's. Did Roddenberry ever hear Smith, or meet him? Nothing against Gene... with regard to art, the 'good' borrow, and the 'great' steal. [g]. But, he might owe Smith a credit, at least... Before this review gets too long I want to mention one other notable segment on the MP3 disc otherwise PACKED with notable segments! It is with regard to a Track #16, "The Great Debate: Major Donald E. Keyhoe of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, debating Col. William T. Coleman (former Chief Air Force publicist), USAF via CBC in 1975... on the existence of UFOs. One can easily predict who argued which side. Keyhoe, as measured by the attending audience, 'lost' that debate. ...But ~did~ he! Yes, Keyhoe 'loses' the straight-up debate, a skeptibunky would strut and crow, ~even~ as a sizable majority of the studio audience remains convinced that UFOs are real ~and~ extraterrestrial at the program's denouement... ...But, a 'Win' or a 'Loss' in a formal debate makes certain presumptions on the process of its exercise, reader! The presumption is that both men are forthcoming, have no ulterior axes to grind and are articulating the truth as they know it. The presumption is that both men are brave and both are going where the data leads. The presumption is that they both follow the same efficacious rules and not use technique and verbal slight of hand to win an honorable contest. The presumption is that the participants are not ~lying~, flatly, in so far as they know it, and are not otherwise selling their points or basing their premises on untruth and obfuscation! It's bona fide "debate"... or it's the United States Congress. There is no middle ground. This is the presumption! Given what we now know decades into the future regarding the verity of Colonel Coleman's support points and his baldly convenient and institution-serving assessment of them, can those assumptions be made about Major Keyhoe and his opponent, presently? Who ~really~ won that debate, truth be known, and how much skeptibunky strutting and crowing is truly justified? Precious ~little~ this reviewer suspects. Listen to the debate yourself contained in Connors' cunning compilation, and with thirty-plus years of 20/20 hindsight see if ~you~ can determine who was being the most logical and forthcoming and who employed logical fallacy and duplicity -- lied (to cut to the chase) to make their points. Come to your own conclusion. Also on Connors' MP3 disc are companion tracks in support of the concepts suggested to the rest of us by W. B. Smith. Included are his son James on a recent interview via "Strange Days Indeed" out of Toronto. RAdm. Herbert B. Knowles discusses the examination, by Smith, of a piece of supposed alien hardware. Robert Beck provides testimony on an ongoing "Project Magnet" (the Canadian saucer hunting effort) long thought cancelled. Robert Groves discusses the strange theories of "Quadrature," the new science revealed by Smith in a serious interview by Earl J. Neff. Lastly, Dr. J. Allen Hynek talks openly during his interview with a first officer of Canadian Pacific Airlines who describes his encounter with a UFO. All the tracks have a tendency to raise neck hair. These were smart serious people and THEY thought there was something to it. Six hours, plus, of very compelling discussion and testimony await the listener on Connors' stunning compilation. She does not disappoint. I've listened to a few of the Smith tracks ~more~ than a few times and drawn something new away, every time. Fascinating stuff? Revealing stuff! Convincing stuff? Inspiring stuff! Find more information on Wendy Connors' compilations of solid UFO history... at http://fadeddiscs.com/projmag.html ! Read on!
	...we're not alone? Well -- I submitted the Mexican FLIR DVD to my sober "pro from Dover" alluded to earlier (...graduate of the Naval Testpilot course, just missed astronaut candidate, FLIR expert past, present, and future... forget for a moment he's a legitimate skeptic on the ufological and a highly educated, grounded, and very intelligently ~deliberate~ person...). He was visibly astonished. This guy has seen aircraft of ~every~ type imaged through FLIR equipment of ~every~ generation and he'd yet to see anything like this. As we watched the DVD he suggested out loud what these images might be and then discarded these self-suggestions one by one. Balloons, bolides, and birds... electrical discharges, plasmid formations and temperature inversions... reflections, echoes, and misinterpretations... were weighed in turn and then retired from consideration. He found the suggestion that they were a new generation of stealth aircraft from the United States as absurdly laughable (and for the same reasons) as did many of us on this board. One does not design stealth equipment that renders the camouflaged object as so readily seen. He said that even with early generation FLIR devices an observed object had a 'hot spot' that was separate from the cooler portion of the ~same~ object. He found the uniformly bright "hotness" of the orb-like objects in the DVD very peculiar and befuddling. Be that as it may... His curiosity is definitely piqued about the DVD and he'll be taking it to work with him to discuss it with his fellow test pilots at the office. I'll keep ya'all posted on any further news... One more thing. If the Government wanted to go to an expert in the FLIR field for information on this intriguing DVD, my "pro from Dover" would be one of the ~few~ go-to guys. Verily. It remains that ~this~ "Pro from Dover" could not discount the... non-prosaic... which should raise a few appropriate neck hairs... Keep watching the skies... there's something in them decidedly ~beyond~ the philosophy of the impacted skeptibunky reactionary. Read on.
