Is the Assassination of JFK an "unsolved Civil Rights murder case from the 1960s"?

[Charles Drago]

Elsewhere on the JFK page of this forum, the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. have been described as "unsolved Civil Rights murder cases from the 1960's."

We might benefit from arguments raised for and against this proposition as it relates to the murder of JFK.

Is it wholly on-target?

Does it point the finger at all, some, or none of the true Sponsors of the hit?

(My working definition of "Sponsors" in this case is the at-the-top powers who ordered the murder and cover-up -- as opposed to their Facilitators and Mechanics.)

Does it bring to light the nature of the act, its essence?

If the proposition is judged to be wholly or even significantly off-target, are we in a position to know if we are being misinformed (as the result of an honest, well-intentioned error)? Disinformed (as targets of a hostile act)?

[Ed Jewett]

It doesn't resonate with me, CD. I've not been at this topic as intensely as some others like you, but I'm up to page 200 of "... the Unspeakable" and I think a very strong case has been made. Thus far, he has said, in essence, we don't know who gave the order, but we know pretty much everything else. And although we can't name a name yet in terms of orders, the list of candidates gets smaller and smaller by the day, and the web grows tighter and tighter. I mention page 200 (what is the reverse of ff ?) because I think Douglass has done the best job I have seen yet of explaining the operational approaches of CIA infiltration and compartmentalization I've read in my short life. And, if we didn't know already, he's explained the history of the post WWII intel world and its impetus and key actors and the connections to Wall Street and the intense anti-Soviet, anti-Communist mindset of the corporate military world. And I love Peter Dale Scott's video on "mindset"...

There is no doubt that much racism ran in parallel with the times and the people involved, but it does not strike me as a primary issue any more than similar commentaries about Obama today having any validity. There's a Venn diagram in here somewhere with some overlap, but I don't think civil rights constitutes the primary circle, or even a secondary one.

[Magda Hassan]

In a general sense it does resonate with me. I haven't yet read Douglass' book though Ed.

Just looking at the broad strokes here so pardon me.
* The concept of 'race' and 'purity' is a huge underlying concept in fascism and to those who rule. 'Born to rule'. Though there are certainly divisions in the ruling class. Thatcher: "Is he one of us?" Various groups/families have dominated various institutions in the power structure/state.
*The Kennedy murder and those of King and RFK were most definitely right wing created events. Not a possibility in the world they would have been done by Castro/Soviets/Ruskies/Reds etc. Racism is one of the primary tools of the ruling class used to divide and conquer. Balkanisation versus universal brotherhood of man .
*Kennedy brought Bolden on to the White House staff. Could have caused some there to participate/look other way/stand down. Proves that Kennedy wanted to break barriers. Action not just words.
*Kennedy was for civil rights and dismantling legislation that discriminated and segregated. For many that represented the forces of chaos and perhaps payback being unleashed. Hordes of black/yellow/red people rising up like an unstoppable tidal wave. A frightening prospect for them. For such people it was imperative to maintain the status quo. At any cost.
* Though Kennedy came from a wealthy and privileged back ground he was not a WASP and was not 'one of them'. He actually thought he could exercise the power of office of POTUS when in actual face he had merely been elected by the population (and only just) He was not selected by 'them'.
* I think it points the finger at some of them not all of them because even in the ruling class not everyone is a raving racist looney and some would have been horrified at what occurred. Nevertheless as a class they can be prevailed upon to cover it up and not break ranks. So, to a large extent it does bring to light the nature of the act.

So, while perhaps there is room for maneuver it is not off target.

[John Bevilaqua]

Do I have to remind you that Prof. George Michael Evica was the second person in the history of the JFK investigation to focus almost exclusively on the roles of Eugenicists like Frederic Osborne and Wickliffe Draper of The Pioneer Fund as quite likely culprits in the JFK Assassination? He even coined the phrase referring to their haughty, snobbish, pompous and holier-than-though attitudes which I can not recall right now. I called it "The Will of the Wasps." Does anyone recall what that phrase was? Now I know you always claimed NOT to be fully conversant with many of the details of his research but to miss this one does a great disservice to the memory of his efforts.

