TBR News June 11, 2019

Jun 11 2019

The Voice of the White House Washington, D.C. June 11, 2019:

“Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.

When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.

I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.

He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.

He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.

His latest business is to re-institute a universal draft in America.

He wants to do this to remove tens of thousands of unemployed young Americans from the streets so they won’t come together and fight him.

Commentary for June 11:”The one thing that emerges from all the flak about corruption, bribes, money laundering circling around the Oval Office is the widespread and rampant corruption in American government agencies today.Inside the Beltway, in restaurants and other gathering places, the gossip sounds like a description of Mafia sit-downs, not dignified national leaders having intellectual conversations a la Jefferson about governance. Pockets are deep here and none deeper than in the Oval Office.”

 

 

The Table of Contents

  • Trump lashes out at New York Times over Mexico deal revelations
  • Trump’s policies add luster to gold at dollar’s expense
  • Operation’Bernhard’: The Destruction of the British Pound
  • The CIA as international counterfeiter
  • The failing US control of the Arctic oil reserves
  • Encyclopedia of American Loons
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

 

Trump lashes out at New York Times over Mexico deal revelations

  • Story said Mexico agreed concessions months ago
  • Attacks on press are subject of new book by CNN’s Acosta

June 10, 2019

by Oliver Milman in New York

The Guardian

Donald Trump on Monday returned to the offensive over criticism of his immigration deal with Mexico, accusing the New York Times of “sick journalism” for reporting that key components of the deal, announced on Friday, had been agreed for months.

He tweeted: “When will the Failing New York Times admit that their front-page story on the the new Mexico deal at the Border is a FRAUD and nothing more than a badly reported ‘hit job’ on me, something that has been going on since the first day I announced for the presidency! Sick Journalism.”

Trump’s tweet followed a similar attack on Sunday, when, en route to Virginia for a second day of golf at his private club there, he accused the New York Times of “bad reporting” and “Fake News” for its coverage of migrants crossing the southern border into the US.

In the deal announced by Trump on Friday, Mexico agreed to use its national guard to keep migrants seeking US asylum in Mexico. In return, Trump said he would not go ahead with his threat to impose tariffs on all Mexican goods entering the US.

However, it emerged via the New York Times that Mexico had agreed to the deal in negotiations over the past six months, rather than because of Trump’s threat. The paper also reported that US attempts to reject asylum seekers that had traveled through Mexico but not sought refuge there first had failed.

Democrats seized on the reports.

Presidential contender Beto O’Rourke told ABC: “I think the president has completely overblown what he purports to have achieved. These are agreements that Mexico had already made, in some cases, months ago.

“They might have accelerated the timetable but by and large the president achieved nothing except to jeopardize the most important trading relationship that the United States of America has.”

On Monday, Trump continued to insist he would push ahead with tariffs should Mexico not fulfill the deal.

An increase in migration to America’s southern border has prompted a series of increasingly belligerent tweets and proposals from Trump, including raising the possibility of indefinite detention of those who attempt to seek refuge in the US.

In May, more than 132,000 people were apprehended at the southern border, according to US Customs and Border Protection, the highest monthly number in the past 13 years. The large majority of these people were comprised of family groups, mostly from Central America.

A total of 24 immigrants have died in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody during the Trump administration, according to an NBC analysis. The US court system is also overloaded, with almost 900,000 immigration cases pending.

Trump’s battle with large parts of the American media could bubble back into view this week with the publication of a book by CNN’s White House correspondent Jim Acosta.

Acosta had his White House pass temporarily revoked last year after a clash with Trump at a press conference.

His book, The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America, will be published on Tuesday. In May, the Guardian obtained an early copy.

Acosta writes that when Trump began his attacks on “fake news” outlets including CNN, the Times, the Washington Post and more, it was an act conceived by adviser Steve Bannon in the absence of effective Democratic opposition. Acosta’s thesis is that this spiralled out of control, to potentially dangerous effect.

Acosta said on CNN on Sunday: “Some of his supporters feel it’s OK to lash out at us in ways that I think put us in danger. And I think we have to hit the pause button and think deeply about whether or not this is the kind of country we want to hand off to our kids.”

Acosta also said he wished “at times that the press had been in more solidarity with each other and standing up to this White House and say, ‘The president can’t call us the enemy of the people, we’re not going to go along with that.’

“We are not just here to report the news, we are here to defend the truth. When you have a president who has made 10,000 false or misleading statements since the beginning of his administration, that makes us fact checkers in real time.”

Acosta’s book contains anonymously sourced reporting likely to anger the president further.

One “senior White House official” is quoted as saying: “The president’s insane.”

 

Trump’s policies add luster to gold at dollar’s expense

Central banks in emerging countries are hoarding the precious metal at the fastest pace in decades. The “weaponization” of the dollar by President Trump is making countries increasingly wary of the greenback.

June 11, 2019

by Ashutosh Pandey

DW

Twenty years after central banks in the West dumped gold in what many saw as the end of the metal’s role in the global monetary system, their counterparts in emerging countries are hoarding gold at rates not seen in over 50 years.

Central banks bought 145.5 tons of gold in the first quarter of 2019, an increase of 68% compared with last year and the strongest first quarter since 2013, according to the World Gold Council. In the past four quarters, these banks have hoarded over 715 tons of the precious metal — the highest that the industry-led body has ever recorded.

The central banks stepped up buying gold following the 2008-09 global financial crisis, as they looked to diversify their foreign exchange reserves and reduce their exposure to developments in the US. The pace of purchases has picked up over the past 18 months amid sluggish growth and global uncertainty caused by trade tensions.

US President Donald Trump’s weaponization of economic tools in pursuit of foreign policy breakthroughs is also prompting countries to look for alternatives to the dollar as the preferred repository for world savings.

“The trade war is a new reason in this decadelong trend, but in itself it looks less important for central bank gold buying than the message which Trump’s tariffs send about Washington asserting its foreign policy through finance and economics,” Adrian Ash, director of research at investment firm BullionVault, told DW. “Selling dollars for gold puts part of a nation’s reserves outside Washington’s control of the dollar clearing system.”

Russia was the biggest purchaser of gold during the first quarter, followed by Turkey and China. The three have seen their ties with Washington fray over the past few years. Although, only Russia has so far publicly stated that it’s buying gold to shield itself from Western sanctions.