		...Just a metaphor? Those Men In Black -- A Review of "High Strangeness," Wendy Connors' Second Volume In Her Ongoing Ufological Audio History Series... On my review of her first captivating volume - "Ufology: A Primer in Audio 1939 - 1959," I wrote that it's not the beginning of the end, or even the end of the beginning -- It's the beginning of the beginning! '... and you are there...,' reader! There was precious little hyperbole in that statement or its parent review. Ms. Connors Does it again with Volume II and provides some indication (...a very exciting Volume III is already available!) that the end is not even in sight! In this second disc in the series she provides, again, nothing less than the unvarnished aural history of a subject that won't be remotely treated as well anywhere else. This time, while performing the same service in the same fascinating and convenient way, she gives voice to one of the most unsettlingly dodgy facets of the UFO conundrum -- those cloyingly ubiquitous Men In Black. Why? Men In Black ARE dodgy and unsettling. They are dodgy because their historical roots are suspect, abstruse, and dominated by the unflattering stories regarding the 'suspected' hoaxes of Gray Barker and Albert K. Bender ...and the 'admitted' ones of CSICOPian John Sherwood (practicing his 'Robertsian' duplicity as one Dr. Richard H. Pratt)... and that all too well known ufological curmudgeon and conflicted commentator, hizzoner James W. Moseley. Even John A. Keel (of "Mothman Prophesies" fame) is listed heavily in this divergent research as a purveyor of alleged MIB hoopla. The debunking of the MIB is thorough and convincing and might even put an end to the matter, but that the debunking effort is plied by persons of CSICOPian persuasion and so then worthy of, at least, a second look for that reason alone. CSICOPia, as I've argued before, has its axe to grind. More convincing, regarding these MIB issues, is one UFO researcher decidedly bereft of axes, Jerry Clark, who writes: "First-generation American ufologists' experiences of men in black - as opposed to the MIB who came along later - were the extremely dubious cases of Maury Island and Al Bender, along with the even more questionable Edgar Jarrold "mystery" and Stuart/Wilkinson affair (in both senses of the word "affair"). In retrospect, the bulk of what Gray Barker wrote in the one men-in-black book of the 1950s (They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, 1956) has been discredited. Beyond that, contactee writers such as Adamski and Williamson were using men in black to weave conspiracy theories, based in anti-Semitic literature, about the so-called Silence Group. No wonder sensible ufologists were sensibly suspicious of men-in-black notions." Why, then, pay attention to MIB stories at all? We pay attention because rational ufology doesn't close the book on them altogether, they may be a device to screen other activity, and (as mentioned before but worth repeating) anything discounted stridently by the CSICOP cult of obdurate personalities deserves a re-look as a matter of standard operating procedure! Moreover, the history of the phenomena may predate all recent (post 1950) accounting of them and easy dismissal of same! Examples... In the March 30, 1905, edition of the Barmouth Advertiser, a Welsh newspaper, it was reported that over a period of three nights a "man dressed in black" appeared in the bedroom of an "exceptionally intelligent young woman of the peasant stock.... This figure has delivered a message to the girl which she is frightened to relate..." whatever one may make of that... In 1864 a gaunt and weirdly accented man, dressed all in black, tried to purchase unusual metal parts dropped from a mysterious flying machine that were only on display and not for sale. He departed, and then the building the 'parts' were stored in subsequently burned to the ground. Ashes, sifted for the parts, failed to turn up them up. The man in black was never seen or heard from again. In 1730 a 13-year-old Norwegian girl told priestly Inquisitors an astonishing tale. Six years earlier she and her grandmother had flown on the back of a huge pig (?) to attend a meeting with 'Satan'. On the way, the clerics wrote in their report, "they met three men