Mark’s interview on “Uncuffed/KALW” aired today, focusing on how vets were treated when they returned from serving in Vietnam. Mark has been one of several inmates who have been instrumental in getting veterans groups organized at the prison.https://www.kalw.org/term/uncuffed#stream/0. So proud of my veteran.
(c) 2010 by Mark Richards
There is a chill in this country of democracy,
Where the no-longer-free press tells you what to believe.
Education now is a target, to be cut and forgotten,
All that was once good, is now considered unimportant.
Civilized thought, kindness, care, love; all go by
The wayside as being fools’ messages – old and outdated.
Signs of past times, with as little meaning now as the
Hooped skirt of the rotary-dial telephone.
A broken government, where corruption is more accepted
Than heroics; spends billions keeping fat union workers
Overfed rather than providing children with a future.
The pork barrel becomes more desired than a healthy environment.
Little girls are brought up to think that looking like a
Hooker is acceptable, while little boys are told that
Porn is safer than relationships, so search the Web
For naked flesh rather than going out in the world to be real and alive.
This is the world built by a State worker’s dream,
Where every joy is based on the poison of a whore’s cream,
But we still have another path, no matter how dangerous it may seem.
To stand for the revolution, to burn their nightmare and make it green.
(c) 2010 by Mark Richards
Stone towers, golden domes,
Are we all so blind to the greater truth,
Why would any god seek palaces
When creation gave us Kilamanjaro?
Robes and crowns seem unneeded
In a universe of comets and novas.
The deadly whine of holy men,
Who care more about dogma than peace,
Condemns their faith to endless pain.
How can anyone follow such ugly people;
Give me a hot-looking, well-built witch!
Give me the healthy fertile loins of mother earth.
Keep your graves and bodies in a ditch,
Give me a morality based on love and birth.
Compound lies try to confine science to age-old myth,
Leaders rages on topics based in an era pre-pill,
Pre-refrigeration, pre-internet, pre-big bang;
Unable to grow with the universe, because their
Reason for being is based in the sewer of the past.
Open your eyes, or be blinded by the fires of exploding stars.
There’s beauty in each branch and twig
When they put forth their leaves again.
You’ll know when buds burst into bloom
Your confinement was not in vain.
@2011 by Mark Richards
It was easy to love the jubilance of Spring,
When leaves and flowers burgeon forth,
And children exulted in the mirth of bird songs,
Resounding through the redwoods.
And one may relish seeing the meadows,
Adorned with hikers and picnickers’ pavilions;
Great was my happiness,
When the fields were packed with unarmored lovers.
By Mark Richards, 2019
To recap: In the first installments of this report, I expressed how my family and I have found ourselves in the unenviable position of becoming targets for the Fake news pundits, and some fanatic English cyber bully and his pack of New World Order followers. The cyber thug opened his attack in the early winter of 2018, claiming that he would ruin our Christmas with some sort of ‘tell-all’ video. While they have failed to manage that, they have produced a series of interviews that offered some questionably one-side ‘witnesses,’ attacking us with accusations and twisted truths based more on mistakes and their deliberate lies than any sort of real evidence – apparently a standard for this sort of cultural molestation by half-baked internet hacks.
In March 2019, the English troll – whose sole claim to fame seems to be how deeply he has wallowed in the porn industry – informed the public in one of his mad, semi-literate diatribes – that he as “declared war” on a number of people involved in the whistleblowing field, my family, friends, and myself. As I’ve mentioned before, it was an interesting choice of words, in this day of terrorist threats and murderous manifestos that would seem to bring up a number of questions concerning the rights and expectations of American citizens to be protected from such attacks. And as the problem grows we have started to note that thee seems to be a number of connections with the government that hint at something far more sinister than some simple-minded, foul-mouthed sexual deviant and his clan of second-rate losers slandering anyone who has tried to help us.
As I pointed out previously, some media types are determined to keep the public ignorant about the threats and political forces that would harm the United States and its citizens. Perhaps they worry that the information might actually set the public on a new path to greater safety and freedom. Perhaps they are just so corrupt that they just do what they are told without any sort of thought about the actions. Whatever the case, their actions threaten the very freedom of free human civilization. The more crazed our attackers become, the more we realized how close we were to a truth that they and their masters want to keep from the public and the more we realized how important it is to press forward with the information that so many of us have been trying to get out of the shadows.
Apparently the Internet Trolls who are working so hard to color the public opinion against those of us trying to bring any sort of information concerning the Alien Question to the public are clearly willing to lie, falsify information, and threaten families, just to silence us. Their unkind insults and degrading personal remarks are the stuff of immature intellects that for the most part are more to be pitied than defended against. But they still cause pain and seem to still convince many people who have fallen for this attack, to jump in and add their two cents to the insults.
A typical example of ‘mob terror’ and ‘mob rule.
