A mishmash of informed snark, piquant opinions, refined nastiness, occasional schmaltz, & tawdry graphics, served up continuously since 2006 by COSMIC CONNIE, aka CONNIE L. SCHMIDT. Covering New-Age/New-Wage culture & crapitalism, pop spirituality & religion, pop psychology, self(ish)-help, alt-health hucksterism, conspiranoia, business babble, media silliness, Scamworld, politix, & related (or occasionally unrelated) matters of consequence.
For years I have been a fan of the urban legend
and conspiracy theory debunking site, Snopes.com. And let's get one thing straight before you start
lecturing me about being a Snopes worshiper: I don't consider
Snopes infallible, any more than I consider any other information
source, online or off, to be infallible. But it appears to me
that the Snopes folks are generally diligent researchers, and
certainly are a far more credible source than the
"alternative" media sites that thrive on selling
largely baseless fear and outrage to the conspiracy crowd. (I'm
talking to y'all, Alex Jones, WorldTruth.TV, Before It's News, et
al.)
At the very least Snopes is a reasonable place to embark upon
your own path of inquiry whenever someone shares a meme on
social media that seems too bizarre or funny or horrible to be
true, or -- equally as important -- that fits too neatly into
prevailing social and political biases (even and especially your
own). Whenever this happens, which it frequently does, I first
check the link in the meme to make sure it's not a satirical/fake
news site like National Report. If
it is truly being presented as serious news, then, yes, I will
very often go to Snopes first, because more than likely they've
covered it. But I generally don't stop at Snopes, although I may
end up sharing the Snopes page on threads where the meme is being
presented as real news.
Snopes, as many know, began as a hobby in the mid 1990s for a California couple named David and Barbara Mikkelson. As far as I know, the Mikkelsons have never pretended
to be anything but what they are: a couple of hobbyists whose
hobby grew into an obsession and a web presence with a huge
following. Except for the "huge following" part, I can
very well identify with the whole hobby-turned-obsession thing,
because I've been hammering away at this Whirled for more than nine years now. The
important point to stress is that despite the frequent claims of
their detractors, the Mikkelsons have never pretended to be
experts or authorities or the last word on anything.
But here's one thing they have accomplished: again and
again Snopes.com has made fools of conspiracy fans and followers
of the "alternative" (read: nutcase) media. And this, I
suppose, is precisely why said fans and followers work so hard to
counter and "expose" Snopes and paint Snopes fans as
the fools. In doing so, however, the conspiracy fans invariably
make themselves look even more foolish. But that doesn't stop
them, and there remain large numbers of people who passionately
hate Snopes and whose wrath often encompasses Snopes fans, whom
the anti-Snopesers accuse of being stupid, gullible, uneducated
or lazy.
Liberal, schmiberal
One of the frequent complaints about Snopes is that they have a
"liberal bias," and the corollary to that claim is that
Snopes is being secretly funded by one or more nefarious liberal
organization(s) or some other special interest group. Back in
March 2013, the Skeptoid blog published a credible post debunking the "liberal bias"
accusation. (It was cross-posted on the Skeptical Libertarian blog the following month.)
That article, written by Eric Hall, was a response to the
infamous (in some circles, anyway) "Snopes got snoped"
article that is STILL going around the Internet and is frequently
hauled out to discredit Snopes and try to make the conspiracy believers look smart and the people who consult Snopes look stupid.
The original source of the article was the aforementioned
conspiracy-fan site WorldTruth.TV. But
the article appears to be gone now from
the original site, although numerous other enthusiastic bloggers
picked it up. You can read it here and on several other sites.
Eric Hall's cross-posted Snopes-defense piece makes a very good
point that I too have attempted to make numerous times in
discussions about Snopes' credibility as opposed to that of
WorldTruth.TV:
A larger look at the site called
WorldTruth.tv reveals something very hilarious. The claim
that Snopes shouldn’t be trusted because it is only run
by 2 people (the Mikkelsons) comes from a website run by 1
person who only identifies himself as Eddie. From
WorldTruth.tv’s “about us” page:
My name is Eddie and WorldTruth.TV is
my way to share all the knowledge and information that I
have acquired and been blessed with in the last 32 years
of my journey on this planet.
WorldTruth.TV is a website dedicated to
educating and informing people on regular basis with
well-researched articles on powerful and concealed
information. I’ve spent the last 32 years researching
Theosophy, Freemasonry, Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, the
Bavarian Illuminati and Western Occultism. I remember
when I first learned about the “Truth” and it wasn’t
pretty. I remember learning about how the mass media lies
to our faces consistently. About how the educational
system only teaches the youth what they need to become
obedient workers.
###
I have to rub my forehead every time I
read it. The website making a claim Snopes cannot be accurate
because they do not have a large team is supposed to be
trustworthy when being run by one person. If someone can make
sense of that logic, please feel free to comment!
A more recent (April 2014) effort to defend Snopes appeared in the Houston Press,
courtesy of Jef Rouner. Take a few
moments to read it if you will; it's worth it. I'll wait. Not
that Jef's effort has had any effect whatsoever on the die-hard
Snopes detractors, who still apparently imagine themselves to hold the
factual, intellectual and in many cases the moral high ground.
Health Nut goes nuts over Snopes piece
Take "Health Nut News" blogger Erin Elizabeth (please).
Last month she got all bent out of shape because, she says,
Snopes misrepresented a couple of things she had written about
the much-buzzed-about holistic doctors murder "conspiracy" (note: the link is to a blog post that takes a
skeptical view of the "conspiracy"). Erin is, among
other things, the personal and business partner of alt-health
guru and osteopath Dr.
Joseph Mercola. (Here are some skeptical links about Mercola, and I also wrote about him on a post last year (see
under, "Joseph Mercola: sitting pretty at the top of the
alt-doc heap").)
Given her partnership with Mercola and her role as a
natural-health blogger, Erin clearly has a stake in fanning the
flames of the dead-doc drama. Don't get me wrong; I'm not making
light of anyone's death, nor am I discounting Erin's distress
over the loss of anyone who may have been a friend or associate,
but there seems to be something more going on here. It centers
around Erin's insistence that she has been careful to avoid any
mention of a conspiracy regarding the high numbers of
"suspicious" deaths among alt-health doctors,
practitioners and advocates. She's just calmly reporting, don't
you know. But to me, reading even one of her posts about the ongoing saga makes it pretty clear that she is playing on the
conspiracy theme. You don't have to use the word
"conspiracy" to do that.
