TBR News February 27, 2020

The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. February 27, 2020:“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 it4
Commentary for February 27:”This coronavirus hysteria is, to perceptive persons, a matter of roaring good humor but to others, a terrible threat to the entire world. These lunatic matters crop up regularly and are screamed about and pressed to the sagging bosoms of a part of general society that believed in witches, the Angles of Mons, chemtrails, Planet X, Bigfoot, the Lost Continent of Atlantis, the Battle of Armageddon, the huge city under Antartican ice, the Loch Ness monster and other entertaining fictions. And when one sees: ‘Scientists have proven…’ one knows the following text was written by someone who take anti-depressants and wears a tin-foil hat to keep sinister forces from reading his thoughts. Here are more nonsense headlines pulled from today’s national and international ‘news’ sources:

• CDC confirms first case of unknown origin (?)
• Secretive church at center of South Korea’s explosive coronavirus outbreak
• Japan schools to close over coronavirus
• ‘Fatal mistake’ for countries to assume they won’t get coronavirus: WHO chief
• Iran coronavirus death toll reaches 26, Tehran Friday prayer canceled- Reuters

• Saudi Arabia bans foreign pilgrims as Japan closes schools
• Italy’s priests told to take steps at mass to counter coronavirus
• Damage could be ‘on scale of 2008 financial crisis’
• President plays down risk to Americans
• ‘Please visit Chinatown’: coronavirus fears empty San Francisco district- The Guardian

• Coronavirus Drives Stocks Down for 6th Day
• The virus, which has now spread to 47 countries, has put pressure on businesses and supply chains around the world.
• South Korea Confirms a Jump in Coronavirus Infections
• Japan Shocks Parents by Moving to Close All Schools- New York Times

• Coronavirus: Are less-developed EU countries more susceptible?
• Coronavirus outbreak hitting German supply chains with fears of economic paralysis
• How the coronavirus is spreading around the world – Deutsche Welle

• Dow plummets over 900 points as coronavirus panic week drags on
• Iran’s VP for women and family affairs is latest official to test positive for coronavirus– RT

• Coronavirus live updates: Fears grow of pandemic- Washington Post
• Coronavirus cases surge to 400 in Italy – BBC News
• Coronavirus latest: Brazil reports first case in South America- NBC News”

Trump Approval Rating
source                                           date            approve  disapprove
_____________________________________________________________________
American Research Group     Feb. 24, 2020          37%     59%

The Table of Contents
• NSA’s controversial $100 million phone surveillance programme led to zero arrests
• Tesla weapons testing in the Australin Outback?
• TWA Flight 800: The Gathering of the Nuts
• Planet X or 10th planet
• The Great Mortgage Scandal
• The Season of Evil
• The Encyclopedia of American Loons

NSA’s controversial $100 million phone surveillance programme led to zero arrests
February 26, 2020
by Oliver O’Connell
The Independent
A National Security Agency (NSA) programme that analysed logs of phone calls and text messages made by Americans cost $100m and yielded one investigation and zero arrests from 2015 to 2019.
In that same period it also only twice produced new information that the FBI did not already know, and 13 leads they already had, according to a new study by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), which briefed Congress this week.
The low success rate and high cost support the NSA’s decision to shut off the programme in 2019. Politicians must now decide whether to allow the expiration of the legislation that makes the programme possible. The USA Freedom Act of 2015 expires on March 15.
The Trump administration would like lawmakers to extend the life of the legislation, giving the NSA the option to turn the system back on again in the future.
The programme had other problems too. The 2015 Act shifted responsibility for data collection from the government to telecommunications companies. In some cases they would send the agency more data than they were legally allowed to collect.
Should it need to, the government could still have access to phone logs through other means, such as through traditional subpoenas or alternatively through NSA collection abroad, where there are fewer legal limits.
The PCLOB does not reveal specifics about the one investigation related to the programme, but The New York Times notes that the two leads led to the vetting of one individual, and the second related to a telephone number and led to the opening of a foreign intelligence investigation.
The programme also provided information relating to two acts of terrorism — the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando in June 2016, and the machete attack on the campus of Ohio State in November 2016.