Before you join the screaming horde to tar and feather anyone, there are a few things that you might consider. No matter what my enemies may say about me, most have to admit that I was brought up in a military household to be a leader. Leaders have a command philosophy – a way of looking at the world; beliefs on the purpose of life and command; and, a desire to see subordinates in certain ways when their leader is not there to guide them. There is a feeling of duty towards not only your direct subordinates, but to the public at large.
To be continued….
By Mark Richards, 2019
People must remember that every tyrant understands that knowledge is a security threat! And as Churchill said, you can tell what direction a government is going by how it treats its prisoners. Since publishing The New Jim Crow in 2010, author Michelle Alexander has sold over one million copies. The book argues that the “war on drugs” is the modern incarnation of racist Jim Crow laws, resulting in mass incarceration that serves to keep black people segregated and impoverished in extensions of social constructs rooted in slavery. Alexander’s publisher, The New Press, said dealing with book bans by correctional facilities has been “a game of whack-a-mole, working prison to prison to get the book to prisoners.” In January 2018, the same month the New York COCCS suspended Directive 4911A – which the New Press publisher Ellen Adler called “painfully stupid and wrong” – New Jersey prison officials rolled back a ban that had been in place on The New Jim Crow at the State Prison in Trenton and the Southern State Correctional Facility in Delmont.
A June 2016 report by The Sentencing Project – a criminal justice research and advocacy organization – had found that New Jerseys’ incarceration rate for blacks was over twelve times higher than the comparable rate for whites. It was the highest discrepancy in the nation. New Jersey’s incarceration rate was 94 per 100,000 whites and 1,140 per 100, 000 blacks. ACLU attorney Alex Shalom fired off a letter to New Jersey DOC Commissioner Gary M. Lanigan, saying that for a state “burdened with this systemic injustice to prohibit prisoners from reading a book about race and mass incarceration is grossly ironic, misguided, and harmful.” (Zoukis, Christopher; “Censorship in Prisons and Jails,” Prison Legal News, [December 2018], pp. 8-9). Shalom asked why the two state prisons had banned the book, even though it was one of the texts being used by prisoners enrolled in the New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education Program. In response, he merely received a list of books disallowed at each facility. Shortly after that, though, The New Jim Crow was removed from the banned list.
Michelle Alexander, a visiting professor at the Union Theological Seminary by 2019, said she hopes media coverage surrounding policies that prohibit prisoners from reading her book will inspire people to wake up to the reality of mass incarceration.
In January 2018, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety (DPS) removed The New Jim Crow from its list of banned book titles following a demand by the ACLU. It had been added to the state’s Master List of Disapproved Publications in February 2017. That list also included Jailhouse Lawyers – written by imprisoned activist Mumia Abu-Jamal – as well as Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Hitler’s Mein Kampf, titles with erotic content and some encyclopedias, magazines and tattoo books. DPS spokesman Jerry Higgins pointed out that some books are banned due to their size, though The New Jim Crow was not one of them. Chris Brook, legal director for North Carolina’s ACLU chapter, called the attempt to ban Alexander’s book “cruelly ironic.”
“For North Carolina – a state with such stark racial disparities in its criminal justice system – to keep a book about racial injustice away from those incarcerated is not just shameful and wrong, it’s also unconstitutional,” he noted.
Brook added that in 2016, African-Americans made up 52 percent of the state’s prison population but only 22 percent of its overall population. Nationwide – including in California – the black incarceration rate is five times higher than that of whites, according to The Sentencing Project.
Heather Ann Thompson, a professor of history at the University of Michigan and the author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, pointed to the historic practice of keeping knowledge and information from black Americans.
“Slaves weren’t allowed to read because reading would directly lead to rebellion,” she observed, drawing a parallel with policies that prevent prisoners from reading books that address racial disparities and inequalities in the criminal justice system.
The point now is that this is true as well for the general public, when the government of any ‘agent’ of authority attempts to silence information that the people are entitled to learn! The problem is no longer just within the prisons.
In the March 2018 op-ed published by USA Today, three criminal justice experts at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law considered the cruelty of a state using its power to keep books out of the hands of prisoners. Myesha Braden, director of the group’s Criminal Justice Project, joined Michael Huggins, its George N. Lindsay Fellow, and its counsel, Courtney Alexander, to highlight the similarities between US systems of slavery and incarceration, both of which “demand the suppression of thought, activity and expression.”
“Just as pre-Civil War literacy bans perpetuated the institution of slavery, restrictions like [the one in North Carolina] perpetuates mass incarceration and ensure that prisons, jails and the industries that serve them continue to flourish,” they wrote. Quoting Frederick Douglass, who said “knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave,” the authors added that “knowledge also makes individuals less likely to become or remain incarcerated.”
Or as stated by the American Library Association: “Learning to be free requires access to a wide range of knowledge, and suppression of ideas does not prepare the incarcerated of any age for life in a free society.” That can be said as well for every citizen within a supposedly ‘free society’! if people who are trying to bring the public a point of view or information that is not popular with the government or some of its media representatives, are silenced by character assassination or other attack, then the suppression of the ideas in question does not prepare the public in general for life in a ‘free’ society.