And here, if you can access it, is the link to the Facebook thread on which Erin shared
her video explaining how Snopes done her wrong. (I'm sorry that I can't seem to find a more
universally accessible (e.g., YouTube) link.) In her video Erin
seems a tad overwrought, declaring that the Snopes piece might
just be the most irresponsible piece of journalism she has seen
this year, or perhaps even in a whole decade. She is shocked,
shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you! And shocked (in case you didn't get
it the first three times).
Mostly Erin seems shocked about the Snopes article's insinuation
that she is spreading "conspiracy" rumors, but she also
spends an inordinate amount of time in the video quibbling about one of the missing doctors'
home state: Montana or North Dakota? She even insinuates that the
confusion over the doctor's residence, exacerbated by Snopes,
might be a reason nobody can find him. As well, Erin seems to be
royally pissed off because she has been misquoted and
misrepresented by other journalists -- not Snopes, as it happens,
but even so, she is laying most of her outrage on Snopes for this
video.
That video wasn't the first time that Erin has dumped all over
Snopes. She previously huffed that they are doing a disservice to
the health world. Here's an August 2014 rant.
The big headline is:
Many quote “Snopes”
like they’re scientists or doctors, but they’re just 2 ole
couch potatoes who may be coerced by special interest groups
To bolster her accusations, Erin posted a much-shared picture of
the Mikkelsons sitting on a couch, with a clearly overweight
orange tabby cat perched behind them.
Again I think it important to emphasize that as far as I have
ever been able to see, the Mikkelsons have never claimed to be
anything but what they are: two folks interested in researching
various unbelievable claims. Unlike some of the pond scum (no
offense to ponds or scum) that I have written about on this blog,
they haven't masqueraded as doctors or scientists. And I
doubt if most people who cite Snopes do so believing that either
one of the Mikkelsons is a doctor or scientist. That headline
seems to be a reflection of Erin's own defensiveness at work.
And as for the ad hominem accusation of being "ole couch
potatoes," the Mikkelsons have never claimed to be health
nuts either, as far as I know. The well-known picture of the
Mikkelsons, which admittedly isn't very flattering, is frequently
shared by people who seem hellbent on discrediting them. It
appears to be a candid photo taken in a moment of levity. Maybe
they now regret ever allowing it to be taken or shared; I don't
know.
But I do know that as the "Health Nut," the youthful
looking and attractive Erin Elizabeth has a very carefully
crafted public persona, and my guess is that she is quite picky
about the pictures of herself that she allows to be shared
publicly. She seems to be unnecessarily rubbing it in that she's cute and the Mikkelsons... not so much.
Moreover, she describes herself as having "a
passion for the healing arts for nearly 25 years" and as
being "an author, public speaker, and advocate for healthy
living." But when it comes right down to it, having a passion and taking that passion public
really doesn't make her an expert of any type -- except,
of course, the self-described and relentlessly self-aggrandizing
sort of expert. The
New-Wage/selfish-help/McSpirituality/alt-health world is full of
those.
Not-Doktor Stoopid joins in on the Snopes sniping
(again) Recently Snopes came under fire yet again from the
stuck-on-stupid contingent, and Leonard Coldwell, former
b.f.f. of serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, gleefully joined in.
You've met Lenny on this blog previously, and are possibly still
trying to rinse your eyes out and clear your mind. I'm sorry to
stymie your cleansing campaign, but he has been such a vociferous
detractor of Snopes that he belongs in this post.
Lenny is a proud follower of the tradition of Snopes
detractors making themselves look stupid in an attempt to
discredit Snopes. Recently, for instance, he shared links to a
hoax article -- which was plainly labeled as such -- about the
supposed arrest of Snopes co-founder David Mikkelson. Here is the original link,
though Lenny shared a link from someone else who had
picked up the article on their site. However, on the second site
the piece was also clearly labeled as satire.
Not only was the article to which Lenny linked tagged as
satirical, and not only was the photo of the "arrest"
plainly a bad Photoshopping job (you'd think that the
Snopes-haters would recognize Mikkelson's face from the standard
Snopes-couch-potato shot), but there are also numerous silly cues
within the text that it is not to be taken at all seriously. I
mean, really: "attacking the messenger?" "Shooting
the piano player?" (Actually it was a player piano, which
makes the story even more blatantly silly.)
But Lenny, a long time Snopes loather, posted the announcement of
David Mikkelson's arrest on Facebook as if it were real news,
accompanied by his customary arrogant and semi-literate
I-told-you-so message. He even aggregated the hoax article for
the blog on his main web site, presenting it as actual truth. It
stayed up on that site for several days, and during this time I
tried twice to write a public comment to the post, explaining
that the article was satirical. Here are the two comments I tried
to post (as usual, click on pics to enlarge):
Neither of my comments was published, though as you'll see in the second screen grab, Coldwell did publish an apparently
supportive comment from a reader (who was obviously using a fake name) who claimed not to be surprised
by the "news." But the article now seems to be gone from Coldwell's site. Not a word of apology to his readers, though, and as
of today, his "I told you so" post
is still on his Facebook page:
As the old saying goes, "The more things change, the more
they stay the same." Here's Lenny from two years ago,
blathering about the "trailer trash" that runs snoops
[sic]:
So deeply does Lenny despise Snopes that he has
been known to throw temper tantrums on his social media whenever
anyone dares to cite a Snopes article. A couple of years ago he
practically had a meltdown when my pal Julie Daniel, whom I have
yet to meet in person but who has become someone I consider a
close friend nonetheless, cited a Snopes article to counter
Lenny's hysterical sharing on Facebook of the meme about Obamacare and compulsory RFID chips. At least I think that was the meme. It was one of
those silly things that are constantly surfacing and resurfacing,
anyway. Lenny quickly turned his Eye of Sauron upon Julie,
writing, "I know who you are!" as well as publicly
issuing what appeared to be several threats to her. She was
actually concerned for her safety for a while.
As it turned out, Lenny apparently thought Julie was I, writing
under one of numerous aliases (he has publicly and falsely
accused me of using more than 70 fake names and accounts to
defame and destroy him). But I am not Julie, and Julie is not I.
We, do, however, share a contempt for Lenny as well as a respect
for Snopes.com.
If, after reading all of the evidence that they are not
evil incarnate, you're still prejudiced against Snopes yourself
for whatever reason, below is a list of alternatives. For your
own sake, always check out wild rumors before sharing them on or
off the Internet. And for gosh sakes, don't rely on WorldTruth.TV
or anything with the name "Leonard Coldwell" in it as
your source.
