TBR News December 3, 2019

Dec 02 2019

The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. December 3, 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 3: During the time of the Soviet Union, many European countries housed their gold in the United States.
Now that the Soviet menace has gone, many of the depositing countries have tried to get their gold returned.
This is not possible because most of it was sold to the Chinese by the Obama administration for business credits so the small amounts of, let us say, German or French gold have been returned but calls for the balances are quietly ignored.
Like the mortgage swindles that have deprived millions of Americans the clear title to their homes and businesses, this issue is not discussed in the American media nor will it ever be resolved.
The attitudes of Congress and American officialdom on such issues is “Not on My Watch, Dear” and in other words, they will be long gone by the time these buried menaces erupt. No doubt many will have moved to Aruba to join the perennial search for bits and pieces of Natalee Holloway.”

The Table of Contents
• China suspends U.S. military visits to Hong Kong, sanctions U.S.-based NGOs
• Nord Stream 2: Go-ahead for Russian gas pipeline angers Ukraine
• Russia, China launch gas pipeline ‘Power of Siberia’
• Trump will not participate in impeachment hearing, White House says
• A recipe for partisan stalemate
• Trump, Lying, Insists Rudy Giuliani Acted Alone on Ukraine
• U.S. court denies Trump administration bid to resume federal executions
• US-Ukranian Military Cooperation
• A ‘Mini Ice Age’ Is Coming in The Next 15 Years
• The Essenes, Jesus and the Homosexual issue
• Urban Myths and Legends
• The Season of Evil

China suspends U.S. military visits to Hong Kong, sanctions U.S.-based NGOs
December 2, 2019
Reuters
BEIJING (Reuters) – China said on Monday U.S. military ships and aircraft would not be allowed to visit Hong Kong, and also announced sanctions against several U.S. non-government organizations for encouraging protesters to “engage in extremist, violent and criminal acts.”
The measures were announced by China’s Foreign Ministry in response to U.S. legislation passed last week supporting anti-government protesters. It said it had suspended taking requests for U.S. military visits indefinitely, and warned of further action to come.
“We urge the U.S. to correct the mistakes and stop interfering in our internal affairs. China will take further steps if necessary to uphold Hong Kong’s stability and prosperity and China’s sovereignty,” ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a daily news briefing in Beijing.
China last week promised it would issue “firm counter measures” after U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act,” which supports anti-government protesters in Hong Kong and threatens China with potential sanctions.
There are fears that the dispute over Hong Kong could impact efforts by Beijing and Washington to reach a preliminary deal that could de-escalate a prolonged trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
The U.S.-headquartered NGOs targeted by Beijing include the National Endowment for Democracy, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the International Republican Institute, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House.
“They shoulder some responsibility for the chaos in Hong Kong and they should be sanctioned and pay the price,” said Hua.
In more normal times, several U.S. naval ships visit Hong Kong annually, a rest-and-recreation tradition that dates back to the pre-1997 colonial era and one that Beijing allowed to continue after the handover from British to Chinese rule.
A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said China’s move would not have an impact on U.S. military operations.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for a comment.
Visits have at times been refused amid broader tensions and two U.S. ships were denied access in August.
The USS Blue Ridge, the command ship of the Japan-based Seventh Fleet, stopped in Hong Kong in April – the last ship to visit before mass protests broke out in June.
Foreign NGOs are already heavily restricted in China, and have previously received sharp rebukes for reporting on rights issues in the country, including the mass detention of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang.
Reporting by Cate Cadell and Beijing Monitoring Desk. Additional reporting by Idrees Ali and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Tom Hogue, Simon Cameron-Moore and Bill Berkrot

Nord Stream 2: Go-ahead for Russian gas pipeline angers Ukraine
BBC News
Denmark’s approval for a controversial pipeline to pump more Russian gas into Europe will strengthen Russia’s influence in the region, Ukraine warns.
“This is not only a matter of energy security, it is a geopolitical issue,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said of the Nord Stream 2 gas project.
Plans for the 1,225km (760-mile) undersea pipeline have divided Europe.
The Danish permit was the last major hurdle. The pipeline will run under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany.
The Russian-led Nord Stream 2 project has also infuriated the US, which fears the pipeline will tighten Russia’s grip over the region’s energy supply and reduce its own share of the lucrative European market for American liquefied natural gas.
US President Donald Trump has said the pipeline, owned by Russia’s Gazprom, could turn Germany into a “hostage of Russia”.
On Wednesday, Denmark said it had granted a permit for part of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to be constructed near the Baltic island of Bornholm.
Denmark’s Energy Agency said it was “obliged to allow the construction of transit pipelines” under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
It will take a month for the permit to come into effect, the agency added.
Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed the news, saying the decision was good for Europe.
But Mr Zelensky said the move “strengthens Russia and weakens Europe”.
“We understood that this could happen,” he said at press conference in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, adding: “For my part, I will say that both me and our government were ready for such a decision. We are ready.”
Nord Stream 2 will not only increase Russia’s supply of gas to the region, it also means that, along with its TurkStream project, Russia will be able to bypass Ukrainian pipelines.
The loss of transit fees would hit Ukraine’s economy hard – in 2017, the country earned about $3bn (€2.7bn; £2.3bn) in Russian gas transit fees.
Why is Nord Stream 2 so controversial?
For years EU member states have been concerned about the bloc’s reliance on Russian gas.
Russia currently supplies about 40% of the EU’s gas supplies – just ahead of Norway, which is not in the EU but takes part in its single market. The new pipeline will increase the amount of gas going under the Baltic to 55 billion cubic metres per year.
Disagreements among EU nations were so strong that, earlier this year, they even threatened to derail the project entirely.
The bloc eventually agreed to strengthen regulations against Nord Stream 2, rather than stop it completely, and to bring it under European control.
Businesses in Germany, meanwhile, have invested heavily in the project. Chancellor Angela Merkel has tried to assure Central and Eastern European states that the pipeline would not make Germany reliant on Russia for energy.
Leaders in the US are also concerned. In May, a group of senators introduced legislation seeking sanctions against the pipeline.
That same month, climate activists opposing the use of fossil fuels occupied part of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in Germany.
The demonstrators, who said the project would be more detrimental to the environment than the authorities had claimed, began skateboarding inside the pipes.
Police said at least five people had occupied the pipes near Wrangelsburg in northern Germany.

