Cry Me a River

By now we all know that Jason Arday has died, likely by suicide. His widely-publicized story has become infamous despite hardly being a month old. The upshot is that he was a black academic who was awarded a professorship in sociology by the woke elites at Cambridge University when he did not have credentials for it. What Arday did have was the capacity to lie.

At the very least, he built his academic reputation on plagiarism, a fact which researcher Nathan Cofnas uncovered last month. Others in the media did as well. Over 100 passages in Arday’s doctoral thesis were identified as originating elsewhere. Of course, the Left backed Arday during this time, claiming racism. The veracity of the charges, however, were undeniable. On August 5, Arday resigned from Cambridge, and on August 14 was found dead in his home. Authorities at the time claimed that the death was “unexpected but is not believed to be suspicious.” It’s hard to imagine any other cause of death under these circumstances.

See Ed Dutton and Lipton Matthews for more insightful and expansive takes on this affair. I especially liked this analysis by Sargon of Akkad as well.

I would like to offer, on the other hand, rhetorical ammunition for those of us on the Right now facing the wrath of Left-wingers lost in the throes of vindictive grief over Arday’s passing. For example, there are many tweets like this one on X which claim that “Right-wing reactionary media” was responsible for Arday’s death and has blood on its hands.

Others blame Arday’s death on a “racist witch hunt,” or “a lynch mob,” or a “Right-wing pile on.” Here is a taste from an outlet called The Voice:

Let’s not beat around the bush here. This entire rancid saga only occurred because Jason was Black.

This was never anything more than a right-wing pile on to attack Diversity Equity and Inclusion, and to suggest that anyone Black in any position of prominence is not there because of merit alone. And believe me, it won’t end here.

And let me clear about another thing. What we saw in Jason’s treatment was a media lynching. He was hounded to his death.

What was always missing from this debate was the fact that Nathan Cofnas, the man who had a fixation on Jason Arday and who launched this campaign, is a so-called ‘race realist’ with views that belong in the dustbin of history.

If Jason Arday were White this would not have happened.

In response, we should remind the Left of its own double standard with regards to academic cancellation. When they do it to people on the Right, they’re utterly vicious about it—and the question of whether the victim actually deserves it or whether his work is academically or scientifically sound makes no difference at all. And yet they cry foul with hideous shrieks and imprecations whenever anyone—Right, Left, or Center—investigates one of their own for actual, verifiable fraud.

Aptly, we should first bring up Mike Adams, the conservative criminology professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He gained notoriety on the Left in the 2010s with his anti-trans, anti-feminist positions, and by saying inflammatory yet defensible things on social media.

Among the professor’s recent statements was his comparing the efforts of North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper to curb coronavirus to that of a slave master, tweeting on May 29: “This evening I ate pizza and drank beer with six guys at a six seat table top. I almost felt like a free man who was not living in the slave state of North Carolina. Massa Cooper, let my people go!”

Earlier this year, Adams mocked women’s studies as “non essential” and labeled civil rights protesters “thugs.”

Back in 2016, Adams used an ultraconservative opinion site to target a student at his school with an article titled “A Queer Muslim Jihad.”


You can buy Spencer J. Quinn’s young adult novel The No College Club here.

When Adams was denied a promotion in 2007, he sued for anti-Christian discrimination and won after a seven-year legal struggle. But by 2020 public pressure against him became so intense that he agreed to retire on August 1 with a half-million-dollar payout from the university. He shot himself in the head a week before that could happen.

Prior to this, a Facebook group called “Justice for UNCW” had pressured the university to fire Adams. Should it and its 8,000 members be held responsible for Adams’ death? According to some defenders of Jason Arday, they should.

There is also a sense of inevitability being projected by Arday’s defenders, as if heightened media scrutiny necessarily leads to suicide. If so, then perhaps we can investigate the numerous times academics and scientists ran afoul of political correctness and did not resort to suicide after being subjected to relentless abuse.

Perhaps most famously, psychologist Arthur Jensen received numerous death threats and much professional hostility in the early 1970s after publishing a paper on the heritability of IQ. For a time, he needed a police bodyguard and a bomb squad to x-ray and open his mail. His lectures were often disrupted by protesters, and calls for his firing were common. This was considerably worse than the one-month ordeal Arday underwent, and yet Jensen never did himself in.

Richard Lynn was another race-realist intelligence researcher who carried on in the face of abuse. Despite many years of activist pressure, disinvitations, lecture disruptions, and widespread calls for his firing—as well as loss of credentials and his removal from the editorial board of a journal he had helped found—he died of natural causes in 2023 at the ripe age of 93. Did Jason Arday actually have it worse than Richard Lynn?

Charles Murray, the co-author of the 1994 work The Bell Curve has faced similar opposition for decades. In 2017, he and a colleague were attacked by deranged Leftist students at Middlebury College in Vermont where he was scheduled to give a speech. Afterwards, College president Laurie Patton refused to expel the perpetrators, despite how Murray’s colleague Allison Stanger received a concussion and a neck injury during the attack. Unlike Arday, the octogenarian Murray persevered and continues to persevere today.


You can buy Spencer Quinn’s novel White Like You here.

Nobel Laureate James Watson had gotten in trouble numerous times throughout his career for dropping bon mots which the Left deemed not so bon. Most notoriously, he stated in 2007 that he felt “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa [because] all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really.” This resulted in instant cancellation, mass-condemnation, and professional ostracism. He was reduced to selling his Nobel Prize medal in 2014 for $4.1 million. Then in 2019 he doubled down, stating correctly that “[t]here’s a difference on the average between blacks and whites in IQ tests. . . I would say the difference is genetic.” This caused mass panic at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories on Long Island, New York. They immediately revoked all honors and titles conferred to Watson, despite how he had served as the lab’s president from 1994 to 2004.

And yet James Watson died of natural causes in 2025, age 97.

And these are just the heavy hitters of race realism. Kevin MacDonald, Jared Taylor, Greg Johnson, Emil Kirkegaard, Peter Brimelow, and Jason Richwine are examples of less famous individuals who have been canceled in one way or another for violating Leftist orthodoxy. And yet they continue plugging along. Perhaps ironically, Nathan Cofnas is now receiving death threats from grieving supporters of Arday—one of whom recently promised to “Charlie Kirk his ass” if he ever decided to visit the United States.

I’ve had my issues with Cofnas in the past—but he doesn’t deserve this abuse. I dearly hope nothing bad comes of it. In any event, we do owe Cofnas a debt of gratitude for exposing Arday’s lies in the first place.

We must remember also that, unlike the men mentioned above, Arday was credibly accused of academic fraud. He wasn’t merely a mediocre scholar who might have taken liberties with other people’s material four or five times early on in his career. That would have been merely embarrassing. Instead, at the time of his death he was facing charges of over 100 instances of plagiarism, not all of which came from Cofnas. Add this to the long list of improbable and likely apocryphal things he had said about himself (for example, claiming to have run 30 marathons in 35 days) and the fact that he sicced the police on a journalist who was investigating the fraud allegations against him, and Arday comes across not as a victim, but as a consummate conman and pathological liar who couldn’t face the music once his seven-figure check bounced from the big bank of lies. Furthermore, he was anti-white considering how he co-wrote a book complaining about “whiteness” and once accused a student of having “white privilege” simply for complaining about a low grade.

This is why I cannot drum up even generic sadness for Jason Arday’s passing. And if his supporters wish to lash out at the Right while keeping mum as their fellow travelers trash the memory of murder victim Ann Widdecombe, then they can go cry me a river.