Update 24 May 2016: I
just now discovered a wonderful blog, Just Bad For
You, by novelist, screenwriter, children's book author and
critical-thinking advocate Jeffrey E. Poehlmann, who is currently
fighting cancer. On this April 2016 post he
discusses, among several other topics, the dead-docs conspiracy
tale and Erin Elizabeth's role in fanning the flames (see under
"Murder, Black Ops and Cover Ups by Big Pharma").
* * * * *
Now more than ever, your donation is needed
to help keep this Whirled spinning. Click here to donate via PayPal or debit/credit
card.
If that link doesn't work, send PayPal payment directly to scrivener66@hotmail.com or tocosmic.connie@juno.com If PayPal, be sure to specify that your contribution is a gift. Thank
you!
Today, believe it or not, is the ninth (9th)
blogaversary of Whirled Musings. I imagine that some are either
surprised or disappointed that this little outpost of the
blogopshere is still whirling. Indeed, its failure to die is not
from lack of effort on the part of some of the forces of evil in
Scamworld. Most notably: the stupid, evil, psychopathic little prick
who unsuccessfully sued me earlier this year.
But I'm still blogging. The orbit of my Whirled has been a little
wobbly of late but it's still spinning. (And the above image was brought to you courtesy of a Google Images search result for Whirled Musings.)
I will have more Kevin Trudeau court docs to share soon, as well
as other news about other scammers. And I'll get to that, slowly
but surely, as I work to address some of the other Matters of
Consequence with which I have been concerned for the past several
months.
For now, I thank you once again for your support of this blog
over its nine years (and counting!) of existence. And if you're
wondering what to give a nine-year-old who has everything but
money, there's always that "Donate" button at the upper
left hand side of the Web version of this Whirled. Every little
bit helps. Thanks!
Six years ago today, on July 25, 2009, Colleen Conaway died at a San
Diego mall during a seminar hosted by James Arthur Ray, the infamous
star of The Secret and now a convicted killer (though he
was convicted, and served a much-too-short prison sentence, for the deaths of three other people in Sedona, Arizona in October of 2009).
Reportedly Ray, who had a history of recklessness and arrogance where his followers are concerned, has paid civil
penalties for Colleen's death, but he has never been charged,
tried, or convicted on any criminal charges for same, and more
than likely never will be. And since his release from prison a little over two years ago, after serving time for the Sedona "sweat
lodge" deaths of James Shore, Kirby Brown, and Liz Neuman,
he has been making lame attempts to become the selfish-help star
he used to be. Not surprisingly he has been exploiting the deaths
of his followers, and his own time in prison, as something of a hero's
journey (with himself as the hero, of course).
In 2009, after rising to the top of his
industry, James was involved in a terrible accident that
claimed the lives of three people he cared about deeply. The
anguish of that event would have been enough… but it didn’t
end there.
James subsequently lost his business that took 20 years to
build, his entire life savings, his home, his reputation and
many so-called friends and colleagues deserted him.
Simultaneously, his Mother was diagnosed with cancer, his
Father with dementia…James eventually lost his freedom.
Through all of this, James states, “In the process of
losing everything…I actually found myself.”
His experience proves that it’s the challenges,
difficulties and austerities of life that we reset ourselves,
reboot, reassess and realize once again what’s truly
important. It’s our challenges and crisis that present the
greatest opportunities if we’re only willing to utilize
them in that way.
Of course, Colleen is not among those
"three people" whose lives were claimed in the
aforementioned "accident." She rates no mention at all in Death Ray's world, apparently.
Colleen may have been all but forgotten by many, but some of us
will never forget. My heart goes out to her family and friends on
this sad anniversary.
I'm on the run right now but just wanted to pop on to the Whirled to announce, in case you haven't already heard, that serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, aka KT, aka Katie, will be the star tonight of a long awaited American Greed episode on CNBC. Here's the link to an extended preview.
And if you want to find out more about what it was like to be a member of Katie's biggest scam of all, the Global Information Network (GIN), and to have invested a lot of money for no return, read my friend John Foster's book, Kevin Trudeau's Roadkill Victims He Doesn't Want You to Know About. John was a founding member of GIN and a member of Katie's "Inner Circle," and like virtually every other GIN member who invested anything, he got royally screwed. Here's a link to the Smashwords page for John's book. In related news, more court docs have become available and I'll share those soon (or you can hop onto PACER and get them yourself). Included among these are various orders concerning the refunds due to the purchasers of Katie's diet book -- the book whose infomercials helped to land him in prison. The FTC wants to start doling out the dough.
But meanwhile you can read another long awaited piece of content, the receiver Robb Evans' latest "Forensic Accounting Report." No big surprises in this 400-plus page tome; clearly, Katie has been cleverly hiding his money while playing the role of the poor imprisoned pauper ("the Receiver cannot state with certainty that it has located all of Trudeau's assets and revenue generated by Trudeau and the Trudeau Entities because of numerous obstacles the Receiver faced...") ... but here's the info anyway. More soon!
I'm very busy right now, but there is no way I
am going to let an entire calendar month go by without posting at
least once. So here I am, just under the wire for June. It's hard to stay focused on my little Whirled beat
when there is so much going on around me. While June has been a
horrendous month in the U.S. in some ways -- the church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17 being one of the most newsworthy examples --
it has also been a month to celebrate. Charleston rallied, and
the rest of the country united in outpourings of love and
compassion -- and then there was Bree Newsome and her brave and symbolic act of climbing that flagpole and removing what is, despite
"Southern pride" protests, a symbol of hatred and
racism from the Charleston State House.
One of the most celebration-worthy events was the June 26
decision by the Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage. Love wins!
Well, maybe. The backlash began immediately. The right-wing
politicians and clergy are foaming at the mouth, and even our own Attorney General here in Texas folded his self-righteous arms and declared that county
clerks can refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
And -- bringing it back to my beat here -- one of those whose
head exploded over the SCOTUS decision was none other than my
least favorite little homophobe, Not-Doctor Leonard Coldwell,
former b.f.f. of imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau. Since I
am kind of on the run, I
will let Bernie 'splain it to you.
Apart from ranting about marriage being between a man and a woman, and about how gay parents mess up their adopted children, Lenny has also been using Facebook to promote links to
writings and videos by notorious anti-Semitic Holocaust-denial
types, such as the late Eustace Mullins and the rabid
End-Times lunatic Texe Marrs. He has also been
promoting "Adolf Hitler: The Greatest Story Never Told"
again. And yes, I have screen shots of all of it.
