Can't Shoot Straight

Well, looks like it's Social Issue Day on the old blog, so you just might want to reconsider whether to stick around. Today, we're all going gay.

That is, we're addressing the matter of gays in the military. I've had this 1993 letter from former President Clinton's Administration (click to enlarge) around for years and never really had an opportunity or reason to post it. Actually, it's strange that the White House even had to issue a letter of this sort, since so many other countries have openly allowed gay people into their military services for years without problems. Based upon my observations, I had written the White House to encourage the inevitable. Yes, I wish Mr. Clinton's letter had actually read, "Dear Robert: Hillary and I realize, like you, that the UFO issue is real and important, and soon I'm going public with demands that all U.S. government information on this subject be released. . ." Well, dream on. That was supposed to happen during the Carter Administration, too.

Politically, I fear that significant national public policy is currently administered by something akin to misguided lunatics, radicals, maniacs and others who may be too smart for our own good. Less arrogance, a dash of humility and a respectful attitude toward those of us who don't dwell in the official Big Boys' circle might be helpful, because those of us with even a modicum of common sense see lots of trouble coming down the pike. Well, who doesn't these days? Change we can believe in, yes-we-can, oh yeah, uh huh. Some days, I wake up wishing I could bottle up all the human testosterone and estrogen in the world, stuff it in a rocket ship and send it to the sun, gender problems being what they are, but that's another story. So now the gays-in-the-military subject is back atop the pile and President Obama swears the policy will change. Ah, where to begin. . .

You may already know that I'm ex-military, having spent four years in the Air Force during the Vietnam years, and I served in a medical field in USAF hospitals stateside. During those years, I both worked among gay airmen and WAFs (Women's Air Force) and encountered gay patients. In fact, those patients were usually about to be discharged simply for being openly gay. It was common for them to be hospitalized in the psychiatric section, and on occasion I learned of outrageous experimental things the psychiatric staff would do to attempt a "cure." Remember, this was 1968-72, still a "dinosaur" era in terms of attitudes about homosexuality in general. I met some of the most talented and essential personnel one could imagine who were booted out the door merely because of their sexual status.

The gay thing is serious stuff with the Armed Services. It's like the cartoon elephant and mouse, where the elephant screams, "Eek! A mouse!" and jumps up on a chair, in mortal, unreasonable fear of something non-threatening. At my own pre-induction physical, when the military draft caught up with me before I enlisted soon thereafter, there literally perched before me the psychiatrist everybody reads about in the humor books, the one whose sole obligation appears to be an ability to ask the question, softly, soothingly, in a fatherly manner, "ARE YOU A HOMOSEXUAL?!!?"

Later on, during Air Force basic training, I recall a session where our entire flight (a "flight" in the Air Force is sort of like a gaggle of geese) was ordered to sit down and relax on the grass, and then our training instructor gave a standard-issue speech about venereal diseases one might catch in town amongst the prostitute community and so on, and, of course, there was one more obligatory low-key mention about h-o-m-o-s-e-x-u-a-l-s and how anybody who was one or thought he might qualify as one should tell officials immediately so he could exit the Air Force and save the military any further expense or embarrassment. Oh, the absurdity of it all. I wonder how many young men from all branches of service falsely, but successfully, "claimed gay" just to avoid the Vietnam nightmare.

The letter posted here reflects President Clinton's attempt (yeah, I know, first line, second paragraph, do as I say, not as I do. . .) to put a reasonable face on what would soon become the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, as he abandoned more ambitious plans in the face of opposition by, frankly, a preponderance of stubborn old blockheads in Congress, feigning the wisdom of their ages, refusing to let gay military personnel serve openly.

It's my understanding that today's young military folk, the ones from age 18 and up into their thirties, are far more informed and much more at ease with the gay military issue. Did anybody "ask" them if they had anything to "tell" about the controversy?

It's way past time for modern military forces to take a tip from ancient armies -- the gay thing was always there. Imagine the countless numbers of gay people who served and died in wars for this country. Why should they be forever invisible and unacknowledged? Thank you for your service, but you don't exist, nope, you were never here, couldn't be, we don't allow those kinds of people into our ranks. Why, it's just not compatible with our religion (our religion?). . .