"A Certain Arrogance" was the phrase used by Prof. Evica and it really captures the essence of both the Mississippi White Supremacists, the Unitarians and The Pioneer Fund White Supremacists (mostly Unitarians including Robert Welch and Harry Weyher) who were very closely affiliated both psychologically and philosophically. And they worked to force "The Will of the Wasps" on everyone. And they have been doing this since well before Smedley Butler and The Plot to Seize the White House, when there was no CIA, no OSS, no DIA, no NSA and no DISC either. Read up on William Nelson Cromwell, OSJ one of the founders of Sullivan and Cromwell and his role with SMOM. Cromwell INVENTED Covert Intel Ops at OSJ and Draper invented PsyOps and Edmund Bernays invented Propaganda. And the brothers Dulles and the CIA were just his water carriers and gophers for all intents and purposes.

I don't plan on a total repetition of the entirety of the arguments involved in my thesis which have been posted here and at Spartacus. But perhaps we should focus once again on those who everyone should admit were involved with first, the building of the Oswald False Legend. And then we should focus on those who were in the forefront of the "planned and protracted cover-up scheme." You will soon realize that they were one and the same group of characters all of whom had personal contacts and close philosophical associations with the Wickliffe Draper crowd, the Citizens Councils, The Pioneer Fund, WACL and The John Birch Society nexus of characters. I am rather amazed and in a way disappointed that apparently no one else has recognized this very obvious pattern before this. At least 100 times before this various posters have said that if you can find out for sure who built the Oswald Legend and who was deliberately scapegoating the wrong culprits after the fact while formulating their cover-up schemes after the fact, and if these were the same group of people then you would have solved the case with a perfect congruence. He who smelt it dealt it. The legend builders and the scapegoaters were mostly from the racist side of the John Birchers and the Citizens Councils types as well.

The Oswald Legend builders:

1) Guy Banister from New Orleans, a legendary racist and right winger who was formerly with the FBI, worked for both Medford B. Evans and Elmore Greaves of The Citizens Councils. He ran the Oswald leafleting campaign with Oswald according to his secretary right from 544 Camp St. at the FPCC offices and informed Bringuer of Oswald's actions. Photos of the 544 Camp St. address stamped on FPCC leaflets were recently posted just in case someone tried to talk you out of that little factoid.

2) Senator James O. Eastland, another blatant racist from Mississippi, who worked for Draper on the Draper Genetics Committee. While heading up SISS he sent Oswald on the Kleins Sporting Goods project to purchase a Manlicher Carcano and then cited that fact after the assassination in order to implicate Oswald and the Clinton, LA voter registration drive which was also used against Oswald. Eastland also held hearings about the problem of Juvenile Delinquency and may have become acquainted with Oswald at that time. He constantly tried to portray Oswald as a Communist when we all now know that he was anything but that.

3) The entire right wing racist INCA donors and supporters crowd in New Orleans run by Alton Ochsner and Patrick J. Frawley which included the Sterns from Radio Station WSDU who arranged or sponsored the incriminating Oswald-Bringuer debate, the Reilly character from The Reilly Coffee Company involved with putting Oswald into the TSBD and Edwin Scannell Butler who was also involved with WSDU, Bringuer and Oswald.

4) Edwin A. Walker, yet another Mississippi styled racist who ran the Ole Miss Riots as an anarchist and an insurrectionist with ties into other racists like George Soule, Leander Perez and Kent and Phoebe Courtney, George Lincoln Rockwell and numerous other people of their ilk.

5) Both Elmore Greaves and Ned Touchstone as cited on Gary Buell's web blog site tried very hard to link Ruby and Oswald together in order to over exaggerate the extent of the conspiracy citing some vague job application where Oswald supposedly cited Jack Ruby as a previous job reference. But they never produced such a document or named the company where they both supposedly worked together. What a joke! And Medford B. Evans, who was a John Bircher on the Editorial Advisory Board of The John Birch Society and the Managing Editor of the racist Citizens Councils wrote scathing but false indictments of Oswald both before and after the assassination. One of his essays sounds which was posted here sounds like a perfect match for the exact words that come out of your mouth on this subject of who was behind the JFK hit. How did they ever get inside your head? When you read his essays and those of other Birchers like Revilo Oliver, Robert Morris, G.L.K. Smith, Dan Smoot and even E. Merrill Root you will finally realize, perhaps, that most of your beliefs and your ideas about the assassination were originally formulated, constructed and carefully weaved by the likes of the Birchers and the Eugenics and Citizens Council crowds, mostly with Yale or Harvard educations, and with abundant experience with Intel Agencies like Medford Evans, Ned Touchstone and Elmore Greaves and then these ideas were planted firmly and indelibly into your mind using subtle techniques of mind control, persuasion, thought control and other forms of invasive replacement of one set of facts with others. In other words if you just parrot the Birch view of the world related to the JFK assassination, then you have been brainwashed.