Some media types are determined to keep the public ignorant as possible about the threats and political forces that would harm the United States and its citizens. Perhaps they worry that the information might actually set the public on a new path to greater safety and freedom. Perhaps they are just so corrupt that they just do what they are told without any sort of thought about the actions. Whatever the case, their actions do harm to more than those of us to whom they are openly attacking. They do an injustice to the people of the United States, and everything that the country stands for.
Of course, it is understood that, as author Upton Sinclair once said, “It is hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it.” Many of you don’t want to consider the topics that my family and I have brought to light, as the truth can be frightening and overpowering. Plus, attacking the messenger is the easy way to avoid facing the subject at hand. As Ellen Adler, publisher of the The New Press said, it is morally reprehensible to try to strip the people “of their humanity and limit what they can read…Books have the power to teach and inspire and help people rebuild their lives – who could possibly object to that?”
Apparently the Internet Trolls, who are working so hard to color the public opinion against any of us trying to bring any sort of information concerning the Alien Question to the public, object rather madly. They are clearly willing to lie, falsify information, and threaten families, just to silence us. I have been saddened to see how many people have fallen for this attack, to turn on us without considering the crazed or one-sided allegations. Just as with the civil rights movement, people who do not fit the mold of those in power make easy targets for the ignorant or the close-minded.
In Politics and the English Language, George Orwell correctly pointed out that the “court of public opinion” is the most brutal court of all. The powers that be who did not flinch when Jamal Kashoggi was murdered and dismembered, and who want to punish Mr. Julian Assange for illuminating secrets, are more than willing to do just about anything to influence the public’s point of view to protect their version of the status quo. That ‘court of public opinion” is, increasingly, being hijacked by spin doctors that would have made Joseph Goebbels and Hitler proud. However, they do not own the theater that they play in, and there are a number of heroic people who are willing to put up a fight to bring what they believe to be the truth to the people. As with Mr. Assange, some may believe that with all the negative press releases and threats, my adversaries have effectively already publicly reconvicted me in the public eye. But one might ask the question: Whose sword took Goliath’s head off? It was his own. (Letter by James Kor to DEMOCRACY NOW!, dated 4/11/19).
In prison there is a balance between being self-reliant and depending on others. We all know people who would rather suffer or go without than ask someone else for help. At best, they value being self-reliant and not needing to bother other people for things. At worst, they view asking for help as a sign of being human. We stand on our own two feet by recognizing that we are connected to a larger whole that is part of our identity. We are necessary to the whole, and the whole is necessary to us. We need each other, plain and simple. Being with and helping others is our way of experiencing and nurturing not only ourselves but our society. While there is a need to rely on ourselves and our own inner strength, it doesn’t mean that we don’t reach out to others who can remind us of that infinite reservoir of strength that each one of us has within. Denying help from others is denying our connection.
The flip side is that it is our job to remind others of their innate strength and to extend our arms in friendship and support to others. This is the way Americans made our country great in the past, and it is the way we will survive the onslaught of the Barbarians at the gates today. The American message of freedom needs us to express it at every opportunity. Even as the agents of evil pound us, we celebrate our connection with our nation and our world, and continue our efforts to bring our side of the truth to the public.
That message will expand in the next installments of this essay.
To be continued…
By Mark Richards, 2019
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently ruled that the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause was violated when the government introduced videotaped deposition testimony without making a good-faith effort, based on the facts of the case, to secure the witnesses’ presence at trial. It is the law of the land in America that people get to face their accusers – for a number of good reasons.
In the case at hand, the government filed a motion to declare the witnesses were ‘unavailable’ and to allow the introduction of their videotaped depositions at trial. The defendant countered with a motion to exclude the depositions on the grounds that the government had failed to prove the witnesses were unavailable and that the introduction of the videotaped depositions violated his right to confrontation. (Ankney, Douglas; “Fifth Circuit: Introduction of Deposition Video Without Making Good-Faith Effort to Secure Witnesses’ Presence at Trial Violates Confrontation Clause,” Criminal Legal News [March 2019], pg. 29.) As the Supreme Court stated in United States v. Allie, 978 F.2d 1401 (5th Cir. 1992): “…[b]ecause of the importance our constitutional tradition attaches to a defendant’s right to confrontation, the good-faith effort requirement demands much more than a merely perfunctory effort by the government.”
In the past, the public has been protected from such un-Constitutional attacks by the appeal courts for criminal encounters, and by local courts when it came to what most would consider ‘slander’ or ‘false witness’ accusations. But because the legal system has not been able to keep up with the technology, we now find fanatics of every sort are able to accost us with any wild accusation or statement that they want, with seemingly no realistic recourse on the part of the victim.
How many children have you heard about over the last few years who have killed themselves after a cyber-bully attack? Nor are well-healed adults immune from such reactions to being emotionally butchered by such cowardly backstabbing. A well-known 23-year-old porn star, apparently hung herself in December 2017 after a number of bitter media attacks over something she had said.
