TBR News December 6, 2019

Dec 06 2019

The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. December 6, 2019:“Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.
When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.
I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.
He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.
He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.
It is becoming more and more evident to even the least intelligent American voter that Trump is vicious, corrupt and amoral. He has stated often that even if he loses the election in 2020, he will not leave the White House. I have news for Donald but this is not the place to discuss it.
Commentary for December 6: “Trump is back in the United States, howling with rage at having been laughed at during a ceremony at Buckinghm Palace during the NATO conference.
If one remembers the past, when a fake report reached him that Syria was using chemical weapons, he ordered a US Navy ship to bombard the country with missiles.
This is an act of war and a completely illegal act on the part of Trump.
Now, it is being said he wants to attack someone because he was made a fool of. Someone should tell Chubby that no one at the NATO conference made a fool of him.
God beat them to it long ago.
And it is common knowledge here inside the Beltway that the military will never again launch an attack against a country we are not at war with.
Trump might order an attack on. Let us say, Turkey, but the Pentagon would toss his order in the shredder and laugh even louder than the top people at the NATO conference.
A General I know said Trump ought to wear a clown suit when he goes out in public.

The Table of Contents
What’s it like to stand stark naked on the world stage? Ask Donald Trump
• PLAYGROUND POLITICS: Trump Stomps Home From NATO Meeting After ‘Two-Faced’ Trudeau Was Mean to Him
• Video shows world leaders laughing and gossiping about Trump
• Russian and American Swindles: U.S. taxpayers and Oil companies lose billions
• Trump’s Russian deals
• The Keys Are Not Going To Save Everybody’: Officials Could Let Roads, Homes Be Swallowed Up By Rising Sea
• The Season of Evil

What’s it like to stand stark naked on the world stage? Ask Donald Trump
Stripped of his usual protections inside the White House, Trump exposes himself on the world stage at every conceivable opportunity
December 5. 2019
by Richard Wolffe
The Guardian
What’s it like to stand stark naked on the world stage? Ask Donald Trump You know that classic nightmare where you’re at work and everyone is talking but none of them say the obvious: you’re stark naked.
Donald Trump is living that hellacious dream every time he steps in front of the women and men who make up the world’s leaders.
Stripped of his usual protections inside the White House, Trump exposes himself on the world stage at every conceivable opportunity. This week’s Nato summit in London was no exception, adding itself to the long list of denuded nonsense that erupts in front of every international figure.
First he attempted to joke with President Emmanuel Macron of France about Isis. “Would you like some nice Isis fighters? I can give them to you. You can take everyone you can,” said the man pretending to be the leader of the free world.
“Let’s be serious,” said Macron, dispensing with a translator as he shut down the clown show. “The very large number of fighters you have on the ground are Isis fighters coming from Syria, from Iraq, and the region.”
You don’t have to be a world leader at a Nato summit to know that Isis fighters and jihadist sympathizers pose a serious threat to the streets of Europe’s capital cities. You just have to be a grownup who pays attention to the news, such as the fatal stabbings on London Bridge just last week. But that may be asking too much of the man-baby who watches TV somewhere close to the Oval Office.
The widespread expectation that Trump will embarrass himself does not make his nakedness any less shocking. Even after all these years of bare-faced tomfoolery.
So it was Macron and his French-speaking ally Justin Trudeau, accompanied by a jolly-hockey-sticks Boris Johnson, who all seemed to be dumping on Donald at Buck House on Tuesday.
“You just watched his team’s jaws drop to the floor,” Trudeau said, dropping his hand towards floor in a performance that also seemed to involve a glass of beer.
It was hard to know what Trump-induced jaw-dropper he was talking about. There are so many to choose from.
Was it the head-wrenching answer a few minutes after his comments on Isis fighters, when Trump was asked if he supported the protesters in Iran?
“I don’t want to comment on that. But the answer is no. But I don’t want to comment on that,” said Trump, contradicting himself twice in the space of just 20 words.
Then again, maybe Trudeau was talking about the way Trump explained how he betrayed his Kurdish allies in Syria by pretending that “we’ve captured the oil and taken the oil”.
Or maybe he was talking about the way Trump explained at a Nato summit that he understood why Turkey was buying Russian missiles.
“So, you know, there are two sides to the story,” claimed the president who consistently prefers the Russian side of the story.
Of all the threats facing the world – the climate crisis, the rise of Putin-style politicians, refugees, terrorism – none have played on Trump’s mind quite as much as the thought that the world might be laughing at America.
“We need a President who isn’t a laughing stock to the entire World,” Trump tweeted two years before he became just that. “We need a truly great leader, a genius at strategy and winning. Respect!”
Sadly, Trump never became the second half of his own tweet, no matter what he sees in the mirror each morning.
Instead he became the kind of leader who bragged to the United Nations how awesome his administration was. To be specific, he told last year’s general assembly that it was more awesome than “almost any other administration in the history of our country”. At which point, the massed ranks of world leaders started guffawing.
“I didn’t expect that reaction, but that’s OK,” he said.
It’s never OK for this fragile snowflake of a tough guy. When asked about Trudeau’s laughter on Wednesday, Trump melted once again.
“Well he’s two-faced,” he said. “And honestly with Trudeau, he’s a nice guy. I find him to be a very nice guy. But you know the truth is that I called him out on the fact that he’s not paying 2%. And I guess he’s not very happy about it.”
Yeah, that must be it. Totally nailed him on that one.
Sitting beside him, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, was surely impressed with the savage indictment of the size of Canada’s military spending. But she subtly masked her admiration by looking like an anxious patient expecting a bad prognosis.
There was plenty to feel queasy about. Trump once again heaped praise on himself for carving up the Kurds, in alliance with the Russians, Syrians and Turks. “Maybe someday they’ll give me credit, but probably not,” he whined. “But that worked out well. They’ve been trying to do this for a hundred years. That border is a mess for a long time.”
It worked out less well for America’s Kurdish allies, but hey.
Perhaps someday they’ll also give him credit for his Greenland gambit, which he suggested would be part of his forthcoming talks with the Danish prime minister.
“Do you still want to buy Greenland,” asked one cheeky reporter.
“She must be in the real estate business,” said the non-laughingstock president. “That’s a very good question.”
After all those good questions about his genius at strategy and winning, Trump wimped out of his final press conference. “I think we’ve done plenty of press conferences,” he said. “Unless you’re demanding a press conference, we’ll do one, but I think we’ve answered plenty of questions.”
For a split second, Boris Johnson gulped hard at the thought of one more chance for Trump to blow the British general election.
And so the naked emperor declared he would get dressed, unless you thought he was already wearing something fancy, in which case he’d stay happily inside his birthday suit. Respect!
Richard Wolffe is a Guardian US columnist