6) Otto Otepka, J. Strom Thurmond and Philip J. Corso who worked for Thurmond were also experts on mass persuasion techniques, the use of Edmund Bernays styled false public relations scams, the use of mind control and pulling off mass hysteria campaigns designed to influence people to think that themes like the Alien Abduction topics, the vastly overstated threats posed by The Communist Menace,
and the supposed evils of the liberals were in fact realities.
Corso and Otepka also falsely framed Oswald and scapegoated him as a defector and a true Communist and yet Otepka let him back into the country. Did you ever figure out why he did that? Did you even know that he did that? Probably not.

7) The entire crowd behind Murder to Order by Devin Adair written by Karl Anders wrote an entire book about Oswald and Stashinsky and how Oswald was supposedly a trained programmed assassin who attended various CIA based or KGB based training academies when all along they knew that Dr. Hans J. Eysenck worked for both MKULTRA and the racist Pioneer Fund and that he and George de Mohrenschildt, a Nazi spy who would never have been allowed into the CIA, highjacked Oswald from this "official orbit" and then used him as the perfect patsy and the perfect lightening rod to force an overall U.S. Government cover-up because much of what they said was entirely true.
I have never seen you so much as consider how Oswald WAS a trained programmed assassin who probably never even fired a shot in Dealey Plaza. Just a bit too complex for most to comprehend.

So as to your first question:

"Does it bring to light the nature of the act, its essence?"

The answer is an unqualified yes.

And as to this question which really begs the question as to who is really closer to the mark on the issue of the JFK conundrum doesn't it? If in fact, your version of events is incorrect which I would call the John Birch, Christian Defense League and Citizens Councils scapegoating approach to the JFK assassination which is palpably incorrect and deliberately contrived as a falsehood to deflect responsibility away from the facts to throw gullible and easily persuaded people off the mark then you have to reconsider your own question as being applicable to your thesis and focus instead:

"If the proposition is judged to be wholly or even significantly off-target, are we in a position to know if we are being misinformed (as the result of an honest, well-intentioned error)? Disinformed (as targets of a hostile act)?"

If the shoe fits, wear it. Evica and I are right on the money here about Eugenics and The Pioneer Fund and the John Birch scapegoaters just have millions of unwitting converts who are just predisposed to swallowing their lines of bull hook line and sinker.

Read the essays by Dan Smoot, GLK Smith, Revilo P. Oliver and Medford B. Evans and you will realize just how you have been hoodwinked in fact. Your thesis sounds as if you have swallowed the garbage published by THE PERPS in its entirety. Why would you take the word of THE PERPS and these cover-up artists about the TRUTH in the JFK hit and then adopt their JFK conspiracy theories as your own? This in fact is exactly what you and dozens of others on these forums have done. If you knew they were THE PERPS, you would read their publications with a much more jaundiced eye and realize that you can tell when they are lying quite readily. They are lying whenever their typewriters are clacking or their mouths are flapping for all intents and purposes.

For the sake of George Michael Evica, read his book again. He even asked me to collaborate with him on the subject of The Pioneer Fund, the Eugenicists and Senator Thomas Dodd from SISS, but in fact the real culprit he was looking for was Dodd's partner on SISS, Senator James O. Eastland from Mississippi. I put him onto the trail of Draper, Osborne, Laughlin and The Pioneer Fund and he followed it religiously. I tried to put him on the trail of the racist Senator from Mississippi who was the primary Legend Builder of LHO but he was already determined to blame all of the SISS related LHO ops on Thomas J. Dodd because the Dodd files were all located in and around Connecticut.
Eastland was in charge of Operation Red Cross, not Dodd and not the CIA. Eastland, Walker and Banister were in charge of setting up the Oswald Legend, not Dodd. But Dodd flew to West Berlin to interview Bogdhan Stashinsksy, another Minsk trained programmed assassin after he finally realized the importance of Stashinsky and the White Russian Fascist version of MKULTRA which Oswald was subjected to while in Russia. And Evica was never introduced to Anastase Vonsiatsky, de Mohrenschildt's boss, but if he had, he would have pursued that lead to its ultimate conclusion. Draper and Vonsiatsky led the assault on JFK and they used both the Ghouls of Mississippi and the John Birch Society and the Schickshinny Knights of Malta which had INTERNATIONAL representation to eliminate JFK.