My only recourse in my own case seems to be to ‘vent’ a bit, and try to remind the public of a number of factors that my enemies have overlooked in their rush to do harm to my family and myself. I am reminded of actor Jackie Chan’s words: “I allowed myself to be bullied because I was scared…I was bullied until I prevented a new student from being bullied. By standing up for him, I learned to stand up for myself.” (Quoted in Guideposts, March 2019, pg. 12.)
After 35 years in California prisons, very little scares me, and nobody bullies me. Another point, however, that most of us have heard before, but those of us in prison know often to be a false hope, is that “the truth shall set you free.” Anyone in prison, or who has suffered a government or media attack, will tell you that all too often the ‘truth’ becomes so twisted by the expert enemy forces that the sure weight of the falsehoods are going to convict you no matter what the truth might have been. And because in the new “Media Rules” society there is no such thing as “You’ve done your time,” or “Give the man another chance,” the more vicious pundit can excite the public ‘will,’ the less chance a man has to ever get out of prison.
Because of the timing of my own case – that the attack came shortly after the filing of paperwork requesting a commutation that might have allowed me to start going to a Parole Board with the long-range hope of someday going home – my family and I have to consider the possibility that the government still so fears my whistleblowing efforts that they will go so far as to organize a media attack to further discredit me and rebuild an active ‘hate’ and ‘fear’ towards me in the public mind. Why else, after nearly 40 years, would anyone try to dig up such long-forgotten stories?
Well, money for one thing. The men involved have been trying to get money from the public for months to supposedly use it in the making of a more elaborate video against me. One can only guess how much money they’ve already been given by interested sources that have a stake in trying to silence me. I might remind the public of the words of Ray Bradbury, when he warned that, “There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
In its landmark ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010) – which held political campaign spending is a form of protected speech – the U.S. Supreme Court noted the First Amendment is “[p]remised on mistrust of governmental power.” The Court has also held that such mistrust extends to bans on books and other reading materials, since “freedom of speech is not merely freedom to speak; it is also freedom to read.” (See: King v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, 415 F.3d 634 [7th Cir. 2005.)
In addition to the many other privations that prisoners experience, we are often subjected to censorship of books, magazines and even correspondence by prison officials, and everything we attempt to write of say is constantly looked at and often censored. As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit wrote, “The simple opportunity to read a book or write a letter, whether it expresses political views or absent affections, supplies a vital link between the inmate and the outside world, and nourishes the prisoner’s mind despite the blankness and bleakness of his environment.” (See: Wolfish v. Levi, 573 F.2d 118 [2d Cir. 1978], rev’d sum nom. Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520 [1979].)
Yet restrictions on books and magazines have become commonplace in prisons and jails, and now someone is trying to silence my comments on a number of subjects by turning public attention against me – or perhaps even provoking an attack on me in prison to silence me once and for all. It should be noted that the men involved in this ‘cyber’ attack have already contacted my fellow prisoners in the attempt to make me look bad in their eyes – something that, in prison, can result in very dangerous situations, and leave me in a position where I have no options but to defend myself, and thus ruin any hope there may be for a positive action by the Parole Board.
In 1974, in Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396 (1974), writing for the majority, Justice Thurgood Marshall stated, “when the prison gates slam behind an inmate, he does not lose his human quality; his mind does not become closed to ideas; his intellect does not cease to feed on a free and open interchange of opinions, his yearning for self-respect does not end; nor is his quest for self-realization concluded. If anything, the needs for identity and self-respect are more compelling in the dehumanizing prison environment.”
Crucial to that need for self-improvement is the ability to read and study, to thereby learn new ideas and ways of thinking – and thus behaving. As a result, federal courts have found that incarceration does not automatically deprive prisoners of the First Amendment’s protection from policies that abridge the freedom of speech.
And yet, here we are, with some group of cyber bullies, performing a smear campaign, trying to convince the public that you shouldn’t pay attention to what I might say because they want you to believe that I’m a ‘bad man.’
Let’s get something clear: after 35 years on the main lines of California prisons, I am a really bad man. I sure as Hell wouldn’t want me for an enemy. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t listen to my voice when I try to warn you that something is going wrong! I have never spoken or written a word over the last three decades that I didn’t expect people to question. I’ve told the public to question and research everything they are told. What I object to is the current fad of attacking a speaker or writer on a personal level when you can’t find a ‘real’ flaw in their arguments. This becomes no different than the street thug who beats someone into silence just because he is more brutal and can get away with the attack. The sad fact is that the government, and the New World Order-backed media, get away with this sort of tactic just about any time they desire. That doesn’t mean that we have to like it, or that we should remain silent when we see it happening yet again! As Americans, it is up to each of us to demand that our rights are not violated by the government or any individual who thinks they are above the laws of the land.
And it is our right, according to our American Constitution, that we can defend ourselves against those who attack us, or pose a threat to our loved ones and our nation. That is why I have started this series of essays, and why events have been set in motion to legally present my side of the story to the public in a rational and organized manner. If my attackers become a little worried about the direction things may take, so be it. How does it feel, punks? You should never have attacked my wife and children in public!