PLAYGROUND POLITICS: Trump Stomps Home From NATO Meeting After ‘Two-Faced’ Trudeau Was Mean to Him
Trump canceled his NATO press conference after video showed the Canadian prime minister laughing about him with other world leaders at Buckingham Palace.
December 4, 2019
by Jamie Ross
The Daily Beast
It’s fair to say the NATO leaders’ meeting in Britain is not going terribly well.
Donald Trump hit out at Justin Trudeau on Wednesday after a candid video emerged of the Canadian prime minister ridiculing the U.S. president to the obvious delight and amusement of other world leaders. A fed-up Trump then canceled his scheduled press conference and said he’d fly straight home.
The video shows Trudeau with French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at a gathering at Buckingham Palace. Trudeau mocked Trump’s unexpected Monday press conferences, and said he “watched [Trump’s] team’s jaws drop to the floor” when the president made an announcement, which wasn’t specified in the video.
Trudeau later confirmed the leaders were laughing about Trump’s “impromptu press conference” at the meeting and, according to Canada’s CBC News, said he was talking about Trump’s announcement that the U.S. will host the next G-7 summit at Camp David.
Johnson can be seen laughing at Trudeau’s shtick, and even the Queen’s daughter Princess Anne appears to join in.
The British prime minister was asked about laughing at Trump at his press conference. “No. That’s complete nonsense, I don’t know where that’s come from,” he said, suggesting that he did not know about the video.
Trump made no such effort to swerve from the controversy, hitting back on Wednesday, saying: “Well, he’s two-faced.
“And honestly, with Trudeau, he’s a nice guy, I find him to be a very nice guy. But the truth is I called him out on the fact that he’s not paying 2 percent, and I guess he’s not very happy about it.” (CBC News reported Wednesday that Trudeau “waved off” the “two-faced” remark and said his relationship with Trump was “excellent.”)
Trump has repeatedly complained that the other NATO countries aren’t spending as much as the U.S. on their defense budgets.
Following his comments on Trudeau, Trump suggested he would cancel a press conference scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, saying he has done enough appearances in front of reporters during the summit.
Trump later confirmed he would be heading home early from the summit on Twitter, writing: “When today’s meetings are over, I will be heading back to Washington. We won’t be doing a press conference at the close of NATO because we did so many over the past two days.”
Before it got derailed, the NATO meeting was supposed to be a joyful celebration of the alliance’s 70th anniversary.

Video shows world leaders laughing and gossiping about Trump
December 4, 2019
by Michael Birnbaum, Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker
Washington Post
WATFORD, England — President Trump, who has demeaned his rivals for being laughed at around the world, found himself the scorned child on the global playground at a NATO summit here Wednesday, as widely circulated video showed leaders gossiping about and mocking him.
The video, captured at a Buckingham Palace reception Tuesday evening, appeared to show Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and others laughing about Trump’s freewheeling news conferences earlier in the day.
‘‘I just watched his team’s jaws drop to the floor,’’ Trudeau told the others, dropping his hand toward the ground to dramatize his retelling.
And so it was Wednesday morning that Trump presented a sulking, brooding president as he slapped down Trudeau as ‘‘two-faced’’ and engaged with other foreign counterparts at a secluded estate outside London.
As the summit concluded, Trump abruptly canceled a news conference, arguing he had already answered so many questions in other settings during his visit to Britain.
He took off for Washington as the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment hearing was underway.
Though his conduct here fit his pattern of disruption at international summits, Trump did not make the fiery threats that have punctuated previous gatherings. NATO leaders were almost giddy as they survived another encounter with Trump with their alliance intact. Trump’s canceled news conference — eliminating one last chance for him to take aim at them — was to many the departure gift.
The day’s drama centered around Trump and Trudeau, who previously feuded at the Group of Seven summit in 2018. Asked Wednesday by journalists about Trudeau’s mockery, Trump fired back at the Canadian prime minister.
‘‘Well, he’s two-faced,’’ Trump said of Trudeau. ‘‘And honestly, with Trudeau, he’s a nice guy. I find him to be a very nice guy. But, you know, the truth is that I called him out on the fact that he’s not paying 2 percent and I guess he’s not very happy about it.’’
Trump was later caught on an audio recording bragging to an unidentified summit attendee, ‘‘That was funny when I said that guy was two-faced.’’ The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., tweeted a photo of Trudeau wearing blackface that he said was ‘‘evidence’’ the Canadian prime minister was ‘‘two-faced.’’
During their Tuesday meeting, Trump needled Trudeau over Canada’s defense spending, labeling the country ‘‘slightly delinquent’’ for failing to meet NATO’s guidelines for member nations of 2 percent of gross domestic product.
Trudeau on Wednesday explained his Buckingham Palace comments by telling reporters he had been referring to Trump’s announcement that he would host the next Group of Seven summit at Camp David, which the Canadian leader thought surprised White House aides. Trump had initially proposed his own Doral golf resort near Miami for the next G-7, but abandoned that idea after being criticized for self-dealing.
Trudeau said he was pleased to recount the Camp David moment to fellow leaders and that Canada’s relationship with the United States remained ‘‘extraordinarily important and effective.’’
Trump’s visit to the NATO summit was erratic. The president, who has long criticized the 70-year-old alliance, at times this week cast himself as its defender, while at other moments chastised allies for, in his view, taking advantage of the United States.
In a closed-door session, Trump read a prepared statement to his fellow leaders listing off grievances about defense spending. But he did not threaten other countries in the same way he had done at previous NATO meetings, according to five NATO diplomats and policy makers who were either in the room or listened to the conversation from a separate chamber
‘‘There were no threats. It wasn’t like last time,’’ said one policy maker, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door session. Trump ‘‘always prefers to have a tough image, but he fell in with the general effort to portray what’s happening as a success,’’ the official added.
Trump told fellow leaders that ‘‘if trade imbalances were taken into account, then the United States would be spending 90 percent of NATO’s defense,’’ according to the official.
The fact that most of the leaders, including Trump, simply read prepared statements rather than engaging in angry back-and-forth was a sign of a calmer summit than previous encounters, such as last year’s gathering in Brussels, several of the officials said.
Another leader, pushing back gently at Trump by trying to demonstrate the importance of defending Europe, pointed out that if Russia took over Western Europe, the size of its collective economy would swell larger than that of the United States, one official said.
Macron, too, was softer inside the meeting than outside of it and did not repeat his widely publicized comments about NATO suffering from ‘‘brain death.’’
‘‘My words have now been dealt with,’’ Macron told reporters at the end of the summit.
He took issue with Trump’s nearly single-minded focus on defense spending. ‘‘Up until now, we have been talking about burden sharing,’’ Macron said. ‘‘There was no discussion of geopolitical strategy.’’ Now, he added, there would be.
Another NATO disrupter, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, ultimately backed down from blocking crucial military plans to defend Eastern Europe — a concession to fellow allies.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg trumpeted what he said was a successful meeting. He argued that the disagreements were not a challenge to NATO’s fundamental ‘‘all for one, one for all’’ mission.
‘‘Disagreements will always attract more attention than when we agree,’’ he said. ‘‘The strength of NATO is that we have always been able to overcome these differences and then unite around our core task to protect and defend each other.’’