“The tension that exists between these countries and the US and the antipathy that has been there for some time is a reason why they are looking at ensuring that gold is playing a significant role and that deemphasizes the role of the dollar, relatively speaking,” Ross Strachan, senior commodities economist at Capital Economics, told DW. “But I will be a bit careful of that events over the past six to 12 months on their own have created a big step change.”

Russia’s growing appetite for gold

Russia has been aggressively hoarding gold in response to Western sanctions in 2014 over Moscow’s actions in Ukraine. The country’s central bank has bought more than 200 tons of gold every year since then, while drastically cutting down on its US treasury holdings amid tensions with the US and the likelihood of further sanctions.

The growing appetite has catapulted Russia into the top five gold-holding countries with more than 2,100 tons. The yellow metal now accounts for a little over 18% of the country’s total reserves. It was just over 2% in 2007.

“When they [the Russians] are talking about political risks, they’re talking about sanctions. They’re talking about geopolitics. They’re talking about the US dollar financial system and how gold can help them manage an element of that risk,” Alistair Hewitt, a director at the WGC, told DW. “I think that probably a theme that’s affecting many other central banks as well.”

Russian central bank deputy head Sergey Shvetsov said in April it was necessary to “increase forex and gold reserves even more” amid “persisting sanctions risks.”

Russia, which is the third-biggest gold producer in the world behind China and Australia, is virtually buying the country’s entire domestic mine output.

“Paying in rubles has helped Moscow defend and grow its reserve assets even amid the currency’s slump to record lows,” Ash said.  “It’s also enabled Russian gold miners, an important domestic industry, to sell what might otherwise have been locked out of international markets.”

‘Political statement’

Last year, Hungary and Poland also joined the gold-buying spree, becoming the only European countries since 2009 to significantly boost their reserves. Major European countries such as Germany, Italy and France, which hold some of the biggest gold reserves in the world, have not added to their reserves in decades.

The National Bank of Poland boosted its gold reserves by 13.7 tons to 116.7 tons in the third quarter last year.

In October, Hungary said it had increased gold reserves tenfold to 31.5 tons — its highest level since 1990.

Hungary, whose populist government has been on a collision course with the European Union in recent years, said the decision was driven by stability objectives, citing gold’s lack of credit or counterparty risk.

“Hungary and Poland surprised the market, not to mention their European partners, by buying gold in what looked like a political statement,” Ash said.

Dollar retains charm

Despite central banks increasingly dedollarizing their reserves, the dollar’s decline in reported reserves has hardly been significant so far. It remains the world’s dominant reserve currency.

Reserves held in US dollars fell to $6.62 trillion, or 61.69% of total foreign exchange reserves, in the fourth quarter of 2018, from $6.63 trillion, or 61.94%, in the third quarter. The dollar’s share has now fallen for three straight quarters.

“Certainly, the volume of changes that is being impacted [as a result of central bank gold purchases] is meaningful for the gold market,” Strachan said. “Obviously, the liquidity of the US dollar is enormous and the influence [of the gold purchases] is relatively minor and can be swamped by other factors.”

While the recent spurt in gold purchases by central banks, which now hold over 17% of the total above-ground gold stocks, has boosted the demand for the yellow metal, it has not had much impact on their prices. Gold prices have risen just about 3% since the beginning of 2018.

“Central banks attract a heck of a lot of attention because they’re the custodians of the global financial architecture and what they do is rightly watched and rightly studied,” Hewitt said. “But over the past 10 years they only account for about 10% of annual gold demand. So they’re not the most significant players in the gold market.”

 

 

Operation’Bernhard’: The Destruction of the British Pound

June 11. 2019

by Christian Jürs

 

The root cause of all warfare is economics. Whether it is the seizure of a weaker tribe’s grazing land or the destruction of a rival power’s production capacity, war, to elaborate on Clausewitz, is a logical extension of political and economic aims. War launched against an unpopular head of state or a political system is war commenced solely for economic gains; the common rationale of a holy crusade is merely window dressing for popular historians to postulate.

The hatred engendered against Hitler by the American and British official propaganda machinery before the outset of World War II was due more to the success of Hitler’s barter system than to his personal dislike of Jews or threats to putative democracies in Central Europe.

Stripped of her colonies and gold reserves after the First World War, Germany had to incur massive, interest-bearing loans with both the United States and England to pay for needed imports. When Hitler came to power, he paid off the existing loans and instituted a barter system in which, for example, Germany would trade locomotives to Argentina for their beef and wheat. Previously, both countries had borrowed money from international banks at high-interest rates to pay for their respective imports.

The barter system, therefore, represented a serious threat to international banking interests that complained loudly and effectively to their respective governments, demanding intervention and relief. Many economists referred to a boycott of German products, which was instituted in the United States and England as economic warfare, as indeed it was. The British were past-masters in creating economic warfare and experts in ruining the currency of their rivals by flooding the marketplace with counterfeit currency. During the American Revolutionary War, the British dumped so many counterfeit Continental notes into the economy that American currency became virtually worthless, and the phrase, “not worth a Continental” became common. Angered by French support of the American Revolution, the British counterfeited adulterated gold French Louis coins.

As a means of economic retaliation against Napoleon for his support of a French-dominated continental system which excluded England, the British counterfeited French assignats and franc notes. Napoleon retaliated by forging British currency. Later in the same century, the US federal government forged Confederate money in huge quantities.

The Soviet forgery of American currency in the 1930s, on the other hand, was not designed to destroy the US economy. Rather, the counterfeit gold certificates were manufactured to pay their agents. Since many of these agents were highly placed and expensive members of the Roosevelt Administration, Stalin’s experts concentrated on the manufacture of $100 gold certificates. As the duplication of official US banknote paper was a problem, smaller denomination bills were bleached and over-printed.

At the outbreak of World War II, economic advisors to the leaders of England and the United States urged their respective governments to forge German marks and flood the international market which would cause a collapse of confidence in that currency and, therefore, create tremendous inflation in Germany. The British did counterfeit German military scrip but used the blank reverse for propaganda messages. These were scattered by aircraft over Germany where their impact on the population was nil, but the impact on German leadership was considerable.

Exactly who in the Third Reich initiated the program for the counterfeiting of British currency is not known. One man, Alfred Naujocks, an SS-Sturmbannführer (or Major) in the SD, has taken credit for the inception of the plan in 1940. Naujocks was a longtime acquaintance of Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the SD and it was Heydrich who initially authorized the reproduction of British pound notes. The initial code name for the operation was “Andreas.”