So the next time any of you sharp-minded legal eagles are
even thinking of suing me for indicating that Lenny
Coldwell is a hateful little being, or for anything else I have ever written
about him, you'd better think again. You don't have a case.
My hope is that, in the end, love will win, despite
those rabid little haters over there in the corner, foaming over about gay people getting married, or for that matter,
ranting against the removal of historical symbols of hatred and oppression.
For now, just know that I love all of you who have supported my
efforts here, and I will have much more as soon as I can. See you
in July!
So the great affair is over but
whoever would have guessed
it would leave us all so vacant and so deeply unimpressed
It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star
I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far. ~ Leonard Cohen
("Death of a Ladies' Man," from the album of the same
title, 1977)
"I will not start the fight, but I will finish it!" ~ Leonard
Coldwell, everywhere on the Interwebz, constantly
I published a very abbreviated version of this post -- just the
above graphic, no text -- when I first received the news on May 19, via
email and supporting PDF, that not-doctor Leonard Coldwell,
ex-b.f.f. of imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, had, through his attorneys, voluntarily dismissed his
civil defamation case against me (and several other defendants).
[Case number 15-CVS-2791, filed in the General Court of Justice,
Superior Court Division, Guilford County, North Carolina]
For more details about this suit, see this post (under
"Cosmic Connie and the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad
lawsuit").
On the following day I temporarily removed the
present post for a couple of reasons, though not before receiving
a comment suggesting that the picture of the dismissal was fake
(see comments). I assure you it is real. Okay, so I did embellish
it with a picture frame and Lady Justice, but the document itself
is real. I have since received a print copy of said document in
the mail, unframed and un-embellished, directly from the lawyer's
office. But you don't have to take my word for it, Florian (and any of you other
doubters). If you want to verify its reality for yourself, feel
free to contact the attorney in question, William F. May of the
Greensboro, North Carolina law firm Culbertson & Associates
(also known on some Google sites as May & Culbertson Attorneys at Law), whose contact information is on the Notice of
Voluntary Dismissal document. Or contact Mr. Coldwell himself, if
he hasn't blocked you.
Make no mistake, though: I am not gloating about
this. I do not feel that I have "won," mainly because,
due to my inability to afford a lawyer and my reluctance to go
forth without one, I never really got into the fray. All I did
was file a couple of motions on a timely basis, pro se. I first filed
a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. Ignoring
that motion, the Plaintiff's attorney apparently tried to plunge
ahead into discovery -- evidently not giving a flip that
discovery works both ways and that his client would have
shriveled under real discovery. He even subpoenaed Google for my
personal account information, and I was obliged to file a motion
to stay discovery pending resolution of the motion to dismiss for
lack of personal jurisdiction. (That second motion did manage to
get Google's legal department off my back -- not that they were
ever really on my back, because Google doesn't even necessarily
respond to subpoenas, of which it receives thousands per year. Here is more information about that subject.)
However, my motions were never calendared (by me), and consequently were never heard or ruled on (by
the Court), and the Plaintiff's voluntary dismissal makes them
moot. The attorney, when I asked him for a reason for the
voluntary dismissal of Leonard Coldwell's defamation suit against
Schmidt et al., simply responded that a "non-waivable conflict
of interest" had "developed" between the Plaintiff
and the law firm, and that the firm of Culbertson &
Associates will not be representing Mr. Coldwell with regard to any matter going forward.
Make of that what you will. I did not and will not ask Mr. May
for details.
But I am not
complacent. While it may seem like good news, the truth is that I
won nothing. And "without prejudice" means, of course,
that Coldwell is perfectly free to turn around and file another
sham lawsuit, which I will also be obligated to deal with. On the
other hand, neither did Coldwell win anything, except some more
legal bills and, possibly, more fodder for lies or distortions,
should he foolishly choose to exploit this case the way he did his sham suit last year against Jason Jones (Salty Droid) and Omri
Shabat (Glancingweb), whom the suit mistakenly named as being one and the same person. (In
fact, Coldwell was exploiting the failed Droid/Glancingweb case even in
the service of bragging about this 2015 North Carolina case, falsely stating on
Facebook that Jason had been hiding from service for well over a
year. Nothing could be further from the truth.)
Early in this case, Coldwell boasted about it several times on
Facebook. Most of the boasts were soon taken down; I speculate
though do not know for sure that this was at the advice of his
lawyers. But the bragging lives on, in screen shots. Here are two
that were up briefly -- posted on February 6, 2015 -- but were soon taken down:
The second picture, the one with the tiger and the threatening "RUN BITCH" watermark, was
posted to Coldwell's buddy Abe Husein's page under Coldwell's
former alias "Rudi Kauder." Coldwell has written other ridiculous public posts under that name and once he even sent
me a personal threat via Facebook using the same alias. "Rudi's" account
has since been deleted.
In addition to the general boasts about the lawsuit, Coldwell
spewed several profoundly absurd posts specifically about Jason
on Facebook, e.g., the usual nonsense about Jason being "in
hiding," and other even wilder and crazier false claims
about him. I'll leave it to Jason to share those if he wishes to
do so.
While the above two Facebook posts are gone, this one, from March
13, 2015, still exists as of May 31, 2015. You can see how Lenny's little group of sycophants is
cheering him on (as always, click on pic to enlarge):
And lest you have any doubt that Coldwell was
talking about Jason and me in the above, there's this, also from
the same day and purportedly written by Coldwell's half-brother
Jens Wilhelm Anskohl, whose fake name Coldwell never can seem to
spell the same way consistently (Nicholas? Nicolas? Nicky?
Nicki?). (Jens, or Nicholas, or Nicky, or Nicki, or whatever you
want to call him, is a good-looking ladies' man (reportedly) who,
I think, lives in Germany and Las Vegas. Do you really believe he
spends his time writing posts on Lenny's Facebook page? Me
neither.) Anyway, this post also disappeared soon after its
appearance; either Abe wiped it away or Lenny did so himself.
On a video posted on April 1 (an appropriate day to be
sure), Coldwell can be heard telling
conspiracy-fringe radio host Jeff Rense about arrest warrants
against un-named perps who were supposedly defaming Lenny, and he mentions
having spent... well, I can't quite understand him, but it sounds
like he's either saying he spent $6,000.00 or $106,000.00 on legal fees last year in order to finally make these arrests happen. It
starts at about 36:00, but if you have some time to waste you
really should listen to the whole hilarious thing.