Russian and American Swindles: U.S. taxpayers and Oil companies lose billions
by Aaron L. Johnson, Domestic Intelligence Reporter
December 4, 2019
In mid-1998 British officials investigating Russian organized criminal activities brought the attention of US authorities to a link between YBM Magnex, a front company for suspected Russian gangster Semyon Yukovich Mogilevich, and Benex, a firm owned by Peter Berlin, the husband of one of the subsequently-suspended Bank of New York (hereinafter ‘BNY’) vice-presidents. From October 1998 to March 1999, $4.2 billion in suspect money passed through the BNY accounts of Benex and other firms. Investigators allowed the account to remain open after March of 1999 as they continued their probe, and the total amount laundered eventually proved to be in excess of $10 billion. In August 1999, Swiss banks in Geneva discovered massive fraud involving Swiss banks and local prosecutors immediately froze 22 accounts of Russian individuals and corporate entities, worth a total of $15 million.
The growing evidence of international criminal wrongdoing extended far beyond suspected organized crime figures like Mogilevich and point to high-level officials in the US and Russia. Investigators began to look into whether funds from the subsequently insolvent Russian bank, Menatep, were also involved in money laundering at BNY. Menatep was then owned by Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and employed, as a senior executive, Konstantin Kagalovsky. (for a full listing of the Russian personalities involved, see Appendix at the end of this article.)
Federal officials, in the main, the New York office of the FBI in conjunction with their counterparts in Britain and Switzerland, launched an in-depth an investigation of what later proved to be the largest money-laundering scheme in US history. The investigation revealed that billions of dollars from Russia, the bulk of it from Russian criminal elements, were channeled through accounts at the Bank of New York. Two BNY vice-presidents were initially suspended as a result of the probe.
Kagalovsky’s role in the money-laundering operation highlighted the criminal character of the nouveau riche in Russia, for the most part born of the old Stalinist bureaucracy, as well as the complicity of Western financial institutions, governments, and academic advisors. Kagalovsky was involved at the highest level of the Russian government, serving as an advisor and as its representative to the IMF before moving on to Menatep in 1994. Prominently displayed in his office at Menatep were photographs of his meetings with George Bush, John Major and other Western leaders.
He left Menatep to become the vice-chairman of the Lukos oil conglomerate. This company had been acquired by Menatep on the cheap in a “loans-for-shares” scheme in which the bank extended credit to the Russian government in exchange for shares in the company’s ownership. When the bank went under, Lukos picked up many of its assets, including its Moscow headquarters and a number of offshore holding companies, according to a report in a 1999 Wall Street Journal.
These holding companies are alleged to have been used to plunder a number of other Russian companies, also owned by Menatep. In a procedure known as tolling, the assets or products of manufacturing firms were sold to the holding companies at below-market prices. The offshore holding companies then sold the goods at normal prices, keeping the profits outside Russia. The Journal article cited one example of tolling in which $20 million was removed from a Russian titanium plant in just one year.
In essence, and there are literally two reams of emails, Xeroxed documents and discs on this matter, this is what happened. This is a very large story and one now being prepared as a book but the précis of it is this:
Boris Yeltsin, the Russian President, was not only a very corrupt drunk but also in the pocket of the American CIA. The CIA, and now the current Administration, has the best connections with the upper levels of American business. When the Soviet Union imploded, American oil interests looked with growing hunger at the enormous Russian oil and gas reserves. They reasoned that if a compliant Yeltsin could be persuaded to privatize the former state oil holdings, American oil giants might be able to purchase controlling interests in these relatively untapped sources. This is exactly what happened. The prime mover in this buyout was a Russian gangster, one Semyon Yudkovich Mogilevich.
The name Semyon Mogilevich first came to public light in 1999 in connection with the Bank of New York (BoNY)-Russian money laundering scandal. Media reports described Mogilevich as one of the most powerful and dangerous “godfathers” in the world. US and UK intelligence agencies believe that his organization operates in Russia, Hungary, Ukraine, Belorussia, Lithuania, Israel, United States, Columbia, Pakistan, Lebanon, Germany, Austria and dozens of other countries. Mogilevich has his hand in narcotics and weapon trafficking, prostitution, money laundering, gambling and numerous other illicit trades. He is extremely clever – a quality that earned him the nick-name the “Brainy Don” – as he is callous and brutal, ruling his world-wide syndicate with an iron-fist and extraordinary sagacity. In the mid 90s Mogilevich acquired a secret interest in Russian bank Inkombank. He then used it to finance his ignoble trade, most notably drug smuggling through the Georgian port of Poti, and funnel the proceeds to his and his “banker”-partners’ offshore coffers. Mogilevich was de facto ruler of Inkombank when the BoNY – Inkombank relationship was at its peak.
Semyon Yudkovich Mogilevich was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Kiev on June 30, 1946, to Genya Tevevna Shepelskaya and Yudka Mogilevich. His early years are mist-shrouded. At the age of 22, Mogilevich earned an advance degree in economics from the prestigious University of Lvov. “He was a brilliant student” recalls one of his former professors – “he had a photographic memory and he could multiply, divide and add seven digit numbers in his head instantaneously.” Another former professor said that Mogilevich had a great interest in macroeconomics and “was able to see a panoramic picture of national and world economies, everybody believed he would become a great academician.”
An academic career however did not entice the future crime emperor. Russian police records reveal Mogilevich’s ties with a Moscow gang known as Lybretskaya in early 70s. At the time, the young Mogilevich was primarily involved in small time fraud and black market currency machinations. He was caught and twice served terms of three and four years in Russian prisons for “currency offenses.”
In the 1980s Mogilevich found a niche in the then emerging immigration of Russian Jews to Israel. After receiving “exit visas” from Russian authorities, Jewish families were often given only a few days to leave the country and allowed to take out only bare essentials. Mogilevich would persuade them to leave all their possessions with him promising to sell them and sent the proceeds to their new homes in Israel.
Many immigrating families at the time owned expensive art objects, jewelry and other valuable items, exportation of which was strictly forbidden by Soviet authorities. Thus Mogilevich’s proposition appeared quite alluring. Mogilevich made a small fortune selling the property of thousands of departing families. He sent nothing to them in Israel correctly calculating that these people would have absolutely no recourse.
In 1990 Mogilevich decided to immigrate to Israel himself. By that time he had parlayed his “Jewish proceeds” into a fortune by craftily investing in various illicit enterprises, including weapons trafficking and prostitution. He arrived in Israel a millionaire, highly respected in the emerging Russian underworld as a shrewd operator who was capable of putting together complex international schemes. Several of Mogilevich’s top lieutenants immigrated with him.
Mogilevich became an Israeli citizen and made contacts with top Russian-Israeli organized crime figures, expanding his international crime syndicate. Expert-economist Mogilevich continued to acutely invest in everything from night-clubs to precious metals and stones, to liquor distilleries. At the same time Mogilevich continued to develop his world-wide networks of prostitution, weapon-running and drug smuggling. Mogilevich always operated through a complex web of offshore companies which he created.
In 1991 Mogilevich married Katalin Papp, a Hungarian citizen and a year later he moved to Hungary and settled down in Budapest. Marrying a Hungarian accorded Mogilevich the opportunity to obtain a Hungarian passport and by 1992 he was simultaneously a citizen of 4 countries: Russia, Ukraine, Israel and Hungary. He likes to refer to himself as “a citizen of the world.”
Mogilevich decided to make Budapest the home of his growing criminal empire, which by that time operated on five continents. In Hungary he continued investing in legitimate enterprises, night clubs, restaurants and other liquor establishments. His major acquisition was a so-called Army Co-Op, a military plant producing anti-aircraft guns and surface-to-air missiles. His criminal organization was emerging as one of the world’s largest and most feared international organized crime groups. Mogilevich fashioned it after the Sicilian Cosa Nostra but added “a unique Russian touch”, according to one Hungarian intelligence official. Mogilevich befriended many Hungarian politicians and law enforcement officials thanks to payoffs and his charismatic personality.
Under their protection, Mogilevich’s organization flourished and expanded. He had de facto his own private army of enforcers numbering in the hundreds. Mogilevich preferred to recruit veterans of Soviet special forces who fought in the USSR war in Afghanistan and were known for their extreme viciousness. Mogilevich’s highly trained killers carried out his nefarious orders in over thirty countries, including Israel, Germany, Canada and the United States. Anyone standing in his way was tortured and murdered, his body conspicuously left gruesomely mutilated “for educational purposes,” as one of his top enforcers, the infamous and universally feared Igor Tkachenko, once said. When Tkachenko was himself murdered in Budapest, Mogilevich’s “enforcement department” was headed by two brothers, Igor and Sergei Korolev, whose particular brand of brutality made them somewhat of a legend.
In 1993, Mogilevich joined forces with the Solntsevo crime syndicate, one of Moscow’s dominant crime families. Together the Mogilevich and Solntsevo syndicates invested in a joint venture which purchased antiques, precious stones and art stolen from churches and museums in Russia and Eastern Europe.
Mogilevich’s wife died in December of 1994. Initially he considered returning to Russia but decided to remain in Budapest. A year later he married his long time mistress, Russian-Israeli, Galina Alexeyevna Telesh-Jambulskaya. Apparently the relationship between Mogilevich and Telesh started long before their marriage, as their son was born in September of 1990. Mogilevich also has children from his prior marriages: a daughter Mila, born in 1972 and a son Yuly born in 1983.
Mogilevich continued to expand his armament cartel. To complement the Army Co-OP, he also acquired Magnex 2000, a large magnet manufacturer and defense contractor, and the Digep General Machine Works which manufacturs artillery shells and mortar. These acquisitions gave Mogilevich virtual control of the Hungarian war industry.
Simultaneously Mogilevich developed powerful contacts in the Muslim Middle East, including with top officials in Iraq, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. These countries became the primary market for his weapon sales – both “legal” and illegal. Mogilevich structured a deal selling $20 million worth of armaments stolen from East Germany to an Iranian buyer. The weapons included ground-to-air missiles and a dozen armored personnel carriers, according to a Mossad officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
By the mid-90s, Mogilevich’s ever growing illicit international multimillion dollar transactions required extensive banking contacts. Hiding behind a web of offshore shell companies became progressively more difficult as banks around the world were adopting a more cautious approach to Mogilevich-style “banking” and money movement. Mogilevich could no longer afford to be just a bank “customer.” A need arose for an “equity partnership” with a bank that would be able and willing to both finance large international schemes and funnel the proceeds through his shell corporation world-wide. Mogilevich set his eye on Inkombank, by then one of Moscow’s largest privately owned banks with $3 billion in assets. What made Inkombank especially attractive to Mogilevich was its vast network of correspondent accounts, which Inkombank maintained with banks around the globe, including with such major banks as Bank of China, Union Bank of Switzerland, Swiss Bank Corp., and Deutchebank. In the US, Inkombank maintained its largest correspondent relationship with the Bank of New York. This was particularly crucial to the Brainy Don’s empire, as most of the world trade, legal and illegal, was effected in US dollars.