Russia, China launch gas pipeline ‘Power of Siberia’
China and Russia’s leaders opened the giant “Power of Siberia” pipeline project on Monday. The 3,000 kilometer pipeline has been hailed as a sign of the close friendship between two of the world’s superpowers.
December 12, 2019
DW
Pipeline as a symbol of friendship
Xi and Putin, who both attended the opening ceremony via video link, spoke of the project as a symbol of growing cooperation between the two nations.
“This step takes Russo-Chinese strategic cooperation in energy to a qualitative new level and brings us closer to fulfilling the task, set together with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, of taking bilateral trade to $200 billion (€181 billion) by 2024,” said Putin.
Putin added that it was “a genuinely historical event.”
Xi told Putin via video link that “China-Russia relations are entering a new era” and that the pipeline was an “example of deep integration and mutually beneficial cooperation.”
When the pipeline hits full capacity it could make China the second-largest gas customer after Germany, which bought 58.5 billion cubic meters of gas from Russia in 2018.
China was the world’s fifth largest importer of natural gas in 2016, according to CIA statistics.

Trump will not participate in impeachment hearing, White House says
December 2, 2019
BBC News
The White House has said US President Donald Trump and his lawyers will not attend an impeachment hearing on Wednesday, citing a lack of “fairness”.
The hearing by the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee marks the next stage of the probe, with legal experts giving testimony that could lead to a vote of impeachment.
It is alleged the president pressured Ukraine to conduct two investigations for his own political gain.
Mr Trump has denied any wrongdoing.
After weeks of closed-door witness interviews and public hearings, the process will now focus on possible charges of misconduct, which could lead to an impeachment vote in the House and trial in the Republican-led Senate.
The Democratic-led inquiry centres on a phone call in July between Mr Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Mr Trump has dismissed the process as a “witch hunt”.
Last Wednesday, Jerrold Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, invited Mr Trump to attend this week’s hearing, “directly or through a counsel”, saying it would be an opportunity to discuss the historical and constitutional basis for impeachment.
But in a letter to the committee, White House counsel Pat Cipollone accused the committee of a “complete lack of due process and fundamental fairness”, saying the invitation would fail to give the White House adequate time to prepare and did not give information about the witnesses.
Reports suggested witnesses were “apparently all academics” and would include “no fact witnesses”, Mr Cipollone said. A fact witness testifies their personal knowledge of events while an expert witness assists the judge by offering an opinion.
Mr Cipollone also said the committee had called three witnesses but allowed Republicans to call just one, and lambasted Mr Nadler’s claim that the process was “consistent” with historical impeachment inquiries, arguing that President Bill Clinton had a fairer hearing in 1998.
In order for Mr Trump to be represented in further hearings, the president’s counsel said, Mr Nadler would need to ensure “that due process rights are protected” and that the process was “fair and just”.
The letter also accused Democrats of scheduling the hearing “no doubt purposefully” to conflict with Mr Trump’s visit this week to London for a Nato summit. He is due to return to Washington after the judiciary committee hearing.
Mr Cipollone’s letter did not say whether Mr Trump would attend a second hearing, which does not yet have a date, but added that a response would be given by Friday.
What is Trump accused of?
Democrats say Mr Trump dangled two bargaining chips – $400m (£309m) of military aid to Ukraine that had already been allocated by Congress, and a White House meeting with Ukraine’s new leader. They think this political pressure on a vulnerable US ally amounts to an abuse of power.
The first investigation Mr Trump wanted from Ukraine was into one of his main Democratic challengers, Joe Biden, and his son Hunter. Hunter joined the board of a Ukrainian company when Joe Biden was US vice-president.
The second Trump demand was that Ukraine try to corroborate a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the last US presidential election. This theory has been widely debunked, and the US intelligence agencies are unanimous in saying Moscow was behind the hacking of Democratic Party emails in 2016.

A recipe for partisan stalemate
An analysis by Anthony Zurcher

First the White House said it would not co-operate with the impeachment probe because it was not formally authorised by the House of Representatives. Then, Donald Trump complained that the congressionally approved process in the Intelligence Committee violated his legal due-process rights.
Now the White House says it won’t send lawyers to the first Judiciary Committee hearing this week, even though they are permitted to participate.
The president still has the opportunity to change course, and Wednesday’s hearing could turn out to be a stuffy academic discussion about the impeachment process with little lasting impact, but it’s a sign that the White House feels things may be breaking Mr Trump’s way.
Opinion polls indicate the public’s view of impeachment is solidifying on party lines. Those who like the president want the process to end; those who hate him want him gone, whether through impeachment or next November’s election.
That’s a recipe for partisan stalemate. And as long as Republicans continue to stick together, the president has an impenetrable defence against removal from office.
While the White House may not be winning the impeachment fight, it’s not losing either – and for now that’s reason enough to keep the process at arm’s length.
What is the evidence?
At the heart of the inquiry is the rough transcript of a phone call on 25 July between Mr Trump and Mr Zelensky, in which Mr Trump asks for “a favour” and wants Ukraine to “look into” corruption claims involving the Bidens. These claims remain unsubstantiated.
The call prompted a whistleblower complaint from an unidentified CIA officer who said Mr Trump had used his office to “solicit interference from a foreign country”. That complaint sparked an impeachment inquiry which has featured diplomats and White House aides giving testimony to Congress.
Several testified that there was a “shadow” foreign policy to push Ukraine into opening these investigations, and to announce them publicly. The witnesses linked the president to the promise of a White House meeting but none had direct knowledge he had personally held back the military aid.
However, Democrats say the evidence is overwhelming that Mr Trump orchestrated the pressure campaign, and point to an admission of a “quid pro quo” by White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney at a press conference.
What happens next?
Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said the committees leading the probe – Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs – are now working on their report, which will be issued on 3 December.
On Wednesday, legal experts yet to be named are expected to be heard by the Judiciary Committee, which is responsible for crafting articles of impeachment, or the charges of wrongdoing against the president. It is expected that those charges will be drafted this month.
After a vote in the Democratic-controlled House, a trial would be held in the Senate. The White House and some Republicans want the trial to be limited to two weeks.
If Mr Trump was convicted by a two-thirds majority – an outcome deemed highly unlikely – he would become the first US president to be removed from office through impeachment.