Spencer J. Quinn

Beau Albrecht:

If our lefty moral superiors want to blame critics for Jason Arday’s death, then they also should look into “root causes” as they’re fond of doing.  In this case, the cultural Marxist academic establishment promoted this diversity hire every step of the way – someone was both a chronic liar and didn’t have a clue about academic standards like attribution – to a position far beyond his competence level.  Then when the truth came out, his entire world collapsed.  If instead he’d been working in a job suited to his capabilities (mopping floors, perhaps), then he’d be alive and well now.

https://counter-currents.com/

The discreet charm of the sea level, or exercises in deindoctrination

 

1. How Do You Know Earth is Not a Spinning Globe?

Flat Earth has long been denigrated, derided and disparaged as being the most crackpot of all conspiracy theories, marginalized, mocked and ridiculed for centuries as being an ignorant ancient unscientific worldview, but the facts of the matter are far from what you have been told.  When thoroughly examined and diligently researched with an open-mind, any skeptical critical-thinker will find it is actually the tilting, wobbling, spinning space-ball Earth promoted by NASA and taught in schools that is truly ridiculous and unscientific.  The following are 20 ways anyone can prove for themselves that Earth is a level stationary plane:

1. Common Sense

It cannot be overstated or overemphasized, the most important thing to realize and most obvious way to know you are not spinning on a ball is your own common sense and lived experience.  You have always and will always experience yourself as living right-side up on a motionless Earth with the Sun, Moon and stars revolving over and around you.  This is common sense and what everyone in the world personally experiences every day of their lives.  We are taught to believe otherwise, however, many things completely contrary to our own common sense and experience from a very early age.  We are told that people living "down-under" the spinning ball Earth in Australia are actually living upside-down relative to those residing in the northern hemisphere, while an invisible force strong enough to hold people, buildings and oceans stuck to the underside of a rapidly rotating ball, but weak enough to allow birds, bugs and planes to take off and fly with ease, keeps Earth's atmosphere spinning in perfect balance and holds everyone firmly to the surface without crushing us.

We can clearly see that the horizon is horizontal, but we are told it curves.  We can feel that the Earth under our feet is motionless, but we are told it moves.  We can observe the luminaries revolving around us, but we are told it is us that revolves.  It is obvious that stars are stars, but we are told that stars are suns.  We can see the Sun is bigger than the stars, but we are told stars are bigger than the Sun.  We can see the Sun and Moon are the same size, but we are told the Sun is 400 times larger.  It is obvious that up is up and down is down, but we are told there is no such thing!  As stated by flat Earth author David Wardlaw Scott, "with the modern astronomer there is theoretically neither 'up' nor 'down,' though his experience belies his assertion, every time he looks 'up' to the heavens or 'down' to the ground.  Such aberration of intellect is really to be pitied."  The third century philosopher Lacantius was similarly perturbed about the idea, stating, "A sphere where people on the other side live with their feet above their heads, where rain, snow and hail fall upwards, where trees and crops grow upside-down and the sky is lower than the ground? The ancient wonder of the hanging gardens of Babylon dwindle into nothing in comparison to the fields, seas, towns and mountains that pagan philosophers believe to be hanging from the Earth without support!"  Truly, the idea that people are standing, ships are sailing, and planes are flying upside-down on certain parts of Earth while others are tilted at 90 degrees and all other impossible angles is utter absurdity and an affront to common sense.

In fact, common sense is the first casualty of globe belief.  No child or un-indoctrinated man would ever conclude or even conceive if given to their own devices, based on their own personal observations, that Earth was a spinning ball revolving around the Sun.  When children are indoctrinated from a very early age to abandon their common sense and lived experience of a geocentric plane Earth in favor of this nonsensical heliocentric globe model taught in schools, a schism occurs in their psyche.  No longer can they trust their own senses and experience, and instead must trust information completely contrary to it, taught by supposed experts and authority figures who insist their version of reality is correct.  When children see that every adult around them believes whole-heartedly in the spinning globe, and hear that only our ignorant unscientific ancestors believed otherwise, they readily abandon the empirical evidence of their senses and adopt the prevailing nonsensical model.  As stated by flat Earth author E. Eschini, "the one thing the fable of the revolving Earth has done, it has shown the terrible power of a lie, a lie has the power to make a man a mental slave, so that he dares not back the evidence of his own senses. To deny the plain and obvious movement of the Sun he sees before him. When he feels himself standing on an Earth utterly devoid of motion, at the suggestion of someone else he is prepared to accept that he is spinning furiously round. When he sees a bird flying, and gaining over the ground, he is prepared to believe that the ground is really travelling a great number of times faster than the bird, and finally, in order to uphold the imagination of a madman, he is prepared to accuse his Maker of forming him a sensiferous lie."

2. Fake Photographs

One of the main reasons the average person believes the world is a globe is because of the globular Earth images and video footage provided by NASA and other space agencies.  Hundreds of such pictures and thousands of videos featuring a globe Earth are freely available on the internet, yet most people never critically examine them with a skeptical eye.  From the earliest photographs to the latest live-streams, NASA and the world's other space agencies continue to be exposed for their Hollywood-style trickery.  When conscientiously compared, contrasted and investigated for inconsistencies, it turns out every single image and video showing a globular Earth has been manipulated in some way.

All globe videos, for example, are achieved using either a fish-eye lens to curve the horizon, or created completely through CGI technology.  One clear instance of the latter is NASA's 1990 time-lapse video of Earth supposedly filmed by their Galileo space telescope from 1.3 million miles away.  This video features the Earth-globe spinning in space uncut for 25 hours and shows the exact same clouds present without ever dissipating, changing shape or location the entire time.  In reality, if you watch clouds in the sky for several minutes, three things will inevitably happen: the clouds will all move, some will morph gradually changing shape, and others will dissipate and disappear completely.  In NASA's official footage of the spinning ball-Earth, however, the entire world's cloud cover doesn't dissipate, morph or move for 25 hours, which is of course impossible and proof of fakery.

A good example of fish-eye lens fakery is the famous 2012 Go Pro Red Bull jump where skydiver Felix Baumgartner was lifted to a record-breaking 128,000 feet in a stratospheric balloon then jumped back to Earth.  Seven Go Pro cameras on the outside of the craft and strapped to Felix himself recorded the entire ascent and descent.  Astute observers will notice that from ground level all the way to the 24-mile apex, the horizon is significantly curved and remains equally so for the entire ascent.  This is because the curve is artificial and being caused by the Go Pro cameras' standard-issue fish-eye lens.  Once Felix reaches his peak altitude and the door of his craft opens, an inside camera mounted behind him without a fish-eye lens reveals the truth showing a perfectly flat horizon still at eye-level 128,000 feet high.

As for the hundreds of supposed photographs available of the globe, NASA readily admits that these are composite images and not actual photographs.  They claim the composites are made by taking strips of data sent from satellites spliced together in Photoshop and colorized for the final creation.  NASA's senior program analyst and lead data visualizer, Robert Simmon admitted in an interview that they are "photoshopped" because they "have to be."  When compared side by side and viewed with a discerning eye the inconsistencies become obvious.  The coloration of the land/oceans and relative size of the continents drastically changes between images and they often feature far too little landmass for 50% of a globe.  Several of NASA's Blue Marble Earth images have repeat instances of exact cloud patterns clearly copied and pasted into place.

Computer enhancements done on Earth images taken during the Apollo Moon missions also show similar photo trickery.  When hues are removed from the black backgrounds and brightness enhanced, distinct rectangular artifacts appear around the globe where they were pasted in, again proving them to be doctored composites.

Furthermore, when NASA's Earth pictures are compared with those from the Russians, Chinese and other space agencies, the differences become evident and the fact that they are all simply Photoshop images becomes obvious.  If NASA and the world's space agencies could provide real, legitimate photographs and videos of a globe, they most certainly would, so the fact that they continue producing and pumping out nothing but fish-eye fakery and CGI cartoons is strong evidence that Earth is not what they claim.