Because of its rapid expansion, Inkombank was short on liquidity and Mogilevich offered to “help.” A secret deal was struck between Inkombank’s then chairman, Vladimir Vinogradov and Mogilevich’s representatives, whereby in exchange for $65 million, and a promise to help gain Inkombank’s entree into the world’s arms market (which Vinogradov desperately sought,) Mogilevich’s front entities were given 23% in Inkombank’s equity. This gave the “latter day Don” de facto control over Inkombank.
The don kept his part of the bargain. In late 1996 he used his connections and muscle to help Inkombank’s bid for 25% of the common stock of the Sukhoy, maker of the coveted Russian SU fighter jets. Arguably the world’s most advanced military aircraft, of which some are capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Countries like Iraq, Iran, India and Libya have gladly paid $30 to 50 million per aircraft and Sukhoy had generated $1 billion in sales in the three year period after Inkombank became its largest shareholder, accordingly to Russian intelligence sources. The proceeds were largely funneled from the Inkombank-Cyprus branch through BoNY correspondent accounts – to various offshore firms, including Brasset, Footnote and Bridge Investments, controlled by Vinogradov and Mogilevich.
Having Inkombank as a player in his multifaceted empire, propelled Mogilevich to the very top of global organized crime networks. He had now entered “the big time” and was able to participate in major deals. Running conventional arms around the world no longer fitted the don’s newly found “stature” and he attempted to move into the nuclear weapons black market. He financed the 1997 theft of six thousand pounds of enriched uranium from a Warsaw Pact storage facility intending to sell it to a Middle East buyer and deliver it through the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan. The deal was negotiated in the Czech resort of Karlovy Vary but Czech intelligence and security forces were able to stop it days before the fissile material was to be shipped to the Middle East. The uranium was safely recovered and Mogilevich’s partners in crime, J. Vagner, a nuclear physicist, Z. Sindlauer, a Prague police official and A. Sczerbinian, a Tadjik entrepreneur, were arrested. Mogilevich however was able to buy his way out with large bribes and by arranging for the disappearance of key witnesses. Intelligence sources said that this was the largest known theft of nuclear material ever.
According to filings in Federal court in New York, in mid-1998, The Bank of New York security personnel raised concerns to BoNY CEO Thomas Renyi about the association and apparent close ties between Mogilevich and Konstantin Kagalovsky, the husband of Natasha Kagalovsky, BoNY’s senior vice president in charge of its Eastern European Division. Renyi personally “interviewed” Kagalovsky about the matter but no action was taken. Court documents also show that BoNY was linked to at least two Hungarian banks, MKB Bank and CIB Bank, that have been the subject of FBI investigations concerning their ties to Semyon Mogilevich. Both MKB Bank and CIB Bank were involved in circular transactions for substantial amounts that were listed on Inkombank’s statement for its BoNY accounts in November and December 1993. In addition, law enforcement authorities in Latin America have investigated transactions whereby Mogilevich, or persons under his control, gave Kagalovsky wire transfer instructions to move funds through BoNY for the Cali drug cartel through Brazilian banks to offshore companies.
The FBI “wanted” alert warned that Mogilevich might be armed and dangerous and asks anyone with information about him to contact his local FBI office or the nearest US embassy
On April 24, 2003, a federal indictment, unsealed today, in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, charges Semyon Mogilevich and his two cohorts, Igor L’Vovich Fisherman, and Anatoli Tsoura with 45 counts of racketeering, securities fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, and money laundering, according to the FBI crime alert. The three men are wanted for their alleged participation in a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud investors in the stock of YBM Magnex International, Inc. (YBM), a public company incorporated in Canada, but headquartered in Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Investors lost more than 150 million dollars through the alleged scheme that included inflating stock values, preparing bogus financial books and records, lying to Securities and Exchange Commission officials, and offering bribes to accountants. The scheme to defraud collapsed on May 13, 1998, when federal search warrants were executed in Pennsylvania and trading of the YBM stock was suspended by the Ontario Securities Exchange.
The company later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities and mail fraud. YBM paid a $2 million fine, and agreed to pay $1 million more to reimburse investors, as part of a plea bargain.
The indictment alleges that between 1993 and September of 1998, Semion Mogilevich (56) headed and controlled the Mogilevich Enterprise, an association which consisted of the aforementioned individuals and a network of companies in over twenty different countries which orchestrated a sophisticated scheme to defraud investors in YBM stock. The scheme was allegedly funded and authorized by Mogilevich. This complex network of corporations was set up to create the illusion that YBM was engaged in a profitable international business, primarily the industrial magnet market. Igor Fisherman served as the Chief Operating Officer of YBM on behalf of Mogilevich, who was YBM’s major shareholder. Anatoli Tsoura was the Vice President of Finance for YBM’s main subsidiary.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan said the company was no more than “a well disguised illusion.” “Books were cooked. Auditors were deceived. Bribes were paid to accountants,” Meehan said, according to the Wall Street Journal report.
This morning FBI agents arrested YBM’s former chief executive, Jacob Bogatin, Thursday morning at his home in Richboro, an affluent town near Philadelphia. Bogatin (56), a naturalized U.S. citizen from Russia netted more than $10 million from the YBM scheme, according to the indictment. Fisherman (51), also a naturalized Russian American, got more than $3 million and Tsoura (54), a Russian national, more than $1 million. Mogilevich skimmed over $18 million in profits from the scheme, indictment charges.
Jeffrey A. Lampinski, the head of Philadelphia FBI office, traveled to Moscow and Kiev last week and met with Russian and Ukrainian law enforcement officials to ask for help in arresting Mogilevich and his two leiutenants. Lampinsky said Russian and Ukrainian authorities promised help in locating the fugitives. However, at least one high ranking Russian official privately expressed skepticism that Mogilevich would be caught and extradited.
Mogilevich utilizes the aliases Seva Moguilevich, Semon Yudkovich Palagnyuk, Semen Yukovich Telesh, Simeon Mogilevitch, Semjon Mogilevcs, Shimon Makelwitsh, Shimon Makhelwitsch, and “Seva”, according to the FBI.
Mogilevich masterminded the great oil swindle in which official agencies like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, along with the Israeli-controlled Bank of New York, sent huge sums of money to the so-called “oligarchs” who successfully bought up the Russian oil and gas industry. They were, in essence, being paid for a controlling interest in their holdings. These oligarchs, listed herewith, were all men with previous criminal backgrounds in drug sales, prostitution, extortion, espionage and money laundering. Besides their criminal records, the oligarchy all were Jewish and most held dual Russian/Israeli citizenship.
In order to facilitate American assistance, Mogilevich made contact with Republican lobbyist Jack Abramof. From 1996, the American CIA in conjunction with various European law enforcement agencies, were tapping Mogilevich’s international telephone calls (with the assistance of the secret NSA “Operation Harvest” that taps into the communications satellites worldwide) and became aware of the outlines of the enormous swindle. From this, it was learned that a person being contacted with the purpose of security top level financial support and official U.S. government blindness, was a man called “Производитель” or Producer. This was later positively identified as Jack Abramof, who had produced a terrible movie called – “Red Scorpion,” released in 1989. His high-level American contact was identified as – Истребитель Exterminator- who was later positively identified as Tomas Dale DeLay, Congressman and powerful Republican figure from Texas. At one time, DeLay, a personal friend of Abramof, ran a pest exterminiator company in Texas, one that failed due to the rampant alcoholism of the later Republican Whip.
The problem with Mogilievich’s plan was that Yeltsin was forced to retire and Vladimir Putin, a former KGB colonel, was elected to the office of Russian President. Unlike Yeltsin, who was a drunken American “asset,”, Putin at once recognized the potential economic disaster to Russia if the American oil interests controlled of that nation’s increasingly valuable natural resources. He followed the old Italian dictum that he who goes softly goes safely and he who goes safely goes far. In short, Putin broke the back of the U.S. sponsored oligarchs, either imprisoning them or causing them to flee from extradition-safe Israel. The oil and natural gas assets reverted back to state control and none of those, including institutions and private parties, who invested with the oligarchs in the hope of enormous financial rewards, recovered a cent of their ill-advised investments.
While the now-disgraced DeLay apparently did nothing more than pressure various agencies to cooperate with Mogilevich’s criminal enterprises, nevertheless, it also appears that at least $10,000,000 in U.S. dollars was paid into a bank account at the Banque Suisse at 2 rue Confédération in Geneva, Switzerland in 1999 and 2000. From a European source (such things are strictly off-limits in the Republican-controlled United States) it is learned that DeLay was not alone in reaping enormous rewards although he was one of the few non-Jews to do so.
Now, as this information becomes more public, the panic grows.
The inquiry into the BoNY case was conducted by Judge Laurent Kasper-Ansermet. In the fall of 1999, while studying the U.S. bank’s records, he found that IMF money had moved through its accounts. That in effect caused an inquiry into the IMF $4.8 billion loan to Russia.
The inquiry established that the key role in covering up the trail of the IMF loan was played by the RF Central Bank-controlled banks abroad – above all the Frankfurt based Ost-West Handelsbank (incidentally, contrary to Dominic Kennedy, neither Abramovich nor his companies can be the bank’s shareholders – for the simple reason that it is 100 percent owned by the RF Central Bank). Kasper-Ansermet found out that on August 14, 1998, the money was wired to a bank in the state of Ticino from where, on the same day, $2.35 billion was transferred to the Bank of Sidney, $2.1 billion to National Westminster Bank, and $780 million to an account at Credit Suisse. On August 18, the remaining $1.4 billion was moved to the BoNY.
Yet, it transpired that the “Sidney” and ” Westminster” banks did not exist: There were only offshore companies of that name. They were in operation for only two years (1996 through 1998) and were then conveniently liquidated.
At this stage we move into the area of conjecture and speculation. The fact is that five to six years ago, a certain Bruce Rappaport was a prominent wheeler and dealer in Geneva. In 1966, he created InterMaritime Bank and already in the early 1990s, as a major BoNY shareholder, proposed merging the two institutions. Thus the Bank of New York – InterMaritime was born. Back in 1993, BoNY- InterMaritime was the first foreign bank to get a license in Moscow. It was established that the bank operated a correspondence account of Abramovich’s Obyedinenny bank to which the money from New York was in fact wired: The amount of money that went missing at the BoNY also coincided.