Sad, when a convict is the only one with any class left standing.
To be continued….
By Mark Richards, 2019
In the previous installments of this diatribe I expressed how my family and I have found ourselves in the unenviable position of becoming targets for the Fake News pundits, and some fanatic English cyber bully. The cyber thug opened his attack with a series of interviews with some questionably one sided ‘witnesses’ that attacked us with accusations and twisted truths based on more mistakes and deliberate lies than any sort of evidence – apparently a standard for this sort of cultural molestation.
The new generation of low-life Sirens seem to be seeking to solve their lack of ability to ‘debate’ by simply calling the rest of us names and disturbing titles. The problem is that their tactics works, as the general public isn’t always aware enough to question the wildly nasty accusations or accept the idea that not everything you may hear or read in the media is true. The more emotionally crazed the accusatory attack, the more the public is willing to go along with the threatening words being thrown around, rather than looking deeper into the motives and agenda of those making the loudest noise.
One may realize that Yellow Journalism has been out there for over a century, and we have only to look at any of the propaganda from either of the World Wars to see how well it works. But to any rational person it comes as a real shock when they find themselves as the targets of such attacks. Many have started to wonder if our civilization can survive this new age of cultureless, discourteous, harsh, impolite, tempestuous, fear mongers; seeing the negative force of such foul minds overwhelming everything from free speech to all other basic human rights and ‘truths.’
What I teach the men in my prison Debate Group is to never lower ourselves to that name-calling level. When our opponents emphasize their emotional and intellectual inferiority by trying to reduce the debate to name-calling and ‘fear tactics,’ we much be even more inflexible in our professionalism. The only things that can save us – or our cause – when a ‘louder’ opponent attacks, is our positive character, spirit, and calmly superior methods. If we can re-establish ourselves as the only real professional in the conversation – distinguished from the rude amateur – then the profane and enraged aggressor slowly is silenced by the weight of weakness within their own negative energy. As one professor assured me years ago, “No fool wins forever.”
Already mentioned in my last writing on this subject were the general concepts of the use of witnesses who have something to gain by their contrived testimony, and the reason that someone would perform such an attack on myself and my supporters. These ideas will be enlarged on in this and future reports, as our defense becomes more aggressive. A sad point is that such a vicious attack would not take place in an environment that did not hold contempt in such high regard.
In a lecture at the Harvard Kennedy School in 2017, Arthur Brooks, of the American Enterprise Institute, analyzed the state of public disclosure, saying: “We don’t have an anger problem in American politics.” Though “Contempt” was not the subject of the lecture, audio engineers chose those comments to feature in a promotional video on Facebook. Within a very short time, the video had received over 12 million views – making Brooks think he might have touched a nerve. (Cheaney, Janie B.; “Heaping doses of contempt” WORLD Magazine, September 15, 2018, page 16.)
In modern American political conversation, it’s not persuasive reasoning that tallies up likes and retweets, but the ability to “skewer” or “destroy” an opponent. Scoring often matters more in everyday life than peacemaking, kindness, or forgiveness.
Most of us know what contempt feels like, and the pain it causes. Now ask yourself honestly: Have I ever listened only to an attack? Mocked anyone who believed and acted differently? Brushed off someone trying to warn you of some perceived threat or danger that you didn’t believe in? It may be a fleeting emotion you regret later, but how do you feel about it when someone does that to you? Can you draw a line between despising the actions and despising the person? (Cheaney, Janie B.; “Heaping doses of contempt” WORLD Magazine, September 15, 2018, page 16.)
This sort of cyber contempt has become such a problem internationally that the United Nations has assigned human rights investigators to comb cyberspace to track how websites can stoke hatred and possible violence as part of expanding forensics into the role of the digital world in modern conflict. The influence of online anger and propaganda has been assessed for nearly a generation and is now part of the routine casework by security forces around the world. But the UN – whose reports are often crucial for possible international prosecutions – is now trying to catch up after years of relying mostly on firsthand reports from the field.
Rights investigators and monitors have used information from open-source Internet sites – including videos, satellite imagery, and inflammatory posts – to strengthen traditional fact-finding in flash points and the tragic headline stories where cruel words have forced people into suicide or acts of violence against others. Yet the public seems oblivious to the damage that such attacks can cause.
In 2018 the UN dispatched a veteran human rights official to Silicon Valley to build relationships with technology companies. Felim McMahon, who directs the technology and human rights program at the University of California at Berkeley law school’s Human Rights Center, described the United Nations’ pace of reform as “turning several battleships tied together.” The UN human rights office, however, has now realized, “We need to have our small teams, not just in the field, but on the Internet,” McMahon said, going on to add, “This is essentially putting the UN at the cutting edge of this investigative opportunity. In terms of arriving at the scene of a crime, they are going to be the first ones there.” (McLaughlin, Tim; “UN increases monitoring of hate speech on Internet,” Washington Post, November 27, 2018.)