3. Water

The natural physics of water are that once contained and undisturbed the surface will always remain horizontal.  This fundamental physical property of water is why it has been used as a leveling tool by builders and engineers for millennia.  Whether in a bucket, bathtub, pond, lake or an ocean, the surface of water at rest always remains flat and doesn't have the ability to show convexity or any shape whatsoever upon its surface.  This fact is easily demonstrable and empirically verifiable but completely at odds with what we are told about the globe.  For Earth to be globular and over 70% covered in water, the oceans must be somehow curving around and sticking to all sides of a rapidly spinning ball suspended in space.  It is simply impossible to make water behave this way, as anyone can experiment for themselves, bodies of water will not stick to the underside of a ball, and cannot show convexity or any other shape upon their surface.

Globe defenders will often point to water droplets, meniscus, surface tension or adhesion claiming these are examples of water bending or sticking to a surface, which is nothing but a fallacy of false equivalency, as these only happen at a very small scale the size of a coffee cup.  The claim is entire oceans wrapping around and sticking to the underside of a spinning ball, not a water droplet or the meniscus in a glass filled to the brim.  NASA has also recently taken to faking CGI water balls using augmented virtual reality technology in an attempt to convince the public that water can behave this way.  This kind of demonstration done in a reference frame inaccessible to 99.99% of the population, however, is unrepeatable by the world's scientists/skeptics and is therefore not scientific or permissible as proof of anything.  First, they claim only massive objects the size of Earth have this attractive property, then as evidence they show a phenomenon allegedly outside of our Earthly reference frame.  In other words, they are claiming bodies of water can bend around, stick to a ball, and show curvature upon their surface, but only at a scale too big for the public to recreate; then they are claiming water can ball-up and float suspended in air, but only in a reference frame too far for the public to recreate.

As for water level, globe defenders have actually attempted to completely re-define the term "level" just to fit with their dogma.  The true definition of "level" is "a flat, horizontal plane with no deviation in elevation along its surface."  Water always reliably seeks and maintains its own level, and that is why it has been used in spirit levels and construction projects from time immemorial to create perfectly horizontal structures, no matter their size.  Globe zealots, however, unsatisfied with this obvious truth and clear definition have attempted to redefine "level" to instead mean "curved."  Their new globe-friendly version of "level" means "equal heights around a ball when measured from a central point."  The fact of the matter is, however, that nobody has ever reached this hypothetical center-point of the hypothetical Earth-globe, so their redefined term cannot be tested or falsified.  Until that day, rest assured there is good reason we all call it "sea-level" and not "sea-curve."

4. The Horizon

The horizon is always perfectly horizontal 360 degrees around the observer regardless of altitude.  If Earth was actually a globe, no matter how large, as an observer ascended, the horizon would remain fixed in position and fall below the observer the higher climbed.  In reality, all amateur balloon, rocket, plane and drone footage filmed without a fish-eye lens at maximum altitudes of over 20 miles high show a completely flat horizon still rising to eye-level.  Only in NASA and other space agency footage does the horizon ever curve or appear below the observer's eye-level.

In the heliocentric model, the horizon is claimed to be the physical curvature of their globe, and the reason boats receding from a shore-bound observer disappear from view.  This was actually one of the original alleged globe Earth proofs presented by Aristotle and still parroted by believers today, but by using modern zoom technology, we now know that the horizon is not the physical curvature of a globe, and those boats can be zoomed back into full view.  This is because the horizon is not an objective physical phenomenon at all, but rather a subjective optical phenomenon based on an individual observer's perspective.  If the horizon was actually the objective physical curvature of a globe, then objects receding beyond it could not be zoomed back into view, and it would remain fixed as an observer ascended.  In reality, however, the horizon rises along with the observer no matter how high, and modern zoom technology can bring objects receding beyond it back into full view.  This proves the horizon line is not some objective point of curvature on a convex Earth, but rather the subjective vanishing line of perspective from a given observer's point of view.

Quoting "Earth Not a Globe," by Dr. Samuel Rowbotham, "On the shore near Waterloo, a few miles to the north of Liverpool, a good telescope was fixed, at an elevation of 6 feet above the water. It was directed to a large steamer, just leaving the River Mersey, and sailing out to Dublin. Gradually the mast-head of the receding vessel came nearer to the horizon, until, at length, after more than four hours had elapsed, it disappeared. The ordinary rate of sailing of the Dublin steamers was fully eight miles an hour; so that the vessel would be, at least, thirty-two miles distant when the mast-head came to the horizon. The 6 feet of elevation of the telescope would require three miles to be deducted for convexity, which would leave twenty-nine miles, the square of which, multiplied by 8 inches, gives 560 feet; deducting 80 feet for the height of the main-mast, and we find that, according to the doctrine of rotundity, the mast-head of the outward bound steamer should have been 480 feet below the horizon. Many other experiments of this kind have been made upon sea-going steamers, and always with results entirely incompatible with the theory that the Earth is a globe."

7. Plane Sailing

Ship captains in navigating great distances at sea never need to factor the supposed curvature of the Earth into their calculations. Both Plane Sailing and Great Circle Sailing, the most popular navigation methods, use plane, not spherical trigonometry, making all mathematical calculations on the assumption that the Earth is perfectly flat. If the Earth were in fact a sphere, such an errant assumption would lead to constant glaring inaccuracies. Plane Sailing has worked perfectly fine in both theory and practice for thousands of years, however, and plane trigonometry has time and again proven more accurate than spherical trigonometry in determining distances across the oceans.  It is so commonly used at sea "Navigation in Theory and Practice," states that "In practice, scarcely any other rules are used but those derived from plane sailing.  The great and serious objection to plane sailing is that longitude cannot be found by it accurately, although in practice, it is more frequently found by it than any other method."  So, both latitude and longitude are found most often and most accurately by assuming Earth to be flat, more accurately even than assuming the Earth to be spherical.  Quoting "100 Proofs Earth is Not a Globe" by William Carpenter, "If the Earth were a globe, a small model globe would be the very best - because the truest - thing for the navigator to take to sea with him.  But such a thing as that is not known: with such a toy as a guide, the mariner would wreck his ship, of a certainty!  This is a proof that Earth is not a globe."

8. Construction

Surveyors, engineers, architects, and builders are never required to factor the supposed curvature of the Earth into their projects.  Plumb-bobs are used to establish plumb vertical datum, with spirit levels then used to establish horizontal datum and lay flat foundations across great expanses.  If Earth was actually a globe of given proportions, builders would find themselves constantly deviating from both their established vertical and horizontal datum lines, but in reality, canals, railways, bridges, tunnels and other large projects are always cut and laid horizontally, often over hundreds of miles, without any allowance for curvature and no deviation from the established datum.  As stated by surveyor T. Westwood in Earth Review magazine, "In leveling, I work from ordinance marks, or canal levels, to get the height above sea level. The puzzle to me used to be, that over several miles each level was and is treated throughout its whole length as the same level from end to end; not the least allowance being made for curvature."

The Suez Canal which connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Gulf of Suez on the Red Sea is one clear proof of both the Earth's and water's non-convexity. The canal is 100 miles long and without any locks so the water within is an uninterrupted continuation of the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea. When it was constructed, the Earth's supposed curvature was not taken into account, it was dug along a horizontal datum line 26 feet below sea-level, passing through several lakes from one sea to the other, with the datum line and the water's surface running perfectly parallel over the 100 miles.  Another good example is the Dunyang-Kunshan Bridge, the longest bridge in the world just over 102 miles long, which runs parallel to the Yangtze river and connects the Shanghai and Nanjing provinces.  This bridge is approximately the same length as the Suez Canal and was also built without factoring the alleged curvature of the Earth.  If Earth was actually a globe 24,900 miles in circumference, spherical trigonometry dictates that the center of both the Suez Canal and the Dunyang-Kunshan Bridge would bulge over 1666 feet higher than either end.