Trump’s Russian deals
December 6, 2019
by Gregory Douglas
During his trip to Moscow on November 9-11, 2013 for the Miss Universe pageant, Mr.Trump surrounded himself with business people and those necessary to sign a deal which would bring a Trump Tower project to Moscow. These were: Aras Agalarov, Emin Agalarov,Yulya (Yulia) Alferova,Herman Gref, Artem Klyushin, Vladimir Kozhin, Chuck LaBella, Rotem Rosen, Phil Ruffin, Alex Sapir, Keith Schiller, Roustam Tariko and Bob Van Ronkel.
At first, President Putin, who had planned on meeting Mr.Trump at the pageant, sent numerous individuals tied to the Russian construction sector to the event to discuss potential lucrative building plans and to ascertain Mr. Trump’s attitudes.
President Putin to establish a distance, stated he was unable to attend the pagent because of a last-minute visit from the King of the Netherlands.
Previous to this meeting, there had been no positive positions on the possibility that Mr. Trump, with Russian assistance and financing, might construct a luxury hotel in Moscow. Trump made several tweets thanking individuals in Moscow and bragging about his future plans. Then on November 12th, 2013 Trump posted a link to the Moscow Times, remarking that his organization was working on building a luxury hotel in Moscow “@AgalarovAras I had a great weekend with you and your family. You have done a FANTASTIC job. TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next. EMIN was WOW!”
This hotel deal was finalized during Trump’s weekend stay in Moscow for his Miss Universe pageant. At the Four Seasons Hotel at Ulitsa Okhotnyy Ryad, 2, a private meeting was held between Mr. Trump and President Putin. As the President is fluent in English, no other person was present. President Putin praised the business abilities of Mr. Trump and said that he would be a “refreshing person” as President of the United States. President Putin said that his people would be pleased to support Mr. Trump and that if this support was deemed material in achieving a victory, President Putin had one request to make of Mr. Trump. President Putin said his best wish was to establish “friendly and cooperative attitudes” by both parties, firmer business contacts and an abandonment of the policy of threats to the Russian Republic. President Putin stressed that certain very right-wing groups in America had been constantly agitating against him and against the Russian Republic and he hoped that Mr. Trump, if elected, could ignore these few people and work with, not against the Russian Republic. Mr. Trump repeatedly assured the President that he would be most eager to do just that and he agreed to work with various people in the United States who were friendly towards, and had connections with, the Russian Republic.
This most important conversation was recorded as a form of kompromat. And it is certain that a direct quid pro quo took place in November of 2013 between President Putin and Mr. Trump.
On June 16, 2015, Mr. Trump announced his candidacy for President