Trump, Lying, Insists Rudy Giuliani Acted Alone on Ukraine
Unfortunately for Trump, multiple witnesses have testified otherwise.
November 27, 2019
by Bess Levin
Vanity Fair
mong the 24 different defenses Republicans have trotted out in an effort to convince people Donald Trump should not be impeached, one of the most absurd is that the president was just an innocent patsy in this whole Ukraine business, and that his deputies acted alone. It’s not remotely believable, given the president’s documented love of corruption and obvious belief that it’s his right as the king of America to make other countries investigate his rivals, but that didn’t stop Trump himself from trying out the explanation this week, like the desperate man he is.
In an interview with former Fox News talking head Bill O’Reilly, Trump told the disgraced ex-host that he did not direct Rudy Giuliani to go to Ukraine to dig up dirt on his political rivals and, in fact, had no idea what his personal attorney was doing there. “You have to ask that to Rudy,” Trump said, noting that “Rudy has other clients, other than me,” and “has done a lot of work in Ukraine over the years.” “You didn’t direct him to go there on your behalf?” O’Reilly pressed. “No,” the pathological liar insisted.
Of course, the idea that Giuliani was not acting directly on Trump’s behalf is not only ridiculous knowing what we know about the ex-real estate developer, but damn near impossible given the high volume of evidence to the contrary. For starters, long before the formal impeachment inquiry had been launched, Giuliani was telling anyone who would listen—including the New York Times and Hannity—that he was encouraging Ukraine to open investigations he hoped would help Trump. As New York’s Jonathan Chait notes, “If Giuliani was somehow doing all this without Trump’s permission, Trump might have said something.” Then there are the sworn testimonies of both Trump donor turned E.U. ambassador Gordon Sondland and former U.S. special representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker, who both told lawmakers that Trump had directed them to work with Giuliani. As Sondland said in his opening statement to the House Intelligence Committee last week, he, Volker, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry “did not want to work with Mr. Giuliani,” but did so “at the express direction of the president of the United States.”
Then there’s the recent claim from the attorney of Lev Parnas, Giuliani’s business associate, that Trump pulled both Parnas and Igor Fruman aside at last year’s White House Hanukkah party and tasked them with working on the “secret mission” to get Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. And of course, because Trump has repeatedly insisted we all of his July 25 phone call with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, here’s a fun little passage from that document:
Trump: Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the attorney general. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news, and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news, so I just want to let you know that. The other thing, there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution, and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it…It sounds horrible to me…. I will tell Rudy and Attorney General Barr to call.
For his part, Giuliani, who Trump told O’Reilly is a “warrior,” confirmed earlier this month that any work he did in Ukraine was on behalf of his client, i.e. Trump.
In a statement, Giuliani, apparently trying to rewrite history, said through his lawyer: “President is correct. Giuliani never went to Ukraine for any probe. The information he received was given to him in U.S. by Ukrainians while Mueller probe was still ongoing and before Biden was even announced.”

U.S. court denies Trump administration bid to resume federal executions

December 2, 2019
by Sarah N. Lynch
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Monday denied the Justice Department’s request to overturn a lower court decision that temporarily stalled plans by President Donald Trump’s administration to resume executions of prisoners convicted of certain federal crimes after a 16-year hiatus.
The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that the administration had “not satisfied the stringent requirements” to stay the lower court’s ruling. The administration had planned to resume executions of federal death row inmates starting on Dec. 9.
The ruling follows a Nov. 21 decision by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to stay the planned executions of four federal death row inmates until a long-running legal challenge to the Justice Department’s lethal injection protocol can be resolved.
The lawsuits, the first of which was filed in 2005, challenged the protocol on the grounds that it violated the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment by carrying a risk of severe pain. The suits also said the protocol violated a federal law called the Administrative Procedure Act because it was written in secret without public input.
The case fell dormant during President Barack Obama’s tenure after the federal government was forced to halt executions and abandon its previous three-drug protocol due to a shortage of one of the drugs, an anesthetic called sodium thiopental.
But the case was revived in July, after U.S. Attorney General William Barr, appointed by Trump earlier in the year, scheduled the execution of five federal death row inmates and unveiled a new protocol that calls for using a single drug, pentobarbital, for the lethal injection.
Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Will Dunham

US-Ukranian Military Cooperation

Military cooperation between Ukraine and U.S. is carried out within the framework of the signed bilateral agreements.
Main spheres of the military cooperation are:
• Security cooperation;
• Military-to-military interoperability;
• Civil-military relations;
• Financial support in defense sphere;
• Military-technical cooperation;
• Military scientific/technical cooperation.
In order to implement these directions of military cooperation MOD of Ukraine and DOD USA are exchanging with military delegations at different levels on a regular basis. During the last visit to the United States in October 2002 Minister of Defense of Ukraine General of Army of Ukraine Volodimur Shkidchenko met Pentagon leaders and discussed different issues of US-Ukraine relationships in military and civilian spheres. He also met with high level officials from the US State Department and National Security Council.
There are several practical issues of cooperation between MOD of Ukraine and DOD USA.
Ukraine is an active participant in antiterrorist campaign, leaded by USA. Ukraine has given permission to allied forces to use its air space to deliver humanitarian relief to Afghanistan. United States’ and Germany’s transport planes have been using Ukrainian air space since the beginning of operation “Enduring Freedom”. Ministry of Defense of Ukraine sent representatives to the Coalition Coordination Center at US Central Command in Tampa, Florida. Ukraine also donated military equipment and munitions for the needs of Afghan National Army in total cost of $ 350 000.
Ukraine also proposed its airlift capability to other European nations. Ministry of Defense of Ukraine has already helped some countries to deploy their contingents to Afghanistan.
On 20th of February 2003, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine made a decision to send NBC battalion to the Persian Gulf region to assist troops and local population with recovering from any possible use of weapons of mass destruction in the area of the conflict. Later on Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament) approved this decision and President L.Kuchma, as the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces gave an order to deploy NBC protection battalion to Kuwait.
Ukrainian and American experts are working together to resolve some other important issues such as:
• Reforming the Ukrainian Armed Forces military personnel and education system;
• Ukraine Armed Forces transfer to a contract-based service and professional NCO training;
• Defense Analysis;
• Fulfillment of US Foreign Military Financing Program for Ukraine;
• Emplacement of US-controlled anti-ballistic missiles in the Ukraine;
U.S. financial assistance to Ukraine:
In 2012, the United States provided Ukraine with $7 million for the purchase of military equipment under the Foreign Military Financing program (FMF) and for the continued upgrade and improvement of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
More than 50 Ukrainian military personnel currently study in the United States at military education facilities.
The United States continues financial support to Ukraine in the military sphere in accordance with US budget.
At the center of the latest scandal threatening to take down President Donald Trump is $391 million in military aid that the U.S. leader reportedly asked his staff to freeze for two months before dropping the hold a week ago, under pressure from lawmakers.
On Wednesday, Washington was consumed with a July 25 call between Trump and Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. According to a memorandum of the call released by the White House, Zelenskiy asked to buy American-made Javelin anti-tank weapons, and Trump asked Zelenskiy to help him work with U.S. officials to investigate political rivals.
That call fueled a whistleblower’s complaint that has become central to the formal impeachment inquiry launched by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but the call also highlights the vital role of U.S. military aid to Ukraine, which has lost 13,000 of its people since its conflict with Russia began in 2014.
Here’s what you need to know about the U.S. military aid to Ukraine.
$1.5 billion in security assistance
In June, the Pentagon announced plans to provide $250 million to Ukraine in security cooperation funds for additional training, equipment and advisory efforts to build the capacity of Ukraine’s armed forces. The U.S. State Department separately planned to provide $141 million in aid.
Broadly speaking, Democratic lawmakers see the president’s decision to temporarily hold both pots of money as divorced from policy and politically motivated, and a few Republican lawmakers have publicly expressed cautious concern. Trump’s allies say the president was troubled about corruption in Ukraine and leery of spending more to help Ukraine when compared to America’s European allies.
Trump and Zelenskiy appeared together for a news conference, at which Trump said he wanted Germany, France and other European countries to contribute to Ukraine’s defense. Trump also diminished the substantial aid provided under the administration of President Barack Obama.