Engineer W. Winckler was published in the Earth Review regarding the Earth’s supposed curvature, stating, "As an engineer of many years standing, I saw that this absurd allowance is only permitted in school books. No engineer would dream of allowing anything of the kind. I have projected many miles of railways and many more of canals and the allowance has not even been thought of, much less allowed for. This allowance for curvature means this - that it is 8" for the first mile of a canal, and increasing at the ratio by the square of the distance in miles; thus a small navigable canal for boats, say 30 miles long, will have, by the above rule an allowance for curvature of 600 feet. Think of that and then please credit engineers as not being quite such fools. Nothing of the sort is allowed. We no more think of allowing 600 feet for a line of 30 miles of railway or canal, than of wasting our time trying to square the circle."

Railroads are another example of large-scale construction projects spanning hundreds or even thousands of miles working from an established datum line and without deviating for the entire length.  The Manchester Ship Canal Company in an official statement published in Earth Review magazine confirmed, "It is customary in railway and canal constructions for all levels to be referred to a datum which is nominally horizontal and is so shown on all sections. It is not the practice in laying out public works to make allowances for the curvature of the Earth."  As an example, the London and Northwestern Railway forms a straight line 180 miles long between London and Liverpool. The railroad's highest point, midway at Birmingham station, is only 240 feet above sea-level, but if Earth was actually a globe of given proportions, the 180 mile stretch of rail would form an arc with its center-point at Birmingham raising over a mile, a full 5,400 feet, above London and Liverpool.

A surveyor and engineer of thirty years published in the Birmingham Weekly Mercury stated, "I am thoroughly acquainted with the theory and practice of civil engineering. However bigoted some of our professors may be in the theory of surveying according to the prescribed rules, yet it is well known amongst us that such theoretical measurements are incapable of any practical illustration. All our locomotives are designed to run on what may be regarded as true levels or flats. There are, of course, partial inclines or gradients here and there, but they are always accurately defined and must be carefully traversed. But anything approaching to eight inches in the mile, increasing as the square of the distance, could not be worked by any engine that was ever yet constructed. Taking one station with another all over England and Scotland, it may be stated that all the platforms are on the same relative level. The distance between eastern and western coasts of England may be set down as 300 miles. If the prescribed curvature was indeed as represented, the central stations at Rugby or Warwick ought to be close upon three miles higher than a chord drawn from the two extremities. If such was the case there is not a driver or stoker within the Kingdom that would be found to take charge of the train. We can only laugh at those of your readers who seriously give us credit for such venturesome exploits, as running trains round spherical curves. Horizontal curves on levels are dangerous enough, vertical curves would be a thousand times worse, and with our rolling stock constructed as at present physically impossible."

9. Long-Distance Photography

We are consistently able to observe objects at incredibly long distances far beyond what would be possible if Earth was actually a globe of given proportions.  By inputting the observer height and distance viewed into an Earth curvature calculator, it is easy to check how much a target should be obstructed on a globe Earth.  For example, it is often possible to see the Chicago skyline from sea-level 60 miles away across Lake Michigan. In 2015 after photographer Joshua Nowicki photographed this phenomenon several news channels quickly claimed his picture to be a "superior mirage," an atmospheric anomaly caused by temperature inversion. While these certainly do occur, the skyline in question was facing right-side up and clearly seen, unlike a hazy illusory mirage, and on a ball-Earth 24,900 miles in circumference should be a full 2,400 feet below the horizon.  In Genoa, Italy, from only 70 feet above sea-level, on clear days it is possible to see the distant islands of Elba, Gorgona, Capraia, and Corsica which are 81, 99, 102 and 125 miles away.  If Earth was truly a globe of given proportions, all four islands could never be visible for such an observer and would be hidden behind 3,300, 5,200, 5,600, and 8,700 of feet of curved water.

From Anchorage, Alaska at an elevation of 102 feet, on clear days both Mount Foraker and Mount McKinley can be seen in their entirety standing straight from base to summit with the naked eye from 120 and 130 miles away respectively.  If Earth was really a ball of given circumference, however, both mountains should be leaning back away from the observer with the lower half of each mountain completely obstructed from view.  Based on verifiable curvature calculations, 7,719 feet of Mount Foraker's 17,400-foot summit and 9,220 feet of Mount McKinley's 20,320-foot summit should be hidden behind a giant bulge of curved globular Earth.  The current record-breaking longest distance zoom photograph recently captured Pic Gaspard from Pic de Finestrelles a whopping 275 miles away, with an observer height of approximately 9,000 feet, from which, based on correct curvature calculations, the entire 12,740-foot mountain should be invisible behind nearly six miles of curved Earth.  Even more recently flat earthers like JTolanMedia have been filming using infrared zoom cameras at high altitudes to capture lakes, mountains, and other landmarks up to an incredible thousand miles away!  If Earth was really a globe the size we are told, many of the landmarks photographed would be hidden behind upwards of 70 miles of curved Earth.

10. Lighthouses

The distance from which various lighthouse lights around the world are visible at sea also far exceeds what could be found on a ball Earth of given proportions. For example, the Dunkerque Light in southern France at an altitude of 194 feet is visible from a boat (10 feet above sea-level) 28 miles away.  Spherical trigonometry dictates that if Earth was a globe with the given curvature rate, this light should be hidden 190 feet below the horizon.  The Port Nicholson Light in New Zealand is 420 feet above sea-level and visible from 35 miles away where it should be 220 feet below the horizon.  The Egerö Light in Norway is 154 feet above high-water and visible from 28 statute miles where it should be 230 feet below the horizon.  The Light at Madras, on the Esplanade, is 132 feet high and visible from 28 miles away, where it should be 250 feet below the line of sight.  The Cordonan Light on the west coast of France is 207 feet high and visible from 31 miles away, where it should be 280 feet below the line of sight.  The light at Cape Bonavista, Newfoundland is 150 feet above sea-level and visible at 35 miles, where it should be 491 feet below the horizon.  The lighthouse steeple of St. Botolph's Parish Church in Boston is 290 feet tall and visible from over 40 miles away, where it should be hidden a full 800 feet below the horizon.  The Isle of Wight lighthouse in England is 180 feet high and can be seen up to 42 miles away, a distance at which modern astronomers say the light should fall 996 feet below line of sight.  The Cape L'Agulhas lighthouse in South Africa is 33 feet high, 238 feet above sea level, and can be seen for over 50 miles. If the world was a globe, this light would fall 1,400 feet below an observer's line of sight.  And finally, the lighthouse at Port Said, Egypt, at an elevation of only 60 feet has been seen an astonishing 58 miles away, where, according to modern astronomy it should be 2,182 feet below the line of sight.

11. Impossible Atmosphere

If Earth was truly a globe constantly spinning eastwards at over 1000mph, it stands to reason that helicopters and hot-air balloons should be able to simply hover over the surface of the Earth and wait for their destinations to come to them.  For example, during the Red Bull stratosphere dive, Felix Baumgartner, spending 3 hours ascending over New Mexico, should have landed 2500 miles West into the Pacific Ocean but instead actually landed a few dozen miles East of the take-off point!  Likewise, vertically-fired cannonballs and other projectiles should fall significantly due West on an eastward spinning ball. In actual fact, however, whenever this has been tested, vertically-fired cannonballs shoot upwards an average of 14 seconds ascending, 14 seconds descending, and fall back to the ground no more than 2 feet away from the cannon, sometimes directly back into the muzzle.

To account for this problem, globe defenders claim that "gravity" somehow magically and inexplicably drags the entire lower-atmosphere of the Earth in perfect synchronization up to some undetermined height where this progressively faster and faster spinning atmosphere gives way to the non-spinning, non-gravitized, non-atmosphere of supposed infinite vacuum space.  NASA refuses to answer at what altitude this impossible feat allegedly happens, but the effect such a transition would have on a craft traversing it would be disastrous.  It is also scientifically refuted by the simple fact that vacuums cannot exist connected to non-vacuums while maintaining the properties of a vacuum.  As anyone who has punctured an aerosol can knows, two adjacent pressure systems not separated by some kind of barrier or membrane will equilibrate.