Truth be told, current psychological military radar is probably focused more upon non-gays than gays, and to this end I reference nationally syndicated radio host and M.D., Dr. Dean Edell. When the issue of homosexuality materializes on Edell's show, he often mentions a reliable study performed where a cross-section of young men were attached "strategically" to equipment which registered their responses to viewing photos of males in various stages of undress. To the surprise of researchers, the most homophobic (defined as a fear or hatred of gay people) among these men were the ones who evidenced sexual stimulation and arousal. The homophobes? Wow.

If this is true, official efforts cannot ignore the likelihood that some heterosexual servicemen, obsessed with perpetual demonstrations of masculinity, also have a deep psychological ability or desire to chase something other than women's skirts. Therein lies the biggest problem for military officials -- keeping a tight rein on potential heterosexual berserkers who subconsciously question their own sexual insecurities. The most dangerous pressure-cooker in town.

Ma Nature, it seems, has her own little way of having a good laugh at our expense, and attempts to legislate and sort gender into neat little compartments, even in the military, seem increasingly ridiculous. Good grief, there's nothing new here. Let's get over it and let gay men and women who wish to serve their country do so with honor. Then we can get back to determining what the government knows about UFOs observed over and apparently influencing operations at military nuclear missile bases, an infinitely more troubling and legitimate national security issue.

(WINDMILL COLLAPSE UPDATE: Engineers checking a windmill in the town of Fenner, NY that toppled over mysteriously one night a few weeks ago were scheduled to issue a final report, but plans were put on hold as they apparently announced continued puzzlement and inability to determine a cause. Should more information become available, I'll include it in a future entry. Hmm. Maybe some unknown ethereal recipient of the windmill's air flow became upset and decided to blow back.)

The Truth Maze

It's funny how the newsstand tabloids are absolutely reviled by folks who believe themselves far above reading such "trash" -- until, for example, the National Enquirer suddenly earns rave reviews (sort of) for revealing that former U.S. Senator and potential presidential candidate John Edwards had a secret love life and love child whose existence he denied up until the bitter end, after the Enquirer stubbornly pursued allegations that other media grand exalteds considered themselves too proper to investigate. Edwards might have been elected the morality-perfecto president many Americans craved, had the personal closet skeletons not been exposed.

Yes, I do miss the sixties, seventies (in particular) and eighties when the Enquirer investigated international UFO incidents with enthusiasm and hard-nosed, determined journalists. Bob Pratt and a few others. I think the National Enquirer was a major influence in convincing Americans of the UFO phenomenon's international reach.

August 15, 1978 was the date of an Enquirer featuring this curious headline: "U.S. Air Force Officers Lied About UFOs." Written by reporter David Wright, the article served as one of numerous opportunities to consult C.R. McQuiston, co-inventor of the Psychological Stress Evaluator (PSE), an instrument designed to sort out truth from lies based upon the pattern of one's speech when responding to questions.

On this occasion, there apparently had been some controversy about a June 27 article charging the U.S. government with an ongoing cover-up of UFO reports. Well, no big surprise there -- but the tabloid editors did find this a great time to allow Mr. McQuiston access to tape-recorded interviews with three U.S. Air Force officers interviewed for the previous story. His opinion, post PSE evaluation: "There is a clear pattern (of deception) here that is common to all of them. They all had characteristics that lead me to believe that there is indeed a cover-up."

That sounds pretty sinister, and while I may agree in part with McQuiston's conclusions, more could be said. Shortly, but first. . .

Maj. Edward Lansdale of the Air Force Office of Information in Washington, D.C. was asked if the USAF still investigates UFOs. His response: "The Air Force does no longer have a program."

McQuiston stated that Lansdale "doesn't really believe what he is saying. . .has definite reservations about the validity" of the statement. "He appears like he is saying, 'Well, I am saying this, but I don't believe it.' "

Asked if Project Blue Book files were complete, Maj. Gary Hawksworth said, "I don't know whether I could say that."