dressed in black whom the grandmother referred to as 'grandfather's boys'. Once arrived at the meeting place, they all went in and sat down at table next to the 'devil'. Her grandmother addressed the demon as 'grandfather'. These "Three men dressed in black" would be a recurring theme, echoing down to present day. Additionally, prior to the modern automobile, these men in black were sometimes seen to arrive and depart in silent black carriages, an antique precursor to quiet black Cadillacs, perhaps... John A. Keel has written that MIBs had interacted with such historical figures as Julius Caesar, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon, and Malcolm X. Ominously, Keel has written that "the general descriptions of vampires ... are identical to the 'men in black'." The danger of MIB visitation to those interested in UFOs especially "the neurotic, the gullible, and the immature" he writes, is such, Keel warns, that parents might "forbid their children from becoming involved [with UFOs], and that teachers and other responsible adults should not encourage teenagers to take an interest in the subject." Mr. Keel can't be discounted out of hand. Jerry Clark seems to believe he has a degree of respectable seriousness to him, whatever the debated quality of Mr. Keel's scholarship, on the one hand, and that this writer lost a teaching job for indulging those interests on the other... MIBs, as previously mentioned, are also... unsettling. Men in black portray an association with the shadow government (?), are the government extant (?), are a black agency of government (?), are ETs who mimic the government (?), or are of a 'larger' government, and 'so', in fact (?), then, a government of some indeterminate and unsuspected kind! I don't mean that, of course, in a good way. They are indication that individuals, at best, only have the illusion that they captain their own ships? That we can removed from the equations of our societies by unaccountable shadows or excised, by them, without due process of any type? Finally, MIBs are, at least, a face to be put on the arbitrary manipulation and convenient control by shadow agencies of non-admitted and closed institutions we suspect is otherwise going on? In these days of ever more repressive 'government' - reproductionist, rightist, and religiously fundamentalist ... where liberty dwindles, human rights sublimate, and due process is airily abandoned altogether as a luxury that cannot be afforded... the MIBs are an uneasy metaphor of our troubled times. They are another kind of metaphor. They are a metaphor for the hurdles encountered in coming to grips with the ephemeral phenomenon of UFOs and all their related sister subjects. They are of a totalitarian fabric threatening unusual individuals compelled by their rationality (and their experience!) to search behind suffocating curtains for the obligatory (and self serving) wizards we suspect are there! These aforementioned individuals, by the way, are unusual only in that they have 'encountered' an "unusual"... for which their proud culture refuses to provide an explanation, and in fact punishes them, in some real-world way for their lawful interest! Left to our own devices we grapple with the problem on our own and as we can. At the same time, these individual persons are sisters and brothers, wives and husbands, parents and children... IF they are not friends and acquaintances, neighbors and fellow citizens, or others persons we'd otherwise hold in respect and regard. They are us, and we are threatened individually. Verily. Men In Black are an obstacle of indeterminate matter that would glue the blinding scales to our eyes and otherwise buttress our cultural blinders... perhaps for our own good? No, not for our 'good'. Decidedly, no. Our contrived and over-manipulated corporate-driven culture is just not set up that way, is this writer's contention. Little, if anything, is (and has ever been) 'kept' from us for our own good. Much is kept from us that would advantage us individually at the expense of our present manipulators, is the suspicion. Individuality, personal autonomy, creative freedom, and freedom of expression... these are the bane of an elite and repugnant, reproductionist, reactionary, and intellectually uptight (...intelligence hating, actually!) fundamentalist culture... trying to return us to the thirties in the case of fundamentalist Christianity, or to the thirteen-fifties as is the case with fundamentalist Islam. Hell IS better. Besides, if the 'aliens' were the threat of popular "head-eating" conjecture (or otherwise complicated the elitist's game plan...?), our culture would mobilize us against them the way they have against the (almost as nebulous!), Islamic terrorists! They wouldn't be shy! Consider Pearl Harbor and 9/11. No. Our culture would have us bristle at THAT brand of alien threat! Instead, our culture (and their lap-dog CSICOPian apologists!) paints an interest in the ufological as the activity of the stupid, the product of the duplicitous, or the production of the mentally ill - as baseless and nonsensical! ...Ironic when the opposite seems to be true: that the "M" cubed misrepresentation of the Misleading corrupting the Mislead into their Mental illness is, ITSELF, baseless and nonsensical! What UFOs are, really, as Richard M. Dolan has pointed out, is the purest of pure seditions! They are an alternative, and perhaps even better, idea (perhaps decisively so!)