It has been stated that the original purpose of “Andreas” was to falsify pound notes and drop them over England to create economic havoc. However, a more believable scenario, and one supported by period documents, is that the SS leadership envisioned the possibility of raising funds for their organization.

The SS was an official branch of the NSDAP and its funding came from the Party coffers, although the Waffen-SS drew on government funding for much of its military requirements. One of Himmler’s best assets in this economic struggle was his complete control of the KZ (or concentration camp system). Based on the institutions introduced by Lord Kitchener in South Africa during the Boer War to control the civil population, the KZ system encompassed a wide spectrum of inmates, ranging from professional criminals, communists, and political opponents of the government, including Jews and other ethnic and religious groups.

At the beginning of the war, there were 21,300 concentration camp inmates, housed in six camps. During the course of the war, the total number of inmates rose to over 400,000 lodged in an enormous network of camps scattered throughout Europe and the East. SS General Oswald Pohl and his deputy Richard Glücks organized a huge, free labor pool which would provide a major source of revenue for the SS. It was this system of forced labor that the SD turned to when “Andreas” was superseded by “Bernhard.” The “Andreas” attempts to forge British notes floundered in technical problems and contributed to personality conflicts within the RSHA.

The proper paper was nearly impossible to initially produce since, unlike the original, it did not properly fluoresce under ultraviolet light. Also, a proper numbering system proved extremely difficult to develop. In 18 months, “Andreas” had only produced a half-million pounds worth of counterfeit notes, many of which, however, were authenticated by the Bank of England when submitted by unsuspecting Swiss banks. Personal rivalry between Heydrich and Naujocks created so many problems that “Andreas” was eventually terminated

“Bernhard” was named for the new head of the scheme, SS-Hauptsturmführer Bernhard Krüger of the SD. Krüger, born in Reise, Saxony on November 26, 1904, was a specialist in forging documents and was assigned to Section VI F4 of the RSHA where his section assembled a large library of foreign documents of all kinds which were copied for intelligence operations.

The second project, “Bernhard,” began only after Heydrich was assassinated by British agents in the summer of 1942. At that time, SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Dörner of the RSHA began to assemble a team of specialists from the ranks of concentration camp inmates. This initial cadre was originally constituted at Oranienburg concentration camp north of Berlin, and on August 23, 1942, it was permanently established at Blocks 18 and 19 at nearby Sachsenhausen camp.

Major Krüger promised his inmate workers good housing, better and regularly served meals, no physical abuse, tobacco, newspapers, good clothing, and packages from outside sources. Most importantly, he assured them of survival. In return, he required full cooperation in the counterfeiting projects and the maintenance of strict security.

By the end of 1942, the 200-pound-pressure Stentz Monopel Type 4 press was moved to Sachsenhausen from its former location in the Berlin forgery center. Aside from the manufacture of the highest quality intaglio plates, the most important factor in the production of undetectable counterfeit pound notes was reproduction paper. British notes were printed on a high rag content paper and manufactured by the Portal, England firm of Laverstoke, which had been producing this paper for the Bank of England since the first quarter of the 18th century.

Paper used in the production of American currency was a 17- pound bond manufactured for the U.S. Treasury by the Crane Company. As the SD turned its attention to the counterfeiting of American currency in 1943, the same German firms that duplicated the Portal paper, Spechthausen and Schlichter, and Schall, successfully duplicated the Crane paper.

The counterfeit paper for pounds had to have not only the correct texture and appearance, but had to be properly and exactly watermarked and fluoresce with the exact shade as the original paper. The Germans solved the latter problem by a careful analysis of water used in the preparation of the original British paper.

The actual manufacturing of the pound note plates was preceded by a thorough study of thousands of original examples of the British pound in German hands. The Bank of England had 156 identifying points on their plates and the forgers were able to duplicate every one of them.

Copying the lettering and numbering of the original currency presented few serious problems to Krüger’s experts, but the vignette of Britannia, common to all denomination pound notes, proved to be extremely difficult to copy—a similar problem which had occurred with the portraits on American currency. On the pound notes, the vignette consisted of a crown-surmounted wreath enclosing a seated Britannia holding a spear in her left hand and a floral spray in her right. However, constant reworking eventually produced an exact copy. The correct numbering system for the pound notes was developed by German mathematicians, and the numbering system for the U.S. bills came from American published sources. As the British used German-made ink for their currency, this aspect of the project presented no problems.

The first run of counterfeit pound notes inspected by senior officials at the RSHA in Berlin was declared a technical success, but lacked the overall visual appearance of original, circulated currency. This was solved by the addition of Soloman Somolianov, a highly competent forger, to the Sachsenhausen crew. Somolianov, a Russian Jew, specialized in the forgery of British pound notes and was successful in adding the proper patina of age to the new pounds and later, U.S. dollars.

After the notes had been printed and aged, they were sent to the RSHA and SS-Oberführer Walter Schellenberg, head of Section VI of the RSHA and SD foreign intelligence, distributed the British pounds to various outlets—many of which are still officially unknown.

For many years the old rhyme, “A Pound’s a Pound the World Around,” recalled the preeminence of British currency throughout the world. The final product of “Bernhard” had been tested by passing it through the Swiss banking system and through them eventually pronounced genuine by the Bank of England. Armed with these bonafides, Schellenberg’s agents glutted the world’s currency markets with over 300 million British pound notes in denominations of 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 pounds, in varying degrees of perfection.

First-class quality notes that defied any detection were used to purchase gold, jewels and safe currency through neutral banking systems, while lower quality notes were used for less exacting customers such as Tito’s partisans from whom the SS purchased huge amounts of weaponry supplied to the Yugoslavs by British and American clandestine services.

In early 1943, full-scale production of U.S. currency began at Sachensenhausen. First, the $100 gold certificate was printed, followed by the $50 and $20 dollar silver certificates. Although specific information on the amount of U.S. bills counterfeited by “Bernhard” from 1943 has never been released by the U.S. Treasury Department, a conservative estimate based on German documents and other information puts the overall total at $50 million.

As the Soviet Army approached Berlin in 1945, the unit at Sachsenhausen was moved to Mauthausen in the Ostmark on March 12, 1945 and again on March 21, to Redl-Zipf, north of Salzburg.

Finally, on April 24, Krüger ordered the prisoners transferred to Ebensee where they were liberated by the Americans. Krüger had kept his word to the inmates and at one point, in November of 1943, had secured official permission from Berlin to award twelve War Service Medals and six War Service Crosses, 2nd Class without Swords, to more deserving counterfeiters. They were permitted to wear their decorations inside the camp area and since most of them were Jewish, the attitude of the camp commandant can only be imagined.

