Friday, September 16, 2005

A Strange Notice

This is one of those pictures of indeterminate origin. Whether it's real or a put-on, it's pretty funny. Click the photograph to enlarge. . .


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Happy Birthday KAC

KAC in 1977, New York City.
Click to enlarge this fabulous
babe's picture.

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Senator Jerry Melin Speaks Out About 1979

this is an audio post - click to play

This excerpt from the archives was taped on Christmas Day 1979, at 324 Atlantic Avenue, Apt. 2R, in Brooklyn. As it grew late, we began recording a pseudo-radio show, recapping the year's events, and the prognostications of the various parties "in the studio." I was the moderator, and winging it. . .I just said whatever popped into my head, and gave each of the people their roles. They then had to vamp for a few minutes. Naturally, Mel's contribution was priceless. Again, sorry for the quality...having to use the telephone puts some pretty serious limits on the fidelity. I will try to put up a couple more excerpts soon.

Present at this taping: Jerry Melin, Sean Curran, Keelin Curran, Jack, Nicholas Gattuccio, Colin Curran, and Kevin Curran.

I am putting this up to celebrate what would be Mel's 51st birthday. /jack

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Audio Blog: Jerry Melin & Jack Discuss Shakespeare & "Self-love" Late One Night In NYC


this is an audio post - click to play

Of the dozens of hours of audio tape I recorded in NYC, only about half an hour seems to still exist, all fairly low-quality, and mostly group projects. I suspect there are cassettes rattling around in cardboard boxes somewhere out there...(if you have them, I'll copy them and send them back!).

I spent many late night hours with Jerry Melin, filling C-90 Cassette tapes with whatever gibberish popped into our heads. A few bits still exist, and I'll be posting them off and on. Between the marginal quality of the originals, and having to pump it into Blogspot via a telephone line (vs. uploading a WAV or MP3), it's a little rocky. . .but perhaps worth listening to. This is 49 seconds long, from 1980. I am putting it up today to celebrate what would have been Mel's 51st birthday. /jack

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Word Verification On Blogs

In the last week, All This Is That has been getting hammered by spam in the comments. The only real fix for this is to turn on "word verification." This means that when you make a comment you will be required to type in a word you see on screen--this word is a bitmap, and not readable by bots and other automated spamming. This means that (for now!) it takes a human being to read the word and pass this step. Sorry for the inconvenience, but the spam is ridiculous. . .

See below for an example of a couple of spams deposited here today, and the fix...the word verification box. /jack


click to enlarge image
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More Shows I've Seen Over The Years

When I wrote last week about my favorite rock (and jazz) shows from The Beatles to The Bluebirds, I left out dozens, of course. I caught the most dramatic ones, but I missed quite a few. Here is the next batch. I'll probably put up another one in a week or so, as more cobwebs fall away. . .

First, three musical events that weren't actually shows...


Steve Griggs, Milo Petersen, Elvin Jones,
Jay Thomas, and Phil Sparks. Photo by Kate Kulzer.

Elvin Jones/the Steve Griggs Quintet) recording session, May, 1998, the suburban boondocks of Seattle.

Elvin Jones came to Seattle to record an album with four Seattle players: bandleader saxophonist Steve Griggs, bassist Phil Sparks, Jay Thomas on trumpet, and guitarist (and often, drummer) Milo Petersen. They recorded out at Bear Creek for two or three days. Milo, a friend since childhood, got me to skip work and come out to the sessions. I spent about five hours there, enthralled with watching this jazz great play. It was really something special. I think for everyone in the studio it was a Big Moment. This guy who played on Coltrane's greatest albums was so generous to these guys, and seemed to dig their music, and playing. Bear Creek was a fantastic, cozy, beautiful old studio, kind of out in the woods, north of Bothell, Wash. They have a beautiful old analog console. Two CDs came out of these sessions: Jones for Elvin, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. You can get them on Amazon. Click here for a good article on this recording session. After the session, I got to eat dinner with the band and talk to Elvin. He gave me a hug when I left.

Gilda Radner album recording session. New York City, 1981. Our friend Cheryl was the music director, so we got to be part of the studio audience. We got to meet everyone (like Jane Curtin and Gilda). I can't remember who else was there or who the session players were. Bill Murray was our warm up. Before Gilda Radner would perform (and record) another song, Bill would come out to fluff us up for the performance. He was funny, and friendly. . .as he was every time I met him (two or three times, when I was with Cheryl. She also introduced us to all sorts of people, like the entire Saturday Night Live cast, Maxine Andrews, various cabaret figures, Bob Cranshaw, Lorna Luft, Divine, Buck Henry, Howard Shore, Lorne Michaels, and many more I am forgetting). Keelin was carrying a paper bag for some reason, and Bill Murray made a joke that she had stocked up on the buffet table.


Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg playing harmonium and chanting William Blake songs. WWU, Bellingham, Wash. 1976. Another meeting with a hero. He came to our classroom (a senior level poetry class) and for an hour or so sang and played harmonium to the Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake. He had appeared in all the books I had read by Kerouac, was a friend and lover of Neal Cassady, knew Kesey, helped William Burroughs assemble his Naked Lunch manuscript, and written some great poetry. This was an inspiring moment. I would meet him one more time. . .in New York City, at the Grassroots Bar on St. Mark's Place. Jerry Melin hailed him, and he came and talked to us, and gave Jerry a big kiss on the forehead. I have a tape somewhere of Jerry relating this story. . .

Dan Hicks And His Hot Licks, Seattle, Mid-70's and 2002 - I saw him twice. Once in the 70's (at Seward Park, with some local Seattle bands on the bill), and on August 31, 2002, at The Bumbershoot Festival. I love the old timey music, the violin, the chorus of women. Jerry Melin was the biggest fan I ever knew, and the last time I ever saw him, he played an obscure CD by them he had ordered from England...I'm An Old Cowhand, I Scare Myself, and Walking One And Only are some of my favorite songs. In the show at Bumbershoot, he was still the sly showman.


Lou Reed

Lou Reed, Memorial Stadium Seattle, Aug. 31, 2002. I was a big fan of Velvet Underground music, and a lot of Reed's . But this concert blew. It was a huge disappointment. The best part was when he read some poetry (the part that really put the rest of the audience off). Sometimes a legend just isn't so legendary...let sleeping dogs lie, and all those cliches. . .

George Harrison (with Billy Preston, Jim Keltner, Tom Scott and others), Seattle. Nov. 4, 1974. This was the tour around his Dark Horse album. Georges voice was famously hoarse on this album, and on this tour. But it was good to see him.

Ravi Shankar, Seattle, 1974. (Opened for his student George Harrison on the Dark Horse tour). Sitar and Tablas. . .good stuff.

Sky Cries Mary
Sweetwater
John Wesley Harding
The Posies
The Crash Test Dummies
Puyallup Fair, September 1995. What a great lineup! All except for the headliners, The Crash Test Dummies. Sky Cries Mary (now defunct) was great. The Posies got into playing some hair rock. This was Brian Young's first show as the The Posies new drummer. Eventually he left, of course, and became the drummer for Fountains of Wayne.

John Hammond - Bumbershoot, the 90's. Mellow, cool, blues guy.

The Roches, Bumbershoot, Seattle, 1995. I liked their humor and easy harmonies.

The Roches (With Brian Eno), New York City, 1980. We saw them, I believe, at The Bottom Line. This was pretty early in their career, and they were great. Doubly cool was Brian Eno, who sat in and played guitar for part of the show. It was great just to see him in person in a small club...

The Fastbacks. I've seen them several times. They are about the oldest Seattle band (I think 20 years together or something like that). Kim Warnick was married for a time to Ken Stringfellow of The Posies.


The Buddy and Julie Miller Band

Buddy and Julie Miller. Bumbershoot, Seattle, September 1, 2002. One of my favorite new (or "alt") country bands. Buddy is a phenomenal guitar player (and Emmylou Harris's guitar player) and writer, and Julie has a terrific voice and stage presence. I didn't go to their show that night at The Tractor which sounded like a lot of fun. They don't come on tour often enough!

Delbert McLinton. A Woodland Park Zoo show, Seattle, August 13, 2002. This was a snoozer show, made better only by The Buddy Miller Band that opened for him. Unfortunately Julie was not there.

Bela Fleck - Woodland Park Zoo, Seattle. 2003. Great show, lots of standout performances by the band. Bela, as always, was a pleasure.

Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Big Band, New York City, about 1980. The legendary big band played every Monday night at a club in the Village. We got to see them in some of their last years. I would get to see Thad's brother Elvin play twenty years later in the recording session mentioned above...

Ornette Coleman - Two times, in about 1978, at a loft around Cooper Square, NYC. Crazy stuff.

Carla Bley Big Band. Public Theatre. NYC, 1980. A hilarious show. It was so refreshing to see jazz with a little humor thrown in. . .jazz folks just take themselves a little too seriously.