A ‘Mini Ice Age’ Is Coming in The Next 15 Years
Science Alert
A new model that predicts the solar cycles more accurately than ever before has suggested that solar magnetic activity will drop by 60 percent between 2030 and 2040, which means in just 15 years’ time, Earth could sink into what researchers are calling a mini ice age.
Such low solar activity has not been seen since the last mini ice age, called the Maunder Minimum, which plunged the northern hemisphere in particular into a series of bitterly cold winters between 1645 and 1715.
The prediction is based on what’s known as the Sun’s ’11-year heartbeat’. The Sun’s magnetic activity is not the same year in year out, it fluctuates over a cycle that lasts between 10 and 12 years. Ever since this was discovered 172 years ago, scientists have struggled to predict what each cycle will look like.
But just last week at the National Astronomy Meeting in Wales, mathematics professor Valentina Zharkova from Northumbria University in the UK has presented a new model that can forecast what these solar cycles will look like based on the dynamo effects at play in two layers of the Sun. Zharkova says she can predict their influence with an accuracy of 97 percent.
What exactly are these so-called dynamo effects? They’re part of a geophysical theory that explains how the motion of Earth’s outer core moves conducting material, such as liquid iron, across a weak magnetic field to create an electric current. This electric current also interacts with the fluid motion below the surface of Earth to create two magnetic fields along the axis of its rotation.
When Zharkova’s model applied this theory to the Sun, it drew its predictions assuming that there are dynamo effects in two subterranean layers – one deep down in the convection zone, and another up near the surface, each fluctuating between the northern and southern hemispheres.
Zharkova explained her findings at the conference:
“We found magnetic wave components appearing in pairs, originating in two different layers in the Sun’s interior. They both have a frequency of approximately 11 years, although this frequency is slightly different, and they are offset in time. Combining both waves together and comparing to real data for the current solar cycle, we found that our predictions showed an accuracy of 97 percent.”
Looking at these magnetic wave patterns, the model predicted that there would be few sunspots over the next two 11-year heartbeats – called Cycle 25, which peaks in 2022, and Cycle 26, which runs from 2030 to 2040.
“In Cycle 26, the two waves exactly mirror each other – peaking at the same time but in opposite hemispheres of the Sun. Their interaction will be disruptive, or they will nearly cancel each other. We predict that this will lead to the properties of a ‘Maunder minimum’,” said Zharkova.
During the original Maunder Minimum, the entire River Thames froze over in England.