Once you realize that the nexus of characters around Guy Banister, Edwin A. Walker, Ned Touchstone, Elmore Greaves, James Eastland, Nathaniel Weyl, Leander Perez and the other Birchers and Citizens Councils types were behind both Operation Red Cross, Operation LHO Legend Building, Operation LHO Highjacking and then Operation JFK Scapegoating then and only then will you ever fully understand the JFK conundrum.

Hey, even Jack Ruby figured out that Maj. Gen. Edwin "Ole Miss Riots" Walker was a lynchpin in the JFK plot almost 50 years ago. Why have you chosen to ignore this fact and others like it from knowledgeable insiders like Mae Brussell, Richard Condon, Bill Turner all of whom independently isolated Charles Willoughby, Robert Morris and the other John Birchers as the most likely culprits of all?

"If the proposition is judged to be wholly or even significantly off-target, are we in a position to know if we are being misinformed (as the result of an honest, well-intentioned error)? Disinformed (as targets of a hostile act)?"

I think you have started with deliberate misinformation spewed by the Birchers and the Pioneer Fund and Citizens Councils' White Supremacists, then put your spin on things and ended up as an unwitting spreader of disinformation.
Propaganda, PsyOps and false Public Relations were the specialties of Robert Morris, Revilo Oliver, GLK Smith, Charles Willoughby, Edmund Bernays, Medford Evans, Dan Smoot and Wickliffe Draper. You were hoodwinked by the very best. The best and the brightest the right wing could muster from Yale and Harvard and Fordham and Georgetown, Notre Dame and Catholic University were put on the case. First to try a character assassination of JFK then later to snuff him and then concoct various lists of scapegoats until one of the themes finally stuck.

When you became a supporter of those who have swallowed the other cockamamie lines about "9/11 as an internal demolition done by the U.S. Gov", "the OK Bombing as a strike from space done by the U.S. Gov", "the Waco Conflagration as started by a U.S. Gov Tank" and "The Lunar Landing Hoax done by the U.S. Gov" then I knew that it was too late to change your mind on the JFK hit, too.

Do you think that Prof. George Michael Evica fell for any of these patently distorted hoaxes constructed by the Far Right Wing? I seriously doubt it. Seriously.

[Charles Drago]

Do I have to remind you that Prof. George Michael Evica was the second person in the history of the JFK investigation to focus almost exclusively on the roles of Eugenicists like Frederic Osborne and Wickliffe Draper of The Pioneer Fund as quite likely culprits in the JFK Assassination?

Not a prayer, son. Not a prayer. Your "exclusively" claim is plain wrong and/or ham-handedly manipulative. You either know it is wrong yet write to the contrary out of a fevered obsession to support your point of view, or you have chosen to mislead.

Now I know you always claimed NOT to be fully conversant with many of the details of his research but to miss this one does a great disservice to the memory of his efforts.

I have missed nothing. My love for George Michael and my dedication to his work and living memory are beyond your ability to understand, let alone judge.

"A Certain Arrogance" was the phrase used by Prof. Evica[.]

It certainly was not coined or used to support your work or even your basic hypotheses.

Cromwell INVENTED Covert Intel Ops at OSJ and Draper invented PsyOps and Edmund Bernays invented Propaganda.

Utter nonsense standing in defiance of history and, for that matter, common sense.

And the brothers Dulles and the CIA were just [Cromwell's] water carriers and gophers for all intents and purposes.

Move over, Waldron and Hartmann! You've got company atop the False Sponsor Champions of the Year short list.

I am rather amazed and in a way disappointed that apparently no one else has recognized this very obvious pattern before this.

Like the Sultan who had a thousand wives, none of whom could get pregnant. He was rather amazed when he wondered what was wrong with those women.

Medford B. Evans, who was a John Bircher on the Editorial Advisory Board of The John Birch Society and the Managing Editor of the racist Citizens Councils wrote scathing but false indictments of Oswald both before and after the assassination. One of his essays sounds which was posted here sounds like a perfect match for the exact words that come out of your mouth on this subject of who was behind the JFK hit.