The former commissioner of the UN High Commission for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, ramped up efforts at dialogue with tech companies. Hussein feared that the UN risked becoming irrelevant if it didn’t make inroads with global tech giants such as Facebook and Microsoft. The Internet is a “fantastically powerful “tool for “empowering people and enhancing their human rights on the one hand,” said Scott Campbell, a long-time officer at the UN commission. “On the other hand, the Internet has been used as a medium through which hate speech can be propagated with previously unthinkable speed and scale…sometimes with absolutely catastrophic effects.” (McLaughlin, Tim; “UN increases monitoring of hate speech on Internet,” Washington Post, November 27, 2018.)
You have only to suffer such an assault once to understand what they are talking about.
To be continued…
By Jo Ann Richards
I would like to comment about several things that Kevin has reported via his video blogs and online forums/newsgroups:
1. The family home in Marin: Mark inherited it from his mom. Since he’s incarcerated, it has to be held in trust for him. I became one of the trustees before we were married; hence, the use of my maiden name. Since we are married, I can’t do anything to the house without Mark’s permission since CA is a community property state. I work very hard and cover all the expenses of maintaining this property: repairs, upkeep, property taxes, utilities, etc. I am not living ‘the gravy train’ as Kevin puts it.
2. Mark’s mom died peacefully in her Marin home, although Kevin would have you believe that she died in a trashy single-wide trailer park in Central CA. Yes, we suggested that Lois move there (we didn’t force her) as I was her only means of visiting Mark at that time; she was no longer driving. She lived in a lovely double-wide mobile home in a nice senior park; nothing trashy about it. I was able to take her often to see him. When he was transferred to a Southern Calif. prison, I moved with her back to the Marin home to help care for her.
3. In Oct. 2018, Kevin got into a New Mexico conference where I was speaking. Before the conference, he was refused permission to attend by the conference organizer. He snuck into my talk, illegally filmed part of it, and then heckled me during Q&A. He made a scene trying to convince the audience that Mark and I are liars. They did not appreciate it. He left, with hotel security making sure he did, and I filed a police report. His main question was about Mark’s timeline, esp. the date of his high school graduation. He was convinced that it was 1972 which would then throw off all other dates we’ve mentioned.
4. Mark graduated from high school in June 1971. I have proof of that. Mark has just sent to me additional proof as well – prison documents that verify his high school graduation and five college degrees. I will post these documents soon on my blogsite. I should also soon have their verification of his military career. If they can find it, why can’t Kevin?
5. I would like to point out that Mark’s friends in the 70s and early 80s did not know of his military activities because he was not allowed to tell them. That is how one was to protect their family and friends. So, just because ex-wife Caryn didn’t know the real reason why he would be gone for weeks at a time does not mean that he wasn’t in the military.
6. Just because ex-wife Caryn did not have children with Mark does not mean that Mark has no children. Kevin or his stooges have underhandedly tried contacting some of them. Thankfully, they knew better than to talk to him. Kevin tried to imply to Caryn that Mark cheated on her while they were married – not true at all.
7. Kevin has also contacted some of Mark’s prison inmate friends and associates. One man, a science fiction writer was duped by Kevin who led him to believe that he wanted to talk to him about his writing. After a while on the phone, Kevin started talking about Mark. That was the real purpose of getting the guy to call Kevin. What I would like all of you to think about is this: how did Kevin get those names? Names of friends and associates are not public record. Yes, once you have the names, you can find out their inmate number and the prison where they are, but not their housing information. Someone had to provide that information to Kevin.
8. I have all the court documents, too, and all the reports from police interviews. When the time is right, I shall point out flaws in what Kevin has been reported.
9. My purpose for speaking in the UFO community has been to share information about the military history behind UFOs, aliens, and space. It’s to educate people about little-known history about a cool topic. I’m not doing it to make my husband famous. It certainly has not been a get-out-of-jail ticket. It has certainly not made me rich.
10. I am not trying to deceive anyone. Most people appreciate the information that I share. I don’t expect everyone to believe it and they don’t. Our point has always been to people – try to disprove it, and they can’t. Kevin says he has evidence. Bring it on. All I see so far is discussions with people who knew Mark, but didn’t know about his military work; plus, the discussions with researchers who don’t know us, have never or barely ever talked to me, and yet they have very strong opinions about the issue.
11. Another question for people to ponder: the prison issue aside, what makes our information more unbelievable than others with their abduction and/or MILAB experiences, or the ones who have hybrid children, or those with UFO sightings? Many of those people are my friends and colleagues. Do they have physical proof? If they don’t, are they being persecuted? I hope not.
12. Lastly, a comment about Kevin’s remarks on Mark’s essay about cyber-space trolls. Yes, Mark used info from other articles. Good researchers do that to support their premise. The point of the essay is to point out that Kevin’s attack on us is clearly the type of method used by the government or law enforcement to discredit someone and keep them in prison as in Mark’s case. If Kevin was so infuriated about poor Richard Baldwin, why didn’t he look into it after he interviewed me years ago on his show? His timing is suspicious as Mark is now working on getting a commutation that would allow parole hearings.