The Keys Are Not Going To Save Everybody’: Officials Could Let Roads, Homes Be Swallowed Up By Rising Sea
December 4, 2019
by David Sutta
CBS
FLORIDA KEYS (CBSMiami) – There are troubled waters on the horizon for the Florida Keys. Monroe County made a shocking announcement Wednesday that some roads and homes may be surrendered to the sea. It’s all because of sea level rise.
The county could let roads sink below the surface, cutting off homes or even neighborhoods.
The revelation comes from a study to raise some 300 miles of roadway indicated it would come at a very high cost.
After seeing the estimate, more than a billion dollars, county leaders said for some neighborhoods it just might not make economic sense to save them. The county is discussing alternatives like replacing roads with boats as well as raising taxes to pay for the roads that are raised.
The 51-page report on climate change in Monroe County is alarming. It noted this year’s seasonal tides are setting records. It also indicated sea level rise projections increasing. There is a chart of the most vulnerable counties in the United States, and Monroe County is now holding the undesirable honor of number three in the country. They hold first place in Florida.
County Sustainability Director Rhonda Hagg said they face a much more difficult situation than Miami-Dade or Broward County.
“We are surrounded by water. We have hundreds and hundreds of shoreline, and it’s comes in from all sides. You cannot build a seawalls around the islands. No. 1, it would be way too cost prohibitive and it wouldn’t necessarily work,” Hagg said.
The county is half way through a study to save the Keys’ 300-plus miles of roads. These are roads that lead to homes, businesses and the mainland. Many are projected to completely disappear below the surface in just 20 years.
Areas like the bayside of Key Largo, Sugarloaf Keys and Big Pine Key all appear to be at greatest risk.
Preliminary budgets indicate the price tag to raise roads, install drains and pumps could be a billion, possibly even billions of dollars.
County Administrator Roman Gastesi believes the solution is not going to be easy. Some property owners are likely going to lose their homes.
“The Keys are not going to save everybody. Your Keys are not going to look like they are today,” Gastesi said.
He believes most homeowners, once they see the numbers, will agree that is more cost effective to move than to try to build the area up.
Gastesi told CBS4 he could see the project funded by increasing sales tax – a resiliency tax.
“Right now we are at 7.5 percent sales tax in the Keys. I’ve traveled in some areas that are up to 10 percent,” he said.
Gastesi suggests the county could raise rates to 8.5 percent to cover the cost of the project. In general, roughly 60 percent of sales tax in Monroe is paid by tourists.
Residents would have the opportunity to vote on it.
But even if they find the money, it’s apparent some roads and homes may not be saved.
Gastesi explained, “It doesn’t mean that we are going to spend $20 million dollars to go down a small road to get to two or three houses. It just doesn’t make sense. We may be better off buying those two or three houses or letting them know that we are not going to provide them services.”
While the county administrator is sending out a warning that residents may need to move or use boats to get home, there is still hope for resolution.
Hagg told CBS4 she sees innovation and partnerships drive costs down. If private industry gets involved, the price tag may drop.
“It’s not all doom and gloom here. There is a lot of high hope here,” she said.
While optimism is high, the county has already hired lawyers for advice. They are asking questions like “Do they legally have to raise your roadway?” and “Can government plan to let a neighborhood go underwater?”
Previous court rulings send mixed signals.
As for a timeline, there is still a long way to go. The study is expected to wrap up in late 2020. Decisions on what roads to save will then be debated. One can assume lawsuits from homeowners may be filed as well as.
Assuming the county finds funding to do all this, the soonest the Keys would see construction to raise roads is likely 2023 – barring no legal fights.

