. THOUGHTS ON ALAN GREENSPAN Politicians debate Greenspan proposal Associated Press WASHINGTON - Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's latest call for benefit cuts in Social Security and Medicare for future retirees touched off a frenzy among politicians in both parties already hypersensitive about the November elections. http://abcnews.go.com/reference/bios/greenspan.html http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/financial_markets/8045919.htm MY THOUGHTS ON ALAN GREENSPAN are these. This old goat has been around Washington D.C. for more years than he should have. The only thing I have against the Clinton administration is that Greenspan was allowed to stay. We the people of the United States have supported Greenspan to a free ride on the government payroll. At the age of seventy-eight he should voluntary place himself in an Alzheimer ward where he can be properly cared for. Instead of advising President Bush to get the hell out of Iraq and quit throwing our hard earned money down a busted oil well, he wants to take away the retirement plans of the American people.

SAME SEX MARRIAGES Do we have the right to tell other people what they can and can't do? I have never had a desire to marry another male. In fact the whole idea to me is absurd, but there are those among us who wish to enter these relationships. Two men or women live together for years. They might buy property and pay off the debt using each others money. Should something happen to one of the people in such a situation then the survivor may not have legal rights to ownership. They can't get tax breaks that married couples get, nor can they enter into other monetary relations that married couples can. Of course these marriages are making the Bible thumpers get in their pulpits and bring the wrath of God down on these sinners./ Following anorther train of thought, in the Old Testament, God put a man to death for spilling his seed on the ground. How many sermons have been preached about spilling sexual discharges somewhere but in a woman? Using logic, if doing one thing that is prohibited in the Bible is wrong, isn't another thing equally wrong?/ Perhaps it would have been better to have made it possible for same sex couples to sign a legal contract instead of getting married. This isn't the way these people wanted it so do we have the right to forbid them from saying marriage vows?

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST Darwin wrote a book about the survival of the fittest, and preachers still call him a godless atheist who taught that evolution was a natural process without outside help. It is very doubtful that Darwin was trying to prove there isn't a Divine Being. Whatever, we should take note of his thoughts and try to apply them to our own situation. OVER POPULATION is causing water and air pollution. The world is fast becoming vastly over populated. Humans have to have water to survive. Because of the need for water, the world's waterways attract large numbers of people. Large numbers of people have to have a place to dump their waste. Our streams, rivers, marshes, and the oceans are becoming cesspools where organisms that support life cannot survive. Fish, birds and animal populations near heavily populated areas are dangerously low while undesirable water plants and forms of animal life are taking over. In highly polluted streams there are very few fish while turtles bask on fallen logs. Man and his combustible engines driven by petroleum energy is polluting the air. Whether the earth's atmosphere is warming up because of energy sources is being debated. Whatever the cause, weather on the earth's surface is changing. Certain areas are becoming drier while other areas are becoming wetter. Ice caps are melting causing a rise in the ocean tides. These changes maybe just earth cycles that periodically change, but the matter must be addressed. One thing we do know is that a haze of pollution is coming out of the big cities, and it is affecting life, as we know it on planet Earth. Agriculture and Urban overuse of chemicals. Animals such as cows, sheep and goats are increasing in vast herds enclosed in small areas. Their waste is being added to the waste created by humans. Agriculture use of chemicals and fertilizer are being added to the pollution. The chemical killing of water life is not restricted to farmers for urban dwellers with their lawns and golf courses are not helping matters at all. PETROLEUM POLLUTION occurs from the time oil is taken from the ground until it is burned in combustible engines. Those harvesting the earth's riches are not always careful about runoff. Waterways in countries where large amounts of oil are being pumped have to be set afire to burn off the pollution. Whether it is the Arctic wilderness or the Iraq desert, oil production makes the water and land almost sterile. Petroleum reserves are rapidly being used. Probably the thing that might save the world as we know it is when the oil pools dry up, we will have to find another source of energy to keep industry turning. Perhaps a cleaner source can be used. Instead