No, Kevin, I will not be in your documentary. You do not have my permission to use recordings of our phone conversations. You do not have my permission to use any video footage that you filmed of me when you showed up in CO. You wanted me to believe that you were willing to do a documentary just on the SSP stuff. We know that wasn’t true.
If any of the readers want to politely/respectfully converse with me about this, please submit a comment on my blogsite: https://dragonhillnews.wordpress.com/
PS – I have moved any evidence that I have to a safe location.
By Mark Richards, 2019
A 2014 Northwestern University study found that almost half of the wrongful convictions in death penalty cases were based on false testimony of incentivized witnesses, making snitches the leading cause of wrongful convictions in capital cases. By 2016, the National Registry of Exonerations found that 81 of 116 death penalty exonerations involved perjury or false testimony by incentivized witnesses, an increase up to 70 percent. Barry Scheck’s Innocence Project found that 25 percent of DNA exonerations involved the knowing use of false incentivized witness testimony, and 11 percent involved the use of coerced witness testimony. (“The Snitch System,” NW School of Law Center on Wrongful Convictions; “incentives, Lies, and Disclosure,” by Christopher T. Robertson and D. Alex Winkleman, Univ. of Penn. Journal of Constitutional Law 20 [2017].)
Families Against Mandatory Minimums noted in 2010 that the threat of mandatory minimum sentences coerced 25 percent of defendants to cooperate with law enforcement in hopes of persuading the government to file a motion for a sentence below the mandatory minimum, since only a motion by the government can get around a mandatory minimum sentence. (“Understanding Snitching” by Families Against Mandatory Minimums.)
The facts show that numerous studies have been conducted on incentivized witnesses, including their effect on wrongful convictions, why they decided to cooperate with the government or other authority figures, and what it takes to persuade someone to become an incentivized witness. While these studies went about their findings in various ways, they all came to the same conclusion: offered an incentive to do so, most people, even honest people, will lie in exchange for some benefit.
In a 2017 study led by University of Arizona law professor Christopher Robertson, two experiments conducted on hundreds of people showed that 20 percent of one group would lie as a witness for the government in a case against someone else to obtain leniency for an unrelated offense, and 55 percent in another study group would lie against one of their codefendants in order to get leniency. The vignette-based experiments conducted by Robertson and his colleagues showed that non-criminals elected to lie at a rate shockingly higher than one might have expected. At the same time they recognized that their experiments actually underestimated the rate jailhouse informants would testify falsely for the government. They based this conclusion on the fact that jailhouse informants would be even more inclined to lie than the average person – because that is what criminals do, they said. (Norris, Robert J., et al; “’Than That One Innocent Suffer’ Evaluating State Safeguards Against Wrongful Convictions,” Albany Law Review [2011]; and Illinois Compiled Statutes 5/115-21 [2003].)
Researchers at the University of Arkansas in 2009 found that an offer to students to get out of having to complete another assignment resulted in about one-third of them providing false testimony against someone, even when they were told that the person had not committed the offense. The researchers said this result was not surprising since incentive is a “selfish motivation.” (Bliss, Kevin; “Police Use of ‘Undercover Friending’ Investigative Technique Unregulated,” from http://www.theroot.com.)
Added to the legal threat of such testimony, one now is faced with the new threat of the widespread use of social media to conduct unregulated, warrantless, long-term surveillance and openly aggressive destruction of individuals by the state of other special interest groups. Government agents have created Facebook accounts with false identities to follow targeted individuals without consideration for any clear investigative outcome, or brought corrupt media pundit-types onboard to discredit (or push people into suicide) targets the State seeks to ruin. How do you fight the false accusations of a cyber-bully, who can report any lie from any supposed ‘witness,’ or make up anything they want to support their side of a story?
That problem is exactly why, in the prison systems around the United States over the last century snitches have been treated harshly by their fellow convicts. For decades, when a man is found to be a ‘snitch’ or ‘rat’ in any of the ‘mainline’ prisons in California, if he doesn’t ‘lock it up’ and go into protective custody, he is likely going to get killed. Such men are considered the lowest of the low, and a threat to all of their convict brothers.
Why would the government risk such a controversial ploy, considering the risk involved? In my own case the answer is very simple. There was no evidence that would have done me enough significant legal damage to put me in prison without the use of ‘false’ or incentivized witnesses. And now, when there was the slight chance that through a ‘commutation,’ I might have hoped to have the “Life Without” sentence reduced to a “Life With,” so that I might seek parole at some point, those who seek to keep me in prison forever are more than willing to utilize the use of such people to get enough negative public reaction so that neither a governor nor a judge would dare to sign any such commutation order.
