TBR News February 18, 2019

Feb 18 2019

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. February 18, 2019:”Excerpt, in translation, of a French intelligence document under date of I February: ‘The present American government is seen as a destabilizing element in world political circles. American President Trump appears to be an inflexible individual with absolutely no desire to seek any kind of diplomatic or negotiated solutions to serious problem that affect the entire world community…” “coupled with his single-minded determination to achieve any of his ends by force and not negotiation…is his complete domination by the ultra-right wing supporters of Israel. Their goals appear to be the idea that America has not only the right but the obligation to her people to dominate the entire world, by military force or the threat of it…The Israeli presence in the Administration determines that America will always support that state, even at the risk of alienating the rest of the world and, even greater, of starting a major war….Trump’s advisors, mostly Jewish, dislike Putin, the Russian President, and have been constantly agitating for the United States to force Russian into a confrontation. Given Russia’s still-formidable military capacity, this confrontational behavior could well lead to open warfare….’”

The Table of Contents

Donald Trump talks of ‘retribution’ after Alec Baldwin sketch on SNL

Trump lashes out at ‘treasonous’ officials after McCabe interview

Racism in Action: The Neo-Confederate Movement in American Politics

Study blames YouTube for rise in number of Flat Earthers

Theory Claims There’s A Lost Frozen City Under Antarctica

The Truth about Planet X

The German Guy and the Destruction of Houston

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

 

Donald Trump talks of ‘retribution’ after Alec Baldwin sketch on SNL

Parody about ‘faking’ national emergency hits nerve with president, who calls for Saturday Night Live to be investigated

February 17, 2019

by Kate Lyons

The Guardian

Donald Trump has savaged Saturday Night Live as a “total Republican hit job” while calling for “retribution” and an investigation of the show after another unflattering portrayal of the president by Alec Baldwin.

Baldwin reprised his role as Donald Trump with blonde wig, characteristic pout and exaggerated imitation of the president’s speech-making style, for the show’s cold open on Saturday. This time the sketch parodied the president’s press conference in which he announced a national emergency over his plans to build a border wall with Mexico.

“We need wall. We have a tremendous amount of drugs coming in through the southern border, or the ‘brown line’ as many people have asked me not to call it,” said Baldwin.

“You all see why I gotta fake this emergency, right? I have to because I want to. It’s really simple. We have a problem. Drugs are coming into this country through no wall.

“Wall works, wall makes safe. You don’t have to be smart to understand that – in fact it’s even easier to understand if you’re not that smart.”

The president, who has proven very sensitive to the way he is covered in the media, was clearly unimpressed with Baldwin’s characterisation, saying on Twitter there was “nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC!” The president asked how the networks got away with shows like this “without retribution … very unfair and should be looked into”.

Trump’s national emergency declaration is expected to face challenges – a topic also seized on by Baldwin.

“I’ll immediately be sued and the ruling will not go in my favour and then it will end up in the supreme court and then I’ll call my buddy Kavanaugh and I’ll say ‘It’s time to repay the Donny’ and he’ll say, ‘New phone, who dis?’ And by then the Mueller report will be released, crumbling my house of cards and I can plead insanity and do a few months in the puzzle factory and my personal hell of playing president will finally be over.”

Trump’s talk of “retribution” drew criticism, with lawmakers and journalists suggesting the threats violated core democratic principles. The Democrat Congressman Ted Lieu tweeted: “One thing that makes America great is that people can laugh at you without retribution.”

Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, said that while such language had become commonplace “it’s worth remembering that no other president in decades publicly threatened ‘retribution’ against a television network because it satirized him”.

Trump has lashed out in the past over Saturday Night Live sketches mocking him and his administration, but has largely refrained from criticising the show in recent months. In October, Trump tweeted his support for Kanye West, who appeared on the show wearing a Make America Great Again hat.

In that tweet Trump reminded readers he once hosted SNL but said it was “no longer funny, no talent or charm. It is just a political ad for the Dems.”

 

Trump lashes out at ‘treasonous’ officials after McCabe interview

February 18, 2019

BBC News

US President Donald Trump has issued an angry response after a TV interview on Sunday alleged that officials had held discussions to have him removed.

Mr Trump tweeted of “illegal and treasonous” behaviour and an “illegal coup attempt”.

In the interview, ex-acting FBI chief Andrew McCabe said talks had been held in 2017 about invoking a clause that can remove a president deemed unfit.

The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman has vowed to investigate the claims.

Lindsey Graham said the claims were an “attempted bureaucratic coup”.

Mr McCabe said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had held discussions on the number of cabinet members and others needed to invoke the clause, the 25th Amendment of the US Constitution.

How has Mr Trump responded to the claims?

In a series of tweets on Monday morning, he condemned “so many lies by now disgraced acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. He was fired for lying and now his story gets even more deranged.

“He and Rod Rosenstein, who was hired by [then Attorney General] Jeff Sessions (another beauty), look like they were planning a very illegal act, and got caught.”

Mr Trump added: “There is a lot of explaining to do to the millions of people who had just elected a president who they really like and who has done a great job for them with the military. Vets. Economy and so much more. This was the illegal and treasonous ‘insurance policy’ in full action!”

The president quoted a comment on the Fox and Friends programme saying this was “an illegal coup attempt”, adding “True!”

The White House said Mr McCabe, who was fired last year for allegedly lying to government investigators, had “no credibility”.

The justice department said Mr McCabe’s account was “inaccurate and factually incorrect”.

What’s the background to this?

Allegations that Mr Rosenstein discussed invoking the 25th Amendment were first reported last year by the New York Times.

However, Mr McCabe’s quotes are the first to be made on the record from someone present at the meeting where the alleged comments were reportedly made – in May 2017, after Mr Trump fired FBI director James Comey.

“The discussion of the 25th Amendment was simply [that] Rod raised the issue and discussed it with me in the context of thinking about how many other cabinet officials might support such an effort,” he said.

Mr McCabe also said Mr Rosenstein was openly “counting votes, or possible votes” and that he was “very concerned” about the president “his capacity and about his intent at that point in time.”