Tesla weapons testing in the Australin Outback?
A study in lunacy and mass hysteria
by Christian Jürs
In 1995, British born Geologist/Geophysicist, Harry Mason, stumbled across a strange, unaccountable earthquake which rumbled across the vast open spaces of Western Australia two years earlier.
The event took place at 11.03 p.m., on 28 May 1993 with an epi-centre close to Banjawarn sheep station in the Leonora-Laverton area – North-west of Perth. The event registered 3.7 on the Richter scale and was assumed to have been the first ever recorded quake in that part of Australia. Mason, who was very familiar with the region and it’s geological composition, was intrigued. Initially believing the tremor was the result of a meteorite impact, he set about gathering detailed data.
Eyewitnesses reported sighting a fireball trailing across the sky just minutes before the subsequent tremor. This was followed by a bright blue flash and shortly afterwards, by an earth tremor measuring 3.7 on the Richter scale. Shortly following this a“ large hemisphere of orange light, lined with a silverish glow, rose above the apparent blast site.”[xvii] Extra ordinarily ,the dome of light remained in place for two hours, and then rapidly vanished like “someone turning off a switch.”
Extensive interviews soon revealed to Mason,a number of major inconsistencies with his meteorite theory. For one thing the object was heard before it arrived overhead and clearly was moving at a sub-sonic speed. Aware that meteorites generally have entry speeds of around 25,000 mph, Mason was bemused.
In addition the object gave of “no sparks or other drop off fragments, and appeared to arc up over the observers before seeming to plunge down to the North.” Moreover, the fireball emitted
“a fiery spherical white-blue-yellow light…” and “…flew at relatively low altitude,” and “emitted a regular pulsed swooshing roar” similar to a Diesel freight train engine roar]
Some witnesses told Mason they thought they had observed a jumbo jet or plane crash. Subsequent flights over the estimated impact site revealed no crater or blast damage.
As his detailed investigation continued, Mason became increasingly convinced that the Banjawarn event was not a meteor.[xxi] In time, his thoughts increasingly turned towards the peculiar group that had purchased the Banjawarn sheep station in late April 1993. Representatives of Aum Shinrikyo had first arrived at the station in early April 1993 and commenced negotiations to buy the property 5 weeks before the powerful quake. By May 1993, 4 other Aum members, including a nuclear physicist arrived on site. By September 1993, Guru Shoko Asahara, arrived with his entourage and remained for a few weeks.
Throughout, a series of unusual geological investigations by Aum scientists in, and around Banjawarn, were undertaken.
These involved the curious activities of Aum’s chief arms dealer, Kiyode Hayakawa. Visiting Banjawarn station, he set about conducting extensive electromagnetic tests with electronic probes. The data he accumulated was fed into a laptop computer. Hayakawa remains central to the story. He had extraordinarily good contacts in Russia, travelling there no less than 21 times and repeatedly meeting with the chief of Russia’s Security Council. It was Hayakawa who decided to purchase the sheep station, just days prior to the energy event and subsequent ground tremor.
In researching part in the Aum story, journalist Jack Amano, is convinced that Hayakawa’s sojourns to Russia reaped rewards: “Aum’s Russian scientists had provided detailed designs and the theoretical grounding to develop a technology more powerful even than the ultimate weapon predicted by Asahara.”
Not least in the Aum efforts, was the acquisition of related US weapons data obtained by hacking into “sensitive US databases.” This, with the aid of Japanese government funding, Russian technological know-how and advanced equipment provided by major Japanese transnational corporations, a terrifyingly powerful super-weapon was being constructed in secret.
Meanwhile, Geologist, Harry Mason, was gathering information that made him pause for thought. Intriguingly, just a few kilometres from Banjawarn, is a military facility located at Laverton. Mason says that press photo’s of this facility “are identical” to the Alaskan HAARP (High-frequency Active Aural Research Project) programme. HAARP has received intense media speculation in recent years, due to its Tesla-like research programme.
In an early, detailed essay, Mason concludes “One is certainly left with the impression that someone has been utilising the Leonora-Laverton region as their own private testing ground.” In a private telephone conversation with the US Senate Investigations Chief Council, Dan Gerber,