The liberated “Bernhard” people were free to follow whatever course they chose. There is reason to believe that a number of them continued their artistic endeavors but under different management.

Soviet and American intelligence agencies were extremely eager to locate Bernhard Krüger. Their interest had to do with American dollars.

As retreating SS units threw huge sums of counterfeit pounds into Austrian lakes and streams, the acres of floating and waterlogged notes put an effective end to the usefulness of the once-mighty British pound. It is interesting to note that not a single American bill has ever been identified as a counterfeit of the Sachsenhausen project.

The Soviets and Americans were eager to locate not only the finished U.S. bills but the plates and paper as well. Since the “Bernhard” people and their baggage fell into American hands, the Soviets ran a poor second in the race. They only managed to locate some of the workers but none of their products. Neither the plates, paper, nor German documentation relating to the counterfeiting of American money ever officially surfaced. It is noted that large sums of dollars suddenly appeared in the Mid-East as funding for various U.S. intelligence operations in Lebanon controlled by Haj Amin-El Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem. Many of the funds were in $100 dollar gold certificates.

The Germans were not the only country to liberally finance their intelligence agencies and assist their countrymen in building personal fortunes through the use of counterfeit currency. The basic difference is that the Germans did not manufacture their own currency.

This form of economic warfare has certainly not ceased with the downfall of the Third Reich. The Iranian government has, by all serious accounts, been forging nearly perfect U.S. $100 bills which have circulated throughout the world and caused the U.S. Treasury Department to issue newly formatted bills. The U.S. Treasury Department will eventually recall all outstanding older bills and carefully inspect them before making exchanges.

In 1984, over 2,000 extremely rare, nearly mint condition, ancient Greek silver coins, dating from 465 BC, were unearthed near Elmali in Turkey. The hoard of coins, in violation of Turkish law, quickly circulated into the international marketplace, and many coins sold for huge sums of money. Discovering that their national treasures had apparently been looted, the irate Turkish government forced the return of most of the horde through legal and diplomatic means. The British Museum inspected some of the rarer specimens and concluded that the entire collection had been recently manufactured at the Bulgarian State Mint in Sofia by that country’s intelligence agency to raise much-needed Western currency. Following this revelation, the value of rare Greek coins toppled as quickly as the British pound had fallen in 1945.

The irony of the “Bernhard” operation is that their 5 pound counterfeits are now worth more on the collector’s market than they were during the war.

 

The CIA as international counterfeiter

June 11, 2019

by Christian Jürs

The CIA, has been responsible for manufacturing the nearly-perfect counterfeit 50 and 100-dollar-notes that Washington has been accusing the North Koreans of making.The charge comes after an extensive investigation in Europe and Asia by the German BfV and after interviews with counterfeit money experts and leading representatives of the high-security publishing industry.

The U.S.-dollar forgeries, designated ‘Supernotes,’  are so good that even specialists are unable to distinguish them from genuine notes, have circulated for almost two decades without a reliable identification of the culprits. Because of their extraordinary quality, experts had assumed that some country must have been  behind the enterprise.

The administration of George W. Bush had officially accused Pyongyang of the deed in the autumn of 2005, derailing Six-Party Talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. Since then, tensions on the Korean Peninsula have increased considerably. America charged that North Korea has been financing its rocket and nuclear weapons program with the counterfeit ‘Supernotes.’

North Korea is one of the world’s poorest nations and lacks the technological capability to produce notes of such high quality. According to the BfV, North Korea is at present unable to even produce the won, the North Korean currency.

The German sources state that the CIA has printed the falsified ‘Supernotes’ at a secret facility near Washington to fund covert operations without Congressional oversight. The same agency has also been falsifying Euros to fund its large-scale bribery of German government officials.

 

The failing US control of the Arctic oil reserves

June 11, 2019

by Michael Hunt

Arctic territories are believed to hold vast untapped reserves of oil and gas. They have increasingly been at the center of disputes between the United States, Russia, Canada, Norway and Denmark as rising temperatures lead to a reduction in sea ice and make energy reserves more accessible. Russia has made claims to several Arctic shelf areas and plans to defend its bid at the United Nations.

As Arctic ice has melted, companies from Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia, and the United States — the five countries that have a border with the Arctic — have been rushing to secure rights to drill for oil and natural gas in places that are now accessible.

Under international law, no country currently owns the North Pole or the region of the Arctic Ocean surrounding it. The five surrounding Arctic countries, the Russian Federation, the United States (via Alaska), Canada, Norway and Denmark (via Greenland), are limited to an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of 200 nautical miles (370 km; 230 mi) adjacent to their coasts. The waters beyond the territorial waters of the coastal states are considered the “high seas” (i.e. international waters). The sea bottom beyond the exclusive economic zones and confirmed extended continental shelf claims are considered to be the “heritage of all mankind” and administered by the UN International Seabed Authority.

Upon ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), a country has a ten-year period to make claims to an extended continental shelf which, if validated, gives it exclusive rights to resources on or below the seabed of that extended shelf area. Norway (ratified the convention in 1996), Russia (ratified in 1997), Canada (ratified in 2003) and Denmark (ratified in 2004) launched projects to provide a basis for seabed claims on extended continental shelves beyond their exclusive economic zones. The United States has signed, but not yet ratified the UNCLOS.

The status of certain portions of the Arctic sea region is in dispute for various reasons. Canada, Denmark, Norway, the Russian Federation and the United States all regard parts of the Arctic seas as “national waters” (territorial waters out to 12 nautical miles (22 km)) or “internal waters”. There also are disputes regarding what passages constitute “international seaways” and rights to passage along them .

As defined by the UNCLOS, states have ten years from the date of ratification to make claims to an extended continental shelf. On this basis the five states fronting the Arctic Ocean – Canada, Denmark, Norway, the Russian Federation, and the U.S. – must make any desired claims by 2013, 2014, 2006, and 2007 respectively. Since the U.S. has yet to ratify the UNCLOS, the date for its submission is undetermined at this time.