Anyway, to be clear: The case that has just been
dismissed was a civil case, not a criminal case. Coldwell never filed any criminal case against Salty and me and the
other defendants -- not now and not in the past (even though he has been boasting for years that civil and criminal actions against Salty, me, and various other bloggers are in process). So either
Coldwell was flat-out lying about that criminal litigation and those arrest warrants, or, perhaps inspired by
false hope imparted to him by his "legal team," he was
counting his chickens before they hatched, or even before he had
a hen to lay the eggs. Granted, there were indications -- things
going on in the background that I'm not going to write about yet
-- that Coldwell and his lawyers were trying to trump up some
sort of wacky criminal case, but that never happened. And
Coldwell's lawyer Mr. May assured me that new pleadings his firm
had been working on were also rendered moot by the voluntary
dismissal of Case Number 15-CVS-2791.
Although I did not discuss arrest warrants with Mr. May, I can
assure you that there never were any arrest warrants for any of
the defendants in the case that Mr. May was involved in and that
Coldwell had been boasting about on Facebook -- so, again, that clearly
seems like a deliberate lie from Coldwell. But maybe you are in Lenny's inner circle and you know something I don't. Fine. If you can present me
with evidence that there is or ever was a warrant out for my arrest, or for
Jason Michael Jones, or for anyone involved with Rational Wiki
(the other main defendant), I will be glad to publish it. For now, I
think it is safe to assume that once again Leonard Coldwell was
lying about arrest warrants being issued for "defaming" him. Now, that's a big surprise.
Look, I know that many of you are probably tired
of reading about this. And indeed, I have so many other things to
write about on this blog besides Leonard Coldwell. Heck, even
Google -- the search algorithms, not their legal department -- wants to
steer me away from Leonard Coldwell and towards a much more
popular, much more successful, and much more frequently Googled
Leonard C, Leonard Cohen. Google is always trying to complete my
search term for me when I'm typing, whether I'm signed in or not, and Google apparently likes Cohen a lot better than Coldwell. Me too.
But I stand by every word I've written about Leonard Coldwell and
will continue to do so until and unless I receive credible
information that will lead me to modify or retract any of the
content. On my numerous posts about Coldwell (as on all of my
posts), I have provided abundant screen shots and/or links that
you can easily follow yourself and make up your own mind about
the subject.
What I am trying to say is that I don't want to
bore you any more than necessary -- or any more than I already
have -- with this particular subject.
But I suspect this story isn't really over, and
as I said, I am not complacent. None of us should ever be
complacent where potential SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits
Against Public Participation) actions are concerned. Equally as
important, we should never be complacent about the continual
abuse of our legal system by public figures such as Leonard
Coldwell who file frivolous lawsuits to bully and try to
intimidate writers... just because they can. Jason Jones said it
quite well in last year's memorandum in support of his motion to sanction Coldwell
and his then-lawyer, Dennis J. Kellogg of Chicago:
The legal system should not be a weapon
wielded by wrongdoers in the face of well-meaning
whistle-blowers, stifling important discussion about matters
of public concern, though too often, that is exactly how our
system is used. There can be few better examples of suits
interposed for improper purposes than the present frivolous
and unreasonable Complaint brought by Plaintiff...
...Much judicial ink is spilled opining about the possible
"chilling effect" that a given piece of
legislation, or legal precedent, might have on the
marketplace of ideas. But as the speech function of the
fourth estate has become increasingly diffuse, with modern
technologies removing most of the traditional barriers to
publishing and public participation, the vanguard in the
fight for the free exchange of ideas has moved from the
newsroom to the living room. It is the constant threat of
frivolous, and prohibitively expensive, litigation that is of
principal concern for the individual citizen journalist
without access to media lawyer representation.
If you haven't read Jason's entire motion, I urge
you to do so. It's worthwhile not only for the arguments, backed
by case law, but also for the exhibits, which clearly display
Coldwell's primary objective of using litigation as a bullying
tool. (Coldwell even refers to me in some of those exhibits,
e.g., as Jason's "playmate" or simply "the
slut.") Despite Coldwell's crowing about the case, Leonard Coldwell's attorney Dennis J. Kellogg filed a
motion to withdraw from the case ("for professional
reasons") less than three weeks after it was filed, and that motion was granted on March 17, 2014.
Coldwell spun that on social media as his having learned that the
case was actually a Federal criminal case and therefore he was
hiring new lawyers to prosecute it. He also lied that Jason was
scared and hiding from him because of the lawsuits, making it impossible to properly serve Jason. And as
indicated above, Coldwell continued his lie about Jason being a
fugitive from justice when he (Coldwell) was spinning tales about the
now-dismissed North Carolina case 15-CVS-2791. His attorney for the North Carolina case apparently even bought that lie for a while, or pretended he did, as Jason wrote about on his February 19, 2015 blog post.
To my knowledge Jason did not follow up on his
2014 motion to sanction Leonard Coldwell and attorney Dennis J.
Kellogg, even though legally he could have. This is probably
because Judge Lynn M. Egan's dismissal of the case "for
want of prosecution" rendered it moot. "For want of prosecution" basically means
that nobody -- neither Coldwell the Plaintiff, nor an attorney
appearing on his behalf -- even bothered to show up for the
hearing that had been scheduled by the Court. And Jason, having
been a resident of Ohio for more than a year by that time, didn't
want to have to keep going back to Chicago to attend hearings,
which he would have had to do had he pursued the sanctions
motion. He has a life, after all. But he did file the
motion to sanction Leonard Coldwell and Dennis J. Kellogg in the
Court, and it is on public record, so Coldwell's recent claim
that Jason was lying about the sanction motion is inaccurate.
I might as well finally break in the merry month of May on this
Whirled, since the month is already almost half over. Gosh, where does
the time go? Since I'm on deadline with a project and occupied
with other matters of consequence, this will just be a brief
update about imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, who likes
to be called KT, but whom I like to call Katie. In my previous blog post on April 20
(scroll down to "Selling GIN from the clink"), I caught
you up on, among several other things, some of the civil court
action (Case number 1:03-cv-03904), sharing with you that Katie
has been whining to the court because the court-appointed
receiver, Robb Evans, hasn't been filing taxes for all of Katie's
bidness entities on a timely basis, and also hasn't filed a
status report in a heck of a long time. I gave you a link to that
fine whine, but here it is again in case you haven't seen it yet
or want to review: https://www.scribd.com/doc/262276155/Trudeau-Civil-Case-Document-879-and-Exhibits-Trudeau-Motion-to-Compel-Receiver-to-File-Tax-Returns-and-File-a-Status-Report-04-01-15
Both stories quoted Katie as saying, "I have been stripped
of all ego, arrogance, defiance and pride and for this I am very
thankful, as it has made me a better person."