of President Bush throwing money into killing Arabs, perhaps the money could be better spent in developing another source of energy, but trying to tell a fool what to do is almost impossible. OCEANS ARE DYING. Whether the oceans will become sterile within our lifetimes is debatable. What is not debatable is that the ocean water is daily losing its ability to support any kind of life. Coral reefs are dying at an alarming speed. Only if we can learn to safely farm the oceans can we continue to use them for food. SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST Returning to the subject that Darwin discussed, we must raise the question, "Can life as we know it survive on planet Earth?" The answer is obvious. We maybe able to intelligently change our lifestyles enough to help preserve a human friendly earth, but the way we are going about it at present makes the saving of living conditions on earth harder and harder to maintain. Whether Earth becomes a sterile planet such as Mars may depend on decisions we make soon. Whether the human species survives may depend upon our actions. http://novelsbybutler.homestead.com/untitled1.html

Erowid LSD Vault : Effects

LSD AND THE CIA AND MILITARY PERSONNEL Beginning with the end of the Truman administration through Eisenhower's time as president, the CIA carried out experiments that used military people and government workers for guinea pigs. We will probably never know how many thousands of government workers were screwed up by this gigantic crime that should have put some people in very high positions in prison. With horror the world learned of Hitler's gruesome experiments on his people, but only the tip of the iceberg has been touched on finding out about the experiments that the U.S. Government has done on its on people. The government agencies involved shredded most of its evidence. There was enough scraps left over for congressional hearings to last for two decades. http://www.tmtmetropolis.ru/stories/2002/08/16/120.html During the 1950s these experiments climbed to a mountaintop. Unfortunately I was innocently caught up in this diabolic evil crime against Navy and Army personnel. A very short synopsis of my life is important. The fifth of five living children of Mississippian David Homer Butler and Texan Melinda Ann Jenkins Butler, I was born in Alamosa, Colorado on November 14, 1929. My father was homesteading a tract of land on the former Ute Indian land in La Plata County, Colorado when he persuaded apple growers in nearby Colorado and New Mexico to let him take two box cars of Delicious apples to his mother's home in Cleburne, Texas and sell them on the Texas market. That year, scaly apples from Arkansas flooded the market so it took my dad all winter to sell the apples at a loss so he could go back to his homestead. Much of what happened can be found in the novel, Homesteaders and Sheepherders and D.H. http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=1583486127 I dropped out of Albuquerque High School during WWII to help an older brother run his farm. When the War was over I felt called to the ministry, finished high school, and by the time the Korean War was a year and a half year over I only needed one subject to complete my college degree from Eastern New Mexico University. I attended Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for two months before finances forced me to drop out and join the Navy. I entered the Navy as an enlisted man in October of 1952. Boot camp was a snap until just before Christmas I came down with pneumonia. After finishing Recruit Training near the end of March, I used my leave to finish up my college degree. After a stint as ship's company at Norfolk the Navy accepted my request to transfer me to Officer's Candidate School in New Port, Rhode Island. In the meantime I was sent to Radar School until my class was to start in November. Radar School was a snap until during a football game against another Navy team I was knocked out during an extremely rough play. In November I went to OCS with a throbbing headache and the beginning of one hell of a depression. Just before graduation it was decided that I should remain an enlisted man. The Navy cut me orders to Personnelman School at Bainbridge. After finishing third in a class of over sixty men and women my next duty station was at the U.S. Naval Receiving Station, Anacostia, Virginia just across the river from the magnificent capitol city of Washington, D.C where I was assigned the job of filling out applications for insurance, allotments, and housing for enlisted men in the area. No one bothered me because they didn't know much about what I was doing. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/anacostia.htm Trouble started after five months on duty during which time I became a Petty Officer 3rd Class instead of a Seaman. Except when three First Class Petty Officers swapped wives and left one man without a wife in the deal, in spite of fist fights that developed, the duty was pleasant. In the meantime I played on the office softball team and looked at the historical sights in D.C. The young lady I planned on making my wife was getting her degree in Botany from the University of Kentucky so I didn't do any heavy dating. As I mentioned, my untroubled time came abruptly to an end when after a day of swimming under the hot August sun ended the next morning when parts of my body started paralyzing, and a Naval car took me the thirty miles to Bethesda Naval Hospital. As we drove through the quiet Maryland countryside, a conversation came into my mind. Four or five of the career men who had been in at least one enlistment conversed about not going to Bethesda unless of an emergency. The CIA was carrying on an experiment that was changing the personality of the men involved. As the Bethesda tower came into sight, I remembered six or seven men who had recently returned to duty after a stay in the hospital. All of them had been fairly well adjusted men who did their jobs well. After their return, they became loners who cried a great deal. No matter what they were going to do to me, the doctor had diagnosed me with Polio, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about what was going to happen at Bethesda. The first days in the Neurology ward at the hospital are a blur. I didn't feel well at all, and the fact that my right leg from the hip down not only didn't have any feeling but it wouldn't move bothered me a great deal. In tests when they pricked me with sharp objects and I couldn't feel anything worried me. In case I was contagious caused them to place me in isolation for several days. Another thing, like many young adults I was afraid of going nuts. Although I had a college degree I hadn't taken psychology. To me Neurology Ward meant almost the same as Psycho Ward which was a nearby unit of several wards. When I was released to an open ward, some of the patients were very weird. A deep-sea diver had the bends, and his doctor was retraining him to remember. He had lost several years of his life when the air bubble went to his brain. A patient with Multiple Scheloris was in the bed next to me. Reaching retirement age, the career sailor was unable to walk over a few steps before he had to rest. The cripple told me, "If you can't walk, crawl. If you can't crawl, lay flat on your belly and keep going someway." This advice has stayed with me for some fifty years, only now, I ride a bicycle. In a few days a doctor introduced himself to me. He wore Commanders three silver bars on his khaki uniform shirt collar.. In his office he was very friendly and talkative about himself. Born and educated in Arkansas, he had his medical degree from the University of Arkansas. Years later I found out that he was a CIA officer on temporary duty at Bethesda to carry out chemical experiments on Navy personnel. He left after visiting with me in the ward, and later I was escorted to his office by a corpsman. Stripping down to my skivvies, a nurse brought various equipment necessary to carry out physical and mental tests. When I stretched out on an examination table, the doc began hammering, and poking me with sharp objects used to detect nerve damage. Suddenly he took his lit cigarette and put it in a metal container. I didn't realize what he had done with it until the stench of burning flesh filled my nostrils. The nurse said, "You'll burn him." Looking at my knee there was an ugly red burn."I won't treat another faker," he yelled. Had I not been afraid of going to the brig, I would have punched the dirty son of a bitch right in his big fat Arkansas nose. Suddenly I noticed that his fat belly protruded over his uniform pants. Later I found out that he spent his free time guzzling beer. He was not Navy material. Even though two doctors had told me that I had polio, he came out with a new diagnoses of Gullian Barrie Syndrome.which is another of the myriad diseases that paralysis the patients by injuring the nerves in the brain and spinal column. This particular disease sometimes shows up as after certain flu shots. Although it like polio can sometimes be mild, it can kill or cripple. Years later I found out that the only sure way of testing for polio is to take spinal fluid and test it. The only testing done on me was urine and blood test. Later I found out that an injury to the neck can damage an artery and cut off the normal flow of blood thus partially paralyzing the person. I had suffered a diving accident in the base swimming pool a few days before I almost passed out on the morning when I went to sick bay. "What I want you to do," said Fat Gut, "is sit in a dark room and meditate on what sin you committed during your childhood that is causing you to punish yourself by paralyzing yourself now." The first thing an enlisted man learns is never trust an officer who is kind. The best officers are gruff and straightforward. Most officers deal with enlisted men through petty officers. A warning flag went up when this one who had burned me offered to let me sit and drink a tall cool glass of orange juice on a hot August day. Time has erased how many days the doctor had me sit in a dark room, drink orange juice and meditate. After the morning sessions they let