The Essenes, Jesus and the Homosexual issue
December 2, 2019
by Aaron L. Johnson
The Gospel of John makes references to the disciple whom Jesus loved (John 13:23, 19:26, 21:7, 20), In the text, this beloved disciple is present at the crucifixion of Jesus, with Jesus’ mother, Mary.
It has traditionally been assumed that the disciple whom Jesus loved is a self-reference by the author of the Gospel, traditionally regarded as John the Apostle.
Aelred of Rievaulx, in his work Spiritual Friendship, referred to the relationship of Jesus and John as a “marriage” and held it out as an example sanctioning friendships between clerics. It has been claimed that it was held by Francesco Calcagno, who was investigated on that account by the Venetian Inquisition in 1550.
James I of England may have been relying on a pre-existing tradition when he defended his relationship with the young Duke of Buckingham: “I wish to speak in my own behalf and not to have it thought to be a defect, for Jesus Christ did the same, and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had his son John, and I have my George.”
In the Gospel of John, the disciple John frequently refers to himself in the third person as ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’.” One might argue that Jesus loved all of his followers in a non-sexual way. Thus to identify Jesus’ love for John in a special way might indicate a sexual relationship. The disciple was “the” beloved. He was in a class by himself. During the Last Supper before Jesus’ execution, the author(s) of the Gospel of John describes how the “beloved” disciple laid himself on Jesus’ inner tunic — his undergarment. See John 13:25 and 21:20. Robert Goss, assistant professor of comparative religion at Webster University in St. Louis, LA, noted that Jesus and the beloved disciple: “… eat together, side by side. What’s being portrayed here is a pederastic relationship between an older man and a younger man. A Greek reader would understand.”
The late Morton Smith, of Columbia University reported in 1958 that he had found a fragment of a manuscript which at the Mar Saba monastery near Jerusalem. It contained the full text of Mark, chapter 10. Apparently, the version that is in the Christian Scriptures is an edited version of the original. Additional verses allegedly formed part of the full version of Mark, and were inserted after verse 34. It discusses how a young man, naked but for a linen covering, expressed his love for Jesus and stayed with him at his place all night. Mark 7:14-16 shows that Jesus approves of homosexual acts. The critical phrase reads: “There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him…” Jesus gave great emphasis to this teaching, directing it to everyone.
Mark 7:14-16 shows that Jesus approves of homosexual acts. The critical phrase reads: “There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him…” Jesus gave great emphasis to this teaching, directing it to everyone.
Mark 14:51-52 describes the incident when Jesus was arrested by the religious police. It describes how one of Jesus’ followers was scantily dressed. The King James Version says he had a linen cloth cast on his naked body; the size and location of the cloth is not defined. The New International Version says that he was “wearing nothing but a linen garment.” When the police tried to seize him, they were able to grab only his cloth; the man ran away naked. Reverend Peter Murphy wrote: “We don’t know from the sources what really was going on, but we do know that something was very peculiar between Jesus and young men.” (Emphasis in the original.)
Michael Kelly wrote of Jesus’ attitude towards a same-sex couple as described in Matthew 8:5-13: and Luke 7:2: “One day a Roman Centurion asked him to heal his dying servant. Scholars of both Scripture and Ancient History tell us that Roman Centurions, who were not permitted to marry while in service, regularly chose a favorite male slave to be their personal assistant and sexual servant. Such liaisons were common in the Greco-Roman world and it was not unusual for them to deepen into loving partnerships….Jesus offered to go to the servant, but the centurion asked him simply to speak a word of healing, since he was not worthy to welcome this itinerant Jewish teacher under his roof. Jesus responded by healing the servant and proclaiming that even in Israel he had never found faith like this! So, in the one Gospel story where Jesus encountered people sharing what we would call a ‘gay relationship,’ we see him simply concerned about — and deeply moved by — their faith and love.” Kelly implies that Jesus’ sensitivity towards the gay couple might have arisen from his own bisexual or homosexual orientation.
Some commentators argue from silence. They note that there is no passage in the Christian Scriptures (New Testament) that directly describes anything about Jesus’ sexuality. There are many direct and indirect references to Jesus’ sensuality. He was accused of being a “drunkard and a glutton” and of partying with “prostitutes and sinners.” He apparently enjoyed a tender foot massage from a woman. Yet, neither Jesus’ sexuality nor his celibacy is mentioned. Yet, sex is referred to, elsewhere in the Bible, quite often. One might argue that the books in the Christian Scriptures might have once described Jesus’ sexual relationships, but that these passages have been vigorously censored by the later church because they were unconventional.
Other commentators have noted that Jesus is silent towards homosexuality in the Gospels. Yet, Paul’s opinions and those of many other authors in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) are clearly stated. They conclude that Jesus might have been gay.
In the Renaissance period (14th—16th centuries), a man was accused and tried in Venice (c.1550) for heresies, one of which was his claim that John was Christ’s catamite (cinedo di Cristo), an idea that apparently had a certain following in Italy at the time.
In England, Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) authored the famous homoerotic play Edward II (1591).
Then after his death, Richard Baines in a libel case claimed that Marlowe had professed that “St. John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ and leaned alwaies in his bosome, that he used him as the sinners of Sodome.”
Another playwright Thomas Kyd said that “He [Marlowe] would report St. John to be our Saviour Christ’s Alexis,” referring to the love which the Greek shepherd Corydon felt for the fair youth Alexis as described in Virgil’s Eclogues 2 and about which Marlowe had written in his poem “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.”
Later, the philosopher and jurist Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) devoted himself to trying to decriminalize homosexual relations in Britain, where hangings for this had increased.
In an only-partially published manuscript titled ‘Not Paul but Jesus,’ Bentham mentions the special fondness which Jesus had for John, and asked, “Could John have meant to imply that he and Jesus were lovers?”
Then he added, “[G]ood taste and . . . prudence would require us to turn aside” from such a “topic of extreme delicacy,” although at the same time a regard for human happiness, truth and justice still “compel” this author “to go over it
Modern scholars who believe that Jesus and his Beloved Disciple shared a homosexual relationship include: Hugh Montefiore (1969), Robert Williams (1992), Sjef van Tilborg (1993), John McNeill (1995), Rollan McCleary (2003), Robert E. Goss (2006), and James Neill (2009).
The United Reformed Church of Christ of Great Britain in its document Toward a Christian Understanding of Sexuality (1984) wrote that Jesus “may have . . . been homosexuality inclined.”
Psychoanalyst Richard C. Friedman (1988) viewed Jesus and his beloved disciple as having a homosexual marriage.
Rosemary Ruether (1978) and Nancy Wilson (1995) held that Jesus was bisexual. Going further in the other direction, Morton Smith (1973) suggested that as part of a secret baptismal ritual Jesus may have had physical union with more than one of his disciples.―although this view is based on a later ‘heretical’ text.
Theodore Jennings (2003) believes definitely that Jesus and John “were lovers,” although he notes that the Bible tells us nothing more about how Jesus and his Beloved shared their love beyond the physical intimacy described at the Last Supper.
Jesus was not a Nazerene but an Alexandrian Jew. His family moved to Judea when Jesus and his two brothers were very young. Jesus’ elder brother was a member of the agricultural Essene cult and Jesus joined this group.
During the Procuratorship of Antonius Felix (52 to 58 CE) Jesus amassed a mob of about 30,000 Palestinian Jewish dissidents, planning to attack Jerusalem and drive out the Roman garrison. One of Jesus’s Essene associates, a man named Judas, informed Felix of the impending raid and it was stopped by Roman troops with a heavy loss of life for the rebels. Many were taken prisoner, tried and crucified for rebellion against the Roman government but the period records show, very clearly, that the leader, Jesus from Alexandria, escaped and vanished into the desert.
Jesus was an Essene, and Christianity as we know it today evolved from this sect of Judaism, with which it shared many ideas and symbols
The Essenes, a Judean cult were an agricultural community that had a communistic approach to their life style. There was a common purse and shared wealth and much, if not most, of the first expressed Christian dogma came directly from the Essenes. Unfortunately, like the Spartans and Zulus who were essentially a military community cult, the agricultural Essenes were male-oriented and homosexual in nature. The Essenes were outlawed by the Romans, and many members were subsequently crucified in a general crackdown under Titus, not because of their sexual practices but because of their political opposition to Roman rule The small remnants of the Essenes retreated to the Dead Sea area and eventually died out.
The Essenes are discussed in detail by Josephus and Philo. Scholars believe that the community at Qumran that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls were Essenes, that Jesus was an Essene, and Christianity as we know it today evolved from this sect of Judaism, with which it shared many ideas and symbols The Essenes are best known today as the inhabitants from Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were located by Bedouins first in 1947. It is now known that they were closely affiliated with the Hasidim, a sectarian group that included the disciples of Hillel and Menahem the Essene who left for Damascus in 20 BCE.
The Essenes are discussed in detail by Josephus and Philo.