C.R. McQuiston advised, "He's hedging. There's very definite reservation in that statement. He obviously knows of cases that didn't go in the Blue Book. He's not telling the whole truth and shows the stress line."

Finally, Capt. Charles Wax had told the National Enquirer that "there's no Air Force procedure for reporting extraterrestrial type spottings," leading McQuiston to suggest:

"The PSE shows that's not true. There's a lot of stress there. He doesn't pass the test at all."

For its time, over 30 years ago, the Enquirer piece and McQuiston's evaluation made sense. After all, the Air Force had supposedly given up on UFO projects, but the troublesome UFOs continued to flit in and out of observers' lives across the country. However, as a former military serviceman, I can see the three officers' statements in a much different way, and maybe the Enquirer did as well, but neglected to take that extra, not so clandestine step.

I doubt that any of them was deliberately bending the truth. Instead, they were merely repeating what official policy required them to say in response to such questions. Maybe they personally believed what they were saying and maybe they did not, but could their voices not fail the PSE simply because they were spewing policy, not hardcore individual opinions?

In addition, just as time has shown that the trusty polygraph ("lie detector"), overly-lionized in many a detective thriller, is hardly foolproof, surely the PSE system possesses its own shortcomings. Nevertheless, as I recall, the PSE system was fairly new to the public in the mid to late 1970s, and as the most recent technological toy in town, everybody wanted a piece of its abilities, even the National Enquirer. I'm just not sure that this PSE exercise was worth the result, but I'll give the Enquirer credit for trying to sort out the facts. The officers themselves? One wonders how they felt about being voice-analyzed for readers from coast to coast.

Ocean Grazing?

(By coincidence, just after I wrote this week's entry, below, the national media began reporting on charges of alleged cruelty discovered at large corporate dairy "farms." Once there were many small family dairy farms, places where the animals were so few in number that farmers could name each cow individually, and all were treated with kindness. By contrast, a disturbing number of corporate mega-farms so prevalent today, whose existence frequently depended upon buying out small family farms unable to stay in business, seem intent upon profits first and the animals' welfare second, or third, if at all. May I take this opportunity -- again -- to say bigger is not necessarily better. The word, growth, applies equally to the business world and cancer, and when each gets out of control the result can be horrific -- as it obviously has become because of the impersonality and cruelty associated with the practice of mega-farming. Cows, poultry and other critters often live in terrible conditions and it seems to be getting harder to produce farm products not contaminated with killer bacteria at some point in the complex network chain. Could be we really do reap what we sow.)

This seems ridiculous, yet it's been in my thoughts for years. Nobody likes to be, uh, "cowed," but this one calls for wild speculation:

In the 1980s many newspapers carried a syndicated column (via Chronicle Features) entitled "Earthweek: A Diary of the Planet," compiled by Steve Newman. A map highlighted global locations of interesting scientific events or findings of the day, and, to the delight of inquiring minds, Mr. Newman never failed to include the occasionally intriguing international UFO report. And there was some just down-home weird stuff, too, quirky little tidbits beckoning us to a place or incident both absurd and dark. So, I was more than a little curious and disturbed by "Earthweek" of September 11, 1989 when I read a paragraph entitled "Sunken Cow."

Newman culled a fair number of stories from various science news services, and this particular account described two people in a small submarine, involved in counting fish off Alaska's Baranof Island. While submerged to a depth of 690 feet beneath the surface, Tory O'Connell, a biologist with Alaska's Dept. of Fish and Game, and her pilot suddenly encountered for several seconds a dead cow resting on the ocean floor.

A videotape viewed by a reporter for The Sitka Sentinel documented this bizarre sight, confirming that the object did indeed seem to be a Holstein cow. The carcass's condition indicated that it hadn't been at the site very long, and ocean researchers (wisely!) declined to offer theories about the cow's guest appearance in Davy Jones' locker.

What to think? Obviously, this wasn't the cow that jumped over the moon. Or was it? If one accepts the high strangeness of cattle mutilations, including researchers' caveats that some animals appear to have been dropped from great heights -- leaving deep depressions in the ground -- almost anything goes. Whether any specific body parts were missing, of course, was not addressed.