If "gravity" magically dragged the atmosphere along with the spinning ball Earth, that would mean the atmosphere at the poles would be spinning at 0mph, while over the mid-latitudes it would be spinning around 500mph, and gradually faster until reaching the equator where Earth and the atmosphere would be spinning together at over 1000mph.  Not only would this "gravitized" atmosphere increase speed from poles to the equator, but would also necessarily progressively increase speed the higher the altitude.  In reality, however, the atmosphere at every point on Earth is equally unaffected by this alleged force, as it has never been measured and is proven non-existent by the ability of airplanes to fly unabated in any direction without experiencing any such atmospheric changes.  Landing airplanes on such fast-moving runways facing all manner of directions North, South, East, West, and otherwise would also be practically impossible.  Not to mention rain, fireworks, birds, bugs, clouds, smoke, balloons and projectiles would all behave very differently if the Earth and its atmosphere were constantly spinning.

Test were conducted in the 19th century with cannons facing each of the cardinal directions which proved Earth and its atmosphere are not spinning.  If they were, then North and South facing cannons would establish a control while East-firing cannonballs should fall significantly farther than all others while West-firing cannonballs should fall significantly closer.  In actual fact, however, regardless of which direction cannons are fired, the distance covered is always the same.  Common sense tells us if Earth and its atmosphere were constantly spinning eastwards over 1000mph, this should somewhere somehow be seen, heard, felt or measured by someone, yet no one in history has ever experienced this alleged eastward motion; meanwhile, however, we can hear, feel and experimentally measure even the slightest westward breeze.  Furthermore, clouds, wind and weather patterns casually and unpredictably meander every which way, with clouds often traveling in opposing directions at varying altitudes simultaneously; this is altogether incompatible with the theory of a rapidly rotating Earth and atmosphere.

12. Flight Times

If Earth and its atmosphere were constantly spinning eastwards over 1000mph at the equator, then the average commercial airliner traveling 500mph should never be able to reach its eastward destinations before they come speeding up from behind.  Likewise, westward destinations should be arrived at thrice the speed, but this is not the case.  In reality, the differences between eastbound and westbound flight durations usually amount to a matter of minutes, and nothing near what would occur on a spinning globe.  As Gabrielle Henriet stated in her book Heaven and Earth, "If flying had been invented at the time of Copernicus, there is no doubt that he would have soon realized that his contention regarding the rotation of the earth was wrong, on account of the relation existing between the speed of an aircraft and that of the Earth's rotation. If the Earth rotates, as it is said, at 1,000 miles an hour, and a plane flies in the same direction at only 500 miles, it is obvious that its place of destination will be farther removed every minute. On the other hand, if flying took place in the direction opposite to that of the rotation, a distance of 1,500 miles would be covered in one hour, instead of 500, since the speed of the rotation is to be added to that of the plane. It could also be pointed out that such a flying speed of 1,000 miles an hour, which is supposed to be that of the Earth's rotation, has recently been achieved, so that an aircraft flying at this rate in the same direction as that of the rotation could not cover any ground at all. It would remain suspended in mid-air over the spot from which it took off, since both speeds are equal."

The spinning globe model dictates that Earth and its atmosphere would be moving together 1,000mph at the equator and progressively slower approaching zero closer to the poles.  The following examples all take place at the mid-latitudes where the globe model claims that Earth and its atmosphere should be moving together at approximately 500mph, the same as the average flight speed of a commercial airliner.  Flights from Los Angeles to New York City traveling East with the alleged rotation of the Earth take an average of 5.5 hours, for instance, so the return flight West should only take 2.75 hours, but in fact the average NYC to LA flight actually takes upwards of 6 hours, a time totally inconsistent with the spinning globe model.  Flights eastwards with the alleged spin of the Earth from Tokyo to Los Angeles take an average of 10.5 hours, therefore return flights westwards against the alleged spin should take an average of 5.25 hours, but in actual fact take an average of 11.5 hours, another flight duration totally inconsistent with the globe model.  Eastbound flights from New York to London take an average of 7 hours, therefore the westbound flights against the alleged spin should take an average of 3.5 hours, but in reality, they take an average of 7.5 hours.  Eastward flights from Chicago to Boston with the alleged spin of the Earth take an average of 2.25 hours, therefore the return flights westwards against the alleged spin should take an average of just over an hour, but in reality, they take an average of 2.75 hours.  Flights eastwards from Paris to Rome take an average of 2 hours, therefore the return flights westwards against the alleged spin should take only 1 hour, but in actual fact have an average flight duration of 2 hours and 10 minutes.  All of these flight times are impossible on a 1000mph eastward spinning ball but are consistent with what would be expected over a stationary Earth.

13. Flight Paths

If Earth was truly a ball, then there are several flights in the southern hemisphere which would have their quickest, straightest path over the Antarctic continent such as Santiago, Chile to Sydney, Australia. Instead of taking the shortest, quickest route in a straight line over Antarctica, however, all such flights detour all manner of directions away from Antarctica instead claiming the temperatures too cold for airplane travel! Considering the fact that there are plenty of flights to, from, and over parts Antarctica, and NASA claims to have technology keeping them in conditions far colder (and far hotter) than any experienced on Earth, such an excuse is clearly just an excuse, and these flights aren't made because they are impossible.  If Earth was a ball, and Antarctica was too cold to fly over, the only logical way to fly from Sydney to Santiago would be a straight shot over the Pacific staying in the southern hemisphere the entire way. Re-fueling could be done in New Zealand or other southern hemisphere destinations along the way if absolutely necessary, but in reality, Santiago-Sydney flights go into the northern hemisphere making stop-overs at LAX and other North American airports before continuing back down to the southern hemisphere. Such ridiculously wayward detours make no sense on the globe but make perfect sense and form nearly straight lines when shown on a flat Earth map.

On a globe, Johannesburg, South Africa to Perth, Australia should be a straight shot over the Indian Ocean with convenient re-fueling possibilities on Mauritius or Madagascar. In actual practice, however, most Johannesburg to Perth flights curiously stop over either in Dubai, Hong Kong or Malaysia all of which make no sense on the ball model, but are completely understandable when mapped on a flat Earth.  On a globe, Cape Town, South Africa to Buenos Aries, Argentina should be a straight shot over the Atlantic following the same line of latitude across, but instead every flight goes to connecting locations in the northern hemisphere first, stopping over anywhere from London to Turkey to Dubai. Once again these make absolutely no sense on the ball model but are completely understandable options when mapped on a flat Earth.  On a globe, Santiago, Chile to Johannesburg, South Africa should be an easy flight all taking place below the Tropic of Capricorn in the southern hemisphere, yet every listed flight makes a curious re-fueling stop in Senegal near the Tropic of Cancer in the north hemisphere first! When mapped on a flat Earth the reason why is clear to see though, because Senegal is actually directly in a straight-line path half-way between the two.  On a globe, Johannesburg, South Africa to Sao Paolo, Brazil should be a quick, straight shot along the 25th southern latitude, but instead nearly every flight makes a re-fueling stop at the 50th degree north latitude in London first! The only reason such a ridiculous stop-over works in reality is because the Earth is not a spinning ball.