Al Green -At the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, CA, mid-1980's. How could this not be great? He is one of the most innovative and moving R & B performers ever.

Mudhoney - at pain in the grass concert at the Horiuchi mural, Seattle, ('97). Legendary Seattle band. Nice show.

Presidents of The United States (2 times) , at Pain In The Grass, Seattle, early 2000s. This was at their peak. They played tuneful knucklehead/frat boy rock on a bassitar and a guitbass...instruments with two or three strings each.

Widespread Panic. Twice at Paramount Northwest. 1999 and election night, 2000. I liked their jams, and the guitar player who sat totally immobile, never moving an inch or looking up, hunched over the guitar with his hair in his eyes. He died a few years later, very young. They were a great jam band, with the same affliction many jam bands (like Phish) have: the singer can't sing. Jerry Garcia was like Pavarotti compared to most of these guys.

Andy Narrell. Steel drum player at The Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, about 1985. Even if his music appeared on Windham Hill, it was good. In later years his music has become more ethnic, incorporating more calypso and African elements.

Pat Metheny. Paramount Northwest, Seattle, about 1995. This was fun. I had been skeptical. He is a serious player. Like the Andy Narrell show, I went to this one with my friend from San Francisco David Grosten.



Eartha Kitt, 2003. Jazz Alley, Seattle. An inspiration, and like many people, I admired her for the way she stood up to LBJ at the White House (I wrote about that earlier here, with a great picture of LBJ staring her down... My friend Milo Petersen usually plays drums for her during her annual week in Seattle, at Jazz Alley. She's still a tease and has a sly, cabaret sort of sense of humor.

Stanley Turrentine. 1999. Jazz Alley, Seattle. An awful show. He was milking it.

Bob Weir, with Ratdog, at Bumbershoot, 2002. Like most Dead spinoffs, I liked seeing them but it never moved me in the way the real Grateful Dead did (and still do). Not even close.

The Other Ones. The Gorge, George, Washington. 200? See the comment above under Bob Weir.

The Dead (Grateful Dead minus Jerry Garcia with Joan Osborne, Jimmy Herring, Rob Barraco. The Gorge, George Washington, September 21, 2003. See the comment above under Bob Weir. Except this: Joan Osborne rocked! If they could have really incorporated her, they would have really had something. She was flirtatious, danced, and had fun, and of course, her voice is amazing.

Wynton Marsalis - I saw, him as mentioned previously, with Dizzy Gillespie. His brother Branford is much more to my liking, but Wynton is extremely talented.

The Minus Five Seattle, saw them twice around 2000. (Ken Stringfellow of The Posies, Scott McCaughey of Young Fresh Fellows, Peter Buck of REM, and various others).

Young Fresh Fellows - 1996?, Seattle Center, Horiuchi Mural. Longtime Seattle band. I like them but admit to never having bought a CD...

Paul Revere and The Raiders -
I saw them once in their prime at a "Teen Fair," and once in about 2000, as a dreadful nostalgia act.

Son Volt - Bumbershoot 2005. Shoegazing alt-country...sort of. I thought their reputation was better than their performance.

Mavis Staples - Bumbershoot, Seattle, 2005. A fun show. You could tell how important it was to her to preserve the memory of the Staples, and Pop Staples in particular.

Etta James - I have seen her twice at Bumbershoot, both times in the mid-90's.

Maria Manville -
A very odd cabaret singer in NYC. She was like a pet project of our friends Cheryl and Pinky.

Oscar Peterson - I was lucky enough to see in around 1983. Unfortunately, I remember little of the piano legend's show. . .well, I'm pretty sure he played piano...

Emily Remmler - Great guitar player. We saw her at a Jazz festival a year or so before her death (a heroin OD, I think). Sometime in the 80's.

George Cables - I can't remember much about his show either. He is an L.A.-based pianist.

Supersax - An ensemble of sax players that played only Bird songs. It was a strange sound, but I liked it a lot...We saw them at the Port Townsend Jazz Festival

Ray Brown - Legendary bass player. This was late in his career, but he could swing.

Taj Mahal - I saw him once at a rock festival, and once at Jazz Alley in about 2001.
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Tuesday, September 13, 2005

It Won't Last Long, I Suspect. . .

A fine Google prank.

Enter the word "failure" as a G.I.S. and look at the results. This was still working at 4:00 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, September 13, 2005. It brings up George Bush's official biography, as does the phrase "miserable failure," or, at least it used to.

