Richard Dolan vs. Kerry Cassidy: place your bets

        In July last year, I wrote that Richard Dolan is the "egghead of UFOlogy," and indeed he is. His wikipedia article, complete with a list of his publications, confirms it. His own web site, richarddolanpress, lists more of his analytical essays on paranormal subjects. He completely lacks the borderline hysteria that is a feature of most individuals in the UFO "community", instead taking an academic approach to the subject.

        Kevin Moore is a British researcher and documentary video producer/director who is currently working on a documentary about the murderer Mark Richards, with particular emphasis on Kerry Cassidy's interest in him. Kevin's a good guy in my book. He frames his shots correctly and his audio is intelligible.

To recap the case briefly: 
        On 6th July 1982, Richards conspired with two accomplices to murder Richard Baldwin, a vintage auto dealer who he was on friendly terms with. Evidence included fingerprints on the murder weapons, some of Baldwin's property found in Richards' house and truck, and Baldwin's credit card in Richards' possession. A jury convicted him after four days' deliberation, and he was sentenced to life without parole.

        Since incarceration he has spun elaborate yarns about his own heroism as part of "the secret space program," battling and defeating the alien hordes in outer space, at the helm of exotic space battleships. He has made outrageous and impossible claims of military service, and says his first wife was an extraterrestrial.

        All this has impressed Kerry Cassidy so much that she has made the trip to Vacaville nine times to interview "Captain" Mark Richards, recording long recaps of the interviews on video each time. She apparently believes everything Richards tells her, and regards him as a vital whistleblower revealing information the US Government wishes to keep secret.

        She  has written (blog, 26 September—updated 27 October) that Richards was framed for the crime and is a prisoner of "The Illuminati-Draco planetary governement." What ingrates those guys are, eh? You'd think someone who has saved the planet  from alien invasion on multiple occasions would get some respect.

YouTube preview
        Last Friday Moore vouchsafed us all a preview of his work-in-progress, featuring an edited interview with Richard Dolan. Dolan left us in no doubt that, like Moore (and this blog), he thinks Kerry Cassidy has been utterly bamboozled.

03:03 Dolan: "I don't fault someone, again, for holding to a belief but... but if they're going to persist in excluding evidence because of an ideological blindness then... then yes they need to be taken to account. So I'm very glad that you're doing what you're doing because I believe based on the evidence that I have seen that you... you presented a more than strong case that Mark Richards is... is a deeply, deeply, dangerous, disturbed and sick man ....
04:11 "Now I realize that the other side will say "No, he was framed," but the evidence against him is overwhelming."

One day later, Cassidy reacted, in text on her blog.

KC: "Rich is not the man that I once knew.  What was once a fiery rebel working to expose the secrecy and revealing the role of national security as the proof of the coverup of UFOs in our skies, has now become an apologist for the state, hiding behind a false front masquerading as the voice of paternalistic “reason”.  He has settled for only the most conventional and superficial of explanations for a crime that implicates a top whistleblower who has for the past five years been at the cutting edge of our sector, revealing the very guts of the real truth behind the very craft Rich was so fascinated by as a young man.  And yet strangely, it appears that RD never asks himself the question, can evidence be faked?
::
"What a coup for the dark side to have recruited this man who once challenged them on every level for their lies and hypocrisy to suddenly join their ranks in pretending that there are no other explanations for this terrible crime than to attack a top whistleblower and officer in the Secret Space Program as being “evil” and “dangerous”?  And why, rather than look deeper into why the state would be well motivated to stop the growing popularity of the Mark Richards disclosures, RD (and others) choose to unquestioningly accept the evidence presented by a man who has no background investigating crimes and little knowledge of the rule by secrecy? Do you not find it the least bit suspicious that in the process RD and Moore are working so hard to discredit me, a journalist who routinely reveals the real truth behind so many of life’s mysteries?"

        It's a mystery where Kerry gets the idea that Dolan is "hiding behind a false front"—in Moore's video he's seen looking relaxed but serious, sitting on a nice soft sofa, presumably in his own home. As to whether she's correct in stating that she "routinely reveals the real truth behind so many of life’s mysteries," that's a matter of opinion. Mine is that she's hopelessly gullible, handcuffed as a journalist by her own paranoia. But I don't think we've heard the last of this.

