And now for something completely different...

As you may, or may not, have noticed I haven't been writing much lately. However, today I was driving a lot and I used the opportunity to listen to some podcasts. Listening to the paracast inspired me to post a rant on their forums and, since I bothered to actually write something, I figured I would cross post it to my blog.

This is a rant about UFOs and it occasionally includes foul language. If foul language offends you, please do not read this post.

Post Script: Since making this initial post I had second thoughts about whether or not I should keep it up. Then, this morning, my newsfeed was filled with notifications about a new Steven Greer video which was posted online. If you want to see an excellent example of someone who is selling out the human race or, at the least, humiliating himself by prostrating before imaginary non-human entities, I encourage you to watch the video was well.


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I have been listening to the Paracast off and on for the past month or so (slowly catching up on past episodes). I’m quite enjoying the show and I really appreciate the general tone of the program. As I listen to the show, like many others, often times I wonder why the moderators don’t ask this question, or that. I think this is a fairly natural response and since the program can’t always be a roundtable some questions will always fall through the cracks.

On one episode the following point of view was voiced “That, while it seemed reasonable to believe that military personal might keep deep dark secrets, it was hard to believe that those in the civilian world could do so.” To be frank, I find this point of view to be a bit naïve or, at least, uninformed.

I would like to think most of us know, by now, what a deep, dark and slippery rabbit hole conspiratorial thinking can lead a person into. However, from the point of view of the rationalist, we should not let our distaste for conspiratorial thought make us turn a blind eye to the basic facts of how real secrets are maintained on a regular basis in both the military and civilian world.

As Robert Anton Wilson was often inclined to point out, conspiracies are the life blood of our primate species. We protect our secrets, and our beliefs, with the same degree of ferocity as a lowland Gorilla might defend his own personal territory. All primates’ fight to control their territorial rights and, primates such as ourselves, extend the concept of territory into the realm of ontological belief; defending beliefs, secrets, with as much vigor as any other animal would defend its turf.

Before I continue, I feel compelled to disclose my own personal bias and perspective. I have never seen a UFO. I have never witnessed any paranormal event, other than one occasion that was probably insignificant. I have not been abducted by aliens. I don’t experience poltergeist activity. I do not believe in the dogma of any formal organized religion. I am a Freemason, but I am attracted to that organization primarily based on its moral tenets and deist heritage as demonstrated by past members such as George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.

I am interested in the UFO phenomenon in particular, and the paranormal in general, with the same enthusiasm I find myself interested in any mystery surrounding life, the Universe, and everything.

In the far flung past, I once had a library of UFO books that were the envy of no one, and engaged in endless discussion and debate on the Compuserve message forums way, way, way, back in the pre-Internet days.

I have spoken to many UFO experiencers, including so called ‘alien abductees’, and many others who have had some fairly deep and profound paranormal experiences.

I know enough about the subject that, unlike the hardened skeptic, I am unwilling to call my friends liars. All I can say is that, in the end, they experienced something that I have not.

I also remember, and remind myself, on a steady and regular basis, that the members of the United States Government and, and more specifically, the members of the military and the military industrial complex are good men and women who have our own best interests at heart. I always remind myself of the simple fact that the great UFO cover-up is *NOT* conducted by the US government, or the government of any nation on earth. The UFO cover-up is expertly conducted by the mother-fuckers who fly the fucking UFOs. (And you can quote me on that.)

You see, I’m a humanist at heart. I hold my head high and with pride in the human race, and the members or the US military who have sworn to defend our nation. There has been no evidence in all of the recorded history of this phenomenon to suggest in any way that these UFO encounters are open, honest, positive, or in any way something we should embrace or accept. An argument could be made that it is largely benign (that is unless you are one of the poor unfortunates who claims to have been abducted). I suppose another argument could be made that they really don’t matter all that much compared to death and taxes. Still I don’t think an argument can be made that the UFOs, and their alleged occupants, have our best interests at heart or are truthful and honest in any way, shape or form. Both Vallee and Jung did plenty of work to clearly demonstrate that these denizens of hyperspace closely match the trickster archetype of human mythology and, at the minimum, have committed the crime of seriously fucking with a great number of people’s heads.

If I have ever made any impact in the UFO field in any way, it has been in my constant criticism of the likes of Steven Greer who embarrasses himself and, by proxy our nation and the human race, by prostrating himself before this disturbing set of phenomena. While he goes groveling in corn-fields with a flash light trying to attract the attention of his space brothers, and while he decries the secrecy of the US military (sworn to protect us from such threats), he conveniently forgets that the UFOs hold all of the cards in this not quite so funny game of cat and mouse.

The UFOs can end the cover-up tomorrow, yesterday, today. Yet they refuse to do so. Personally, I think this is a point that people need to remember, remember again, and remember some more. The architects of the UFO cover-up are the assholes flying the UFOs.

With that preamble aside, I would like to return to the main point I wanted to address with this post.

Can civilian organizations keep secrets? Really? Is that really a question? Does anyone on the Paracast actually know how intelligence systems operate?