“To be fair, it was an unbelievably stressful time… it was really something that he kind of threw out in a very frenzied chaotic conversation.”

Mr Rosenstein has previously strongly denied having such discussions, saying there was “no basis” to invoking the amendment.

What else did Mr McCabe say?

In the 60 Minutes interview, aired on Sunday, Mr McCabe also covered allegations Mr Rosenstein had offered to secretly record Mr Trump, amid concerns about possible obstruction of justice relating to the investigation into alleged collusion between the president’s campaign team and Russia.

When the allegations first emerged in the New York Times, Mr Rosenstein said the report was “inaccurate and factually incorrect”.

A source told the BBC at the time that Mr Rosenstein’s comment “was sarcastic and was never discussed with any intention of recording a conversation with the president”.

However, Mr McCabe said that Mr Rosenstein “was not joking. He was absolutely serious”.

“It was incredibly turbulent, incredibly stressful. And it was clear to me that that stress was – was impacting the deputy attorney general.”

What was Sen Graham’s response?

He described Mr McCabe’s comments as “stunning” and pledged to hold a hearing at the Senate Judiciary Committee to determine “who’s telling the truth”.

H said he could issue subpoenas – a court order forcing a witness to appear to give testimony – “if that’s what it takes”.

The powerful committee he chairs oversees the US judiciary.

What is the 25th Amendment?

It provides for the removal of a president if he or she is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of office”. What this exactly means is open to interpretation.

Duties are transferred to the vice-president.

Activating the relevant section of the 25th Amendment would require the approval of eight of the 15 members of Mr Trump’s cabinet, the vice-president and two-thirds majorities in Congress.

Ronald Reagan and George W Bush used the amendment to temporarily transfer power when they were medically anaesthetised.

Who is Andrew McCabe?

He took over as acting director of the FBI in 2017 and was himself fired as deputy director in March last year just two days before he was due to retire.

He was sacked by Jeff Sessions, who said an internal review had found he leaked information and misled investigators.

Mr McCabe denied the claims and said he was being targeted because of his involvement in the Russian collusion inquiry.

He has now written a book on his time in his posts.

 

Racism in Action: The Neo-Confederate Movement in American Politics

February 18, 2019

by Christian Jürs

 

“I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama was based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African American….And that racism inclination still exists.  And I think it’s bubbled up to the surface because of the belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country.” President Jimmy Carter and former Governor of Georgia.

The Neo-Confederate Movement

Robert Lewis Dabney, a 19th century theologian, is considered to be the most early advocate of a theological perspective of the Civil War. Dabney served during the Civil War as the chaplain to General Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson.  After the war, Dabney argued in books and lectures, based on scripture, that slavery was justified by the Bible and that “slavery was a necessary good for what he called the ‘depraved’ classes.” Sebesta and Hague wrote, “Dabney believed that the Bible legitimated slavery, and thus opposition to slavery was tantamount to rejecting Christianity.

Dabney’s post-Civil War writings established the theological cornerstone from which future Christian Reconstructionists and neo-Confederate theologians and strategists would expand their theological ideology and programmatic endeavors.  Dabney’s writings contain such concepts as: “governments were legitimate only if they derived from the will of God;” “condemned human equality and women’s rights… [and] opposed public schooling…justifying all his positions by Biblical interpretation;” “that modern science and development of the theory of evolution were ‘anti-theological’ and that amongst future generations this would result in a ‘nascent contempt for their father’s Bibles and irreparably damage the South’s ‘Christian households.’”

Three key theologians and theoreticians trace their own intellectual lineage back to Dabney—the late Rousas J. Rushdoony, founder of Christian Reconstructionism at the Chalcedon Foundation; Steven Wilkins, co-founder (with history professor Michael Hill) of the racist, secessionist League of the South; and Douglas Wilson, who heads the Association of Classical and Christian Schools, the Confederation of Reformed Evangelicals, Credenda/Agenda, Canon Press, and New Saint Andrews College—all of them located in Moscow, Idaho.

Neo-Confederates believe that with the Civil War, Lincoln was able to expand the power of the federal government beyond constitutional limits, and that with the defeat of the Confederacy the ideals of states’ rights were defeated.  They believe that the 14th Amendment was illegally adopted.  To them this has resulted in the growth of federal government into a Leviathan, a very large monstrous beast in the bible….In this historical view big government, integration and Brown vs. Brown, gay rights, civil rights, feminism, minorities, taxes, FDR, and other issues can be viewed as the result of the American Republic jumping the tracks during the Civil War and being out of control.

The neo-Confederate doctrine that Congressman Ron Paul is associated with believes in the re-establishment of the Confederacy as a Bible-based republic opposed to all laws, rights, or behaviors that cannot be justified according to the Bible.  Its leading theologians have written justifications of slavery as Biblically-based and have described it as a benign social institution.  On theological grounds, neo-Confederates believe the Civil War was a struggle between orthodox Christianity and a heretical Union.  In the mid-twentieth century, many Christian nationalists became politically involved because they opposed the desegregation of white schools and attempts by the federal government to remove their tax exempt status from white private school created to escape the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision to desegregate white-only schools.  The subsequent development of the Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and the moral pressure this movement exerted on federal, state and local governments, as well as the reign of terror unleashed by the Ku Klux Klan with the implicit support of Southern governors, legislatures, congressmen, law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, juries, white clergy, and public opinion all played a role in the development of the neo-Confederate movement.

In September 1957, President Eisenhower ordered federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas to protect nine black children attempting to desegregate a white public school.  In September 1962, President Kennedy ordered federal marshals, Army, and National Guard troops to protect James Meredith as he attempted to enroll in the University of Mississippi.