14. Latitude and Longitude

If Earth was truly a globe, then every line of latitude South of the equator would have to measure a gradually smaller and smaller circumference the farther South travelled. If Earth is an extended plane, however, then every line of latitude South of the equator should measure a gradually larger and larger circumference the farther South travelled.  Practical distance measurements taken from "The Australian Handbook, Almanack, Shippers' and Importers' Directory" state that the straight-line distance between Sydney and Nelson is 1550 statute miles with a given difference in longitude of 22 degrees 2'14".  Therefore if 22 degrees 2'14" out of 360 is 1550 miles, the entirety would measure 25,182 miles, which is not only larger than the globe is said to be at the equator, but a whole 4,262 miles greater than it would be at Sydney's southern latitude on a globe of given proportions.  From near Cape Horn, Chile to Port Philip in Melbourne, Australia the distance is 10,500 miles, or 143 degrees of longitude away.  Factoring the remaining degrees to 360 makes for a total distance of 26,430 miles around this particular latitude, which is over 1500 miles wider than Earth is supposed to be at the equator, and many more thousands of miles wider than it is supposed to be at such southern latitudes.  Similar calculations made from the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa to Melbourne, Australia at an average latitude of 35.5 degrees South, have given an approximate figure of over 25,000 miles, which is again greater than the Earth's supposed circumference at the equator.  Meanwhile calculations from Sydney, Australia to Wellington, New Zealand at an average of 37.5 degrees South, have given an approximate circumference of 25,500 miles, greater still!  According to the globe model, the circumference of Earth at 37.5 degrees South latitude should be only 19,757 statute miles, almost six thousand miles less than such practical measurements.

The fact that many captains navigating South of the equator assuming the globular theory have found themselves drastically out of reckoning, more so the farther South travelled, also testifies to the fact that the Earth is not a ball.  For example, during Captain James Clark Ross's voyages around the Antarctic circumference, he often wrote in his journal perplexed at how they routinely found themselves out of accordance with their charts, stating that they found themselves an average of 12-16 miles outside their reckoning every day, later on further South as much as 29 miles.  Lieutenant Charles Wilkes commanded a United States Navy exploration expedition to the Antarctic from 1838 to 1842, and in his journals also mentioned being consistently East of his reckoning, sometimes over 20 miles in less than 18 hours.  Quoting Reverend Thomas Milner, "In the southern hemisphere, navigators to India have often fancied themselves East of the Cape when still West, and have been driven ashore on the African coast, which, according to their reckoning, lay behind them. This misfortune happened to a fine frigate, the Challenger, in 1845. How came Her Majesty's Ship 'Conqueror,' to be lost? How have so many other noble vessels, perfectly sound, perfectly manned, perfectly navigated, been wrecked in calm weather, not only in dark night, or in a fog, but in broad daylight and sunshine - in the former case upon the coasts, in the latter, upon sunken rocks - from being 'out of reckoning?'" The simple answer is that Earth is not a ball.

In the globe model, Antarctica is an ice continent which covers the bottom of the ball from 78 to 90 degrees South latitude and is therefore not much more than 12,000 miles in circumference.  Many early explorers including Captain Cook and James Clark Ross, however, in attempting to circumnavigate Antarctica took upwards of 3 to 4 years and clocked between 50,000 and 60,000 miles around.  Captain George Nares on his Challenger expedition also made an indirect but complete circumnavigation of Antarctica traversing 69,000 miles, which is entirely inconsistent with the globe model.  Herve Riboni, who circumnavigated the world during the 1993 Whitbread Yacht race has recently become a flat earther himself and claims that the deception is done through the hoax of magnetic declination.  Herve insists that on our flat Earth, magnetic declination does not exist and the addition of this globe-based chart and mathematics to navigation calculations is what keeps pilots and sailors on course.

15. Arctic vs. Antarctic

If Earth was truly a globe, the Arctic and Antarctic polar regions and areas of comparable latitude North and South of the equator should share similar conditions and characteristics such as comparable temperatures, seasonal changes, length of daylight, plant and animal life. In reality, however, the Arctic/Antarctic regions and areas of comparable latitude North/South of the equator differ greatly in many ways entirely inconsistent with the globe model but exactly as expected on a flat Earth.  For example, Antarctica is by far the coldest place on Earth with an average annual temperature of approximately -57 degrees Fahrenheit, and a record low of -135.8! The average annual temperature at the North Pole, however, is a comparatively warm 4 degrees. Throughout the year, temperatures in the Antarctic vary less than half the amount at comparable Arctic latitudes and the northern Arctic region enjoys moderately warm summers and manageable winters, whereas the southern Antarctic region never even warms enough to melt the perpetual snow and ice. On a tilting, wobbling, ball Earth spinning uniformly around the Sun, Arctic and Antarctic temperatures and seasons should not vary so greatly.

In the Arctic there are 4 clearly distinguished seasons, warm summers, and an abundance of plant and animal life, none of which can be said of the Antarctic. The Eskimo also live as far North as the 79th parallel, whereas in the South no native man is found beyond the 56th.  Iceland at 65 degrees North latitude is home to 870 species of native plants and abundant various animal life. Compare this with the Isle of Georgia at just 54 degrees South latitude where there are only 18 species of native plants and animal life is almost non-existent. At the same latitude as Canada or England in the North where dense forests of various tall trees abound, Captain Cook wrote of Georgia that he was unable to find a single shrub large enough to make a toothpick! Cook wrote, "Not a tree was to be seen. The lands which lie to the South are doomed by nature to perpetual frigidness - never to feel the warmth of the sun's rays; whose horrible and savage aspect I have not words to describe. Even marine life is sparse in certain tracts of vast extent, and the sea-bird is seldom observed flying over such lonely wastes. The contrasts between the limits of organic life in Arctic and Antarctic zones is very remarkable and significant."

At places of comparable latitude North and South, the Sun also behaves very differently than it should on the globe model but exactly as expected over a flat Earth. For example, in the North, dawn and dusk come slowly and last far longer than in the South where they come and go very quickly.  Certain places in the North twilight can last for over an hour while at comparable Southern latitudes within a few minutes the sunlight completely disappears.  Also, the longest summer days North of the equator are much longer than those South of the equator, and the shortest winter days North of the equator are much shorter than the shortest South of the equator.  These facts are inexplicable on a uniformly spinning, wobbling ball Earth but make perfect sense on a flat Earth with a Sun traveling faster, wider circles over the South and slower, narrower circles over the North.

17. Polaris

In the heliocentric model they claim Earth is a globe spinning a thousand miles per hour around its axis, while revolving tens of thousands of miles per hour around the Sun, while the entire solar system circles hundreds of thousands of miles per hour around the Milky Way, and the entire galaxy shoots millions of miles per hour more off through infinite space.  In reality, no one in history has ever seen, heard, felt or measured such motions, and everyone can see clearly for themselves that Polaris, the Pole Star situated directly over the North Pole center of Earth, never moves night after night, year after year, century after century, with all the other fixed stars remaining fixed in their relative constellations revolving perfect circles around it.  Such circular star-trails around an unmoving Pole Star seen in time-lapse photos, prove that it is the stars themselves moving and not the Earth.  If Earth was truly a tilting, wobbling, spinning space-ball undergoing these multiple contradictory motions through the universe, you would only ever see irregular random spiral-shaped star-trails and the night sky would never be the same twice.  It would be impossible for constellations to exist whatsoever if Earth was truly performing all these various theoretical motions.

Quoting "100 Proofs Earth is Not a Globe" by William Carpenter, "Why, in the name of common sense, should observers have to fix their telescopes on solid stone bases so that they should not move a hair's-breadth, if the Earth on which they fix them moves at the rate of nineteen miles in a second? Indeed, to believe that 'six thousand million million million tons' is 'rolling, surging, flying, darting on through space for ever' with a velocity compared with which a shot from a cannon is a ‘very slow coach,’ with such unerring accuracy that a telescope fixed on granite pillars in an observatory will not enable a lynx-eyed astronomer to detect a variation in its onward motion of the thousandth part of a hair's-breadth is to conceive a miracle compared with which all the miracles on record put together would sink into utter insignificance. Since we can, (in middle north latitudes), see the North Star, on looking out of a window that faces it - and out of the very same corner of the very same pane of glass in the very same window - all the year round, it is proof enough for any man in his senses that we have made no motion at all and that the Earth is not a globe."

Flat Earth FAQ

Eric Dubay

Programmed to Kill - Role Models

 

“No habit is more easily acquired than mard-savoring; eat one, delicious, eat another, no two taste alike, but all are subtle and the effect is somewhat that of an olive. ”

—Donatien Alphonse Francois, describing the joys of, quite literally, eating shit

Long before Marc Dutroux, there was Donatien Alphonse Francois.