me go wherever my partially paralyzed body would allow me to go. There were many interesting places both inside and out the giant hospital complex surrounded by a nine-hole golf course. This is where senators, congressmen, and a few presidents have been treated. On the sixteenth floor of the Bethesda tower, there was a plaque on the door of the room where James Forestall, Secretary of Defense, is supposed to have jumped to his death on May 22, 1949.. Whether he committed suicide or was pushed is still being debated. I'm not sure how many days or how much orange juice I drank in a darken room. The only result of the treatment was heightened anxiety about the way things were going. My doctor was sending signals that my paralysis was psychosomatic. He began delving into my life before coming into the Navy. Naïve enough to think he was a trained mental health worker, I began opening up to his questioning. Except for getting my four-year hitch in the Navy over with and getting back to my theological training, there was very little bothering me. All I was trying to do was with the minimum of effort, do my job, keep my record clean, and see as much of the country I could on the meager salary the Navy paid me. Just a short time before returning to school, I had been making close to a thousand dollars a month working for El Paso Natural Gas Company. Now my salary was less than a hundred a month, and the Navy was sending half of that to my parents as an allotment that the Navy didn't match. No longer did I have a car to drive where I wanted to go. Except for occasional hikes across the Anacostia River into D.C., my life consisted of softball, work, and goofing off in the barracks. Aside from three good meals a day and a cot, life was a Spartan existence experienced by many of those in the Armed Forces during that time. There had been a few nice breaks during the summer in a new atmosphere. The office picnic had been a blast. About a hundred of us went to some park along a river and had a very pleasant day. Since my convictions kept me from consuming alcoholic beverages, my chief delight was spent hiking along the river. In the two previous years there had been few times to be alone in God's open earth. Little did I realize that the conversations I was having with Fat Gut pretending to be a psychiatrist were being taken down verbatim. That bastard even wrote down my personal feelings about people I worked with every day, and when I got back to duty, his remarks were in my Service Record for everyone to see. I'll never have enough words to express my disgust with the way the whole thing was conducted. When I was moved into a ward there was a young Marine bunking next to me. This guy was unable to move his arm after an illness. The doctor was treating him as a malinger who was afraid of a gun, therefore no ability to use his arm, he was no longer of use to the Marine Corp. If you think these faith healers on television are bad, Big Gut outdid them all. To me he represented all the bad things wrong with Navy doctors, but what could I do about it? The doctor called me into his office and told me in a very buddy to buddy matter to spend a little time each day picking up trash outside the ward. It wasn't a hard job, but to me it was demeaning for a college graduate who had found a meaningful niche in the Navy to be policing the grounds. The first day I found a whiskey bottle that was about half full. Without and thought, I dumped it and threw the bottle in the trash. All hell broke lose. The stashed bottle belonged to a First Class Petty Officer who became very indignant over the loss of his booze. The doctor called me into his office and let me know that he let the patient keep liquor to help him sleep. My trash picking up days were over. The orange juice and the talks with Fat Gut weren't helping my legs. As it had always been my habit, I continued to walk as much as I could each day, but it wasn't far. Whether I would ever be able to return to duty was nagging at the edges of my mind when on Saturday after my orange juice my mind went crazy as a bed bug. Partial feeling came into my legs, and I went seeking a chaplain to spill my troubled thoughts on. Very few chaplains are on Navy bases on Saturday. Something was compelling me to tell someone about how my feelings had crippled me. A red headed nurse was the only person around. She was afraid of me I could tell by her actions, but she listened and reported my conversation to Fat Gut. That night for the first time I became very frightened because I couldn't breath. On Monday I was shaking so bad I couldn't tie my shoes, but still my doctor insisted on sending me back to duty. Fat Gut didn't have a very high standing among the other doctors. Before he could get my orders cut returning me to duty he had to have my case reviewed by another doctor. "You can't send this man back to duty in the shape he's in," the second doctor ordered. Swelling up like a toad, Fat Gut let it be known that he could do as he damn well pleased. "During the fighting in Korea I treated men with battle fatigue. The sooner they were sent back to