Indicative of the Southern rage underlying the reign of terror, in May 1964, Sam Bowers, Imperial Wizard of the Mississippi White Knights, declared: “‘The events which will occur in Mississippi this summer may well determine the fate of Christian civilization for centuries to come.’”  This Ku Klux Klan statement is no different than statements from the League of the South that was founded in 1994. Opposition to the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s was not limited to Kirk and the neo-Confederate movement and the John Birch Society. William F. Buckley and the National Review defended the white supremacists

In 1980, right after the Republican Party’s national convention, Ronald Reagan spoke at the fairgrounds to an audience of over thirty thousand, in Philadelphia, Mississippi, “‘I believe in states’ rights.’” Reagan was following in the footsteps of Barry Goldwater in 1964 who carried only his home state of Arizona and five states in the Deep South. This became a strong indication of future white voting patterns.  One should also consider George Wallace’s 1968 presidential campaign as the American Independent Party candidate; former Klan leader David Duke’s multiple campaigns as a Democrat, Republican, and Populist; and, Patrick Buchanan’s presidential run in 1992 in the Republican primaries that expropriated Duke’s issues. Between 1954 and 2004 the Republican gains in the House of Representatives was a reversal of the dominance the Democrats had in 1954.  The Democrats had net gains outside the South, but more than all of the Democratic net loss to the Republicans came from the Southern switch. Basicially the racial issue became essential to the ability of conservatives to win elections in spite of economic policies that favored a minority over the majority. It is important to remember that the “New Right” movement that brought Reagan to victory had been deeply involved in opposition to civil rights.  Max Blumenthal reported that after the 1954 Supreme Court decision the late Jerry Falwell “posited segregation as a biblical mandate” and worked with the FBI to try and smear Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. as a “communist subversive,” the same charge raised by the John Birch Society. King’s subsequent assassination has never been satisfactorily solved and the accepted stories that James Earl Ray was, like Oswald, the lone assassin does not stand up to objective analysis.  In 1966, Falwell started the Lynchburg Christian Academy, “‘a private school for white students.’”  And, as Michelle Goldberg noted, “what spurred them [the Christian Right] into action was the IRS’s attempt to revoke the tax-exempt status of whites-only Christian schools, schools that had been created specifically to evade desegregation.”

Steven Wilkins, co-founder of the racist, secessionist League of the South, is “arguably the most prominent member of the neo-Confederate clergy,” and a “resident instructor at the R.L. Dabney Center for Theological Studies” and “writes for almost all the religious publications and groups that advance neo-Confederate and Christian nationalist ideas. Another follower of Dabney is theologian Douglas Wilson.  For more than 30 years Wilson has run a mini-Christian Reconstructionist empire in Idaho that includes the New Saint Andrews College; Logos School, a private Christian academy; the Association of Classical and Christian Schools that certifies such private academies; Canon Press; the journal Credenda/Agenda; and, the Confederation of Reformed Evangelicals.  Both Wilkins and Wilson, writing separately or jointly, are major proponents of the theological war thesis and defend “slavery as Biblically justified.”

Writing in 2002, Sebesta and Hague reported that the “Sons of Confederate Veterans heritage organization, Christian Reconstructionist bodies such as the Chalcedon Foundation, and the League of the South now generally accept the theological war thesis….Collaboration between the Christian Reconstructionist movement and the League of the South has also increased, evidencing a growing overlap in the historical, political and theological perspectives of participants in both organizations.

The practical effect of this conflation of nationalisms is an opposition to the following, according to Michael Hill, co-founder of the League of the South: loss of American sovereignty to foreign institutions; “‘radical egalitarianism; feminism; sodomite rights; Third World immigration; gun control; hate crime legislation (almost meant to be used against whites); judicial tyranny; burdensome taxation; multiculturalism and diversity (code words for anti-white, anti-Christian bigotry); the universal rights of man; and other manifestations of a new brand of politically-correct totalitarianism.’”

The other major neo-Confederate organization of interest here is the radical libertarian Ludwig von Meises Institute headed by Lew Rockwell, a long-time friend and political-business partner of Ron Paul.  In 2003, the Institute and the associated LewRockwell.com spearheaded a protest against the erection of a President Abraham Lincoln statue in Richmond, Virginia, while holding a “Lincoln Reconsidered” conference.  LewRockwell.com also hosts a “King Lincoln” archive of articles by leading neo-Confederate writers. The Institute also serves as an adjunct home to neo-Confederate professors Thomas D. Lorenzo, Donald Livingston, and Clyde Wilson.  Lorenzo, a professor of economics, has written that the Civil War was fought to end the right of secession, not to end slavery.  He was the star of the “Lincoln Reconsidered” conference.  Livingston, a professor of philosophy who specializes on David Hume, he was the first director of the League of the South’s Institute for the Study of Southern Culture and History.  Livingston’s writings have strongly defended the right of the pre-Civil War South to  secede and has written that Lincoln started the Civil War in order to establish a centralized state. He also was present at the “Lincoln Reconsidered” conference.  Lastly, Clyde Wilson is the “biggest intellectual heavyweight associated with the neo-Confederate scene.” Wilson specializes in the writings of John C. Calhoun, “the preeminent states’ rights theorists before the Civil War.” Wilson was also a founding member of the League of the South.

” Libertarianism—Born Racist

To sort through these conflicting claims on the centrality of race to the Tea Party movement it is necessary to cover the following salient issues raised by some of the writers.  It is clearly evident that the conservative movements in the United Sates have never accepted integration in any of its manifestations and it is also true that the Tea Party movement is forcing the conservative movement in the United States towards the ultra-right and its strong racial sentiments. To what degree has Ron Paul adopted the Southern Strategy of abandoning the N-word racism and adopting the abstract and race-neutral code words and public policies that still amount to a defense of states’ rights and a defense of white supremacy or white nationalism?  To what degree is libertarian economic philosophy inherently racist?  And, finally, is this inherent racism the reason why libertarian writers such as but not limited to David Weigel and Glenn Greenwald still blandly refer to Ron Paul as a “libertarian” and a champion of “individual liberty” but prefer not to discuss his support for a white Christian nationalist and inherently anti-black agenda?

It is clearly evident that twentieth century libertarianism was born racist and is inherently racist.