! Would you like to find out if that is true? Could you be safer, freer, smarter... stronger? Yes, of course. The preceding paragraphs are a justification for reviewing Connors 'forbidden index' of forgotten ufological lore! To gain access... to mine that history for facts those folks didn't really know they were giving away, decades ago! Listening to Wendy Connor's ardent compilation the listener can sift the expressions of the principals on their own regarding the subjects of MIBs and many other themes in the ufological tradition. Grains of ufological truth may surely be gleaned in the exercise! Moreover, Ufology has always had its share of inimitable strangeness, cultivated or otherwise, as it has evolved, and this volume of Connors' aural history is every bit of THAT! Her compilation amply covers the (ufologically silver?) years 1952 to 1976, when hairy anthropoids shambled out of flying saucers (?), Men in Black silenced witnesses to UFOs (?), and other monsters prowled the unsettled countryside. Something was going on... whatever the debated 'provenance' of all this "high strangeness." There are lectures, personal experiences recounted, and the fall-out of those early reports linger and compel even today. Listen to the accounts and presentations of Gray Barker, John Keel, Norman Oliver, Stan Gordon, Dr. Herbert Hopkins, Hayden Hewes, Dr. Ivan T. Sanderson and Albert K. Bender (in their own words) as they flesh out the real and imagined activities of MIBs and other monsters found in an all too real ufological reality. You won't be hearing it (or finding it) anywhere else. Remember, also... it IS the future. Spinning up on the primary references of the past is always a good idea, and provides scant disservice to that future. Truth is better than fiction even if sometimes it's the 'fiction' that IS the truth! For order information, a table of contents, and brief of same... visit: http://fadeddiscs.com/strangeness.html Read on!
	...Michael Horn's DVD presentation "The Meier Contacts" I started this piece with no small trepidation... but then I remembered that the following is dismissed entirely by Kal (triple 'K') Korff with some... energy and vitality, so there is a good chance that there might be something to it, after all. I should let everyone know near the start of this review that I'm not trying to irritate serious Ufologists Richard Hall or Jerry Clark (...or a host of other sincere persons down firmly on the side of the fence they feel they ~should~ be down on... and comfortable there...). These gentlemen, in particular, have recently shown me some kindness and collegiality, and I'm loath to disappoint them in a casual way. I apologize in advance though I'm sure everyone understands I just have some questions about something (and observations regarding same) here... and a few... well chosen... rational and constructive words from learned readers should put me aright, straight away! [g]. I'm not an ideologue; I don't "have to" believe, I just can. Above all else, I want the ~real~ deal. I've been hearing things about an individual of late, an individual, well known in our community, who has had his facts dragged back and forth over the credulity line so hard, so often, and for so long, now, that even the ~metaphor~ has become hopelessly smudged, indeterminate and indistinct. Lately, another gentleman has stepped forward in an apparent bona fide attempt to clarify that line once more. That man is Michael Horn. The line to be clarified is the, decidedly interesting, Billy Meier. The review to be expressed concerns Michael Horn's DVD presentation on the "state of the art" that is one Eduard Albert Meier. The decidedly unlikely Meier arouses, still (after 40 years!), equal passions on both sides of the ufological fence, and ~few~ ufological occurrences have been so diligently and passionately investigated, attacked, and passionately debunker-ized as the indefatigable saga of this aging Swiss farmer. After all the sturm and drang, the passionate pleas, and furious invalidations... there remains Billy Meier, grinning happily like a seemingly unwhackable whack-a-mole... from a surprisingly unassailable hole. What provokes the continued belief in this very usual and un-presupposing gentleman? I can't, shouldn't, and won't (shan't!) suggest any verity for Billy Meier -- a benign separatist (?) who lives on a commune (?) amongst like-minded persons (?), a person heartily denounced by critics exponentially less canted and more acceptable than "Triple'K'" (?), a person repudiated by a close family member as a total