Claims to extended continental shelves, if deemed valid, give the claimant state exclusive rights to the sea bottom and resources below the bottom. Valid extended continental shelf claims do not and cannot extend a state’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) since the EEZ is determined solely by drawing a 200-nautical-mile (370 km) line using territorial sea baselines as their starting point. This point is made because press reports often confuse the facts and assert that extended continental shelf claims expand a state’s EEZ thereby giving a state exclusive rights to not only sea bottom and below resources but also to those in the water column. The Arctic chart prepared by Durham University clearly illustrates the extent of the uncontested Exclusive Economic Zones of the five states bordering the Arctic Ocean and also the relatively small expanse of remaining “high seas” or totally international waters at the very North of the planet.

Russia ratified the UNCLOS in 1997 and had through 2007 to make a claim to an extended continental shelf.

The Russian Federation claims  a large extended continental shelf as far as the North Pole based on the Lomonosov Ridge within their Arctic sector. Moscow believes the eastern Lomonosov Ridge is an extension of the Siberian continental shelf. The Russian claim does not cross the Russia-US Arctic sector demarcation line, nor does it extend into the Arctic sector of any other Arctic coastal state. Russia also considers its exclusive control over the Northern Sea Route connecting Asia and Europe to be a “core national interest.” The U.S., among others, considers the NSR to be an international shipping lane.

On December 20, 2001, Russia made an official submission into the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (article 76, paragraph 8). In the document it is proposed to establish the outer limits of the continental shelf of Russia beyond the 200-nautical-mile (370 km) Exclusive Economic Zone, but within the Russian Arctic sector. The territory claimed by Russia in the submission is a large portion of the Arctic within its sector, extending to but not beyond the geographic North Pole. One of the arguments was a statement that Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater mountain ridge passing near the Pole, and Mendeleev Ridge on the Russian side of the Pole are extensions of the Eurasian continent. In 2002 the UN Commission neither rejected nor accepted the Russian proposal, recommending additional research

On August 2, 2007, a Russian expedition called Arktika 2007, composed of six explorers led by Artur Chilingarov, employing MIR submersibles, for the first time in history descended to the seabed at the North Pole. There they planted the Russian flag and took water and soil samples for analysis, continuing a mission to provide additional evidence related to the Russian claim to the mineral riches of the Arctic.[24] This was part of the ongoing 2007 Russian North Pole expedition within the program of the 2007–2008 International Polar Year.

The expedition aimed to establish that the eastern section of seabed passing close to the Pole, known as the Lomonosov Ridge, is in fact an extension of Russia’s landmass. The expedition came as several countries are trying to extend their rights over sections of the Arctic Ocean floor. Both Norway and Denmark are carrying out surveys to this end. Vladimir Putin made a speech on a nuclear icebreaker on May 3, 2007, urging greater efforts to secure Russia’s “strategic, economic, scientific and defense interests” in the Arctic.

In mid-September 2007, Russia’s Natural Resources Ministry issued a statement:

“ Preliminary results of an analysis of the earth crust model examined by the Arktika 2007 expedition, obtained on September 20, have confirmed that the crust structure of the Lomonosov Ridge corresponds to the world analogues of the continental crust, and it is therefore part of the Russian Federation’s adjacent continental shelf. ”

Viktor Posyolov, an official with Russia’s Agency for Management of Mineral Resources:

“ With a high degree of likelihood, Russia will be able to increase its continental shelf by 1.2 million square kilometers [460,000 square miles] with potential hydrocarbon reserves of not less than 9,000 to 10,000 billion tonnes of conventional fuel beyond the 200-mile (320 km) [322 kilometer] economic zone in the Arctic Ocean ”

As of October 2013, the United States had not ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and, therefore, has not been eligible to file an official claim to an extended continental shelf with the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.

In August 2007, an American Coast Guard icebreaker, the USCGC Healy, headed to the Arctic Ocean to map the sea floor off Alaska. Larry Mayer, director of the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping at the University of New Hampshire, stated the trip had been planned for months, having nothing to do with the Russians planting their flag. The purpose of the mapping work aboard the Healy is to determine the extent of the continental shelf north of Alaska.

The Arctic holds some 30 percent of the world’s natural gas supply, and 13 percent of the world’s oil. Royal Dutch Shell, the U.S.-based Arctic Oil & Gas Corp. and others. have made urgent representations to Washington about the necessity of their securing Arctic drilling areas and requesting a specific statement from the American government concerning area which would be under American control.

Each of the five nations with Arctic borders is allotted 200 nautical miles of land from their most northern coast.

The Canadian claim also asserts that it owns the Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater mountain range located between Ellesmere Island, Canada’s most northern border, and Russia’s east Siberian coast. In 2007, Russian scientists planted a flag on the ridge to claim it as Russian territory.

Russia created the Northern Fleet-Unified Strategic Command to protect oil and gas fields on the Arctic shelf. Unfortunately for American companies, the Pentagon has fallen behind, having only two of the icebreakers necessary to navigate Arctic waters. According to the Congressional Research Service, Russia has 25, with six powered by nuclear energy.

As Arctic ice receded and the region became strategically important, the American DOD shifted its attention back north. It released a new Arctic strategy outlining American interests in the region.

The new strategy calls for the Pentagon to take actions to ensure that American troops could repel an attack against the homeland from a foe based in the Arctic.

The Pentagon believes the Arctic is becoming contested territory, and the DOD should act to protect American interests. The idea that Russia might have access to more oil than America is galling to American political and business interests.

The United States is the world’s largest consumer of oil products by far and Russia is clearly one of the largest controlled of that commodity. The US became so outraged with the left-wing Venezuelan president that they made abortive attempts to seize that country and control its oil.

That they failed in their attempt and will in all probability fail in seizing all the oil reserves in the Arctic is evident and the sign of a rapidly declining world power.

 

Encyclopedia of American Loons

Phillip Johnson

Near-namesake of the (unfortunately) deceased but intellectually very much comparable Charles K. Johnson, Johnson is a retired Berkeley law professor and must perhaps be considered the very founder of the intelligent design movement (and founded, together with George Gilder, the Discovery Institute). The most important turnaround in Johnson’s career was when he became a born again Christian after divorce. He subsequently, and fully independently, realized that science didn’t support the theory of evolution. What a coincidenc

His introduction of “intelligent design” came in his book ”Darwin on Trial”, which since Johnson presented evidence in the form of a mock trial (with legal standards of admissibility of evidence), rejected all scientific evidence in favor of anecdotal evidence – in addition to being (of course) utterly selective in what evidence to present. The point was, essentially, that since the evidence for theory of evolution didn’t provide absolute, logical, irrefutable proof, the theory has to be rejected (no one ever sees that kind of argument from misunderstanding of the role and standards of evidence pop up among climate change denialists, no?). The fact that intelligent design has failed utterly as a scientific theory does not seem to bother him.