That conclusion rests on the authority of none other than the late Murray N. Rothbard, co-founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute along with Lew Rockwell and Ron Paul.  The Institute is not only one of the main neo-Confederate think tanks—one of the key components of the Ron Paul network—but also the primary institution supporting Ron Paul and his Tea Party movement.  The Institute is also the home of the Christian Reconstruction economic libertarian Gary North, who is also the informal strategic adviser to Ron Paul.

According to Rothbard, this libertarian coalition was hard-core regressive: “A few libertarian extremists wanted to go all the way back to the Articles of Confederation, but the great bulk of the right was committed to the United States Constitution—but a Constitution construed so ‘strictly’ as to outlaw much twentieth-century legislation, certainly on the federal level” (emphasis in original).

Edward Sebesta, in an early article on “The Neo-Confederate Movement,” established that Russell Kirk, “perhaps the most prominent conservative of the 20th century,” “promoted the values of southern conservatism and ultimately the neo-Confederates.” Kirk was an early supporter of the Southern Partisan, a leading neo-Confederate journal that attracted conservative writers from across the country, not just the South.  Kirk’s considerable prestige, prodigious writings, and intellectual support ensured that “the values of southern conservatism and admiration for the Confederacy, became accepted and not peripheral, not sectional for conservatism.”

William Voegeli in article on “Civil Rights & the Conservative Movement” noted that Buckley in 1957 wrote an article “Why the South Must Prevail” in which Buckley asked “‘whether the White community in the South is entitled to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically?….The sobering answer is Yes—the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.

Voegeli noted that Buckley “regularly” expressed “the asymmetry of his sympathies—genuine concern for Southern whites beset by integrationists, but more often than not, perfunctory concern for Southern blacks beset by bigots.” Buckley’s views resembled “that of the ‘Southern Manifesto’ signed in 1956 by nearly every senator and representative from the South” which accused the Brown v. Board decision of ‘destroying the amicable relations between white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races.  It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding.’”33

The Southern Manifesto was more than a manifesto.  Part of the white supremacist reaction was a reign of terror against civil rights workers and any African American who could be made an example of for disturbing the apartheid system.  The other reaction was the use of Tenth Amendment (states’ rights) to nullify the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling.  For example, the Florida and Georgia legislatures passed laws that with slightly different wording stated, “‘decisions and orders of the Supreme Court of the United States denying the individual sovereign States the power to enact laws relating to the separation of the races in public institutions of a state are null, void and of no force or effect.’”

Conservative opposition to all civil rights legislation continued with Goldwater’s argument derived from legal advice given by his legal advisers William Rehnquist and Robert Bork that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was “‘a grave threat’ to a constitutional republic in which fifty sovereign states have reserved to themselves and to the people those powers not specifically granted to the central or Federal government.’” With all due respect to Rehnquist and Bork, the Ninth Amendment gave all unenumerated rights to the people and none of these unenumerated rights to the states.

Conservative and Republican opposition to all civil rights legislation and the defense of states’ rights continued under the GOP’s Southern Strategy—a strategy the Republicans have never repudiated and continue to follow.  According to the late Lee Atwater, the essence of the strategy was to conceptually shift the focus away from overt and explicit expressions of racism (the N-word) to “say[ing] stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”  When candidate Reagan went to Philadelphia, Mississippi, and said “‘I believe in states’ rights’” that Reagan “was elbow deep in the same race-baiting Southern strategy of Goldwater and Nixon.”  As Bob Herbert noted, “When Democrats revolted against racism, the G.O.P. rallied to its banner.”

Like the Southern Manifesto which claimed that relations between the races during the Jim Crow era were “amicable” and based on “friendship and understanding,” the neo-Confederate movement sought to portrays racial relations under slavery as highly favorable to the slaves and a burden to the slave masters.  A book written in the 1950s claimed, “‘No, the Southern planter’s work was civilizing the poor, deluded Negro—the greatest missionary work known to history….The institution of slavery as it was in the South, so far from degrading the Negro was fast elevating him above his nature and his race.

Steven Wilkins and Douglas Wilson co-authored a 1996 book, Southern Slavery: As It Was, which claimed that “‘Slavery as it existed in the South…was a relationship based upon mutual affection and harmony….There has never been a multiracial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world.’”

In addition to the Ludwig von Mises Institute, other leading neo-Confederate organizations include the Council of Conservative Citizens, Jared Taylor’s American Renaissance, Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the Rockford Institute in Illinois.  There are many others.

It is the core belief of the League of the South, Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the Christian Reconstructionist Chalcedon Foundation that the Civil War “was a theological war over the future of American religiosity fought between devout Confederate and heretical Union states” and that the Confederate “battle flag and other Confederate icons are Christian symbols and the assertion that opposition to them equates to a rejection of Christianity

Central to the concept of “banal white nationalism” is the much larger concept of the neo-Confederacy which has as its basic principles, among others: states’ rights, local control of schooling, Christian traditions, Confederate symbols, Southerners are persecuted as racists, a natural social hierarchy, white men being dominant in a social hierarchy stratified by race and gender, a disdain for gays and lesbians, and an opposition to modern democracy.  Much of this is no longer unique to neo-Confederates, but extends to Christian nationalists, variants of libertarianism, and other white nationalists.  Moreover, there are institutional linkages across domains such as Christian nationalist and libertarian organizations and white nationalist organizations.

It should therefore come as no surprise that there are two main flags associated with the Tea Party movement—the Confederate flag symbolizing slavery and treason (the neo-Confederates would prefer secession) and the Gadsden flag symbolizing patriotic revolution

That no Republican or Tea Party movement leaderships vociferously opposed the presence of the Confederate flag, or Nazi symbols or references, is indicative of just how pervasive this neo-Confederate mindset, banal white nationalism, and anti-Semitism are in the larger conservative movement.

Also noted is the proliferation of Nazi symbolism and rhetoric associated with the Tea Party movement.

 

 

Study blames YouTube for rise in number of Flat Earthers

Conspiracy theories shown on video-sharing site persuade people to doubt Earth is round

February 17, 2019

by Ian Sample Science editor

The Guardian

Researchers believe they have identified the prime driver for a startling rise in the number of people who think the Earth is flat: Google’s video-sharing site, YouTube.