One could also speculate upon the innocent passage of an ocean vessel crammed with cattle, a voyage troubled by The One That Got Away, but the implications of a cow abducted by otherworldly high-tech cattle rustlers of the night -- perhaps extraterrestrial morons who forgot that fish live in water, but even dead cows belong back on solid ground -- must be entertained. Or maybe somebody or something thought it best to conceal a horrible experiment far away from prying eyes.

Or. . . maybe the wretched creature, taking a rest from chewing grass in some far-off land, had a momentary creative or artistic spark, sprinted off at bovine speed and really did try to jump over the moon. Looks like the poor old girl almost made it, too, but for gravity.

USA Now Serving Ticket No. . .H80 (Haiti)

If misery loves company,

misery has company enough

(from Thoreau's Journal, September 1, 1851)

Death and suffering beyond comprehension. . .200 years of corruption. . .decades of political trial and error destined for failure. . .only flies and disease claim the trophies. . .contributions pour in. . .the generosity of the world. . .hundreds of millions and surely billions of dollars promised by the USA President. . .dollars of thin air. . .invisible dollars materializing through the lies of government printing presses . . .your children and grandchildren quickly becoming the new slave class to bail out debts no longer affordable, no matter whether hearts are in the right place. . .America shares, rewarded with condemnation . . .reviled for even daring to entertain the thought that maybe the nation can't do it all. . .but the more you give, the more that is demanded. . .the next time and the horrors to follow beyond the next time. . .still more earthquakes and tsunamis to thin the herds. . .because humans are the cheapest material on the planet, easy to make and easy to dispatch. . .aftershocks to remind all that the planet will always do whatever it wants despite bleeding hearts and self-accusations. . .natural disasters will always exist and they are not the fault of the USA. . .and there will yet be non-natural disaster conflicts, both large and small. . .things such as wars ...and if Yellowstone eventually blows again and destroys a considerable amount of the USA, much of the world will laugh and regret only the absence of pockets no longer able to be picked. . .so substitute the comic relief of imagining Haiti's prison remnants used to house Iran's cockroach-in-chief Ahmadinejad, Cuba's mummy Castro and Venezuela's prince of thugs Chavez. . .

USA beware. . .border states beware. . .Florida beware. . .30,000 (?) illegal Haitians scheduled for deportation but won't go "for now," as perhaps 100,000 more currently hide in the USA. . .in addition to how many millions of other illegals awaiting their self-chosen fate of leaving this country one way. . . or another. . .beware the floodgates. . .beware tens or hundreds of thousands of "just temporary" arrivals. . .beware the orphans because, no matter the country, the babies and children simply are not cute anymore. . .because of the quantities (well over 380,000 orphans, by early estimate), not the quality. . .though there was a time, yes. . .beware the agendas. . .beware the Third World which slowly pulls us under. . .dismiss the words of the Rev. Pat Robertsons (the devil made 'em do it) and the Danny Glovers (the evils of doing nothing at Copenhagen). . .beware those who will hate us forever, no matter what good or how much good we do. . .beware those whose only wish is to get to our shores and refuse assimilation. . .no desire to become true Americans. . .they'll show us, it's nobody's business how many children they can have. . .beware those who come illegally for opportunities which should not exist for them. . .beware the legal or illegal immigration of those without skills or talents, offering only super-sized families, the ability to populate with a flourish and a cargo of anonymous relatives yet to follow. . .vicious criminal elements. . .potentially vicious elements. . .gangs of convenience. . .machetes of desperation. . .madness. . .futility. . . the military increasingly used for nation-building and as crossing guards, often deprived of weapons in the course of duties never intended to be theirs. . .they are not the United Nations and must not answer exclusively to the UN. . .our military members who are expected to be brave and true defenders of our government, not nannies restricted and neutered by the wimps who lead them from safety behind Washington office blinds . . .and official blinders. . .officials who lie, condemn and court-martial and imprison fine young members of the Armed Forces merely for performing the work they're trained to do in Iraq and Afghanistan. . .Navy Seals. . .Army lieutenant. . .surely more to come. . .