Well, let me tell you, I was shocked and dismayed to discover
that some of you people are laughing at this. Poor Katie. Don't
you cynics think it is at all possible that he has truly changed?
Don't you remember that Christmastime McMiracle he experienced while still
partying and whooping it up at the MCC in Chicago in 2013? Don't you think it is possible that it was a true
miracle and that it changed him forever from the inside out? You
don't believe such a thing happened with our Katie?
Me neither.
But really, it's okay if you laugh. Katie himself was just
talking about ha-ha moments on his Facebooks the other day (thank
you to my dear friend Julie Daniel for pointing this out to me). Here you go:
And I was so inspired by Saint Katie's message about the value of laughter that I
had to hear the Monkees sing about it. But I'm going to give you more than a Monkees' song, and more than the
Chicago media gave you. I'm going to give you links to the latest court
docs regarding Katie and the receiver and all of those un-filed
tax returns and whatnot. 1. First, there's the RECEIVER’S MOTION FOR LEAVE TO FILE
RESPONSE INSTANTER (which is pretentious legalese for
"immediately"), a
motion in which the receiver also asks the court give Trudeau
extra time (well, one day extra) to file his response to the
response. This motion and the attached Exhibits were filed on
April 29, 2015, in response to Trudeau's insistence that the
receiver file the proper tax returns for the Trudeau entities.
The receiver argues that it has not filed tax returns for
entities over which it either has no control, or for which
Trudeau or his agents have not turned over the records. In
response to Trudeau's demands for a new status report, the
receiver explains the reasons for decreased frequency of status
reports. Here is that link: https://www.scribd.com/doc/265231640/Trudeau-Civil-Case-Document-882-and-Exhibits-Receivers-Motion-for-Leave-to-File-04-29-15-PDF
There is still nothing new on the criminal case, court doc-wise,
anyway. Trudeau's appeal (regarding his conviction and ten-year
prison sentence), which was heard in February, has still not been
decided. At the moment I have a feeling that Katie's time in the
cage will not be as prolonged as many may have hoped.
I will have more soon.
PS ~ For those of you who are wondering about the profoundly
stupid defamation lawsuit filed against me (and a few other
defendants; I also wrote about that on my April 20 blog post, under "Cosmic Connie and the terrible, horrible,
no-good, very bad lawsuit"), there's not really any new news
to report at the moment. It appears that where this suit is
concerned the plaintiff is, for all practical purposes, in
hiding, as is often the case with him, so things are kind of on
hold for the time being. Meanwhile, I'm still responding on a
timely basis to whatever is thrown my way as a result of this
totally groundless case. I'm not in hiding, and I hope
to have some real news soon.
Meanwhile, I suggest we all take the Monkees' advice, and...
LAUGH! And if you need any more inspiration for laughter,
look no further than this. Ho,
ha, ha, ha!
First of all, Dear Ones, following my customary
apology for my laxity in blogging (I'm sorry!), I must also
apologize for my April 1 fake-out. Though I
embedded a link to a graphic indicating that it was an April
Fool's joke, a few people were
April-fooled, if but momentarily, and some were quite upset by
the prospect of me hanging up my Cosmic blogging hat. I was
touched by the responses. Rest assured that I am not going to
willingly give up blogging any time soon. Now let's catch up on
things.
Cosmic Connie and the terrible, horrible, no-good,
very bad lawsuit
I do want to let you know about something that is going on in the
background that I've only hinted at on a few blog posts over the
past couple of months (including in my April Fool's graphic),
though I'm not yet ready to write about it in detail. On January
28, 2015 I was served with a lawsuit for defamation. (By sheer
coincidence this was also the birthday of the Plaintiff (I would
make a joke about his "birthday suit," but fear it
would bring up egregiously unpleasant visuals). Also by sheer
coincidence it was the one-year anniversary of the day that this article was published on the Jewish Journal site.)
By "served," I mean I that in response to a
certified mail notice in my rural mailbox, I went to the post
office (or, more accurately, sent my husband to the post office)
to pick up the actual lawsuit. The thing was filed in a North
Carolina court by --- I bet you've already guessed -- one
Not-Doctor Leonard Coldwell, ex-b.f.f. of and former
"personal physician in Europe" to now-imprisoned serial
scammer Kevin Trudeau (aka K.T., aka Katie). [Case number 15 CVS
2791, filed in the General Court of Justice, Superior Court
Division, Guilford County, North Carolina]
Yes. The very man who, over the past few years, has publicly,
repeatedly, and without any evidence whatsoever called me,
among other things...
an AIDS-infected ex-prostitute who gave
STDs to her customers
a Big Pharma/medical profession shill
being paid to defame, hurt and ruin Coldwell under "more than 70 fake names" and on dozens of
"fake web sites"
a criminal conspirator who recruited
"two proven child molesters in foreign
countries" and a "crazy criminal wannabe
lawyer" Stateside to defame "Dr." C and
hack into his web sites and radio show
a druggie
a seriously mentally ill (and/or mentally
retarded) person who is "a danger to herself and
others"
a sexual harasser who has been pursuing
him for years and has told his own brother on the phone
that she wants to "suck Dr. C. dry like the
Sahara"
a dog-killer
...all of which are bald-faced lies... yes, that
person has sued ME for defamation. The suit is rife with
misrepresentations and outright lies as well as more fundamental
flaws, but it is a real "thing" and I am fighting it
the best way I can. I do not yet have a lawyer because -- and I
am not embarrassed to admit this -- I simply cannot afford one.
The sad truth is that many people can't afford lawyers, at least
not good lawyers, a reality that inconveniently clashes with the
litigation fever that has been burning up our society for many
years. And there seems to be a dearth of lawyers willing to help
a small-time blogger fight a bat-crap crazy lawsuit pro bono.
Sometimes lawsuits are necessary to get justice for those who
have been wronged. But all too often, they're simply the first
and last resort of whiners and scoundrels. For some people,
litigation is a sport. For people like Coldwell who often find
themselves cornered by the barking (or snarking) dogs of truth,
abusing the legal system is a desperate attempt to silence the
barking and snarking. Witness last year's sham lawsuit, when
Coldwell sued Jason Jones, aka Salty Droid (in the wrong
jurisdiction, no less), for blog posts written by Omri Shabat at
Glancingweb.
And then there's the present action, where we have the man who
has described himself as "the greatest therapist of our
times," "a great humanitarian," and "the
world's most highly paid motivational coach on earth" -- you
know, the guy who has cured more than 35,000 cancer patients with
a 92.3% or better cure rate -- beating up on a little hobby
blogger who has no money.