duty, the better was their recovery." Latter I was to find out that Fat Gut spent his time in Korea giving patients LSD in their orange juice and when they cracked, he sent them back to the firing line. All I could do that morning was wonder when he said, "For an amateur, I'm a pretty good psychiatrist." With a mind that was trying to comprehend what was going on, I wondered why he was referring to himself as an amateur. Before going any further I had better explain about what was happening to me. No longer did I know the date or did I care about knowing. My mind whirled in a drug-induced confusion that instead of thinking about the present was delving back into my childhood. In other words the present world no longer mattered. Only the past was of importance. Frightened of going completely insane, electric currents went through my body worse than when I had accidentally came in contact with an electrical wire. All hopes of finishing my theological studies were over. No church would hire an insane man to preach for them. I was insane and I knew it, but Fat Gut said I had to return to duty. Before making the last post about the LSD experiment that Fat Gut made on me in August 1954. I've been searching the Internet to find out what possible logical reason the United States Government had for carrying out such a hideous experiment. The only logical reason that I can come up with is that a bunch of spoiled rich kids at Yale University who were members of the Skull and Crossbones were handed money and told to show how smart they were. By 1954 when I was put in the experiment, the CIA already knew that LSD could make people suicidal because a prominent doctor had gone out of a window to his death. They knew that the drug had no potential useful purpose in war or peacetime. Still the Government under the great President Eisenhower continued to pour money down a rat hole and wreck the lives of those who had volunteered to fight for their country. MAY GOD HELP THEIR MISERABLE SOULS. The morning Fat Gut ordered me back to duty my hands were shaking so bad someone else had to tie my shoes. Apparently he had to have another doctor's approval before he could give any orders. The other doctor present objected to me going back to work so soon. Whether I had Polio, Guillain Barrie syndrome, or an injury, I was still partially paralyzed, I didn't know the date, and I was very sick. The officers in charge of the Anacostia Naval Receiving Station were most kind. They put me on lighter duty by transferring me to the Navy Gun Factory to help out with the Navy Relief Ball. Now get this, I was placed in a temporary office with a Navy captain's wife and the wife of a Marine Commandant's wife over me. We were together for hours without any incident, but in January when my health deteriorated to such a point that they put me back in Beheads, I was placed in a lock up ward for at least two months. The only good thing about it was Fat Gut had been transferred! When later he was called back for an investigation. he had to face me when he was told that his treatment had worsen my condition. . From August to January I tried my best to do my duty. Before I had slept on the top bunk of a two tier metal cot. Now I was unable to pull myself up to my former sleeping place. Since all that I had talked about after the LSD had been put in my medical record for all my shipmates to read, I wasn't very popular with the three Petty Officers who had been involved in the wife swapping. One fellow third class sailor made it his business to ridicule me constantly until I threatened to punch him in the nose for which he reported me to our officer. Nothing was done to either of us. The other sailors came to my aid. When I was too sick to stand watch, they took my place. Several of them included me in their plans for the evening. Sailors are supposed to be a no count bunch, but a number of them took me to various church meetings. When I was sent back to Bethesda, my defenses dropped. The first day I was there while we were eating our noon meal, an insane medically retired chief took a chair and tried to kill me. I hadn't overtly tried to hurt others, or myself but still they locked me up with very violent patients many of whom who were awaiting being sent to prison for various crimes. One well developed petty officer had stolen cigarettes off his ship and sold them on the Japanese black market for a profit of $25,000. He was trying to get out of stay in the brig at Portsmouth by claiming to be insane. One day when we were sitting on the fantail, he put a chair leg through the heavy metal screen that was supposed to be indestructible. A Marine sergeant, who while in duty in the Marine Barracks, shot his pistol through the ceiling. The bullet went through three or four floors before it lodged in the roof. This Marine was a tough Black who had been through some tough fighting in Korea. The corpsmen in charge of the ward only opened the bathroom every hour. This Marine had to take a leak so he let loose in the bucket used for cigarette butts. They called in extra sailors to help subdue him. A riot was