Google actually has nothing to do with it [1]other than taking no action against the Google bombing. The New York Times quotes Google: "Craig Silverstein, Google's director for technology, says the company sees nothing wrong with the public using its search engine this way. No user is hurt, he said, because there is no clearly legitimate site for "miserable failure" being pushed aside.

[1] Snopes.com tell us "How did this come about, especially since the phrase "miserable failure" appears nowhere in the President's biography? It was the result of a "Google bombing" project organized by George Johnston back at the end of October 2003, in which he used his blog to urge others to include links connecting the phrase "miserable failure" (a term used prominently by Democratic hopeful Dick Gephardt) with the President's biography in their own web sites and blogs:

Let's get everyone to link to http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html with the words "Miserable Failure." Our goal is to make Shrubya the top google pick. It's fun, it's easy just Miserable Failure in your favorite web page will look like
Miserable Failure

According to Mr. Johnston's progress report, by the last week of November 2003 the Bush biography was the #2 result on Google for "miserable failure," and — after more and more netizens implemented the same link on their sites and urged others to do the same — it reached the top spot soon afterward. (A #1 ranking at Google brings the added bonus of returning the targeted site when users select the search engine's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.) "

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Pat Robertson Only Managed To Keep His Foot Out Of His Mouth Two Weeks (It May Be A Record!)

On Sunday, Pat Robertson--on his 700 Club TV broadcast--said that Hurricane Katrina was God's way of expressing His anger at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for its selection of Ellen Degeneres to host this year's Emmy Awards.


"By choosing an avowed lesbian for this national event, these Hollywood elites have clearly invited God's wrath. Is it any surprise that the Almighty chose to strike at Miss Degeneres' hometown?"

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Update: Mike Brown Quits, Escaping The Hangman's Noose; POTUS Whistles In The Dark, Insanely Denying Knowing Of Brown's Departure

"In the best interest of the agency and best interest of The President," FEMA director Mike Brown resigned on Monday. It was time. You think?!

Brown is the cat responsible for the biggest public relations disaster in the history of FEMA, and an ongoing catastrophe for the already enfeebled Bush Administration. [1] Brown was replaced on Friday at the helm of the relief effort, losing on-site command of the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. Chertoff said they were bringing him back to Washington to prepare for the next disaster. Yeah. It was such a an open and deliberately humiliating public dismissal, that you have to wonder if they even gave him the option to resign. More likely, they ordered him to endure a few days of public ignominy before he put the gun in his mouth.

Brown said he feared he had become a distraction. "The focus has got to be on FEMA, what the people are trying to do down there," Brown told The Associated Press.

The president ducked questions about Brown's resignation. "Maybe you know something I don't know. I've been working," the president said to reporters on an inspection tour of damage in Gulfport, Miss...


Mike Brown is lucky to get off this easy. There are hordes of people in The South who would welcome the chance to string him up.







Ether this is the dumbest thing The President has ever said in public, or he is criminally out of touch, or, actually, both. The highest profile administration official over the last two weeks quits and POTUS says "I don't know!" This may be the last unscripted moment of the Bush Presidency. . .and if it isn't, the G.O.P. should run Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card, Jr. out of town on a rail.


[1] Before you ccomplain about the subject of this post, remember, I am talking about politics, not the lives of the citizens in NO that have been savagely disrupted, and ended by the Hurricane and subsequent events. This particular post focuses on the some of the political ramifications.
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Monday, September 12, 2005

President Bush's Approval Ratings Plummet Into The Toilet (Down 40 Points And Counting)


In September, 2005, President Bush's job approval dipped below 40 percent
for the first time in numerous polls[1]. Apparently. . . seemingly. . . due to some big doubts about the war, the gas crisis, and his Administration's pathetic, anemic, and almost criminal response to Hurricane Katrina.

After the 9/11 attacks on New York City, The Pentagon, and that field out there in the boondocks, his numbers soared into the 80s. Now, nearly two-thirds of those polled this month say the country is heading down the wrong track. OK. We've been headed down that track since 1-20-2001. It just took five years for the polls to kick in.

Fact: His standing is now lower than President Nixon's shortly before he resigned in a miasma of lies, deception, and near-madness.

Click on the title to read an Associated Press article on the latest polling data.
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[1] Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
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The Oil Storm: Prescient, Or Lucky Guess?