charlatan (?), a person offering the most inexplicable testimony and even prophesy (?). Burned and shy... (a pox on culpable liars of any stripe for encouraging same!), one becomes reluctant to put their full weight on the next stone across the paranormal pond. I can't qualify Billy Meier, but I can; however, retain the capacity to be intrigued by recent claims in his decades old case! Michael Horn, one of us yet to discredit himself it appears, goes a little further out on that limb than I can, presently. He identifies himself as Billy Meier's media rep in the United States, and he's making some startling claims regarding Meier that seem to have some support, are not conclusively refuted by the garden-variety skepti-bunky, and are provoking dodgy, inconsistent, and fallacious (...and so, therefore, suspicious...) behavior from same! His claims, as rationally (and logically) detailed in his (not ~too~ pricey...) DVD ("The Meier Contacts"), feature highly specific predictions and prophesies made decades earlier in extant works and books... subsequently revealed recently in mainstream science news?! They include detailed photos and films that have not been duplicated or otherwise conclusively shown to be fakes?! They feature pieces of metal purported to be irreproducible and compellingly alien?! They include clear sound recordings made of a beam ship close by... equally irreproducible, with alien intimating and peculiar harmonic properties?! Put this together with the documentation of the double digit attempts on Meier's life, along with a consistent and well documented journal of ongoing alien contact, and what do you have? Some would argue a continence of ufological buffoonery and the degradation of same! Others would argue that the preceding could be citations of verity. Still others would swear by it! The larger remainder are distractedly aware... or unaware because of the aggregate distraction. I only want non-canted answers to a few questions: What is the verity of the evidence? Are the predictions Mr. Horn outlines with regard to "ozone depletion" and the asteroid Toutitis (among ~significant~ others) legitimate and bona fide? Are the photos, video, and film footage vetted and genuine? Is the aforementioned sound recording significantly indicative of a sound that could not be easily fabricated as examined by competent and unbiased aural authority? Does a similar condition exist for the bit of strange metal mentioned; does it withstand the scrutiny of an unbiased metallurgist? Is there credible evidence that the attempts on Meier's life number in the high teens? Michael Horn has indicated, in his DVD presentation and on the radio, that all the aforementioned evidentiary bits conclusively pass these un-conflicted examinations and appear to provide convincing evidence that Billy Meier is the genuine article. What is the rebuttal of the opponents to Mr. Horn, beyond the reflexive and therefore discountable conclusions based only on citations from the work of the pecu-liar triple"K"? If there are problems with the vetting of the evidence, then there are problems with the vetting (!), but I am unimpressed with proclamations, irritated by innuendo, and righteously angered by baseless and reflexive acrimony! Moreover, treat ~me~ like a rube or dismiss me as a mere believer regarding this query at your ~peril~... Get testy, terse, or disrespectful with me on this, and I'll eat your literary face! I won't be taking any crap. I insist upon reflection over reflex. I am 'everyman', sir, madam, and entities lurking! I pay taxes, try to live an ethical life, and continue an ongoing education regarding what chews on ~my~ ass, and on the derrières of my brother and sister Human Beings. I want some quality answers, some better freaking ~questions~, and something more out of life than sacrificing our sons and daughters, generation after generation, to the whims of a pompous and illegitimate elite while... living a contrived life of the planned obsolescent in their decaying land of emptying promise... That being said, I'd like to talk about the real problem of a "Billy Meier", which Michael Horn understands very well and laid out in almost too calm a manner in his DVD presentation -- stealthily almost (...and would, sensibly, given that the aggregate idea is ~that~ ultimately tumultuous!). There's no cult, there's no cult of personality, there's no institutional eschatology of Raelean-like cultish doctrine as detractors have campaigned. There is only a very unlikely guy, singled out (of billions, presumably and inexplicably enough!) for an alien interaction... not so important for the ships that they fly or the actuality of themselves... but the ~message~ that they might have! The vast majority needing to hear a message of this type will be reluctant to hear it, at all, for an obvious reason (...and the reason for Horn's stealth). The message, if true (and I think it is for reasons I'll get into in a moment), would quite literally turn our contrived, arbitrary, and