Urban Myths and Legends
• 999 phone charging myth is an urban legend which claims that calling the emergency services, then hanging up, charges mobile phone batteries
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• Aerial water bomber picking up scuba diver: about a water bomber, or a helicopter with a dangling water bucket, scooping up a scuba diver and dumping him or her on a wildfire site. Urban legend debunking site Snopes.com reports there are no proven cases of this happening in reality.
• The Ankle slicing car thief or The man under the car is an urban legend that tells of a driver that keeps hearing noises under their car when they are driving. When they step out of the car to investigate, their ankles get sliced open with a knife. And when they are rolling around on the ground in pain, a car thief emerges from underneath the car and steals it.
• A black dog is the name given to a being found primarily in the folklore of Great Britain and Ireland. The black dog is essentially a nocturnal apparition, often said to be associated with the devil or a hellhound. Its appearance was regarded as a portent of death. It is generally supposed to be larger than a normal dog, and often has large, glowing eyes. It is often associated with electrical storms (such as Black Shuck’s appearance at Bungay, Suffolk), and also with crossroads, places of execution and ancient pathways.
• Baby Train is an urban legend which claims that a small town had an unusually high birth rate because a train would pass through the town at 5:00 am and blow its whistle, waking up all the residents. Since it was too late to go back to sleep and too early to get up, couples would find other ways to amuse themselves in bed. This resulted in the mini-baby boom.
• Black-eyed children (or black-eyed kids) are an urban legend of supposed paranormal creatures that resemble children between the ages of 6 and 16, with pale skin and black eyes, who are reportedly seen hitchhiking or panhandling, or are encountered on doorsteps of residential homes. Tales of black-eyed children have appeared in pop culture since the late 1990s.Black Shuck, Old Shuck, Old Shock, or simply Shuck is the name given to a ghostly black dog which is said to roam the coastline and countryside of East Anglia. Accounts of the animal form part of the folklore of Norfolk, Suffolk, the Cambridgeshire fens and Essex.
Black Volga refers to a black Volga limousine that was allegedly used to abduct .
• The Blue star tattoo legend refers to a modern legend that LSD tabs are being distributed as lick-and-stick temporary tattoos to children.
• Bloody Mary is a folklore legend consisting of a ghost or spirit conjured to reveal the future. She is said to appear in a mirror when her name is called multiple times. The Bloody Mary apparition may be benign or malevolent, depending on historic variations of the legend. The Bloody Mary appearances are mostly “witnessed” in group participation games.
• Bunny Man is an urban legend that probably originated from two incidents in Fairfax County, Virginia, in 1970, but has been spread throughout the Washington D.C. area. There are many variations to the legend, but most involve a man wearing a rabbit costume (“bunny suit”) who attacks people with an axe.
• The chupacabra (Spanish pronunciation: [tʃupaˈkaβɾa], from chupar “to suck” and cabra “goat”, literally “goat sucker”) is a legendary cryptid rumored to inhabit parts of the Americas, with the first sightings reported in Puerto Rico. The name comes from the animal’s reported habit of attacking and drinking the blood of livestock, especially goats.
• Cow tipping purported activity of sneaking up on any unsuspecting or sleeping upright cow and pushing it over for entertainment.
• Creepypastas are horror-related legends or images that have been copy-pasted around the Internet. These Internet entries are often brief, user-generated, paranormal stories intended to scare readers. They include gruesome tales of murder, suicide, and otherworldly occurrences. People often (falsely) believe them to be true.
• The Curse of the Bambino was a superstition evolving from the failure of the Boston Red Sox baseball team to win the World Series in the 86-year period from 1918 to 2004. While some fans took the curse seriously, most used the expression in a tongue-in-cheek manner.
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• Hippo Eats Dwarf. An internet-spread urban legend about a circus performer being accidentally swallowed by a hippopotamus.
• The Hook, also called Hookman, is a classic example of an urban legend. Originating in post-war America, it recounts a story of a murderer with a hook prosthesis in place of a hand.
• JATO Rocket Car started as a Darwin Award winner where a driver strapped a pair of Jet Assisted Take Off JATO units to the rear of his car and ended up smashing into the side of a hill in Arizona. No police agency in Arizona took a report of this type of accident. The Arizona Department of Public Safety even issued a press release on their website debunking the report.
• Killer in the backseat (also known as High Beams) is a common car-crime urban legend well known mostly in the United States and United Kingdom. The legend involves a woman who is driving and being followed by a strange car or truck. The mysterious pursuer flashes his high beams, tailgates her and sometimes even rams her vehicle. When she finally makes it home, she realizes that the driver was trying to warn her that there was a man (a murderer, rapist, or escaped mental patient) hiding in her back seat. Each time the man sat up to attack her, the driver behind had used his high beams to scare the killer, after which he ducked down.
• Killswitch is a fictional video game. According to the legend, this game can only be played once – If your character dies or you manage to complete the game, the game will delete itself, and will leave no trace.
• Kuchisake-onna (口裂け女, “Slit-Mouthed Woman”) is a Japanese urban legend about the malevolent spirit, or onryō, of a mutilated woman. She is said to partially cover her face with a mask or object, and reportedly carries a sharp tool of some kind, such as a knife or a large pair of scissors.
The Licked Hand, known sometimes as possible the Doggy Lick or Humans Can Lick Too, is an urban legend popular among teenagers. The story describes a killer who secretly spends the night under a girl’s bed, licking her hand when offered, which she takes to be her dog.
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• Melody is dead is an urban legend claiming that Spanish singer Melody died in a plane accident.
• Nale Ba is a popular folk legend which features prominently in areas across Karnataka, India. “Naale Baa” (ನಾಳೆ ಬಾ in Kannada) has been found written on walls of small towns and villages for years now. Villagers write this on walls to deter the entry of malevolent spirit into their homes. The myth is that a witch roams the streets in the night and knocks on doors. The witch apparently speaks in the voices of one’s kin so that one would be deceived into opening the door. When the house dweller opens the door he dies.
• The Monkey-man of Delhi was a mysterious creature or criminal that was reported attacking locals near New Delhi in mid 2001. Most sources consider the monster an urban legend, and a creation brought on from exaggerated media hysteria, often compared to the Spring-heeled Jack epidemic during Victorian times.
• Paul is dead is an urban legend suggesting that Paul McCartney of the English rock band The Beatles died in 1966 and was secretly replaced by a look-alike.
• Phantom P-40 Airplane/pilot In its original form the pilot is a survivor of the 1941 Battle in the Philippines who wages a one-man war against the Japanese until his heavily-damaged aircraft crashes in China;a modern variation is that he crashes after flying from the Philippines to Pearl Harbor.
• Polybius is a fictitious arcade game, the subject of an urban legend that emerged in early 2000. It has served as inspiration for several free and commercial games by the same name.
• Sewer alligator is an urban legend based upon reports of alligator sightings in rather unorthodox locations, in particular New York City.
• Skeleton in a tree is an urban legend alleging that years after the defeat of St. Clair in 1791 at Fort Recovery, Mercer County, Ohio, the skeleton of a Captain Roger Vanderberg was found in Miami County, Ohio inside a tree, along with a diary. However, no one of this name was a casualty of the 1791 battle; the story originated in 1864 from a Scottish novel.
• Slender Man (also known as Slender man) is a fictional character that originated as an Internet meme created by Something Awful forums user Victor Surge in 2009. It is depicted as resembling a thin, unnaturally tall man with a blank and usually featureless face and wearing a black suit. The Slender Man is commonly said to stalk, abduct, or traumatize people, particularly children. The Slender Man is not tied to any particular story, but appears in many disparate works of fiction, mostly composed online.
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• Teke Teke (テケテケ) is the ghost of a young woman or schoolgirl who fell on a railway line, which resulted in her body being cut in half by a train. She is an onryō, or a vengeful spirit, who lurks around urban areas and train stations at night. Since she no longer has lower extremities, she travels on either her hands or elbows, dragging her upper torso and making a scratching or “teke teke”-like sound. If she encounters a potential victim, she will chase them and slice them in half at the torso with a scythe or other weapon.
• The Spider Bite or The Red Spot is a modern urban legend that emerged in Europe during the 1970s. It features a young woman who is bitten on the cheek by a spider. The bite swells into a large boil and soon bursts open to reveal hundreds of tiny spiders escaping from her cheek.
• Vanishing Lady a.k.a. Vanishing Hotel Room: During an international exposition in Paris, a daughter leaves her ill mother in a hotel room; when she comes back her mother is gone and the hotel staff claims to have no knowledge of the missing woman. It is later revealed that the mother was dying of a plague and, fearing for the negative impact on the hotel’s public image, the staff just disposed of the mother, redecorated the room and pretended as nothing had happened. Inspiration for the movie So Long at the Fair. Based upon a turn-of-the-century Philadelphia newspaper story.
• The Vanishing hitchhiker (or variations such as the ghostly hitchhiker, the disappearing hitchhiker, the phantom hitchhiker or simply the hitchhiker) story is an urban legend in which people traveling by vehicle meet with, or are accompanied by, a hitchhiker who subsequently vanishes without explanation, often from a moving vehicle. Vanishing hitchhikers have been reported for centuries and the story is found across the world with many variants. The popularity and endurance of the legend has helped it spread into popular culture.