The Season of Evil
by Gregory Douglas

Preface
This is in essence a work of fiction, but the usual disclaimers notwithstanding, many of the horrific incidents related herein are based entirely on factual occurrences.
None of the characters or the events in this telling are invented and at the same time, none are real. And certainly, none of the participants could be considered by any stretch of the imagination to be either noble, self-sacrificing, honest, pure of motive or in any way socially acceptable to anything other than a hungry crocodile, a professional politician or a tax collector.
In fact, the main characters are complex, very often unpleasant, destructive and occasionally, very entertaining.
To those who would say that the majority of humanity has nothing in common with the characters depicted herein, the response is that mirrors only depict the ugly, evil and deformed things that peer into them
There are no heroes here, only different shapes and degrees of villains and if there is a moral to this tale it might well be found in a sentence by Jonathan Swift, a brilliant and misanthropic Irish cleric who wrote in his ‘Gulliver’s Travels,”
“I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most odious race of little pernicious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”
Swift was often unkind in his observations but certainly not inaccurate.Frienze, Italy
July 2018-August 2019

Chapter 19

In Seattle, Lars finished a bottle of beer and belched.
“Why didn’t the money do him any good, Chuck?”
“He died, Lars. He drowned in his own swimming pool but that was quite a while ago and I have gotten over my grief. I guess we can go to Minnesota if you want and look around. But we will have to go back to Santa Clara and find some safe place for all of our money. I don’t dare put it into a bank or they will notify the IRS the same day.
I don’t want to carry it with me so I think the best thing will be to hide it in the apartment and then go east for a few weeks. After all, we’ve paid up for a full year so we can use that place as a temporary base. I still don’t trust the manager. Why don’t you hump her and keep her mind off of us? I heard from someone there that she has been screwing some beaner gardener and you’re dark enough. Tie some fishing leader around your love pole, cut off the loops and pleasure the woman to the point where she’ll let us do anything we want.”
Lars shook his head vehemently.
“Oh no, I’m not doing it with any old lady. Why don’t you do it with her?”
“I suppose I could. She came over when I was at the pool last week and asked me some stupid questions while she was trying to see through my Speedos. I could, I suppose, but let’s see how it shapes up.”
“I’m sorry about your cousin having an accident, Chuck. Were you close to him?”
“Fortunately not. Now he’s with the angels, Lars, or at least with one angel in particular, and we can thank God for His graces, can’t we?”
The moment the rented Cadillac stopped in front of their garden apartment, Call Me Connie appeared as if by magic.
“Hello boys!” she trumpeted as Chuck was struggling to haul heavy suitcases full of loot out of public view.
“Hello ma’am” said an apprehensive Lars who had a vague image of Chuck forcing him to have sex with the woman on the coffee table.
“Did you have a nice trip?” she queried while peering into the car trunk full of bagged valuables.
Chuck returned for another load.
“Why we certainly did have a good time. Edgar, why don’t you help me take all the nice things inside so I can take the car back?”
Edgar-cum-Lars and Eric eagerly began to unload a computer, terrified that Connie would grope him.
She displayed her capped teeth to Chuck with a grin that would have put a hyena to shame.
“While you boys were gone, an old friend of mine who is out in California for a lecture tour dropped by and we were talking about you. Reggie can’t wait to meet you after I told him about your father.”
That would be the non-existent parent who was allegedly in Congress and was about to retire.
“Oh yes, my old dad. Well, we may be heading out again…”
“So soon? Why don’t you hang around for a few days and get the chance to meet Mr. Tolliver? I’m sure you’ve heard of him. He’s quite a famous writer of course. Reginald Tolliver? ‘The Colonization of the Earth?'”
Chuck had heard of the book and the many others Reggie had produced but politeness prevented him from making any comment.