unbalanced society on its well deserving ear! There's no pretty way to put it. Everything would change, respected reader... every ~thing~! I'm very confident that it is change for the better, but tumultuously and disconcertingly interesting (albeit needlessly), nonetheless... For example: Religion, as it's presently practiced, would be abandoned out of hand like the individual was leaving a sinking ship of fear, hatred, and disease. Money, hoarded and saved or purloined, would be rendered moot and meaningless. Power would be to the individual. Property would be newly defined, privilege would have no justification, and position would be rendered impotent and invalid. A new individual Autonomy and self-sufficiency would be the rule, and we'd all have to respect our planet as an appreciative thing, instead of a thing to thoughtlessly and irresponsibly consume. We'd have to respect what we EAT, ladies and gentlemen (Hamburgers and fries soaked in HVO and trans-fat are not respectful to the cattle and over-eutrophied [and environment destroying] potatoes, just as they are not respectful to us, individually and physically, on any level you'd care to name. We'd have to be a lot more aware who pays so we can play! We would have to substantially reduce our numbers from the catastrophe-begging overpopulation that we endure... right at the perilous edge of its tenuous capacity! The reason I think the over-all message, as relayed in Horn's DVD rings true (has an underlying sense of solid rationality for me personally) is because it so closely parallels a personal philosophy I've laid out for myself in 55 plus years of watching the world work, what's right, what's fair and balanced... and comparing it with the antithesis of those things as I try to really see them... from an alien's point of view. The AlienView. A short piece (mostly prose) on that personal philosophy is found at http://www.alienview.net/avexp.html . It's what I allude to when I wrote in the last verse of a recently posted piece of poetic explication: "Fill Your Bucket..." "The future that's portended will be seen and not pretended, but the satisfactions gained will awe inspire! We will live beyond pretensions, and ignore old class distinctions as we build on firmer ground than what's now known to be conspired! We will build upon new ethics in a wealth of new ~eclectics~ that we didn't know abundant... in our fog... and we'll find that our behavior's more inclusive -- it's our SAVIOR, while elitists see their error in the past, and all along! C'mon up and fill your bucket with the facts you haven't chewed yet, and don't worry that it tastes a ~lot~ like crow -- it may taste a little worse before you finish what needs chewing... but then tasting, far, far grander than you know!" Correcting our own mistakes is never easy, but putting off the consequences of ongoing bad behavior is like putting off a trip to the dentist's office, as I have written before. It's an ongoing pain one can even endure to a point... given enough distraction, but the outcome, to gallop this metaphor, is inadequate chewing, resulting in badly digested food, poorer aggregate health, and an eventual dental emergency precluding being able to eat, at all! This is what Billy Meier would transmit to his brother and sister humans, and it's good information and rational advice (it would be my own), apart from flying saucers, multiracial human aliens from the Pleiades, and new definitions of time and space... which all the principals admit are incidental and subordinate to that communication (message), anyway. If Billy Meier is a hoax and a fraud it is unfortunate that an efficacious, self-revealing, and responsible message has to be trussed-up into such a bad wrapper. But if Meier is not a fraud, as Michael Horn reports in his DVD presentation, and there is verity in the evidence of his claims? Then Meier's message has value and gravitas that it couldn't have before... everything we know is wrong (a broad brush but accurate enough to be descriptive), and significant, heartfelt, and self-identifying cultural imperatives must be discarded and abandoned if we are to step out of present pretentious paradigms into a multi-verse ever bigger than we ever thought it could be... and growing all the time! Qualified, Meier means change, reader. Discomfiting change. Inconvenient change. Tumultuous change brought about (predictably) by those most reluctant ~to~ change. But change regardless. Easy or hard it's our choice. One need only look around at what reflexive and unthinking nationalism, rigid religious fundamentalism, material disrespect to self, others and the environment... and programmed ignorance... have ~ever~ done (and now do!) for us on this planet... or we'd ~already~ embrace the stars! Change, in this context, is a good thing, and listening to Michael Horn discuss it reasonably on his DVD, isn't bad, either. Find further info on Mr. Horn's DVD at: http://www.theyfly.com/ Read on!	.
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