Richard Hoagland and Keith Laney hate NASA

"Why is NASA lying about a major volcanic eruption on Mars?"

        The above is the headline for next Saturday's edition of Richard Hoagland's blogtalk show "Other Side of Midnight." Meanwhile, over on The Hidden Mission forum, Keith Laney posted as follows:

"Arsia Mons has been erupting since about Sept 20th. So far science hasn't said doodly squat about it. Figures, seems heads are so far up asses^{note 1} that they can't even see the f'in Millennium Falcon sitting plainly on top of Ryugu."

These two clowns are so obsessed with NASA hatred that they haven't noticed that:

1. This is not an eruption
2. The image comes from ESA's Mars Express, not NASA
3. Dr. Tanya Harrison, one of the "drivers" of the Mars rover Opportunity (and of course a JPL employee) has commented. I see no evidence that Dr. Harrison's head is anywhere close to her ass.

Harrison's comment was as follows:

"It's not a plume of smoke, but rather water ice clouds condensing out over the summit of the Arsia Mons volcano. We see these clouds hang out over the summit of Arsia for weeks at a time during this time of year, every year."

        Dr. Harrison is trained in planetary science. Neither Hoagland nor Laney has any such training, yet they think they know better just from having a look at a rather intriguing image. The guest on next Saturday's blogtalk show (if it happens—Hoagland's technical skills have been failing again lately) is John Brandenburg. Brandenburg has no expertise in this area either—he's a plasma physicist with very strange ideas about Xenon isotope ratios. That show may plumb new depths of NASA-hating ignorance. I will not be listening.

        P.S. The image above is just one of a whole series from the Mars Express Webcam. Check 'em out.

Update 1:
        This page from MSSS dated 20 September 2005 ascribes these seasonal plumes to dust rather than vapor. I'm not qualified to arbitrate between Tanya Harrison and her former employer—the point is, it ain't an eruption.

Update 2:
        Trekker provides this excellent update, direct from ESA. I don't think Keith Laney will be whining about science saying doodly squat any more.

Update 3:
        OSOM was aborted after about six minutes due to technical problems. Hoagland said he had no music and no commercials. "You should never do an amateur program, ever."^{note 2} It's rescheduled for Sunday night.

Update 4:
        The show completed on Sunday night. It's available (for a limited time, I think) at this link.

Update 5:
        Appearing on the News segment of Coast to Coast AM Oct. 30th, Mike Bara incorrectly stated that the plume's origin was the crater, and said "definitely not water vapor." Isn't it time C2C started calling in somebody who knows WTF he's talking about?

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[1] Juvenile obscenity is a standard feature of Keith's forum. The members often behave like nasty little schoolboys.

[2] This will bring a smile to the faces of those who remember his radio shows from 2015/16. The squeaking chair, the ringing phone, the barking dog....

Sean David Morton: heart attack

This from Sean David Morton's blog on Project Camelot:

"Under the massive stress of finally getting my Appellate Brief in, last Thursday night I suffered a mito cardiac infarction, basically a mild stroke. My heart was racing, a massive stabbing headache, bulging eyes and my left arm and hand went numb. I asked to go to the hospital and was told that I was WELCOME to wait for the DOCTOR to come HERE at 0600 on MONDAY. So I may just die in here, and nobody would care." (emph. added)

        So it seems Morton is as error-prone on medical matters as he is on finance. He means a myocardial infarction, not a mito-. And it isn't a stroke, although a stroke can be one of the worst collateral outcomes. It's a common or garden heart attack, and as a 60-year-old grossly overweight American male, it's not at all a surprise, or shouldn't be. However, he's right to be concerned. He needs angioplasty, and delaying it is extremely unwise, possibly fatal.

There's more:

"It also appears that TIME and NEWSWEEK are going to do stories on our situation and what has been done to us…but I can’t trust them to do anything but amp up the smear and describe us as “DANGEROUS DISSIDENTS” and/or “Crazy SOVEREIGN CITIZENS and TAX PROTESTORS” NONE of which we are or have EVER BEEN! Again, I NEVER taught or spoke about TAXES."