Check your meds and get back to me, with specifics, about where I falsely indicted Oswald.

In other words if you just parrot the Birch view of the world related to the JFK assassination, then you have been brainwashed.

Finally, we agree.

I have never seen you so much as consider how Oswald WAS a trained programmed assassin who probably never even fired a shot in Dealey Plaza. Just a bit too complex for most to comprehend.

Congratulations on your first confession of ignorance. And condolensces in light of your latest transference episode.

So as to your first question:

"Does it bring to light the nature of the act, its essence?"

The answer is an unqualified yes.

I agree: You are unqualified.

Evica and I are right on the money here[.]

Your fatal mistake, "John," was to attempt to link your pathologies to the extraordinary work of as important a researcher/historian as any produced in the 20th century. You pissed me off. And now the gloves are on the ice.

For the sake of George Michael Evica, read his book again.

There you go again. I can imagine no more efficient a way for you to advertise your obsessions and the depths to which you'll descend to defend the indefensible.

He even asked me to collaborate with him on the subject of The Pioneer Fund, the Eugenicists and Senator Thomas Dodd from SISS, but in fact the real culprit he was looking for was Dodd's partner on SISS, Senator James O. Eastland from Mississippi. I put him onto the trail of Draper, Osborne, Laughlin and The Pioneer Fund and he followed it religiously. I tried to put him on the trail of the racist Senator from Mississippi who was the primary Legend Builder of LHO but he was already determined to blame all of the SISS related LHO ops on Thomas J. Dodd because the Dodd files were all located in and around Connecticut.
Eastland was in charge of Operation Red Cross, not Dodd and not the CIA. Eastland, Walker and Banister were in charge of setting up the Oswald Legend, not Dodd.

On behalf of the Evica family and the very cause of History itself, I thank you for trying to enlighten George Michael. If only he had lived long enough to acknowledge you and your work for what you and it truly are.

Wait a minute ... by golly I think he did. See below.

As for your "because the files were located in Connecticut" bullshit: How dare you accuse so tireless and committed a researcher -- whose untold sacrifices of time and energy to the causes of truth and justice contributed to his death -- of such perfidy! You've just given away your game, and if you're wise, you'll slink away from this forum and spread your lies where they are welcome.

For lying is indeed what you're doing when you state as fact that George Michael limited his research to material that was within easy reach of his Hartford home.

I will not have it. You are undone, sir. Nothing else you write -- nothing -- will be taken seriously by any man or woman of sound mind and good conscience.

When you became a supporter of those who have swallowed the other cockamamie lines about "9/11 as an internal demolition done by the U.S. Gov", "the OK Bombing as a strike from space done by the U.S. Gov", "the Waco Conflagration as started by a U.S. Gov Tank" and "The Lunar Landing Hoax done by the U.S. Gov" then I knew that it was too late to change your mind on the JFK hit, too.

Please indicate when and where I became a supporter of "The Lunar Landing Hoax," the "Waco Conflagration [sic] as started by a U.S. Gov [sic] Tank [sic]," and the "OK Bombing [sic] as a strike from space."

What's that? You cannot so indicate? You mean ... can it be? ... that you've created all this out of whole cloth? That you're ... delusional?

Dear Lord, there must be another explanation!

But wait. Save your foul breath. Your words are worthless.

Do you think that Prof. George Michael Evica fell for any of these patently distorted hoaxes constructed by the Far Right Wing? I seriously doubt it. Seriously.

George Michael, on numerous occasions dating as far back as the Third Decade conferences and as recently as the year of his passing, characterized you as a modestly gifted but sadly obsessive researcher in need of professional help. We laughed more than once at your "Frank Sturgis drove to Rhode Island to threaten me with a cocked pistol hand gesture" fantasy. Kind soul that he was, he worried after your OCD, your "I overheard the JFK plot from my bedroom window" fantasy that we likened to a "I was brought up in a house under the Coney Island roller coaster" delusion, and mostly your Da Vinci Code-like appreciation of The Manchurian Candidate.

George Michael Evica pitied you. Which makes him a better man than I am.

[Charles Drago]

All,

Please see my boldface additions to post #5 above.