Johnson’s vision of the mission of the Intelligent Design PR movement is not limited to evolutionary biology. Rather, the point is that all science lacks a proper theistic basis. Hence every field of science and indeed all public policy should be held hostage to theocratic organization. This is apparently why Johnson calls evolution the ‘thin edge of the wedge’ with which to ‘split the log of materialism open’. This is a good resource on Johnson and his strategy. The idea is not to establish ID through science, but through public policy – hence the Discovery Institute’s focus, not on developing ID, but to get it into school curricula. See also this.

Thus Johnson is known for accepting not only creationism, but the whole full range of woo and crank ideas. He is, for instance, a HIV-denialist as well, having written several articles denying the link between HIV and AIDS.

Johnson has, however, remained relatively quiet the last 10 years after suffering a series of strokes, but he does make the occasional reappearance.

For fun, you can try scoring him on the crackpot index. Ed Brayton provides a brilliant guide here.

This is an interesting take on the whole creationist movement.

Diagnosis: Hyper-crackpot and one of the central founders of the denialist movement. His impact has been huge, but he seems to be semi-retired at present. Still dangerous, however.

 

Judy Zebra “JZ” Knight

A.k.a. Judith Darlene Hampton

A.k.a. Ramtha

Ramtha is, according to the press releases, a dead guy who led a huge army to conquer two thirds of the earth some 35,000 years ago. His main opponents were the Atlanteans, and the battle apparently led to huge, cataclysmic disasters. As a token of his goodwill, Ramtha is currently warning us about similar cataclysmic changes in the near future, so apparently we have to prepare. Ramtha also seems to have remarkable insights into various conspiracies, illuminati-type, ruling the world at the moment, and very up-to-date (read “trendy”) new age fads, including quantum woo and “the Secret”-style fluff and snowflakes magical thinking (“you are God” is one of Ramtha’s messages to mankind).

Being dead is no hindrance to spreading the word, and Ramtha is letting himself be channeled by JZ Knight (of Yelm, Washington), who makes a living selling books containing Ramtha’s advice and various healing trinkets (with her husband, James Flick). More here.

To help spread Ramtha’s important messages to mankind, Knight also opened Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment (rather a cult, really) which takes approximately 6000 students yearly and teaches them to utilize their inner wisdom and create their own reality (post-modernism is the best friend of stuff like this). Among the important courses offered is “breathing”, which seems less interesting than the various classes focusing on drug use (through which the students are sent on their to becoming as “enlightened” as other shamans, or even “real magicians” who can alter the world and reality at will). Among the powers good students will obtain are (seriously!) raising the dead, freezing a rocket in mid-air, make gold appear out of thin air, and predicting the future. It is unknown whether the school has produced any GPA above 2.0 yet. Eventually psychic progress will lead to “ascension” of the body into the “Void”, what Knight calls the ultimate spiritual state (an uncanny version of “graduation” it seems). Students also learn psychokinesis, telepathy, clairvoyance, other ESP skills, and that HIV is nature’s way to get rid of homosexuality. To ensure obedience, the school teaches that “unless students remain faithful to Ramtha, they will become prey of the “lizard people”, and that the ancient figure of Jehovah would return to earth accompanied by lizard people, in a spaceship” (no kidding!). The school’s official webpage is here; their newsletter is here. It’s a little difficult to find the school’s faculty and staff, but former teachers have included the Wayne Allen Geis, Ruth Beverly Martin, spiritual teacher Whitewind Weaver (whom Knight later sued), and school administrator Mike Wright.

Somewhat controversially, Knight has encouraged her students to engage in tax evasion (since the government is an illusion and the US will be invaded by Chinese communists right away).

Among the school’s more successful ventures was the creation of the movie “What the Bleep Do We Know”.

J.Z. Knight was previously heavily promoted by the clinically delusional Shirley MacLaine.

As an interesting aside, Don & Carol Croft (covered earlier) seem to think that she is some kind of front for alien lizard people, Tavistock and the Rothschild family, and (like many psychics) is secretly working to open some time tunnels or other. They talk about “Ramtha hives” of lizard people. It is not completely clear and has something to do with Montauk and Al Bielek (also covered earlier) – try to make sense of it yourself; also covered in this, uh, remarkable diary

Diagnosis: The very queen of new age insanity, one step up from Deepak Chopra. Severely mentally challenged, and in fact rather dangerous.

 

Frances Cress Welsing

 

Frances Cress Welsing is a D.C. psychiatrist and completely batshit insane. She is particularly noted for her afrocentric “Cress Theory of Color Confrontation,” and The Isis Papers; The Keys to the Colors (1991). Welsing claims that there is a system practiced (consciously and unconsciously) by the global white minority to ensure their genetic survival by any means necessary, a system that attacks people of color (particularly of African descent) in all areas of activity, and that it is, accordingly, imperative that people of color (particularly of African descent) understand how the system of white supremacy works in order to dismantle it. So far, so good, perhaps – some over-the-top formulations, but that can probably be excused when dealing with a real issue.

But no. In The Isis Papers she formulates her pseudoscientific melanin theory, the gist of which is that white people are the genetically defective descendants of albino mutants, a mutation that may have caused them (justifiably, it seems) to have been forcibly expelled from Africa. And it is because “pure whitness” is so easily genetically lost during interracial breeding that light-skinned peoples have developed an aggressive colonial urge. She also ascribes plenty inherent and behavioral differences between black and white people to this “melanin deficiency,” since melanin is apparently a superconductor that absorbs all frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum, can convert sound energy to light energy, and work as a minicomputer to process information; a deficiency would accordingly be bad). Her evidence is apparently restricted to “her experiences as a psychiatrist”.

White people’s (accurate) sense of their own inferiority is exhibited in various cultural practices: “On both St. Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, the white male gives gifts of chocolate candy with nut … If his sweetheart ingests ‘chocolate with nuts’, the white male can fantasize that he is genetically equal to the Black male … Is it not also curious that when white males are young and vigorous, they attempt to master the large brown balls, but as they become older and wiser, they psychologically resign themselves to their inability to master the large brown balls? Their focus then shifts masochistically to hitting the tiny white golf balls in disgust and resignation – in full final realization of white genetic recessiveness.” I suppose such gibberish is standard fare in some branches of post-modern Freudianism – big claims are justified by vague associations between words in any manner the practitioner may fancy – but it is no less loony for that.