Francois was born into an atmosphere of power and privilege; his mother was a relative of the ruling administration and his father served as an ambassador. When Donatien was just two years old, he was sent to live with his paternal grandmother and her five daughters in what has been described as a sexually promiscuous atmosphere. The women reportedly lavished attention on the boy, though it is debatable just what sort of attention it was.

After two years there, Donatien was sent to live with his fathers brother, who was ostensibly a man of the cloth. Francois’ uncle was rather notorious for frequently engaging in decadent sex, with numerous male and female partners. He also had a considerable collection of pornographic literature. The young boy spent a considerable amount of time reading through his uncles collection. After six years there, he was uprooted once again and sent to live at a religious prep school. At the school, he was subjected to harsh and frequent punishment from his caretakers, including being frequently sodomized. The young man was also taught the importance of confessing his sins as the means to identify and eliminate personal weaknesses.

Following his years at the prep school, Donatien was enrolled in a military academy, after which he entered into military service. Due to his family connections, he entered as a lieutenant and was soon placed in an elite, Special Forces unit. He left the military after eight years holding the rank of captain, and at that time married a woman from a socially prominent family. She would serve as his accomplice in many of his subsequent crimes, and his new mother-in-law would actively work to free him from various legal entanglements.

His first arrest came some ten days after a violent sexual assault on a woman. He is said to have raped her with a religious icon, and likely to have whipped her as well. For this, he served less than three weeks in jail. Shortly thereafter, he went to live in a secluded, fortified family estate that had at one time served as a jail. Within a year or two of his arrival, he had built a secret room. He also hosted frequent parties that were notable for featuring what were euphemistically dubbed ‘orgies.’ These parties were attended by various members of the ruling elite and the clergy, including Donatien’s aforementioned uncle.

Within a few years of taking up residence in the estate, Francois was once again arrested. Once again he had violently assaulted a young woman, on Easter Sunday, forcing her to strip and then binding her, sexually assaulting her and whipping her with a cat-o-nine-tails. He then left her locked up, but she was able to escape out a window. She was found running from the estate half-naked and covered in her own blood. For that assault, Francois served just four months before being once again released.

Shortly thereafter, Donatien rejoined the military, elevated to the rank of colonel despite his criminal past. It was not long before he once again ran afoul of the law. Francois and a male accomplice reportedly engaged the services of four prostitutes, as well as the services of each other. There was, of course, the requisite whipping involved. Following the encounter, the women became violently ill and grew convinced that they had been poisoned. When police went to arrest Donatien and his accomplice, they found that someone had tipped them off to the impending arrest and the men had fled. By the end of the year, however, Donatien was in custody, and he once again served prison time.

He ‘escaped,’ however, after less than five months, curiously leaving behind a note claiming full credit for engineering the escape and explicitly clearing his cap-tors of any culpability. Strangely enough, the escape occurred on, of all days, April 30: Walpurgisnacht.

In short order, Francois was back at the family estate, with authorities making occasional raids on the compound in an alleged attempt to arrest the escaped convict. His activities, meanwhile, grew increasingly disturbing. Shortly after his return, he began staging what some accounts refer to euphemistically as extended ‘orgies.’ That hardly seems a fair description of what occurred, however, since some of the ‘participants’ were young boys and girls being held at the estate, many of whom had been abducted. The victims were abused continuously for several weeks. Assisted by his wife and at least three other adults, Francois inflicted all manner of torture and sexual abuse on the victims. Whipping was a preferred means of torture, along with burning with heated implements. Donatien also had a fondness for sodomizing his victims, and for forcing them to eat excrement, which he himself indulged in as well.

Despite the gravity of his crimes, legal action was not immediately taken. It was several months before police finally raided the estate, in search of the escaped convict, kidnapper, torturer, rapist, and pedophile. Though the suspect was reportedly hiding in the estate, his pursuers failed to locate him. A little more than a year later, he was still free and was back at the property, accompanied by a number of young women and girls procured for him by a member of the clergy. A few months later, he was finally arrested and imprisoned, but he quickly escaped once again, only to be recaptured a month later. Following his recapture, he remained in prison for thirteen years, during which time he wrote prolifically of his fascination with torture, copraphilia, pedophilia, and various other depravities.

Amazingly enough, just two years after his release he held political office. A decade later, he was confined to a mental institution, where he spent the last twelve years of his life once again writing of rape, torture and murder. After his death at the age of seventy-four, his oldest son burned most of his writings, though some survived.

Donatien’s full regal title was Donatien Alphonse Francois, Comte de Sade, but he is better known as the Marquis de Sade. His crimes were committed over two hundred years ago, around the time that America was declaring its independence. Yet even as these words are being written, he is being revived and rehabilitated on Americas movie screens. The Encyclopaedia Britannica provides the following assessment of the Marquis: “de Sade is to some an incarnation of absolute evil who advocates the unleashing of instincts even to the point of crime. Others have looked upon him as a champion of total liberation through the satisfaction of his desires in all forms.”

Virtually those same words have been used to eulogize such other notorious figures as Aleister Crowley and Anton LaVey, both of whose later musings echoed the writings of the Marquis.

Perhaps the most cogent analysis of those writings was provided by Alex Steiner, a contributor to the World Socialist Web Site. Steiner noted that the “clearest formulation of de Sades philosophy appears in his Philosophy in the Bedroom [which] features a philosophical interlude.” Within that interlude lies a “philosophical defense, argued in the language of the Enlightenment, but not of course, in the spirit of the Enlightenment, that presents a justification for incest, rape, murder and cruelty.” That interlude is said to have been published separately in 1848, under the title “Yet Another Effort, Frenchmen, If You Would Become Republicans.” It was intended for distribution as a political manifesto. Among other things, the tract contained a “defense of murder as a legitimate civil activity used to weed out the weaker members of society.” Steiner also noted that writer and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini^ saw “in de Sade the antecedents of fascism.” One of the defining characteristics of de Sade’s philosophy was his “view of society as composed of atomistic individuals potentially engaged in a war of all against all,” which is, of course, precisely the direction in which Western society is being driven.

Perhaps the most revealing passage in Steiner’s piece reads as follows: “De Sade’s state of nature is a veritable hell on earth. Perhaps de Sade’s alleged Satanism is an appropriate metaphor of his philosophy.” It could be reasonably argued that Satanism was more than just a metaphor of de Sade’s philosophy; it was his philosophy. As Steiner notes, “De Sade is unwilling to allow any restraints on his ability to exploit, mistreat and even destroy other human beings in the pursuit of pleasure.” That same notion is now the mantra of modern Satanists, expressed by Crowley and others as: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”

“Sade...only had one occupation in his long life which really absorbed him—that of enumerating to the point of exhaustion the possibilities of destroying human life; of destroying them and of enjoying the thought of their death and suffering. ”

—French writer Georges Bataille

More than three centuries before the birth of de Sade, another Frenchman was providing a blueprint for the Marquis to later follow. Born in 1406 in the ‘Black Tower’ of his family’s castle at Champtoce, Gilles de Rais was the eldest son of one of the wealthiest men in all of France, Guy de Rais. Gilles’ mother was Marie d’Craon, the daughter of Jean d’Craon, who was also one of the wealthiest and most politically powerful men in the country.

In 1415, Guy de Rais was reportedly gored to death by a boar while hunting. That same year, Gilles mother died as well, as did her brother, Amaury d’Craon,

49 Strangely enough, Pasolini was killed in an apparent ritual murder in 1975. The slain leftist was discovered just two days after Halloween with his head bludgeoned beyond recognition. UK author Janet Street-Porter noted that “only a few weeks before his death he had written a series of newspaper articles attacking his compatriots, saying they had become obsessed with crime and had abandoned genuine values for those of the bourgeois consumer society.”

who was slain in the legendary battle at Agincourt. As Amaury had been Jean d’Craon’s only son, the rapid succession of deaths left young Gilles de Rais as the sole heir to both the de Rais and the d’Craon family fortunes. In 1420, Gilles kidnapped and then married his cousin, Catherine de Thouars, whose family had vast land holdings adjacent to the properties owned by the de Rais and d’Craon families. At just sixteen years of age, Gilles de Rais stood poised to become the wealthiest man in France—by some accounts, possibly the richest man in all of Europe.