Their suspicion was raised when they attended the world’s largest gatherings of Flat Earthers at the movement’s annual conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 2017, and then in Denver, Colorado, last year.

Interviews with 30 attendees revealed a pattern in the stories people told about how they came to be convinced that the Earth was not a large round rock spinning through space but a large flat disc doing much the same thing.

Of the 30, all but one said they had not considered the Earth to be flat two years ago but changed their minds after watching videos promoting conspiracy theories on YouTube. “The only person who didn’t say this was there with his daughter and his son-in-law and they had seen it on YouTube and told him about it,” said Asheley Landrum, who led the research at Texas Tech Universit

The interviews revealed that most had been watching videos about other conspiracies, with alternative takes on 9/11, the Sandy Hook school shooting and whether Nasa really went to the moon, when YouTube offered up Flat Earth videos for them to watch next.

Some said they watched the videos only in order to debunk them but soon found themselves won over by the material.

Landrum said one of the most popular Flat Earth videos, “200 proofs Earth is not a spinning ball” appears to be effective because it offers arguments that appeal to so many mindsets, from biblical literalists and conspiracy theorists to those of a more scientific bent.

One way or another, the interviewees found themselves believers and before long were asking “where is the curve?” and “why is the horizon always at eye level?”

Landrum, who presented her results at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington DC, said she did not think YouTube was doing anything overtly wrong, but said that if the site wanted to help it could tweak its algorithm to show more accurate information.

“There’s a lot of helpful information on YouTube but also a lot of misinformation,” Landrum said. “Their algorithms make it easy to end up going down the rabbit hole, by presenting information to people who are going to be more susceptible to it.”

“Believing the Earth is flat in of itself is not necessarily harmful, but it comes packaged with a distrust in institutions and authority more generally,” she added. “We want people to be critical consumers of the information they are given, but there is a balance to be had.”

Landrum called on scientists and others to create their own YouTube videos to combat the proliferation of conspiracy videos. “We don’t want YouTube to be full of videos saying here are all these reasons the Earth is flat. We need other videos saying here’s why those reasons aren’t real and here’s a bunch of ways you can research it for yourself.”

But she conceded that some Flat Earthers may not be swayed by a scientists’ words. When the US astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson explained how small sections of large curved surfaces will always appear flat to the little creatures that crawl upon it, his message was seen by some Flat Earthers as patronising and dismissive, Landrum said.

“There’s always going to be a small percentage of people who will reject anything that scientists put out there but maybe there’s a group in the middle that won’t,” she added. “The only tool we have to battle misinformation is to try and overwhelm it with better information.”

Google did not respond to a request for comment.

 

Theory Claims There’s A Lost Frozen City Under Antarctica

by Francesca Donovan

Unilad

People have spent thousands of years pondering the existence of the Lost City of Atlantis, ever since Plato wrote about the fictional island of half-humans, half-Gods in the dialogues Timaeus and Critias.

While these musings have largely been sequestered to the realms of fantasy, new discoveries in the Antarctic could shed light on the possibility of ancient Utopian civilisations.

A scientific theory put forward in the 1950s by American history expert, Professor Charles A. Hapgood, suggests that thousands of years ago the icy tundra may have been home to an ancient and mysterious civilisation.

The theory of crustal displacement posits the Earth’s entire crust shifts every 20,000 to 30,000 years and that only 11,600 years ago large parts of Antarctica – a continent we now know as icy and barren – were ice free.

Hapgood looks to the Piri Reis world map, drawn 500 years ago by the Ottoman admiral of the same name, to reconcile his theory with evidence.

The map is thought to show the west coast of Africa, the east coast of South America and the northern coast of Antarctica, with all land masses totally devoid of ice.

Conspirators believe both Hapgood’s theory of crustal displacement and that much of the south pole was free of ice – and also the location of The Lost City of Atlantis.In 1995, Graham Hancock publish a study, Fingerprints of the Gods, claiming that crustal displacement in 10,450 BC had destroyed an advanced, ancient civilisation, the remains of which now lie beneath Antarctica.

Hancock muses the descendants of said civilisation went on to build the Aztec, Mayan and Egyptian empires.

This postulation rings true when compared to Native American mythology, which traces their ancestors back to the enigmatic white island in the South, Aztlán, which was destroyed by natural disaster.

Despite this, dreamers, conspiracy theorists and believers are convinced Atlantis – a city that was born in fiction – lies underneath the Antarctic.

Presumably the U.S. government are responsible, or aliens, or the lizard race that secretly rules the Earth – put your theory on a postcard…

 

The Truth about Planet X

by Jack Mehoff

The truth must be made known about Planet X! The reason for not announcing it is due to religious beliefs it would cause the world to go into physiological panic. It was discovered by NASA probes Pioneer 10 and 11 and was announce on the Paul Harvey news cast as a possible 10th planet but when our government realized the implications of an incoming body which has its unique elliptical orbit around two suns.  It has turned into a national security issue, our government knows and is afraid of panic.  The whole story of planet X (Nibiru) one of many names for Planet X comes from ancient clay tablets 4000 BC describing a tenth planet and its life on it. They were called The Anunnaki which means in Summerian language they who came from heaven to Earth.  They taught us math, building techniques, farming and etc.  The Summerian land is where IRAQ is now.  The word NIBIRU means planet of crossing.  It has a history or else I would take this as all BS.  These Anunnaki were giants they were 8 to 10 feet tall.  They used the inhabitants to dig for gold they needed for there atmosphere.  I believe in UFOs and the possibility that these aliens was the cause of all religions. This is what our government is afraid of us finding out the real truth.