Beware those whose mental capabilities don't extend much beyond wallowing in how they worship "Avatar," or some vastly irrelevant professional athlete, actor or actress, while everything that actually matters slowly crumbles to dust. . .technology enthusiasts longing to be the first to see Haitian chaos and decay on 3D television. . . beware the digital revolution which can locate and count the dead, determine statistics, and keep track of everybody's everything. . .beware national and world tyrants who wish to control and tax the Internet. . .beware a "suite" of taxes the World Health Organization wishes to impose via a popular guise. . .probably no better time to be paranoid, and don't ruin the mind's rush of endearing hypervigilance and gut feelings of betrayal with suppressive drugs or alleged therapists. . .stay real. . .

Voodoo capitol of the world. . .true believers may wonder, why have zombies not been called out by the houngan (Voodoo priests) to do the heavy lifting, serve refreshments and tidy up. . .the old song lyrics, do do that Voodoo that you do so well. . .half the Haitian population is said to believe Voodoo is real. . .in the White House, does anybody say, never let a good zombie go to waste, as they said for crises. . .pity the animals. . .the pungent ambulatory odor of death attracts more than flies. . .in political terms. . .the marriage of Catholicism and Voodoo in a country 80 percent Catholic. . .Christian missionaries and other messengers of a God circus who infiltrated Haiti, ignoring the veritable poster child for birth control, adding forced reproductive heat to the boiling pot. . .encouragement to produce far more people than the land should comfortably hold. . .poverty and resultant orgasmic disasters culminating ultimately in a putrescent liquid human mess. . .surgical and environmental amputations. . .limbs and pieces of humanity pepper the landscape. . .The Church. . .growing populations like gardens to be harvested in the worst ways possible. . . men and gangs dominating, raping and forcing women to produce children against their will. . .the joy of sex. . .surely, the only sane reason to produce so many people must be to feed extraterrestrial lizards, as in the (original) TV series "V". . .that the people saying "thank God" should be those who appreciate Planned Parenthood's aggressive goal to provide Haiti and other poor nations with aggressive birth control education, devices and procedures. . .to bill the Vatican for encouraging population growth without end in Haiti. . .helping to create the misery now encountered. . .the eternal holy quest to end suffering by promoting more of it. . .so as to remain relevant. . . should rightly pay for damages. . .let the invoice be presented in Rome by that devoutly religious and/or crazy woman who annually jumps barricades, hoping to meet the Pope for her own purposes. . .in the company of Voodoo priests for proper balance. . .

Beware the right hand of any faith-based or government do-gooders who do sleight-of-hand with the left. . .beware the next horror, and the next. . .at what point does overburdening compassion for the endless masses reduce a nation's ability to survive . . . it is not one world, but you and yours will always be forced to pay up, as if everything that befalls a population is somehow your fault and your responsibility. . .and so we helpfully juggle wars and natural disasters as enemies, international thugs and extortionists of the cloth plot against all. . .and even the greatest of nations can burn to the ground without evidence of flame. . . while you ponder the philosophical argument, who is better or worse off, their dead or your dead?

Newspaper Blanket / New Windmill Mystery in NY

We're incapable of becoming properly overwhelmed because there is so much, so very much, that we don't know about those mysteries which intrude momentarily into our existence. Yet, the snippets float by endlessly, just enough to remind open minds about a presence, comings and goings of extraordinary things beyond our control or comprehension. Some might insist upon secrecy in the belief that certain knowledge must be denied and obfuscated at all costs, while others profess an obligation to publicly reveal all things, both bright and horrible.

I grew up in an era when newspapers were still king, the crafty survivors of television's dawn because they did what fledgling TV news broadcasts wouldn't do -- report stories in remarkable depth, sometimes incorporating entire pages to do so. And without inexpensive video recorders available to the general public, one would necessarily clip and save newspaper articles of importance to the individual or group.

The inevitable marriage of the Information Age to electronic communication is a milestone but, we fear, not necessarily a step set comfortably in stone. With knowledge quickly gained comes knowledge, implications and common sense lost and doomed to be overlooked simply because events and time are recorded faster and faster, displacing mass in one area while piling mass in others. All the while, the classically trained print journalists die off, retreat or disappear, likely feeling as discarded and unwanted as tin soldiers abandoned in a landfill toy box.