The roots of such an attack can be insidious. In my case, any encounter with entities known to be of extraterrestrial origin is to be considered to be a master of the highest national security and therefore classified ABOVE TOP SECRET. Under no circumstances is the general public or the public press to learn of the existence of these entities, or their interactions with humans. The official government policy is that such creatures do not exist, and that no agency of the Federal Government is now engaged in any study of extraterrestrials or their artifacts, or in any sort of communications with such creatures. Any deviation from this stated policy is absolutely forbidden. (Majestic 12 Group; “Special Operations Manual, SOM1-01 – Extraterrestrial Entities and Technology, Recovery and Disposal,” April 1954, Part 2; http://209.132.68.98/pdf/-som101_part2.pdf.)
The penalties for disclosing classified information are quite severe. In December 1953, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued Army-Navy-Air Force publication 146 that made the unauthorized release of information concerning UFOs a crime under the Espionage Act, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. (21st Century Radio’s Hieronimus & Co.; “Transcript of Interview with Bob Dean; March 24, 1996,” found at site: http://www.planetarymysteries.com/hieronimus/bobdean.html.) According to Robert Dean, this penalty is what prevented most former members of the military from coming forward to disclose information. (21st Century Radio’s Hieronimus & Co.; “Transcript of Interview with Bob Dean; March 24, 1996,” found at site: http://www.planetarymysteries.com/hieronimus/bobdean.html.)
The strategies for dealing with those former servicemen, corporate employees or witnesses brave (or foolish) enough to come forward to reveal classified information is to intimidate, silence, eliminate or discredit these individuals. This policy involves such strategies as removing all public records of former military service personnel or corporate employees, forcing individuals to make retractions, deliberately distorting statements of existing records of individuals, or discrediting the individuals by twisting the truth or making wild accusations. Bob Lazar, for example, claimed to be a former physicist employed with reverse engineering extraterrestrial craft. He described the disappearance of all his university and public records indicating how intelligence agencies actively discredit whistleblowers. (“Bob Lazar on the Billy Goodman Happening”; December 20, 1989; http://www.swahome.de/lazar3.htm.) In the well-known witness cases in the field – such as Cooper, Schneider, Lear, Wolf, and myself to name a few – all have been subjected to some or all of these strategies thereby making it difficult for the public to reach firm conclusions about our testimonies. Since the creation of controversy, uncertainty, and confusion is the modus operandi of intelligence agencies in maintaining secrecy of the extraterrestrial presence, then the testimonies of former officials/employees/witnesses need to be considered on their merits. (Salla, Michael; “Eisenhower’s 1954 Meeting with Extraterrestrials – Part 2/2, May 22, 2011 by Steve Beckow; http://goldenageofgaia.com.)
While issues of credibility, credentials and disinformation are important in the study of the extraterrestrial presence, a rigorous methodology for dealing with the efforts of intelligence agencies to discredit, intimidate, or create controversy around particular witnesses, has yet to be developed. For example, numerous efforts to discredit Cooper in particular by referring to inconsistencies in his statements, retractions, egregious behavior and stated positions. May be due in part or in whole to the policy of intelligence officials to discredit and/or intimidate Cooper from leaking classified information concerning events that he had witnessed in his official capacities. Since Cooper’s military record does indicate that he did serve in an official capacity on the briefing team of the Commander of the Pacific Fleet, it is most likely that much of his testimony is credible. Whatever inaccuracies exist in terms of his recollections of events (like the timing of meetings between the Eisenhower administration and extraterrestrials), may either have been due to understandable memory lapses after the passage of decades, or perhaps deliberately introduced as a self-protective mechanism. It has been pointed out by some “whistleblowers” that making retractions or sowing inaccuracies in testimonies is something essential in disseminating information without being physically harmed. (Salla, Michael; “Disinformation, Extraterrestrial Subversion & Psychological Reductionism – A Reply to Dr. Richard Boylan,” http://www.exopolitics.org January 7, 2004, found on http://exopolitics.org/Exo-Comment-11.htm.) The controversial Cooper has been subjected to undoubtedly the longest and most intense intelligence efforts to discredit or intimidate any whistleblower revealing classified information; finally including his murder by Federal agents.
What I find fascinating is the way the intensity of the attacks of disinformation and discrediting increase as a person brings more information to the public. If we were crazy fringe lunatics, as some would suggest, then why not just leave us alone and let time silence our foolishness the very vehemence of our attackers would seem to suggest that there is something wrong to what we are trying to tell the public.
Thusly, I consider it something of a compliment and a verification that my efforts in the field have been on the right track. Are the accusations painful and hard to take without reacting? Of course they are. Having my wife accosted in public lectures by some crazed English pervert in bad makeup to disguise himself from the authorities is not something that I am happy about. Having a small number of people from my past come forward to slander and parrot what the New World Order-backed Fake News slime suggests irritates but (like the people themselves) is almost meaningless. My greatest problem in fact is trying to keep a number of my ‘friends’ from protectively over-reacting to the attacks, and thus getting me in more legal trouble for innocent guilt by association. As one snarled recently, “Let’s offer them full disclosure. They may not like our version of it, but they so richly deserve it.”
To be continued…
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