Reginald St. James Tolliver had written nearly thirty books that represented twenty-five years of his life and the senseless death of many fine trees. His real name was Norbert Gromley and he had been born in the Soho district of London to a prostitute who was famous for her faux epileptic seizures. She would have these in restaurants to avoid paying the bill or in an exclusive Mayfair shop while a confederate looted the temporarily unattended cash register.
No one knew who Reginald’s real father was but in the blurbs on his book dust jackets, he alluded to a lesser member of the British Royal Family.
He was a thoroughly offensive youth who was mercilessly harassed in school for his arrogance and after he had his pants pulled off for the third time in a week or had his head shoved into the communal school toilet, he eventually retreated into himself and embarked on a series of fantasies that he eventually came to believe.
The basic core of this strange, surreal world, was that the planet Earth had been empty of human life until it was visited by a fleet of space craft originating in the Zorkan galaxy, somewhat to the west of the Belt of Orion.
These craft contained colonists whom Reginald called the Eloy after fictional creatures in H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine.” The Eloy, like those depicted in the original story, were the elite of a dying world while the debased Morlocks, the name also taken from the Wells story, represented the slave class.
His first book talked knowingly of a great, Manichean struggle between what were essentially the white Eloy and the black Morlocks.
Tolliver, to use the name he lifted from a Letters to the Editor column in the London ‘Times’, discovered that while most sane people found his first book badly written lunacy, the racists of Britain, and later the United States, decided that they enjoyed his thesis and he began to sell extensively to the strange, pale people who believe in flying saucers, the Lost Continent of Atlantis and other myths and legends so beloved of those with truly empty lives and small brains.
Tapping into a rich vein of bigotry that runs so pleasantly through much of the human race, Reggie began to experiment with other fictional life forms designed to please his growing legion of readers.
The Baraks, who arrived later to the planet, were intended to be Jews while the Glabbos (named for a hated tormentor from his school days) stood in for an admixture of Freemasons and Jesuits. Reginald, needless to say, was greatly enamored of both Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin as well as the Marquis de Sade and their well thumbed, and occasionally stained, works filled the headboard bookshelf of his bed.
With the success of his first book, Tolliver immediately embarked on others and over a period of years, amassed a considerable sum of money. He also amassed a considerable number of enemies who pursued him relentlessly across the world, picketing his lectures in the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Spain, Russia, Italy and Sweden. The Swiss would not permit him in their country and he had been expelled from Denmark and Norway.
As his revenues diminished due to the increasingly disordered tenor of his books, Tolliver saw himself slipping back into the grinding poverty of his youth and, quite naturally, blamed this decline and fall entirely on Jews, Catholics, Jesuits, Freemasons, various intelligence agencies, the international banking fraternity and the Southern Baptist Churches.
As he became more frantic in his attempts to prove the validity of his childhood fantasies, his literary output suffered as he spent most of his time on the lecture circuit. He drove restlessly from state to state in America, holding seminars for his loyal readers and informing them that he alone was the keeper of what he liked to call ‘The Real Truth.’ At one point, he adopted Huey Long’s ‘Every Man A King’ program and informed his awestruck listeners that as Eloy, they were entitled to the benefits of a complete redistribution of the nation’s wealth and that soon, when the Truth was revealed, all of those who believed would find Heaven in their bank accounts.
Because of the disruptiveness of his meetings, Tolliver was eventually banned from Canada, New Zealand, India, most of Africa including Egypt, Japan, China and a good part of South America. Since no publisher would handle his manic manuscripts, Tolliver was reduced to publishing them himself and dragging these books around in a rented car to his various lectures.
For a fee, he would autograph books or pictures of himself taken in mock-heroic poses. One had the choice of Tolliver looking pensively at the Great Pyramid of Cheops, the Eiffel Tower, the statue of Liberty in New York Harbor or standing on top of a small mountain in Colorado, looking up at the heavens in anticipation of the arrival of another round of colonizers.
For those of his followers who believed, as he did, in Discipline as a part of a well-ordered life, there were several pictures of Tolliver wearing black tights, no shirt and a sort of modified black ski mask. He was holding a thick leather whip in one hand and a pair of handcuffs in the other. He had once sold one of these pictures to a teenage boy and there were terrible repercussions when the family discovered it after they caught their son thrashing his younger brother with a dog leash, so Tolliver always kept the Special Pictures locked safely in a shabby briefcase. These he signed “The Powermaster” and for those who were interested, he often held Power and Discipline sessions in a rented hotel room, usually in a hotel that catered to drifters and who did object to loud smacks and occasional screeches of pain from the acolytes undergoing instruction while handcuffed to the lavatory door.
The author shared one thing in common with Lars; he had a penchant for much younger women who used to travel with him as “research assistants”, and who generally departed rather quickly after having encountered the Powermaster in one of his bad moods. As he grew older, Tolliver decided that life was passing him by rather quickly so he broadened his interests to include younger men as well as girls. They were never allowed to be “research assistants” but instead were called “public relations” personnel.

(Continued)

This is also an e-book, available from Amazon:

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