[Dawn Meredith]

It doesn't resonate with me, CD. I've not been at this topic as intensely as some others like you, but I'm up to page 200 of "... the Unspeakable" and I think a very strong case has been made. Thus far, he has said, in essence, we don't know who gave the order, but we know pretty much everything else. And although we can't name a name yet in terms of orders, the list of candidates gets smaller and smaller by the day, and the web grows tighter and tighter. I mention page 200 (what is the reverse of ff ?) because I think Douglass has done the best job I have seen yet of explaining the operational approaches of CIA infiltration and compartmentalization I've read in my short life. And, if we didn't know already, he's explained the history of the post WWII intel world and its impetus and key actors and the connections to Wall Street and the intense anti-Soviet, anti-Communist mindset of the corporate military world. And I love Peter Dale Scott's video on "mindset"...

There is no doubt that much racism ran in parallel with the times and the people involved, but it does not strike me as a primary issue any more than similar commentaries about Obama today having any validity. There's a Venn diagram in here somewhere with some overlap, but I don't think civil rights constitutes the primary circle, or even a secondary one.

It does not resonate with me either. Not that I discount racism. We know from Mr. Bolden that JFK's secret service men were very racist. And we see it today with Obama. BUT if the assassination was about race then why didn't they assassinate LBJ, it was in his admin. that the Civil Rights legislation so close to JFK's heart was enacted.

I have read hundreds of excellent books on the assassination of JFK but I believe we learn the most from James Douglas. Much is what we knew already but the depth and documentation in JFK and the Unspeakable succeds brilliantly in showing both "why he died" and "why it matters". (And thus without naming all the names, points in the right direction of the killers).

JB you make some good points but in this regard you appear to harp on one topic to the exclusion of the rest, the real truth for those of us who have toiled in these woods many a decade .

You are entitled to your opinion certainly but you do need to be open to other views, imho.

Dawn

[Dawn Meredith]

All,

Please see my boldface additions to post #5 above.

WOW!!! I did not see those until after I posted.
Most interesting CD. This case certainly has attracted mare than its share of strange people, and not by accident.

Dawn

[Phil Dragoo]

I see the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to have been the basest of the civil rights violations of the era.

In the brutal murder of our 35th president I see the violent imposition of national security dogma imposed on the constitutionally authorized executive of any legitimate policy.

Reading James Douglass' JFK and the Unspeakable restores the correct focus, that foreign policy was imposed by criminals when they disapproved of that of the elected executive.

My interest is now enormously piqued by the introduction of Mr. Evica, and he is now firmly in queue of my must-read following Douglass and Horne.

Your forum continues to inspire.

[Charles Drago]

I see the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to have been the basest of the civil rights violations of the era.

In the brutal murder of our 35th president I see the violent imposition of national security dogma imposed on the constitutionally authorized executive of any legitimate policy.

Reading James Douglass' JFK and the Unspeakable restores the correct focus, that foreign policy was imposed by criminals when they disapproved of that of the elected executive.

My interest is now enormously piqued by the introduction of Mr. Evica, and he is now firmly in queue of my must-read following Douglass and Horne.

Your forum continues to inspire.

Phil,

Please try to find a copy of And We Are All Mortal, Professor Evica's first book-length contribution to our shared cause. It was published early on in the JFK investigation, yet it resonates today. You might also search for my earliest posts here in which I offer excerpts from AWAAM.

By mid-year TrineDay publisher will reissue my dear friend's final book, A Certain Arrogance, for which I was profoundly honored to write the Introduction.

I'm currently expanding the Intro significantly, so please don't order the currently available version, which was butchered by the on-demand publisher of the time (some three years ago).

George Michael is with us still in spirit -- as a disembodied personality and within the pages of his books, monographs, and articles.

Thank you for your interest.
_______________

P.S. -- You might like this: G.M. and I initially met at the first conference of The Third Decade in, I believe, 1990. The following year we ran into each other on the way to a Dallas ASK conference. He was a "celebrity" within the JFK reserach community, and I was a nobody/novice. I had delivered a paper at the aforementioned TD event -- a piece that G.M. had praised (and even defended in the face of an attack by Harry Livingstone).

Anyway, at the hub airport, as I stood at the connecting gate, all of a sudden my shoulders were being grabbed by unknown hands. I spun around and there was George Michael, smiling broadly and expressing his pleasure at running into me.

"Charles, isn't it?" he asked. I nodded.

"Is it 'Dragoo?' I wonder because I'm Dalmatian."

I corrected him.

He, his family, me, and my own immediate family soon became inseparable.

And so we remain.