I have been studying Planet Xes history on xfacts.com and zetatalk.com for four years now.  Planet X orbits two suns about every 3657 years and is in our solar system now it is four times the size of Earth and it’s mass = 23 Earths. Planet X has many names from most countries, the most common name is Nemesis. This is what’s causing the Earth changes and disasters were seeing today. Our planet weighs nothing in space any magnetic disturbance will have disastrous affects on weather and tectonic plates and volcanoes. Planet X caused the Great Flood there was a pole shift that melted the poles. They said that this coming pole shift will be worst the Earth’s outer crust not the oceans will rotate 90 degrees because the Earth will line up with Nemesis as it crosses our skies. The Bible calls Planet X (Wormwood). The Incas called Planet X (Hercolubus), The Babylonians called Planet X (Marduk), the ancient Hindu astronomers named Planet X Treta Yuga and the destruction it causes Kali Yuga. So it has a history which makes it real.  Almost every time it comes into our solar system it affects the surface of every planet it crosses. It’s coming in from our blind side (sun side). There seems to be a Government cover-up on this subject matter. WHY? Do they fear panic? We must warn people for survival reasons if theirs a fighting chance to survive we must take it.”

 

 

The German Guy and the Destruction of Houston

A Staged Attack on Atlanta, Dallas or Houston on Dec 27, 2004

From a former Bundesnachrichtendienst member– Intel Expert

We may be on the cusp of catastrophic events and even World War. The Illuminati wishes to destroy the US as a superpower and fold it into the New World Order. George Bush and the Neo Cons are traitors who have sent the US army into a meat grinder.

Before the war began, Iran and Iraq likely made an alliance. They knew the Neo Cons ultimate goal is to invade Iran and control the world’s oil supply. They prepared this guerrilla war long in advance and it is well coordinated and financed.

The only way the Neo Cons can rescue the situation is to provoke a nuclear war against Iran. It is plausible that the same ruthless force behind Sept. 11 is prepared to act again.

The following are excerpts and summaries of the “German Guy’s” disclosures:

“Anyone else able to pick up CIA and other US government “chatter”? I can, and I have.

December 27 is the day that’s freaking out the minions at the alphabet agencies (but not the controllers at the good ol´ al-CIAda network).

Paul Wofowitz will authorise the detonation of a nuclear payload in the Houston area on December 27, 2004. The Hidden Hand network (Mossad/al-Qaeda/SAS) of which he is the nominal controller has verified in advance every aspect of operational integrity – a failsafe job with zero chance of discovery.

Houston has been primed for months via deliberate mismanagement, incompetence, corruption and embezzlement at its FEMA-independent Emergency Center. The police and fire services have been deliberately and systematically sabotaged and thrown into administrative chaos so as to ensure maximum fatalities in the aftermath of the detonation. However, the existence of the center will provide the Bush administration with a “we did everything we could” excuse.

We believe the Hidden Hand envisages the following scenario:

  1. Detonation on Dec 27 (could be delayed, but all our intercepts point to this date)
  2. The State Department blames “al-Qaeda”, whose leaders are allegedly hiding in Iran
  3. Iran (truthfully) denies giving refuge to said leaders
  4. Bush issues Iran with a cowboy-style deadline for delivery of alleged leaders
  5. Iran fails to comply because it cannot
  6. UN convenes in emergency session – no agreement (Watch Ariel Sharon quietly flee to his private estate in Greece)
  7. Other foreign intelligence agencies dispute the State Department version
  8. Happily for Wolfowitz, Osama bin Laden releases a videotape claiming responsibility, warning America not to attack his “brave warriors” in Iran
  9. American fighters launch a “decapitation” attack on the Iranian government and alleged “al-Qaeda” bases

We know that the Wolfowitz network has concealed a remote-controlled nuclear payload in the Houston area. None of our intercepts give us exact coordinates. We have also heard the same code system used in regard to Atlanta and Dallas, although not with the same frequency. We believe that Mara Salvatruchas, the CIA-run Salvadora syndicate, is peripherally involved with the Wolfowitz network in protecting and running cover for a rogue ex-SAS British assassin who is perhaps the world´s leading logistics and reconnaisance expert.

Last known as either Frank Riley or Terence Lawley, we believe that he was responsible for the murder of nuclear physicist John Mullen on June 29. Mullen was approached by a Hidden Hand contact man posing as a CIA agent at the behest of Wolfowitz on February 12, 2003, and was asked to provide the “CIA” with an hypothetical schematic of a remote-controlled, trunk-sized nuclear device with a payload “several times greater than ´Fat Man´” (in the interests of nationaly security). Mullen was told that the hypothetical impact area would be “a city the size of Houston”. Mullen complied with this request but grew suspicious toward the end of 2003 and abruptly ended his cooperation.

At the beginning of June, Mr Mullen decided to contact the staff of former National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, with a view to discussing his CIA work with him. At the time Berger was too busy too see him immediately owing to his work as foreign policy adviser to John Kerry. We believe that this is what sealed the fate of Mr Mullen, as Sandy Berger does indeed have informal links to the Wolfowitz network and it is conceivable that Berger warned Hidden Hand. Incidentally, three weeks later Berger was charged by the FBI with the theft of critical documents from the National Archive relating to evidence that he had helped Wolfowitz facilitate the 9-11 attacks.

Wolfowitz is also running a Mossad agent in the Houston area called Avner Meir, whose present status is unknown, but we believe he is currently holding a visitor´s visa. His job is to facilitate the smuggling of Muslims (any Muslims will do) across the Mexican border and provide them with accomodation and distress funds under the asuspices of a fake charitable organisation. We suspect that Meir, also a master forger, will provide the unwitting Muslims with forged US passports and driving licences, plenty of Muslim literature, commendations and enough money to be “seen and remembered”.

This was the basis of my discussions with American diplomatic personnel in Frankfurt yesterday, both of whom have been locked in secret discussions with the German government over, among many other things, their application for political refugee status in the event of making this known to the media.

The far side of the CIA and Mossad have been ordered to drop any plans they may have had for bombing the financial district of Frankfurt, including the European Central Bank. The Wolfowitz Network has decided that the Houston detonation must take priority over everything else.

All of our intercepts, field information and disclosures from former (and not so former!) US diplomatic personnel, tell us that the American people are being set up for another, but even more devastating, 9-11 tragedy in which a tiny group of people will gain enormously at the expense of the rest of the world

 

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

February 17, 2019

by Dr. Peter Janney

On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.

Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal, Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment.

Three months before, on July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.

After Corson’s death, Trento and the well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.

The small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento’s house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.

When published material concerning the CIA’s actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA’s horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA’s activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious ‘Regional Interrogation Centers’ in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..

A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid “historians” and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world.

The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley’s survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton conspired to secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files out of the agency. Crowley did the same thing right before his own retirement, secretly removing thousands of pages of classified information that covered his entire agency career.

Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks,”: Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago, Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at its inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations.

Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas in 1993 when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. In 1996, Crowley told Douglas that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley’s story but only after Crowley’s death. Douglas, for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publication

Conversation No. 11a

Date:  Monday, April 29, 1996

Commenced:  9:17 AM CST

Concluded: 10:11 AM CST

 

GD: Good morning, Robert. Interesting news on the wire.

RTC: Good morning. What news is that, Gregory?

GD: I see that Colby  appears to have had a boating accident.

RTC: So I understand.

GD: I believe you mentioned this earlier.

RTC: I very possibly may have, Gregory. We live in dangerous times indeed.

GD: Apparently he went out for a midnight excursion on the Potomac and did not come back.

RTC: A terrible loss. They haven’t found him yet have they?

GD: Not yet. Depends on the temperature of the water. When gasses build up in the body, it will rise like Jesus to the surface. We used to call them floaters when I was doing pathology and believe me, they stank badly. That is unless the bottom feeders got to him first. I can foresee a closed casket and lots of air freshener, Robert.

RTC: Graphic side to a great national tragedy. When we shot Paisley in the back of the head and chucked him off his sail boat, we put weights on him so he wouldn’t come up. When divers did find him, he was rotten to the core. Had to cut off his hands to try to get fingerprints.

GD: What was his transgression?

RTC: We let it get out he was suspected of dealing with the Soviets but actually, it had to do with the Kennedy business. Now that the box has arrived here, we will discuss this historical event much further. By the way, Gregory, when I turn it on, all the birds vanish from the area like magic. I can only imagine what must be going on inside. At least it works with the birds and one other thing I noticed. Some local was walking his dog on their side of the street and the dog began to yelp and howl when he came in range. Do you think the Swiss are more sensitive than dogs? I was halfway expecting to hear screaming from over there. Well, I followed your advice and only left it on for about twenty minutes for the first time and a little longer for the second.

GD: I’m glad you’re happy, Robert.

RTC: Well, another DCI gone.

GD: And lamented?

RTC: Certainly not by me, Gregory. Nor, I should think, by many others over there. A nasty man who had a mouth problem.

GD: I hope for the sake of all of us they find him but without a bullet in the back of his head. If the body never comes up, there will be endless books and articles about his vanishing. Some drooling pinhead will swear they saw him playing golf in Madrid. When Kitchener went down with the Hampshire, years later there were claims he was alive and well in Patagonia, running a penguin farm.

RTC: Yes, there’s a lot of that. The Kennedy business has the myth makers working overtime. Have you read any of the fantasy books? Men with umbrellas? People hidden in the sewers? Hoover shooting at him from some bank building? The Hunt brothers potting away from a black helicopter? Well, we’re responsible for a lot of that. Feed silly rumors to the babblers in the nut fringe and they stir up so much mud, you can’t see the truth.

GD: Maybe it’s on the bottom with Colby.

RTC: Remind me to avoid crab cakes for a few months.

GD: Mueller was telling me about Dulles.

RTC: Which one? Allen or John?

GD: Both, actually.

RTC: What did he say about Allen?

GD: Mueller knew him before he became DCI, when?

RTC: In ’53.

GD: Yes.

RTC: Kennedy forced him out in ’61. Kennedy did not trust us and threatened to break up the CIA. Not a wise move.

GD: No, it wasn’t. And Kennedy is dead and the agency lives on.

RTC: Yes, it does. What did Mueller tell you about Allen?

GD: Oh, that he met Dulles in Switzerland during the war. Dulles had no idea who Mueller was. Heini told me Dulles was a sucker for the plant and he loaded him up with all kinds of fake information about what was going on in Germany and Dulles ate the whole horse, saddle and all.

RTC: Allen was never too bright. His brother was a dyed-in-the wool Nazi, just like another one of our DCI’s father. Prescott Bush. But Allen was not a particularly deep or thoughtful man all in all. His son got shot in the head in Korea and came back an idiot so Allan was very bad to him.

GD: Beat him up?

RTC: Worse. He ignored him. Allen was not a kind or thoughtful man. But his wife really did a number on him at the end. Allen was dying in ’69 and they had a Christmas party at his place. Wife was downstairs with the guests, having a wonderful time. Not a word about Allen except that he was not feeling well. Finally, one of the boys decided to go up and wish Allen a Merry Christmas. Guess what he found?

GD: Tell me.

RTC: Allen lying in a urine and shit soaked bed, completely out of it and mumbling to himself. She had left him up there for quite a while. Ugly. She really must have hated him. The boys picked him up, wrapped him in a clean blanket and took him to the hospital where he died about a month later. She didn’t care at all and was very upset that they used one of her good blankets.

GD: You mentioned Prescott Bush. I have an original medal presentation paper giving a high Nazi decoration to him. Signed by Hitler in 1938. I’m surprised this never got out. I also have a picture of IBM’s Watson with a higher decoration, sitting in opera box with Hitler. The IBM people have been trying to buy that from me for ten years.

RTC: You asking too much for it?

GD: No. I thought it might look good in a book. Was George a good DCI?

RTC: George was a sly, effeminate creature as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. When he was VP, they attended a state dinner in the White House and he brought his older boy with him. That one was a chronic boozer and during an intermission, he went out and pissed in one of the downstairs halls. I understand Nancy Reagan 86’ed him out of the White House. His brother is a con-man, unconvicted of ripping banks off because Daddy put on the pressure. And his wife is like something out of a Norse legend. A real dominatrix-type. You never know what goes on behind the curtains, Gregory, but I do. It’s enough to shake anyone’s belief in the honesty of our leaders, who hasn’t worked inside the Beltway long enough. Bush was only DCI for a year and I never had any use for him. Smiled a lot and as vicious and back-stabbing as anyone I ever knew. But then so many of them are.