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 16

Vancouver was enjoying a pleasant autumn weekend when the pair drove their large, black rented Cadillac up to a Canadian customs post at Blaine, Washington. Lars had on a baseball hat which topped his blonde hair and Chuck looked vaguely professorial with his dark beard. To allay the suspicions of the customs, they had dark glasses, a cooler of soft drinks in a bed of melted ice, a cheap video camera and a trunk full of suitcases, bags and a mesh bag of elderly apples.
The area under the spare tire had been enlarged to accommodate bags of fake money, two handguns and three boxes of ammunition.
The props proved to be useless because the bored official waved them through without even bothering to check their identification. After the drive into Vancouver, they crossed the Burrard Bridge and into the city itself.
They checked into a quiet hotel on Granville Street, registering as the Reverend Marcus MacCall and Dr. Hermann Schacht, an OBGYN from Michigan. As there happened to be both a conference of Lutheran ministers as well as a medical convention in Vancouver at the time, Chuck felt another doctor and preacher would pass unnoticed in the crowd. He had obtained stick-on badges from the convention center at the Bayshore Inn and carefully inked in their new identities.
When they left their room, pockets stuffed with fake money, red and white convention badges stuck to their lapels, they were soberly dressed as befitting professional men and they walked out the front door of the hotel, prepared to add to the growing problem of Canadian inflation. After all, as Chuck pointed out over breakfast, governments print up money that has no backing whatsoever and this worthless paper is accepted on its psychological value alone. There was very little difference between counterfeit money and genuine except the latter was usually of superior quality.
The first stop was the Hudson Bay department store where Chuck bought a nice cashmere scarf, a pair of leather gloves, a Harris tweed sport jacket, an expensive Swiss watch and a leather travel kit. Lars, who had less sophistication and a good deal more anxiety, bought a belt, a box of handkerchiefs, a watch, two pair of expensive sunglasses, a black trench coat and a pair of suede loafers.
There was no problem with the money and Lars was called “Doctor” a number of times while Chuck was able to discuss theology with a graduate student from Simon Fraser University that was moonlighting as a clerk.
This successful initial foray encouraged them to expand their activities and once they had left their new purchases in their room, they returned to the city and its myriad of expensive shops. Between them they had acquired nearly a thousand dollars in change, a sum that rapidly increased as the day progressed.
Before lunch they had purchased twenty three gold coins, jade ornaments, six valuable Japanese ivory minuke including a pornographic one that Chuck put on his key ring, four valuable British and American stamps, a pair of binoculars, two computers, a portable CD player, twenty three CDs, two boxes of condoms with frilled attachments, four boxes of expensive Cuban cigars, several Haida Indian relics, (one of which was authentic), a small box of illegal ivory scrimshaw, a suede jacket, a pair of diamond-studded cufflinks, a large diamond engagement ring and several very rare comic books.
In addition to this, they had taken in a total of ten thousand dollars in return cash.
Their activities continued into the early evening and the hotel room was rapidly filling up with loot. That evening, the pair enjoyed a pleasant dinner of smoked salmon, Beluga caviar, a very dry champagne and chocolate bomb glace au chocolate for dessert.
The only unpleasantness of the day came when a fat man with thick glasses and a label proclaiming Doctor Nestlerod, a proctologist from Miami, encountered them as they left the restaurant and insisted that he knew Doctor Schacht from Stanford medical school. Chuck extracted his crime partner from what could have proven to be an embarrassing situation by saying, as he took Lars by the arm,
“Please excuse us but my friend made a terrible mistake and drank the water here. If we don’t get him back to the hotel, there will be a lake of shit all over this lovely carpet.”
The fat man blinked at him.
“Jeez, I thought the water in Mexico was bad, not here.”
“Oh yes,” said Chuck over his shoulder as they walked out into the night, “that used to be true but things have changed since they’ve been dumping mercury into the drinking water. And watch out for the women. They have more claps than a football crowd. This seems to be the new capital for the Chinese Fall-Apart syndrome.”
The check, which came to nearly five hundred dollars, was paid for with fake bills and the forty-dollar tip came from the same source.
Early the next morning, Chuck put on the television set in his room to watch the early edition of the local news. It was no surprise to discover that the both the RCMP and the Vancouver public safety department were issuing a warning about counterfeit twenty dollar bills. The earnest announcer held up a bill while behind him appeared a list of the serial numbers of identified counterfeits. Chuck hastily scribbled down the information on the inside of a Gideon Bible and while Lars was still deep in sleep, he went through his suitcase of bills and removed all the blown numbers.
The rest of the program was about a famous heart surgeon who had run his car into a crosswalk filled with small children while very drunk.
The possibility of successfully passing bills was rapidly diminishing because soon enough, no one would take a twenty anywhere in Vancouver. That much Chuck determined from the tenor of the broadcast. As usual, arrests were expected momentarily and again, as usual, Chuck contemplated this information and decided how best to profit by it.
Since these bills were of exceptional quality, he decided to try a gambit that very few would have attempted. When he and Lars went out that day, Chuck had packets of bills, all of them either genuine or fakes with safe numbers. His first stop was a branch of the Bank of Canada on Granville Street. Leaving a nervous Lars sitting on a bench at a bus stop, Chuck walked up to a teller and asked to see the manager.
A few minutes later, he was sitting across from a thin man with the healed scar of a harelip and a very bad hairpiece that looked very much like roadkill.