According to Welsing psychiatry (that is, her brand of psychiatry) seems to be some sort of primary science. Her “Unified Field Theory Psychiatry” encompasses and grounds biology, psychology, and physics, and is a prerequisite to understanding the etiology of a unified field of energy phenomena, in particular the “behavior-energy” underlying racial conflict (yes, it is quantum woo), as well as homosexuality and sexism. And no, she doesn’t like gays. According to Welsing black male homosexuality was imposed on blacks by the white man in order to reduce the black population; it is a sign of weakness, and homosexual patterns of behavior are simply expressions of black male self-submission to other males in the area of sex, as well as in economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, and war.

But this, readers, is just the beginning of Welsing’s “scientifically based” theories of race. According to Welsing there is a correlation between high blood pressure and blackness of skin due to the fact that melanin picks up energy vibrations from other people under stress – the darker the skin, the more melanin, and thus the more vibrations would supposedly be picked up. This apparently explains why George Washington Carver was so successful in discovering useful products from plants – he owed his success not to his MA in chemistry, but to the fact that he was dark-skinned: The plants “talked to his melanin and told him what they were good for” during his early morning strolls. It is hard to see how such ideas, if incorporated in a school curriculum (which is what Welsing and her group try to achieve – just like creationists, the point is to get the rubbish into schools, not to gather evidence), would have any long-term positive effects for the target groups.

But melanin can do more than talking to plants. According to Welsing (and repeated in particular by Hunter Adams) the Dogon of Mali discovered a dwarf companion of Sirius, Sirius B, which is invisible to the naked eye. They did so, according to Welsing, because the Dogon’s melanin, in addition to giving you ESP, functions in a manner similar to an infrared telescope, enabling them to detect Sirius B through the melanin in their pineal glands (yes, the pineal gland). Evidence, or plausible mechanism? Forget it – her justification is a matter of Freudian associations. She further claims that everything that happens on Earth is converted to energy and beamed up to Sirius B, and that the high melanin content of black people enables them to tap into that information. Thus, for instance, Greek oracles (who were apparently black, according to Welsing) were able to foresee the future, just as present-day blacks are able to do (but of course not melanin-deficient whites).

Diagnosis: Appalling pseudoscientific bullshit. And as with other pseudoscientce, it is all about outreach, not finding out what’s actually the case.

 

Joel D. Wallach

Joel D. Wallach, M.S., D.V.M. and N.D. (Naturopathic doctor – or “not doctor”) is a veterinarian and naturopath with a long history of involvement in dubious health schemes. He is particularly infamous for claiming (in the bizarre audio tape “Dead Doctors Don’t Lie”) that all diseases are due to mineral deficiencies, that everyone who dies of natural causes dies because of mineral deficiencies, and that just about anyone can live more than one hundred years if they take daily supplements of colloidal minerals harvested from pits in Utah. It is probably needless to say that the information is not entirely accurate (there’s a discussion here). The (a?) website for the tape is here, and it is worth linking to for its glorious design and color scheme, which makes it even more incredible that Wallach has actually had some influence: He’s probably the main US promoter of colloidal mineral supplements, which, by the way, are completely and utterly bunk.

Wallach claims that minerals in foods and most supplements are “metallic” and not as effective as “plant-based” colloidal minerals, which is as nonsense as a claim can get (colloidal minerals are also “metallic”). This is something Wallach ostensibly learned from living on a farm, doing necropsies on animals, and reading National Geographic and the 1934 novel The Lost Horizon. He certainly didn’t learn it from science. And it hardly matters that science has falsified his claims about the benefits of mineral supplements (e.g. here) it’s also worth adding a link to a discussion of the recent results on multivitamin supplements in general here, though Wallach is way beyond standard supplements). Mineral deficiencies are certainly not a major cause of disease and death, either. But to back up his claims to the contrary Wallach uses anecdotes and fiction, for instance claiming that there are five cultures in the world that have average lifespans of between 120 and 140 years: the Tibetans in Western China; the Hunzas in Eastern Pakistan; the Russian Georgians and the Armenians, the Abkhasians, and the Azerbaijanis, which is … well, fiction through and through and so obviously and easily verifiably false that one wonders how he thought he’d get away with it (but apparently he does; gullible people are not only buying his supplements, but repeating his claims). Equally false is, of course, his claims about South American people who sustain longevity by mineral rich “glacier milk”. On the other hand, Wallach says, “the average lifespan of an American doctor is only 58 years!” (hence the title of his tape). That number has absolutely no connection with anything real either, of course. There is a resource on Wallach’s claims here.

On the aforementioned tape, “Dead Doctors Don’t Lie”, Wallach can tell us that “… what I did was go back to school and become a physician […] and they allowed me to use everything I had learned in veterinary school about nutrition on my human patients. And to no surprise to me, it worked.” He doesn’t emphasize that by “physician” he means N.D., which is as much a doctor as a monkey in a lab coat. Wallach is not medical doctor. Still he claims to have made 3,000 autopsies on humans in that period, and discovered that “every human being who dies of natural causes dies of a nutritional deficiency.” How an N.D. gets to do human autopsies in the first place is probably something relevant authorities might want to look into …

According to Wallach, not only can we not get all nutrients we need from our food (no data). Nor can we buy them – the supplements available in stores are not “colloidal” and can, apparently, not be absorbed by the body. We need colloidal minerals from that pit in Utah. His explanation is well covered here (I am indebted to that article for this entry; also check the reader comments).

To make the relevant products available to as many suckers as possible, Wallach founded American Longevity, a multilevel marketing company (for which “Dr.” Paula Bickle, who has a degree from the diploma mill Columbia Pacific University, Jerry Bergman’s alma mater, is a leading distributor.) At least the market structure keeps non-suckers away from the get-go, thus providing some insulation for his rank ridiculousness.

Wallach has also been noticed for testifying in favor of the late James G. Keller’s fraudulent Tumorex device, a “radionics” device that allegedly could transmit “subtle energies” from a person with a hair strand, a drop of blood, or even a photograph, and send and receive “healing energies to that particular object.”

Diagnosis: Make one up yourself. Wallach apparently doesn’t care to know anything about how reality works, and – deliberately, it seems – therefore targets his bullshit at people who don’t know the basics either. A winning scheme for him; a losing scheme for humanity.