Mason was told that Aum had “developed” nuclear bombs and were thought to be conducting a “crash” programme to build an “Earthquake Inducing Weapon.”
As he continued his research, Mason began to gather a significant amount of additional data relating to what he terms “beam events.” These are bright beams of light that hang suspended from the sky, often for prolonged periods. He states that these include “orange beams, small bright white lights and vivid blue-white energy discharges” in the more uninhabited regions of Australia.
These also include observations of “diffuse orange energy ‘cylinders’ coming down and striking the ground, whilst clouds overhead light up with exotic colours.” These beams, some experts believe, are a clear “signature” of Scalar wave weapons.
In addition there have been other unexplained “fireball” events – notably a 1st May 1995 explosion above Perth, estimated to have been in excess of 1 megaton of TNT energy equivalence.
US NAVY TO THE RESCUE?
Additional investigation by Mason centred on the South East Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia. An area unknown for earthquake activity until 1970, an amazing 173 tremors measuring between 3-0 on the Richter scale occurred between 1970-3, with the majority between March and early October 1970.
The epicentres of these events are spaced exactly 10 kilometres apart, along “8 lines each 50-70 km long. Several similar events have occurred subsequently. With the present figure standing at 246 (through 1995), Mason concludes they are “abnormally regular,” and believes Australia is being surreptitiously used as a testing ground for advanced “scalar E/M weapons exercises. Originally, Mason thought these tests may have been of Russian KGB – or more probably French origin.”[xxvii] However, recent data points to Scalar EM weapon tests conducted from the top secret US Navy Exmouth Peninsula Tx facility.
The US Navy connection is intriguing.
It was the US Navy who were responsible for Project “Prime Argus” – a precursor programme to HAARP. Argus was responsible for exploding three atomic bombs in the Van Allen belts and, thereafter monitoring the resultant effects. Researchers who have recently investigated the son of Argus, project HAARP, maintain this is an advanced weapon system capable of acting as an impenetrable planetary-wide missile shield.” Behind the construction of HAARP lay the scientific patents of Bernard J. Eastlund.
Previously classified as Secret, Eastlund’s patents are now partly available for inspection. They are revealing for the sheer scope of what the HAARP project may be capable of, including “weather modification.”
Eastlund had in fact used much of Tesla’s work to arrive at his concepts, a fact he openly acknowledged. Moreover, the original Prime Argus project was also concerned with looking “at ways to cause earthquakes.”
Whether Tesla’s earthquake inducing devices, and other terrifying weapons of mass destruction are being secretly tested by the major powers is, so far, unproved. But the fact remains that serious military research demonstrates these are within grasp. Who knows, they may even have been grasped – considering the 100 year lead-time of Tesla’s inventions. Those of us closeted outside the secret world of weapons research are left to squint and speculate.
Weapons that can mimic cataclysmic natural disasters open a Pandora’s box of deniability, and are, therefore, of great value in today’s “I didn’t do it” doctrine of political survival. The fact that Aum did acquire significant advanced weapons from Russia, and that Japan is presently re-militarising itself as part of the- “China containment” strategy must be of concern – even disregarding the dark visions of the prophet Nichiren and his festering adherents inside Soka Gakkai and the Japanese military, industrial and intelligence complex.
Similarly, one cannot disregard the EM weapon advances of the US, nor forget the touted joint US-Soviet-Japanese missile shield, which might easily switch from defensive to offensive posture? If we are on the brink of a new class of weapons so terrifying in their destructive potential that they prompted Kruschev to sound his warning 36 years ago, should not the public at least be permitted knowledge of what is being done in their name and with their tax dollars? Apparently not. As ever, Joe and Jane citizen are to be left blinking in ignorance – a fact their masters regard as “blissful” – as they are Goose-stepped into a brave new world.
In one experiment in 1896, Tesla accidentally triggered an earthquake across a dozen New York city blocks. This, Tesla later said, was caused “by a little piece of apparatus you could slip in your pocket.” As local police stormed his lab, the wily inventor lifted a sledge-hammer and smashed the oscillator to pieces, bringing an end to the pandemonium