He was still wearing his convention label and to increase confidence, he wore a black suit and a minister’s collar and vest.
The assistant manager was properly polite.
“And how may we help you, sir?”
Chuck pulled a thick wad of bills out of his coat pocket and put them on the desk in front of him.
“In this way, sir. You see I came up here for the conference at the Bayshore Inn and I gave my talk on the Early Days of Jesus. I suppose you’ve heard about that because it was in the ‘Vancouver Sun.’ And when I got here, I changed my money into Canadian currency but now….” he waved his hand helplessly in a small circle, “now, with all this talk of counterfeit bills, I am having the Devil’s own time trying to buy anything. I mean, the clerks get out magnifying glasses and so on. Very embarrassing of course. So, what I wondered was; can I bring in my Canadian money here and exchange it for American money?”
The assistant manager, a Mr. Crowe, picked up the stack of bills and began to examine them. He took a list of serial numbers that the police had been circulating and began to check the bills against it. And in with the twenties were many other denomination bills, all of which were completely genuine.
Although Chuck had nerves of steel, he was very nervous when the bank official began to look at some of the bills with a small magnifying glass.
“Well, Reverend…” he looked at Chuck’s label…”MacCall, I can understand your apprehensions. There’s a flood of bad money all over town and it is causing grave anxiety to the authorities and, of course, the banking community. As far as your money is concerned, I see a very serious problem for you….”
Chuck decided he could make it to the door before the functionary could press any effective buttons under his desk.
“Yes, a problem. You see, the exchange rate is not favorable to you at this point. The Canadian dollar has gone down ten cents against the American dollar in the last two days. I am perfectly willing to exchange these bills for you, sir, but I am afraid you will be taking a small loss.”
Chuck exhaled and smiled. The bank would be taking a large loss instead.
When he came out of the bank, Lars was munching on his finger ends.
“How did it go?”
“It went and so did the money. Oh my, look at that, Eric.”
Eric turned and saw that Chuck was pointing at another bank in the next block.
“Shall we go, Doctor? Willy Sutton was asked once why he robbed banks and he said because that’s where the money is.”
And during the course of the day, the pair visited every bank in Vancouver with the same profitable results.
Before his identity was given to the police, who by now were in a state of animal frenzy, Chuck and Lars checked out of the hotel, pleased that they had worn light cotton gloves in the room so as not to leave any fingerprints, got their rented Cadillac now loaded with loot, out of the hotel garage and moved to the Bayshore Inn. They had different, more casual clothing and they had reversed their hair coloring. Lars was back to his original black hair and Chuck had redyed his hair blonde. They discarded the nametags and got out new identification from the stash in the trunk and became professional photographers covering the dual conventions for “Time” magazine.
Later that afternoon, the local television stations kept interrupting their regular programming to announce that apparently a huge ring of counterfeiters was at work in Vancouver and that Ottawa had sent an entire plane load of RCMP specialists to capture the miscreants. Roadblocks were now being set up at all exits from the city and all passengers leaving at the Vancouver airport were being searched. Chuck watched this muted frenzy while demolishing an excellent chicken salad sandwich that room service had just brought to their large suite.
“See how excited people are, Lars? I think I bit off more than I could chew this time. We may have to hole up in Vancouver for a month until the furor dies down. It’s really a provincial town but I don’t think it would be wise to bug out of here with a car stuffed with all kinds of expensive loot and a trunk full of American money. No, I think that would be most unwise. Still, perhaps I can give them something to keep them busy. Finish your hamburger and I think we can go out and dispose of all the rest of the funny money.”
Lars was apprehensive.
“I don’t think we can pass any more of that stuff, Chuck. I really don’t think we should try to do that.”
“No,” said Chuck as he brushed off pieces of chicken from his lap, ” I had in mind giving it away to the good people of Vancouver. I just can’t shake this minister thing. I seem to want to be a genuine Christian and enrich the lives of all the poor people out there, people just waiting for that miracle that will help them pay off their bills or buy training bras for their nubile daughters. I would say for their sons too but this isn’t San Francisco. Finish that up and we can at least be real Christians who believe it is much better to give than to receive.”
His plan, like all good plans, was very simple. There were many tens of thousands of counterfeit dollars left in their trunk. They were by now completely worthless and very dangerous to possess so it was his idea not to pass the money but to distribute it all over Vancouver in the hopes that others would find it, not be aware of the fake numbers and hopefully get caught passing it. This, he reasoned, would take the heat off of the real operation and besides, Chuck did enjoy a good, creative joke.
During the course of the day, fake money was left in various places in the public library, in the bus terminal, in telephone booths, in various retail stores, in public lavatories, on the floors of restaurants, on the shelves of bank ATMs and dropped into mail boxes all over the city.
After darkness fell, they still had a considerable number of bills left so they made a tour of the residential parts of the city, Chuck driving while a laughing Lars shoveled out handfuls of money through the back windows of the car. In the brisk evening winds that blew in from the Strait, hundreds of twenty-dollar bills fluttered up onto lawns and into the gutters of quiet residential streets like leaves in an early autumn.
They returned to the Bayshore Inn, very tired, had a good meal in the dining room and went to bed before midnight.

(Continued)

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