        Excuse me, Sean baby, but what exactly were you lecturing about on the 2016 Conspira-Sea cruise? You remember the one—it was that time when you and your wife were arrested as soon as you stepped off the cruise ship.

Mike Bara bitch-slaps Jimmy Church

        Jimmy Church is the radio chat-host who runs Fade to Black and sometimes comes out of the bull-pen to substitute-pitch for George Noory on Coast to Coast AM.  Back in June 2016 I commented that I rather like Jimmy—he's a lot better than Noory, anyway.

        Mike Bara's guested on FtB Radio more times than I can easily remember—I've certainly blogged about three or four of them. I definitely blogged when, in February 2015, Mike was on C2C-AM with Jimmy subbing as host. That was when Bara said "I’ve  gotten to the point now where I’ve completely blocked out the people that attack me." Those two boys were very chummy, and not just on the air either. Here they are cuddling up at the Conscious Life Expo that same year—same month, in fact. The fat guy on the left is Tom Danheiser, C2C-AM line producer.

        Here's another, not sure when this was but Jimmy seems the worse for...  wear? This time the guy on the left is Jason Martell, another populariser of ridiculously false information like Bara.

« Nothing turns to hate so bitter as what once was love »

--Laurell Hamilton, paranormal novelist

        Now, sad to say, the hugs have turned to insults. It started on 14th September, with Bara tweeting "If you believe... [insert six standard conspiracy topics]... You might be an imbecile. You might also be a candidate for a guest spot on the Jimmy Church show." 15 days later Bara called Church "a small-time drunk." In answer to Larry Fletcher, he tweeted that he hadn't talked to JC since june, and "I will never speak to him again."

        And yesterday the feud got even hotter.

        Karen McIntyre responded "Get off of my tweet, Mike. Not the best way for you to represent yourself and it doesn't sit well here." Predictably, Bara's rejoinder was "Am I supposed to give a shit?"

        If anybody knows what this bitchery is all about, please let me know. I suspect it's the Gaia "alien mummy" story, but that's just a guess. Certainly that was one of the topics listed in the 14th September tweetery.


Thanks to Chris Lawrence for monitoring the tweetosphere

Kerry Cassidy: Interview Nine

        Kerry Cassidy's interminable videos and other documents generally just make me roll my eyes (see, for example, this and this). But yesterday she came up with some genuinely interesting information: female prison visitors to the California Department of Corrections are forbidden to wear underwired bras. Fascinating... what are they worried about? Weaponry? "I've got a Wonderbra here and I'm not afraid to use it!"

        This TITillating TITbit arose because apparently Cassidy inadvertently violated the dress code on her ninth visit to Vacaville to interview "Captain" Mark Richards. The screws made her go away and find a better (less revealing?) top.

        Her web page covering this event describes Richards as "a political prisoner in the War of Worlds going on here on Planet Earth."  Previously she's claimed that he's a prisoner of the Illuminati-Draco planetary government. The reality is that he's a murderer sentenced to Life without parole because of "special circumstances" (the murder involved a hired assassin and was motivated by financial gain and a burglary plan.)

        You've got to hand it to Kerry—she's nothing if not persistent. Her first Richards interview was November 2013, and her thirst for his bullshitwar stories seems insatiable. Vacaville is between Vallejo and Sacramento, and I believe Cassidy lives in the Malibu area, so it's quite a trek for her. The screws don't let her take her beloved camcorder into the jail, so the format for these things on Project Scamalot—sorry, Camelot—has been Kerry recalling as much detail as she can immediately after her visit, talking into the cam. On this occasion, however, she added her notes in text form, and here are a few highlights:

Galactic warfare
 *    Richards still (falsely) claims the rank of US Navy Captain, but now says he no longer reports to Admiral Inman, instead reporting to "a division of the military that he is not at liberty to disclose." That must come as a relief to Inman himself, who retired in 1982 (the same year Richards was jailed) and is now 87 years old.