That's why I consider myself so lucky when I can actually hold a newspaper clipping in my hands, an historical dated document anchored in printers' ink, information on paper threatened temporarily only by age and condition, and not by hard drive failures or cyberspace disasters. The deleted, the overridden, the replaced, the hacking and altering, the constant worries, gone.

The past. There are researchers out there who believe it's a mistake to concentrate too much on the older UFO cases, and I respectfully disagree. All manner of contraptions fly throughout international air space these days, and except in rare cases I suspect the process of narrowing facts down to a distinction between real UFO and not-a-UFO is tougher than ever, particularly because the level of official cooperation is almost impossible to access by the average researcher, now that everything is national security this and homeland security that.

Wallowing in older UFO cases is just fine with me. The 1940s, fifties, sixties and seventies especially, wow, those are the decades of remarkable, breathtaking UFO incidents, many of which were investigated in amazing depth by private investigators.

So today I'm featuring a couple of tidbits from years past, reminded again that newspapers are the rare tool whose archival hard-copy presence will eventually be sorely missed in a world ever more dependent upon digital images, fading pixels and deteriorating chemical media for knowledge. In some ways, prehistoric cave drawings were the best communication devices, enduring and still relevant once discovered ages later by explorers.

Syndicated newspaper entertainment columnist Leonard Lyons inserted these words into an article appearing across the nation early in February, 1967, and so few they were that one wonders if readers understood the enormity of their meaning: "During Col. John Glenn's visit to the Barberry Room he mentioned his feeling that certain reports of flying saucers are legitimate." Glenn, perhaps unaware that his brief comment would receive national press, portrayed himself as yet another astronaut somehow in the know about the UFO issue and not about to dismiss it. How unusual to find this gem mixed in with news about actors Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and other members of the arts and entertainment community.

Almost seven years later, there was this tidbit from the New York Times (via UPI) of October 17, 1973: Retired U.S. Air Force officer and meteorologist James Thornhill, civil defense director for Columbia, Mississippi, was sitting before a radar screen as an unidentified object appeared on the scope. Suddenly, the object stopped moving and the radar equipment failed simultaneously. Shortly thereafter, people began calling him to report seeing unidentified flying objects in the sky.

Of course, it had been, what, around four years by then since the beloved Colorado University UFO project, at taxpayer expense and waste, had assured one and all through lies and misinformation that UFOs were nothing special. That's what we got, and this is what we have. So now, in 2010, the FAA, the gov, seems just to have passed off UFO investigative responsibilities to a private concern -- while its own written instructions still maintain plenty of room at the table for official reporting -- required reporting -- despite what we might think. The clock ticks on. (Read on. . .)

NY WINDMILL CRASH: For those of you intrigued by this sort of "thing," particularly because a British windmill was seriously damaged a year ago, perhaps in conjunction with reports of strange lights in the sky (ref. The Sun of January 8, 2009, England, headlined "UFO Hits Wind Turbine"), I bring you this: On December 27, 2009 at a windmill farm in the town of Fenner, New York (USA) an entire three million dollar windmill was discovered to have toppled over, right from its base, crashing to the ground in the night. Apparently, at least one person admitted hearing the crash. For several days, televised reports indicated that the incident remains a mystery. Last I heard, the power company owning the wind farm had hired an engineering firm to come in and investigate, and brief news reports following that maneuver indicated that the mystery remained. I tend to believe that everybody is/was initially concerned with the base of the structure, when -- you never know -- maybe they should have focused first on the blade condition. The incident may well have a rational explanation (terrorism seems to have been quickly ruled out, at least by the fast-trackers), but I'm just throwing this out there for those of you who tend to dive into these events. One ponders whether Charles Fort's wit might have suggested the teamwork of massive bird flocks dedicated to toppling assumed aviary threats, or perhaps a giant squirrel squadron, angered that perhaps they were unable to access a giant rotating bird feeder atop the structure. Should no eventual solution be found, um, one suspects the authorities will whip something plausible up anyway -- at least something that won't offend the masses whose preferences call for neat, clean and normal theories.