 

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

June 11, 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. 92

Date: Wednesday, July  23, 1997

Commenced: 10:15 AM CST

Concluded:  10:38 AM CST

 

GD: Hello, Robert. How were the tests?

RTC: Exhausting and inconclusive. I told them that if I had cancer of the lungs, I must have had it for years and I would be dead by now. No one listens to you.

GD: Oh, the doctors do love to get huge fees from their victims or from the victim’s insurance companies. Oh my, they tell you, these ingrown toenails could turn to gangrene at any time so I am going to schedule you for a toenail correction operation. And they bill you enough to make the down payment on their gay son’s new Porche. I have some experience with such things and the squeeze the lemon until it’s dry. The next thing will be exploratory surgery which you really don’t want at your age. Too invasive and too dangerous. Well, if you aren’t dead now, you would be when they finish with you. Montaigne said that…what did…oh yes, ‘The ceaseless labor of your life is to build the house of death.’ It happens but don’t let the doctors hasten it along.

RTC: No, I will try. Emily is convinced I should have more tests but I am getting tired of them. When you are gong along good, you never think of being sick. I am getting weaker and my balance is not what it used to be. My hip is not working properly and I fall down sometime if I don’t watch where I put  my feet. I used to get outside more but better safe than sorry.

GD: Did you ever talk to Critchfield about Jimmy Atwood?

RTC: Oh I mentioned it but he just laughed and said ‘shit happens.’ Of course it might happen to him one of these days.

GD: If he ever threatens to shoot me again, it certainly will.

GD: Be careful about that. You might get caught and he isn’t worth it.

GD: Jesus, no. I use other methods. For example I would go to a bar with a bad, bad clientele. I would act like a twit, get a little drunk and offer to buy drinks for the house. If I were lucky, I could pick out someone who was right and then, drunkenly of course, tell him I am a bookkeeper and one of my clients, Jim Critchfield, is such a fool. Why, did you know, that stupid man keeps a half a million dollars worth of Krugerrands in his house? Why, time after time I have warned him to put them into a bank or some burglar might get them. But would Jim listen? Not him. And after another drink, my new friend would slyly ask me where Jim lived because he might be a long lost cousin. Of course I would give him the address and then wait for the news that they found Jim, very dead, and someone had used a steam iron on his feet. And the house had been torn up and they found his wife stuffed into the drier, very dead.

RTC: I like Lois.

RTC: Well, we can’t control these things, Robert, and the good perish with the bad. Life is not always fair. Well, enough humor for the day. Otherwise, how are you doing?

RTC: Oh, as usual.

GD: Thank you, by the way, for the papers on Clinton. I doubt that I could use them but one never knows about these things. I knew all about his wife but he is really something, isn’t he?

RTC: Yes he is. Wouldn’t you like to be married to that?

GD: Oh, God no. Being married to a Jewish dyke would not be my idea of fun. I keep as far away as possible from lezzies, Robert. The bull-dikes are the worst. Tattoos, weight lifter arms, short hair, motorcycle boots and all. They don’t look anything like men but we never tell them. Might get punched out.

RTC: (Laughter) Well, who are we to judge, Gregory?

GD: I am. I love to pass judgments, Robert. I have a limerick for you on this subject:

A gay young man from Khartoum

Took a Lesbian up to his room,

And they argued all night,

As to who had the right

Do to what, and with which, and to whom.

RTC: (Laughter) Well I wouldn’t tell that one at Langley. Step on too many toes.

GD: Oh, please don’t disillusion me, Robert. The Secret Defenders of our Republic wearing mesh stockings under their Brooks Brothers suits?

RTC: It happens.

GD: Do they have daily inspections of the men’s lavatories to see if someone has drilled holes in the toilet stall walls?

RTC: It’s not quite that bad.

GD: If you opened a male whorehouse inside the Beltway, Congress would recess and stampede towards it.

RTC: Gregory, I hate to disillusion you but there are a number of male whorehouses in the District. And some for women as well. I mean with women, not for women. I don’t think things have gotten that bad. Not many women in Congress anyway

GD: Well, I could come there and get rich. I could open up a clinic to treat tennis elbow problems for Congressmen. They develop this problem from dragging around barracks bags stuffed full of bribe money.

RTC: I can’t argue with that, having been involved on the other end.

GD: Well, the other end is usually best.  My God, if they did away with hundred dollar bills and substituted them for heavy; silver coins, Congressmen would have to have leather inserts in their pockets to keep them from ripping out at the bottoms.

RTC: You are forgetting the Jewish Congressmen, Gregory. They spend all their time investing their bribes at 10 percent interest and wailing endlessly about Sacred Israel and the evil Nazis.

GD: Israel is an artificial country, stolen by Polish non-Jews from the Arabs, whom they murdered for their homes and gardens and then begged their co-religionists here to send money and guns. The Arabs outnumber them thirty to one and at some future date, the Arabs will get wise to their power and Israel will be a smoking hole in the ground. And then there will be people dancing in the streets for pure joy.

RTC: Roosevelt should never have let them into the government.

GD: Yes, that’s a bit like a farmer inviting a deputation of hungry hogs into his truck garden.

RTC: Yes, well put. What scares a lot of us is that Israel will drag us into a war to suit their plans. You know, attack some hostile Arab neighbor because they have enough power here to get it done.

GD: I can see this.

RTC: And they once sent tens of thousands of illegal Polish Jews into Florida from the Caribbean. Their Mossad sent them in and we couldn’t stop them. And they get fake papers, settle in Miami, send their sons to law school and from there, into the government. God help us all.

GD: Well, Hitler will be appreciated in a few years hence. He will be seen as a great visionary, even as the Army engineers are setting up detention camps in the deserts of Arizona. Sort of like the ones you ran in Vietnam.

RTC: Please do not get started on that, Gregory.

GD: I won’t but we both know about the torture palaces. Electric drills, acid baths, poked-our eyes, crushed testicles. Just a chance for some of your boys to explore the better sides of their nature. And get their loafers soaked in blood at the same time. Oh, precious treasures, the blood soaked shoes. A real token of personal heroism in the unspoken battle for empire.

RTC: You are being literate today, Gregory.

GD: Elegant realism, Robert. A little sugar coating on the bitter pill someone is going to have to swallow someday.

RTC: I’m out of it, anyways.

GD: Remember, Robert, that the sins of the fathers are paid for by the children.

 

(Concluded at 10:38 AM CST)ncluded: 3:30 PM CST

 

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Conversations+with+the+Crow+by+Gregory+Douglas

 

 

 

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