Writing abusive, profane, obscene and offensive lies about me for more
than two years on his and some of his buddies' public social
media pages did not work to shut me up. Trying to incite his
readers and fans to take violent action against me by falsely
accusing me of killing his dog (and publicly posting my home
address and private cell phone number while openly encouraging
his fans to "get in touch with me") did not work, or
hasn't worked yet (we remain on high alert here, and I have not
really felt safe in my own home since last summer). When telling
vicious lies about me and trying to sic his craziest fans on me
didn't work, Coldwell resorted to abusing the very legal system
for which he has often expressed contempt (e.g., he has preached
that most laws on the books are irrelevant to "sovereign
citizens" such as he, and that most lawyers are
"dirt" and a waste of oxygen). Despite his contempt for
the U.S. legal system, the courts serve just fine as a bullying
tool when it suits him.
Way to fight the good fight, Lenny.
Coldwell has apparently taken great umbrage at numerous things I
have written about him (though no specific blog posts have been
cited), but in the complaint, the top-named offense is that I
have accused him of hating Jewish people. Yes, of all the
thousands of words I have written about him, my relatively few
mentions of his apparent anti-Semitism seem to have gotten his
little goat the most. Make of that what you will. He also doesn't
like the fact that I have shared, in passing, much-repeated
eyewitness accounts regarding his ungentlemanly-like behavior at GIN
(Kevin Trudeau's Global Information Network) events. He doesn't
like the fact that I've insinuated he is a scammer, and he
falsely states that I have called him a cult leader. And he is
really, really riled because I (and another co-defendant) wrote
or insinuated that he has been sued. (Actually there is a record of a civil suit in South Carolina where he is listed as a defendant, but whatever.) And so on. There is a whole laundry
list of petty whines in that complaint.
The lawsuit, for which a jury trial is demanded, asks for tens of
thousands of dollars in "damages" from each of the
defendants (yes, there are more than one; see below), as well as permanent injunctions to make us take down
our writings about Coldwell and agree not to cause any of the
content to ever be republished anywhere, and, presumably, to
refrain from ever writing anything about Coldwell ever again. Way
to champion free speech, Lenny.
"But, Cosmic Connie," almost none of you may be saying,
"You should have thought of this before you started writing
those posts! If you couldn't afford to be sued, then you should
never have gone after this man who has done so much good for so
many sick people, and who is driven only by a promise he made to
God when he was a very little boy with a very sick mommy. If you
can't stand the heat, get out of the blogging game."
To which I can only say, "Some considerations are more
important than money and whether or not one can 'afford' to tell the
truth." Although at this point, some money would be helpful.
If you've not done so already, you can read some
more bits and pieces about this judicial travesty on Salty Droid
(here and here), since Jason is also
named in the lawsuit.
The other main defendant is the person who
is the admin for the Rational Wiki site, the offending piece being a single article about Coldwell that appears on the site
and was originally published in May 2014.
The complaint and subsequent documents betray a confusion on the
part of Coldwell's mighty legal team about just who is
responsible for this article, which was apparently not written by
any of the people named in the complaint. (Any of you Rational
Wiki contributors who might be reading this: you can take this
news back to the "Talk" page: there really is
a lawsuit against Rational Wiki for this piece. I tried to join
in the "Talk" and 'splain as much, but frankly, I don't
understand how the Rational Wiki "Talk" system works,
so I can only communicate through this blog.)
And in a blatantly
obvious attempt to cast as wide a net as possible, the list of
"defendants" is rounded out by several irrelevant web
sites and domain registry companies. NOT on the list of defendants, despite a short-lived post on Lenny's main Facebook profile that featured the blogger's beaten-up mug (a picture
Coldwell stole from the blogger's Facebook page and made up an outrageous and libelous fake story about) is Bernie
O'Mahony in Japan (GINtruth). Omri Shabat at Glancingweb isn't
named either. Just in case you were wondering. (Here
is Bernie's post from February
regarding Coldwell's early hype about the lawsuit. Coldwell has
been pretty silent about it recently, though.)
Though there is more than one defendant, I
am clearly the main target of this suit and the one who, for some
reason, Coldwell views as the greatest threat. He apparently
finds my little blog threatening despite its almost
embarrassingly small readership, and notwithstanding his own
greatness and the fact that he is beloved by millions, and has
zillions of dollars, and his business just keeps growing and
growing and growing, according to the stories he tells outside of
the lawsuit. Why, on his Thanksgiving Day message on Facebook
this past November, he wrote that 2014 was his best year ever,
and that he will just keep getting better and better. But...
better destroy that pesky little blogger, all the same. It's for
the cancer sufferers, Champions!
Anyway, I will give you more deets when I can. And by the way, if
you're surprised that Lenny is apparently hanging his hat in
North Carolina these days instead of South Carolina, as had been
commonly accepted wisdom on this Whirled and elsewhere, you're
not the only one.
UPDATE:
The above case ended, not with a bang but a whimper, on May 19,
2015, when the Plaintiff's attorney filed a notice of voluntary
dismissal without prejudice of all claims against all defendants.
Read more here.
Well, here it is a few months later, and Katie continues to
spread his New-Wage/McSpirituality wisdumb from the confines of
Camp Cupcake, aka FPC (Federal Prison Camp) Montgomery, Alabama.
He's still apparently pooping those Nuggets of Gold out on a
regular basis, along with something he calls the "Science of
Personal Mastery Course," which he emphasizes is not to replace
the famous Success Mastery Course (which you buy into when you
join the Global Information Network (GIN)), but only to supplement
it. Rest assured that via his
Facebook fan page, a page which I am
allowed to read but on which I am not allowed to comment, Katie
is still very much pushing the club that his close buddies took over last year. But one of his main agendas, particularly with the
Nuggets of Gold poop machine, is to raise money for his legal
defense fund to help defray his enormous legal expenses as well
as, of course, to fight for "Free Speech and Civil Liberties
for all." You know Katie, the First Amendment Stuporhero.
Well, Katie, if you're so enamored of free speech, why am I not
allowed to write on your Facebook fan page?
But whether or not he'll get out any time soon remains an
unanswered question. His appeal (re his ten-year prison sentence
for criminal contempt related to infomercials for his weight-loss
book) was heard on February 24, 2015, and so far no decision has
been made. When I popped on to PACER the other day I saw no new
documents in the appeals case.