Last June, Fox aired a made-for-tv movie entitled Oil Storm. I'm not sure if it was prescient, or if anyone could have predicted this could happen sooner or later. Here is Fox's synopsis of the film:

"Oil Storm examines what happens when a category 6 hurricane in the gulf of mexico slams into Louisiana, crushing the city of New Orleans and crippling the vital pipeline for refined oil that is Port Fourchon. It examines the ripple effect of that event and the ensuing cascade of disasters associated with it, through the eyes of public officials, a family in Texas who owns a gas station, an EMS worker in Boston who has to deal with a brutal winter, and a ranching family in South Dakota who have their subsidy's completely taken away and question whether we need oil or food to survive.

"As the country reels from the loss of life and energy reserves associated with hurricane's fury, the price of crude oil skyrockets and the United States government sets forth to take immediate action. It puts in motion efforts to rebuild the infrastructure of Port Fourchon (8 months minimum) and the sagging and disabled deep sea rigs in the gulf of Mexico (of equal length). It re-routes activity normally associated with the Port Fourchon shipping lanes to the port of Houston and compels Houston to work 24/7 in order to get the crude to our refineries and out to the public."
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Alien Mythology Continued: The Deal

You can find this story in hundreds of places on the internet. (for one, try http://www.thewatcherfiles.com/)

From The Dulce Book, Chapter 3:

"In July 1952, a panicked government watched helplessly as a squadron of 'flying saucers' flew over Washington, D.C., and buzzed the White House, the Capitol Building, and the Pentagon. It took all the imagination and intimidation the government could muster to force that incident out of the memory of the public.

"Thousands of sightings occurred during the Korean war and several more saucers were retrieved by the Air Force. Some were stored at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, some were stored at Air Force bases near the locations of the crash site.

"One saucer was so enormous and the logistic problems in transportation so enormous that it was buried at the crash site and remains there today. The stories are legendary on transporting crashed saucers over long distances, moving only at night, purchasing complete farms, slashing through forests, blocking major highways, sometimes driving 2 or 3 lo-boys in tandem with an extraterrestrial load a hundred feet in diameter. (It is alleged that ALPHA or BLUE Teams out of Wright-Patterson AFB were the ones who were most often mobilized to carry out "crash-retrieval" operations. - Branton)

"On April 30, 1964, the first communication [occurred] between these aliens and the 'U.S. Government'. (Others claim that there was an even earlier contact-communication in 1954 during the Eisenhower administration. - Branton)

"During the period of 1969-1971, MJ-12 representing the U.S. Government made a deal with these creatures, called EBE's [Extraterrestrial Biological Entities, named by Detley Bronk, original MJ-12 member and 6th President of John Hopkins University]. The 'deal' was that in exchange for 'technology' that they would provide to us, we agreed to 'ignore' the abductions that were going on and suppress information on the cattle mutilations. The EBE's assured MJ-12 that the abductions [usually lasting about 2 hours] were merely the ongoing monitoring of developing civilizations.

"In fact, the purposes for the abductions turned out to be:

"(1) The insertion of a 3mm spherical device through the nasal cavity of the abductee into the brain [optic and/or nerve center], the device is used for the biological monitoring, tracking, and control of the abductee.

"(2) Implementation of Posthypnotic Suggestion to carry out a specific activity during a specific time period, the actuation of which will occur within the next 2 to 5 years.

"(3) Termination of some people so that they could function as living sources for biological material and substances.

"(4) TERMINATION OF INDIVIDUALS WHO REPRESENT A THREAT TO THE CONTINUATION OF THEIR ACTIVITY.

"(5) Effect genetic engineering experiments.

"(6) Impregnation of human females and early termination of pregnancies to secure the crossbreed infant.

(Note: Or perhaps a better term for it would be a "genetically altered" infant, since there has been no evidence forthcoming that an actual 'hybrid' between humans and the 'EBE' or 'Grey' species has been successful. In other words, the offspring would tend to fall to one side or the other, a 'reptilioid' or 'grey' entity possessing no 'soul-energy-matrix', or a humanoid being possessing such a matrix or soul although somewhat altered genetically in it's outward physical appearance or characteristics. - Branton).

"The U.S. Government was NOT initially aware of the far reaching consequences of their 'deal'. They were LED to believe that the abductions were essentially benign AND SINCE THEY FIGURED THAT THE ABDUCTIONS WOULD PROBABLY GO ON ANYWAY WHETHER THEY AGREED OR NOT, they merely insisted on a current list of abductees be submitted, on a periodic basis, to MJ-12 and the National Security Council. Does this sound incredible? An actual list of abductees sent to the National Security Council? Read on, because I have news for you...

"The EBE's have a genetic disorder in that their digestive system is atrophied and not functional... In order to sustain themselves they use enzyme or hormonal secretions obtained from the tissues that they extract from humans and animals. "
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