Following the death of his parents, Gilles was raised by his grandfather, Jean d’Craon, and was trained as a knight and a soldier. By 1429, he had been named the Marshal of France, making him the highest-ranking military figure in the country—roughly equivalent to the post today of Secretary of Defense. Serving alongside of him was someone who is now regarded as the patron saint of France: Joan of Arc. Joan was said to hear voices in her head, not unlike numerous others whose stories have filled the pages of this book. She also reportedly had Visions,’ which she apparently attributed to divine guidance.

Traveling with a 10,000-man army and accompanied by her general and adviser, Gilles de Rais, Joan was credited with saving France by lifting the siege of Orleans, a crucial battle in the Hundred Years War between France and England. Shortly after that, Gilles was given the honor of personally crowning France’s new king, Charles VII. Joan of Arc sat at the new king’s side during the coronation. Joan’s fortunes turned quickly, however; she was captured by the Duke of Burgundy the next year and accused by the Brits of heresy and sorcery. She was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431 The next year, de Rais ended his public career and retired, along with his entourage, to a family castle at Machecoul, which was just one of five lavish country estates that Gilles then owned.

The arrival of Machecoul’s new residents was accompanied almost immediately by the disappearances of local children. The first child was abducted in 1432 by Gilles de Sille, a cousin of Gilles de Rais. The kidnappings continued, uninterrupted, for nearly a decade. The victims were taken to the de Rais castle where

50 According to a report in Pravda, Ukrainian anthropologist Sergey Gorbenko determined that it was some other woman, with her face cloaked, who burned at the stake that day. Joan of Arc—also known as Margarita d’Champdiver, the daughter of King Karl VI and his mistress, Odetta d’Champdiver—lived to the age of 57. Gorbenko based his findings on an examination of a collection of skulls of the French royal family housed at the Notre Dame Cathedral, and on correspondence among royal family members and other historical artifacts. (“Joan of Arc Was Not Executed. She Died at 57,” Pravda, January 17, 2004)

they were brutally and ritualistically slaughtered by Gilles and his accomplices. As the years went by, the list of those accomplices grew, numbering both men and women. Among his more notorious accomplices were Roger de Briqueville, another cousin, and a woman named Perrine Martin, who was also known as “La Meffraye,” or “The Terror.” Another known accomplice was a man named Etienne Corrillaut, who was also known as Poitou. He was, apparently, initially brought to the castle as a victim, but he was spared for unknown reasons.

The rest of the abductees were not so lucky. At the hands of de Rais and his numerous accomplices, they were subjected to torture, rape and sadistic mutilation. Gilles took great pleasure in watching his victims die, frequently raping them or masturbating on them as they were in their death throes. Gilles was also deeply involved in occultism, necromancy and alchemy. Many of the child victims’ dismembered and disemboweled body parts were reportedly used in rituals that were aimed at “summoning demons.” Some reports hold that the blood of some of the victims was used to write a book of spells and incantations.

De Rais’ fatal mistake was apparently the kidnapping of a priest. The church had been aware for years of the recurrent hushed reports of abducted children, but had chosen to ignore them. It was common knowledge among the townspeople that the missing children had been tortured and killed, but they were powerless to voice their accusations against the unfathomably wealthy and powerful Gilles de Rais. In 1440, the accusations were finally made public by the church. Gilles de Sille and Roger de Briqueville promptly disappeared into one of history’s black holes. On September 14, arrest warrants were issued for de Rais and several of his remaining cohorts.

On October 13, 1440, de Rais was indicted on thirty-four counts of murder, sodomy and heresy. The indictment held that 140 children had been abducted over the course of fourteen years. Many historians have denied that the killings began that early, primarily because acknowledging that to be the case would necessitate a reevaluation of the revered Joan of Arc. There is considerable debate about the number of victims as well. Some accounts claim that the figure of 140 is grossly inflated. Others, however, contend that the actual victim count was somewhere between 200 and 800. The true number is, most likely, forever lost to history. According to one account, the dismembered remains of fifty children were found in the tower at the Machecoul castle, and a similar number were discovered at another of the de Rais estates. An untold number of other victims had apparently been cremated.

De Rais confessed to many of his crimes, but he steadfastly refused to admit to the charge of heresy. Both he and the church apparently felt that heresy was a more serious offense than sadistically murdering scores of what were, after all, ‘peasant’ children. Gilles ultimately did confess to all of his crimes, either due to the threat of, or the actual application of, torture, depending on which account one chooses to believe. On October 26, he was sent to the gallows and executed.

Gilles de Rais reportedly claimed that he had patterned his life after Caligula, the notoriously depraved Roman emperor. He is said by some to have provided the inspiration for the mythical Bluebeard. He also, needless to say, provided the inspiration for countless others who have followed in his footsteps.

“I’m no psycho. I have a good mind.”

—Howard Unruh, responding to a query from an arresting officer

Long before ‘spree’ killers became a fixture of American society, terrorizing the nation’s schools and workplaces, there was Howard Unruh. Howard was, like the other young men of his generation, drafted by the United States Army and sent off to war. He was trained to kill, and he apparently performed that task quite well as a machine-gunner. It was later discovered that he had kept a diary of his war experiences. All of his kills were carefully recorded, complete with the date, time and place of each killing. Most importantly, Howard included a detailed description of how each of his victims looked in death. He received a number of commendations for his exemplary service.

After returning from the war, he grew increasingly estranged from his parents, with whom he was living. He eventually became something of a recluse, spending much of his time indulging in a hobby he had acquired in the army: collecting, admiring and practicing with various lethal weapons.

Then one day, Howard Unruh just sort of went off.

Armed with a 9mm handgun and a back-up weapon, he took a brisk stroll through downtown Camden, New Jersey, along the way shooting sixteen people, thirteen of whom died instantly. He proved to be a remarkably efficient assassin, robotically shooting most of his victims twice—once in the head and once in the torso. He walked door to door, from a cobbler shop to a barbershop, then to a pharmacy and finally to a tailor. He killed almost everyone he encountered and reportedly remained expressionless throughout the rampage. His youngest victim was just three years old.

Running low on ammunition, Unruh soon retreated to his house. His entire killing spree had lasted just twelve minutes. No sooner was he back home than a local reporter phoned the house. What followed was what Jay Robert Nash described as “one of the strangest phone conversations in the annals of crime”:

Unruh: Hello.

Phillip Buxton: Is this Howard?

Unruh: Yes, this is Howard. What is the last name of the party you want?

Buxton: Unruh.

Unruh: Who are you and what do you want?

Buxton: Pm a friend, and I want to know what they’re doing to you.

Unruh: Well, they haven’t done anything to me yet, but I’m doing plenty to them.

Buxton: How many have you killed?

Unruh: I don’t know yet—I haven’t counted ’em, but it looks like a pretty good score.

Buxton: Why are you killing people, Howard?

Unruh: [pause] I don’t know. I can’t answer that yet—I am too busy. I’ll have to talk to you later.

With his house surrounded by dozens of armed officers, Howard Unruh walked out and calmly gave himself up. He never faced trial for the killings. Instead, he was declared incurably insane and committed to the New Jersey State Mental Hospital for a life term. According to recent reports, he is still there, more than half a century later.

“For the highest spiritual working one must accordingly choose that victim which contains the greatest and purest force. A male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence is the most satisfactory and suitable victim.”

—Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice

Programmed to Kill The Politics of Serial Murder

David McGowan