GD: Did you know a William King Harvey?

RTC: Oh, indeed I did. What do you know about Bill?

GD: Mueller knew him and was boffing his wife. Mueller said he was an ex-FBI man whom Hoover fired for being a chronic drunk.

RTC: That’s true. Hoover was a prim and proper one.

GD: And Harvey used to carry a gun around and point it at people.

RTC: Harvey was fat and apparently hung like a stud cricket so the gun made up for what nature had forgotten.

GD: What is it that they said about the flat-chested woman? What nature has forgotten she can remedy with cotton?

RTC: I’ve heard that somewhere before.

GD: Nothing is original. Well, if and when Colby floats, will you go to his funeral?

RTC: That would be a little hypocritical, wouldn’t it Gregory?

GD: Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, Robert.

RTC: You’re a very wise person, Gregory. No wonder Bill and Tom are so upset with you.

GD: And don’t forget Wolfe.

RTC: I don’t like to go to the archives for fear he’ll slink up to me with more hate stories about you.

GD: He’s supposed to be such an expert on the Third Reich but he fakes it mostly. His great triumph was to discover an old record with an alleged speech of Himmler’s in which Reichsheini is talking about killing off all the Jews. Bob made such a fuss over his discovery. I got him to send me a tape of it because it’s in the archives and I got ahold a friend of mine who collects German newsreels. He had a 1939 ufa newsreel with a part of a speech by Himmler so he made a tape of that and I got another friend of mine to compare the speech patterns. Not the same. Either Bob’s precious record that he used to play for Jewish groups or the original newsreel was a stone fake.

RTC: I don’t think it takes a Harvard graduate to see which was which. Do you think he made it? And planted it?

GD: Not personally. His wife is German but Bob is not fluent enough to pull that one off. Probably got it from some co-religionist, planted it, discovered it and exploited it. Or, of course, they faked the Himmler speech on the newsreel. So much of these things are invented and of course the public believes it.

RTC: Tell me, Gregory, what does Wolfe think about our hiring the head of the Gestapo?

GD: Oh and many others. What? Well, he’s a torn person. He’d love to expose this but he can’t because he sucks up to officialdom and can’t have it both ways. I love to tell him about Krichbaum and others and when I do, I suppose he would like to kill me. Kill the messenger, not the message is the hallmark of the very small of mind.

RTC: True enough. And Bill and Tom are highly annoyed that we talk. I think they’re afraid of what I might say to you. Wouldn’t you agree?

GD: Yes. Another convocation of the small of mind.

RTC: But large of ego. When he was younger, we used to call Tom the Arrow Shirt Boy. Ring a bell?

GD: The clean-cut drawings?

RTC: Yes. Really handsome men and beautiful women tend to be very shallow in their social relationships. That’s because they don’t have to make any effort to attract attention. Uglier people have to rely on personality.

GD: Yes, that’s true. My first wife was really beautiful but stupid as a post and very greedy. It’s amazing how we can delude ourselves, isn’t it? She wanted me to give a lot of money to her brother to buy a gas station. He fell off his motorcycle and did damage to his head. I don’t think he could run a bicycle pump, let alone a gas station. I refused and she retaliated by moving her bloated mother in with us. Mom brought four nasty cats with her. I like animals but these loved to shit on the carpets and one loved to take dumps on the kitchen counters. Talking about this did no good so one day while Mom and her hatchling were out trying to spend my money, I took the dear pussies, stuffed them into a potato sack and tossed them into the apartment house pool. When the bubbles stopped, I dove in, fished them out and laid them in a nice, wet, row at the edge of the garden. Threw the bag away. Mom and the Other came home and she started looking for the dear felines. When I told her I had put them outside to do their nasty business, Mom waddled outside, shrieking for her lovelies. Then she really started to wail when she saw the line-up by the pool. When I was at work the next day, they both moved out and took all the furniture with them. This was not a good idea because I had rented the place furnished. I had to pay for the furniture, of course.

RTC: Did she leave the cats behind?

GD: No, they were gone. I think they had a state funeral for them. Burial at Arlington.

RTC: I take it you got a divorce?

GD: Actually, no, I did not. A friend of mine saw the Other passing out drinks in Vegas but when I called personnel at her casino, they said she’d left the place about a month before. She did surface about twenty five years later. Someone sent me a package of old books from LA and wrapped them in the local paper. By God, there was the Other playing golf out at Palm Springs. The long and short of it was, Robert, that she had married a wealthy real estate developer and had two kids by him.

RTC: No divorce?

GD: No, she was too stupid to think of that. I took this to a lawyer I knew but he was not interested until he found out that her husband, who had serious IRS problems, had put all his assets in Other’s name. Then he got very interested because, as he pointed out to me, in California, property acquired by either party in a marriage is considered community property. He was suddenly very eager to take the case on a contingency fee basis because half of what she had was mine and we were still legally married. Here we’re talking about bigamy as well. Much uproar, threats by massive legal firms in LA and in the end, they settled before we made a public filing. I lived on the rewards of my patience and misjudgment for years. And then we were divorced, very privately. Love is a wonderful thing, Robert. Do you know the difference between Herpes and love?

RTC: I can’t say that I do.

GD: Herpes is forever, Robert.

RTC: Now that’s not kind, Gregory.

GD: A very shrewd observation. If I had been a kind person, I would not have sent you those wonderful poems.

RTC: That was not meant unkindly. Let’s say a joke.

GD: Well, we can talk about Kennedy one of these days, can’t we?

RTC: As I said. I can get in touch with you later this week if you want.

GD: Let me call you. I’m sure you’ll be watching and waiting for Colby to emerge from the depths.

 

(Concluded at 10:11 AM CST)

 

 

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