I did see one measly little document in the original criminal
case. Whenever someone sends an email or other communication to
the court, pro- or anti-Trudeau, it is added to the documents in
the case. The letter I saw the other day, which out of mercy for
the writer I have redacted, was not pro-Trudeau, but the writer
seemed a bit confused as to which Trudeau he was really slamming.
Apparently the "Southron" boy thought
he had a real scoop with that discovery that Katie's infomercials
are still running on TV. So scoopworthy did he deem it that he
cc'd some major media, a few Congressfolk, and even selected
Feds. Obviously he didn't read my explanation last year (April
28, 2014) about why Katie is still on TV. Here's that link; see under "Katie is still on TV,
and here's why." Spoiler alert,
Southron [sic] Boy: It can be summed up in two words: Nick
Esayian. And it can much more truthfully be summed up in
seven words: No neat and tidy endings in Scamworld.
Not that Southron Boy asks such a dumb question, mind you. He
makes quite a valid point. But don't count on the complicit media
being hauled off to Camp Cupcake any time soon just for running
infomercials about frauducts and flopportunities. Not as long as
there's money to be made from Katie's scampire.
While on PACER, I poked around on the civil case docs too,
because that 12-year-old case (with origins even older than that)
hasn't been closed yet. That's the case that generated the huge,
yet-to-be-paid $37 million-plus fine to the Federal Trade
Commission (FTC). What I found in the new-ish docs was Trudeau's
motion to compel the court-appointed receiver (Robb Evans,
originally ordered by the court to assume control of the Trudeau
entities on August 7, 2013), to file tax returns and file a
status report. This motion and exhibits were filed April 1, 2015
and a hearing held on April 7. Response is due by April 28; a
reply to that is due by May 12, and a status hearing is set for
May 21, 2015.
Katie is whining that he can't file his income tax returns
because he doesn't have access to all of the necessary
information, and besides, he adds, it's Robb Evans' job to do
that because after all, they took over his whole universe in
2013. He also demands that they file another status report,
because it's been a while. For their part Robb Evans argue that
they are indeed filing the proper papers for the businesses, and
that Kevin and his lovely estranged Ukrainian bride Nataliya
Babenko's personal income taxes are the Trudeau couple's responsibility. They also say that they will file another
status report soon, when they're good and ready, so there. But
here, let me let you read it for yourself.
Here is the link to the latest documents in the Kevin
Trudeau civil case. So that's it courtside for now. I'll keep you
posted about responses and hearings and so on. And by the way,
the much-ballyhooed CNBC American Greed episode about
Kevin Trudeau (and GIN) is currently scheduled to air on July 9,
according to one of the producers. I'll post more about that when
the time approaches.
Dates to remember
Before I close I'll bring this post back full circle, in a way,
subject-wise. Today, besides being International Weed Day, is the birthday of Adolf Hitler.
The latter date is marginally and somewhat hilariously relevant
to the frivolous lawsuit I wrote about at the beginning of this
post. Most of that connection is not really my story to tell, so
I won't, but suffice to say that it does appear that a
much-touted Holocaust-denial propaganda film called Adolf
Hitler: The Greatest Story Never Told is a favorite viewing
choice of one of the parties to this lawsuit. (Hint: not me and
not Jason and not any of the other defendants.) It dismays me to see the "Hitler was
right" or "Hitler wasn't such a bad guy"
contingent at work in various ways on the Interwebz. It floors me
that, 70 years after the "work camps" were finally
liberated -- far too late for millions upon millions of innocent
souls -- the type of hatred that built and maintained those camps
still exists all around the world.
I didn't participate in any marches, but Ron
and I watched a haunting documentary that re-aired on PBS on
April 19, Memory of the Camps.
I could not watch it dry-eyed. I was incredibly sad, of course,
but mostly I was angry that there are so many people who continue
to deny that these atrocities ever occurred. As Holocaust denial becomes more of a force -- becoming ever more sophisticated and widespread
through vile instruments such as Adolf Hitler: The Greatest
Story Never Told -- and as actual Holocaust survivors and
liberators and other eyewitnesses continue to die off, it will, I
suspect, become ever more of a challenge to foster historical
accuracy.
I am not suggesting for a moment that the
Holocaust deniers or even the rabid haters be censored. Censor
them, ban them, and they will simply become martyrs to the cause
of free expression. Moreover, I believe that the fundamental
rights of freedom of expression belong to haters as well as to
the rest of us -- unless, that is, they are specifically inciting
and inviting violence to individuals, and doing things such as
publishing those individuals' home addresses and other personal
information, or otherwise blatantly attempting to endanger them.
Hate speech perpetrators in those cases should be
censored, as well as punished to the full extent of the law.
(Coldwell should have been but wasn't punished for endangering
me, for that matter, and I am not going to let this issue slide.)
Nor am I suggesting that every person who tries to give a fair
listen to some of the deniers is a hater himself or herself. It
is never hateful to ask questions, to question the history we
were taught. But I am saying that people who cling to
Holocaust denial after all of the evidence is presented to them
seem to have their own agendas, and those agendas are not exactly
what you would call friendly to Jewish people or to any other
group who has ever suffered at the hands of haters. That's the
nicest way I can say it.
Truth-seeking and accurate historical perspective become
particularly challenging when you have some Holocaust deniers who
seem to have a clear anti-Semitic agenda, and proudly promote it,
and then sue or otherwise try to intimidate people who point out
that apparent agenda. Just saying. But I also know that lawsuits
are nothing compared to the suffering of millions of people who
were herded into concentration camps and subjected to profound
horrors from which the majority of people walking the Earth today
have the luxury of time and distance. We can't let that luxury
blind us.
I suppose you're wondering why I have been absent
from my Whirled so often in recent months, despite numerous
promises to start blogging more frequently again. I only wrote
one post during the entire month of March (!). That is very
unlike me, even during my busy times when I have lots of real
work to occupy me.
Well, Dear Ones, after much soul-searching I have decided that
the time has come for me to hang up my blogging hat, after nearly
nine years of blogging. It is with some sadness that I do this,
but it is time. The Universe has sent me many signs over the
years, perhaps, but now there is an unmistakable sign, the biggest sign of all, you
might say. I have finally been outwitted, outgunned, and
outmaneuvered, not only by the greatest therapist of our times
but also by one of the greatest legal minds of our times.
Together, they are a formidable force: true Champions, of the
kind that I can only aspire to be. My Cosmic-ness is no match for
their Championics.
I have, in short, been truly humbled. I shall snark no more. It
has been a long, fun ride, but now it is time to move on. I thank you for your support for all of these years.
For details, including a formal statement and some important
documents, please see this link.