TWA Flight 800: The Gathering of the Nuts
Whenever a disaster happens that, unlike a volcanic eruption or a huge forest fire, cannot be immediately explained, a great gathering of self-serving individuals begin to spout forth theories, plans, tales of “secret documents,’ and “confidential communications” with unnamed “experts.” The purpose of expounding these weird tales generally is to draw attention to the expounder. That no reputable segment of any media bothers with discussing these theories is always attributed to control by an irate Government who are furious at the brilliance of the theorist and who spend endless hours spying on them, opening their solicitations from NAMBLA and installing microphones in their desks at the local Humane Society.
As a case in point, let us consider a well-known tragedy. First come the actual facts and then the actual fictions.
On July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747-131 registered as N93119, took off from John F. Kennedy International Airport (New York) enroute to Charles De Gaulle International Airport (Paris).
The aircraft was flying more than eight miles off the cost of East Moriches, New York (part of Long Island) when the fuel tank exploded. The aircraft banked and the front part of the aircraft broke off. The wind pushed the aircraft into a climb. Then, the aircraft went into a dive, causing the wings to break off the aircraft. Pieces of the aircraft plummeted down into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 230 passengers on board.
After what has been billed as the longest and most expensive accident investigation in American aviation history, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation found that the flammable fuel/air mixture of the center wing fuel tank probably ignited due to electrical failure in the center fuel tank, causing the plane to explode in flight. The FBI agreed that there had been no criminal act after examining all the plane’s wreckage that had been recovered. In May of 1997, mechanics discovered a fuel leak in a Boeing 737-200 that they believed was caused by the kind of electrical arcing suspected of causing the TWA Flight 800 fatal explosion. NTSB investigators believed that the same kind of arcing from the wiring in the center fuel tank of TWA Flight 800 sparked the explosion that brought the plane down. As a result of extensive and very through testing, the NTSB issued an “airworthiness directive” requiring the immediate inspection of the wiring of older 747s. In April, it recommended further inspections and design changes in the wiring of 747s and in Boeing 707s and C-130 transport planes, as well.
Eight years after the crash, in February 2004, the FAA indicated that it would start the process of ordering airlines to install a fuel tank inerting system in most of their aircraft. It was stated that the order would probably actually be issued within two years, and then the airlines would be required to install the devices over the subsequent seven years. The FAA stated that, including the TWA Flight 800 crash, there had been three fuel tank explosions in airliners over the previous 14 years (the two others having occurred on the ground),
Various groups and individuals continue to maintain that the plane was downed by a bomb or missile, and that there was a subsequent cover-up to disguise the real cause of the crash.
The “terrorist theory” was, as usual, one of the first to be mentioned, especially due to the fact that the accident happened during the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, where a bomb exploded ten days later. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks, these alternate explanations have been revisited, as some officials and commentators have mentioned this disaster among lists of terrorist attacks. Cmdr. William S. Donaldson, a retired Naval officer who conducted an independent investigation, disagrees with the official theory. According to Commander Donaldson, “jet airliners built by the American aerospace industry have logged at least 150 thousand years of flight time. Not once has there ever been a spontaneous fuel tank explosion on any fuel tank while airborne” (Letter to NTSB 11-14-97).
Donaldson concluded that the airplane was “shot down by missiles.” He interviewed hundreds of witnesses and said he reconstructed the flight paths of these missiles by triangulating the eyewitness accounts. Soon after, a photo that a passenger of a North American Airlines plane arriving at JFK supposedly took, seemed to support the missile theory because the “photo” showed a “missile” missing the NA Airlines jet narrowly.