about to take place when the doctor walked in and told the corpsmen to let us use the bathroom anytime we had to. One day they brought in a World War II deserter on the ward. This older man had jumped ship just off the Florida Keys. After swimming to shore he made living rum running on the Keys. Ships were smuggling liquor in from the Island, and by selling it without taxes, they were making a good profit. Getting too old for such a strenuous life, he decided to come to D.C. and get a government job as a mantience man. When they ran his fingerprints through they found out that he was a wartime deserter for which he should have been shot. Instead they treated him for a couple of months at Bethesda and gave him a dishonorable discharge. One more story. The psycho and neurology ward at Bethesda was housed in barracks that were very unlike the plush Bethesda towers where many of the other wards were located. Our habitat was on a rise that was connected to the main building by a long steep ramp. As patients got more physically able, they were required to push heavy carts with food to those who weren't allowed to go to the dining hall. One day at noon a patient who had recently been released from the locked ward was pushing the cart up the ramp that ended at the officer's mess. This patient who was not recovered enough to be doing such a task got at the top of the ramp and released the food container on wheels. It went sailing through the officers' mess where luckily it missed the diners. The saddest thing that happened to me while I was a patient happened while I was cleaning up the dishes on the women's ward. A WAVE patient and I worked in the small galley together. It was a beautiful spring evening. A doctor came through and made a remark about a sailor and a certain WAVE should have some fun together. I'll admit it had been a long time since I had dated. Spring was getting to me, but in spite of the situation, I didn't make an overt move. The WAVE said, "You were studying to be a Baptist preacher." I didn't say anything. She took a butcher knife out of the galley and entering the ward, she stabbed herself in the belly. I didn't know what had happened until the next morning when two corpsmen were talking about the suicide. What I could have done to prevent the young woman's death I don't know, but I should have done something. It wasn't long after that I was given a discharge and returned to civilian life. To sum it all up, this story doesn't seem so gruesome. Here is what was horrible to me. 1. From the time I was given the LSD until another accident in 1985 I stayed awake all night going over my childhood trying to figure out what had happened to cause me to lose the full use of my body. Only after a VA doctor told me about the LSD did I get any relief. 2. I went from a healthy two hundred pounds on a six foot four frame to one hundred and sixty-pound emancipated ghost. 3. I have been paranoid since the experiment. I think that I can read peoples' minds. What they're thinking about me seems to automatically strike me in the face. 4. I worked eight hours a day to get through college. I graduated in the top ten per cent of my class. When I returned to seminary, I couldn't concentrate. My short-term memory was shot to hell. 5. Where as before I had gotten along well with people, I had a great deal of trouble with my relations with others. Constantly I found myself remembering that I was treated in a Navy mental ward. 6. Because I realized my mental condition was bad, I wouldn't stand up for myself. 7. When I entered the Navy I was making over a thousand a month. After three years of theological school and a diploma, I went to work for less than three hundred a month working in a menial job that my years of training was wasted on. 8. The Navy doctors called it psychosomatic pains, but some of the intense suffering stopped after a VA doctor removed a lodged gallstone and an abscessed appendix. Recently a doctor found that I have a damaged artery into the left side of my brain.. 9. All in all after I saw the horrible things that the wars have done to people in the VA hospitals, I am lucky. Still, I find myself wondering what would have happened to me if Fat Gut hadn't given me LSD. And, I have a hard time trusting a government that used military personnel as useless experiments. 10. Recently I found the web site of the Navy doctor who treated me the second time I was in Bethesda. When I asked him by E-mail why hadn't told me about the LSD, he told me, "I wasn't working for you, I was working for the U.S. Navy." END OF A NIGHTMARE Luther Butler was born of southern parents in Alamosa, Colorado in 1929. He holds degrees from Eastern New Mexico University, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Tarleton State University. He served in the US Navy and has ranched, worked in a mental hospital, in inner city slums, and was with the Texas Department of Agriculture for 23 years. He is married to Jo Butler and has one son. Other novels by the author can be found at Luther Butlers Bookstore, http://www.erath.net/butler/ Contact the author: lbutler@erath.net