 *    There are at least 12 robotic spaceships in Earth orbit, and on four asteroids, defending us against alien invasion. These seem to be the property of the Pleiadians, who wear the white hats in this updated horse opera..

*     The alien wars are intensifying. The Draco, Reptoids and Greys have eaten so many human beings in South America and Africa that they are looking to expand their territory. The devastating wildfires in Northern California last year were part of that. On the other hand our alien allies, the Raptors and Mantids, recently destroyed a Draco moon. Yay!!! The battle has moved to the Orion galaxy (galaxy? Does he mean constellation?)

        What I wonder is this: Is there anything this fraudster could say that Kerry Cassidy would question? She calls herself an investigative journalist, those people are supposed to be good at sniffing out bullshit, aren't they?

Update 14th October
        Geoff Reed, part of Kevin Moore's crew making a video documentary about Richards, posted the following on Kerry Cassidy's FB page:

"Let me clear up some of the more common lies about Mark Richards. First off he graduated from high school in 1972. For the next 4 years he attended Dominican college in San Rafael. That brings us to 1976. We have photos of him on the basketball team and interviewed one of his college buddies and team mate. Soldiers were being pulled out of Viet Nam in 1972. People were not being sent in they were being sent home and that took years to pull everyone out. That war officially ended in 1975. I know several vets and they are not proud of what they did nor do they brag about it. Jo Ann claims he went in the air force first and became an officer. That is a minimum 8 years after re-enlisting for another 4 years to hopefully become an officer. That brings us to 1984.Then she says he went in the navy and also became an officer. That would be another minimum 8 years after re-enlisting for another 4 years to hopefully become an officer again and that would bring us to 1992. The problem here is he has been incarcerated since 1982. He was too young for Viet Nam. His ex-wife says he never went and was never in the military. Its very simple and basic arithmetic. He has never served in any branch of any military. Richards and his wife and KC have so many lies circulating they cannot keep track of all of them. By the way, Mark Richards does not have any kids. Jo Ann states he started writing his SSP fiction for his grand kids in 1997. He had no kids at that time and has no kids of his own to this very day. How the hell could he have grand kids?? I have been with Kevin Moore last month filming our documentary in Marin county and researching our information at the Marin County Civic Center. I must say it was very surreal retracing the footsteps of these murderers and filming what they did. We also have every single piece of paperwork and documents involved in this case. By Mark Richards's own admission his finger prints are all over the crime scenes. Including on the murder weapons and guns he stole from Richard Baldwin's house that were recovered at Mark Richards's home when he was arrested. Why were the wheels to Richard Baldwin's safe found in the bed of Mark Richards's truck? He also admitted to lying to the detectives several times when he was arrested and brought in for questioning. Kerry maintains he was off planet when all of these events took place. Then why by his own admission are his finger prints on every shred of evidence? Why is the murder victim Richard Baldwin's blood in Mark's boat? This was a murder for finical gain and a very tragic shame. They brutally and savagely murdered Mark Richards's best friend (Richard Baldwin) for what amounted to $2000 dollars, a large bag of weed and some guns and credit cards. Kerry maintains we are interviewing the actual killers. Yes thats true. Mark refuses to be interviewed so we will use his willful interview done by detectives working on the case. Mark is one of the two actual killers. Mark could have lawyered up and remained silent but he did not want to do that. He welcomed being interviewed. He was not coerced in any way. The interviews we have and are still getting are from people that were actually there when this tragedy took place. Jo Anne Richards claims these people are all Mark's enemies. His wife at the time, his crime partner that committed this horrible murder and people that knew him or worked for him. She also claims Richard Baldwin was cremated. Thats another lie and we have the paperwork to prove it. We spent a few days at the cemetery. Mark Richards will spend the rest of his pathetic life in prison. He will die there. The only thing that stopped him from receiving the death penalty was he had no criminal record. Our documentary will show and prove that Mark Richards is a pathological liar. He is not capable of ever telling the truth. He lacks empathy as all psychopaths do. R.I.P. Richard Alexander Baldwin. Your good name and memory will soon be restored."