All I can do at this point is relate a few of my own personal anecdotes.

I have a brother who works on black programs. He works on spy satellites for a major civilian corporation. Some number of years ago my brother was sent to Australia. You see, somewhere in Australia, and I don’t know where, is a US military facility which does something or other related to satellite communications. When my brother was sent to Australia he went away for about six months. Once there, he could neither receive phone calls from the outside work nor could he send any out. My brother has never told me about anything that he has ever done, nor would he do so.

Did I mention, this is my own brother?

Ok, so another anecdote might serve. I had a boss who previously worked for a major military defense contractor. At the time, considering my interest in the UFO subject, I constantly pestered him over and over, and over again. However, never would he yield. Still, one day, he did share with me a story to demonstrate the extent to which secrecy is maintained even within civilian defense organizations. The story he shared was this. He had been sent to a place, which he would not say, and on this trip he carried with him a briefcase containing some important documents. The briefcase was strapped directly to his own wrist.

On his way to deliver these documents he had a layover in Las Vegas. In relating this story he would not say where he was going, what he was doing, or anything else; though one might guess it was to Groom Lake. He would certainly not have confirmed or denied such a thing.

During his layover in Vegas he had some time to kill and walked down to the hotel lobby into the casino; briefcase still attached of course. He sat down at a table and just a few minutes later two gentlemen walked up to him and asked him “Do you really think you should be here with that?”

Other anecdotes he related were on going spot checks for security clearances, friends and neighbors being contacted, and these continued on ever well *after* he left working for the major defense contractor.

The point I am trying to get across here is that if you do any degree of investigation into how security clearances work, and take into consideration compartmentalization of information, that for anyone to claim that ‘civilian employees couldn’t keep a secret’ is simply an expression of ignorance about how the system operates.

During my years of heavy interest in the UFO phenomenon, particularly in the early to mid 1990’s, I would make a habit of bringing the subject up on a steady and regular basis. People forget that before the UFO topic had seeped so deeply into our culture just how taboo that it really was. Back in the 1970’s and 1980’s, demonstrating an interest in UFOs held about just as much cache as telling someone just how much you enjoyed child pornography.

I don’t think people realize just how dramatic a shift has occurred in our culture over the past few decades. And, I will get back to this point in a moment..

So, during this time frame, I would bring this topic up as often as I could even when conversing with strangers, simply to gauge their reactions. One time I did this I talked to a gentleman who had previously been in the military but was now out of the service. In response to my query he said, ‘Well, I have never seen a UFO or anything, but now that you bring that up there is a funny thing that happened to me once.’

He then relayed an anecdote that when he was in the service he went though lots of various training programs. One of them was in military intelligence. As part of that training, one day, he and other members of his team were shown a short film on the topic of UFOs; which included footage of a crash retrieval.

What it important about this story is that *no one said anything to them before the film was shown* and no one said anything to them after it ended! There was not one word spoken, they were just shown the film and that was the end of it. The man who relayed this story to me was completely mystified by the experience and it was the only UFO story he could relate from his entire life. He had no more idea of the meaning of it than you or I.

In a larger sense, as I said before, I believe people have lost complete perspective of how significantly attitudes have changed about the UFO topic in our culture; mostly because many people are too young to have witnessed the long slow transformation which has occurred.

I was peripherally involved in the infamous ‘Alien Autopsy’ tape. As the debate raged on about this film what amazed me was how few people seemed to appreciate the real significance of the film!!

It didn’t matter if the film was ‘real’ or ‘not real’. None of that mattered in the end because, quite obviously, the chain of evidence was so corrupted from the start that it was a moot point.

The only ‘real’ affect of the film was that millions upon millions of people watched a semi-realistic snuff filmed autopsy of an alleged alien corpse on national television. They watched it, debated it, maybe even watched the disembowelment over dinner and, guess what; no one got particularly upset or enraged, or had their feathers particularly ruffled.

As I said earlier, I believe the sole responsibility of the great UFO cover-up is in the hands of the mother fuckers who fly the UFOs. Just my opinion, but hear me out on this. Now, I do believe the US government realizes that these UFOnauts could choose to end their cover-up whenever they wish. I also believe there has been a low-grade process of acclimation to the idea of a UFO/ET reality going on for decades.

The fact of the matter is that if a UFO hovered over the Whitehouse tomorrow, not only would it not cause any great stir (I’m not sure it could survive much more than 48 hours of a 24 hour news cycle in a world where 20% of the public supposedly doesn’t believe men landed on the moon, or believe grand conspiracies behind 9-11). I’m not sure that such a UFO event would affect our society about as much as whether Brittany Spears does or does not sport underwear at the MTV music awards.

Or, maybe I’m wrong. Either way, just say no to the great ET/UFO cover-up, tell your local ET/UFO to cut their shit and get the hell off of our planet and the next time you see F-18’s scramble don’t curse them, maybe you should show some pride in your country (and species) and say ‘Go get them.’

John W. Ratcliff