Pierre Salinger, a former White House press secretary to President John F. Kennedy and ABC News journalist, prominently and repeatedly claimed he had proof that the flight was downed by a missile from a U.S. Navy ship. The documents on which he relied were later found to be vague rumors that had been distributed over Usenet, with attributions only to many “unnamed experts”. Some people briefly gave the name of Pierre Salinger Syndrome to the tendency to believe things that one reads on the bloggers of the Internet.
One such theory has the US Navy conducting tests of submarine-to-air missiles, accidentally hitting Flight 800, and then covering up the fatal error. After initial denials, the U.S. Navy later admitted that USS Wyoming (SSBN-742), commissioned only days before, was conducting sea trials in the area, and that USS Trepang (SSN-674) and USS Albuquerque (SSN-706) were conducting unspecified operations in the area. It should be noted that all three of these submarines lacked any surface to air missile armament as part of their standard munitions loadout (as do all submarines). It is possible that any of the three subs could have been carrying MANPADS missiles. However all three subs were more than 50 miles (80 km) away from the crash site, very far outside the range of any MANPADS missile in the world. One suggested possibility is that the type of missile involved may be classified.
Another possible alternate theory involving the US Navy is that a missile was fired from the USS Normandy (CG-60), operating 185 nautical miles (340 km) south of the TWA 800 crash site. This is well outside of the range of currently deployed Standard Missiles carried by US ships, almost double the range of the current Block IIIB versions, and just within the future Block IV ER versions. Even if this were a test of a Block IV version, although there is no evidence for this, at the extreme range in question the engine would have long burned out and the warhead would be gliding. This contradicts the main claim that a missile was involved, which is a number of eyewitness accounts claiming to have seen “a missile trail almost vertical under the explosion site.” Furthermore, inventories of USS Normandy’s missile complement immediately following the crash of TWA 800 showed no missiles missing from the inventory, according to the US Navy
Regardless of the very faint possibility of any number of missiles and missile launch platforms being in the vicinity of TWA 800 at the time of the accident, no evidence of any kind of a missile impact exists within the recovered wreckage, according to a study conducted by the Department of Defense’s Office of Special Technology
However, at least one individual involved at higher levels with the FBI’s portion of the recovery operations has stated publicly that he saw during his involvement predominant evidence in the state of the wreckage, the form of the wreckage field, the state of the victim’s remains, public and confidential actions by the airlines, investigation officials, and the Navy following the event, and other factors that convinced him the crash was the result of an “accidental missile strike.” Unfortunately, they have neglected to produce their evidence, claiming that the FBI and the CIA broke into their apartment and stole it, along with certain magazines, a picture of Matt Drudge in a leather thong and a six pack of warm beer.
One of the usual “reliable eyewitnesses” was a Malvina Tidwell of Long Island who claimed she and her husband, Oscar, (since desceaed) “positively identified” an Arab submarine, firing rockets, from their vantage point of the beach where they were looking for driftwood. “I knew it was an Arab sub,” Tidwell said, “because they had men with beards running around the deck and a green flag with Arab writing on it.” Mrs Tidwell is legally blind and her husband, who also gave a long interview to the alternative media, was suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s Disease and believed that he was the illigetimate son of Harry Truman.
For instance, the following affidavit, dated January 2003 (and which looks very much like blogger information that was passed around the internet shortly after the crash), is being listed as one of the “articles of evidence” in recent FOIA suits pressed by Captain Ray Lahr against the National Transportation Safety Board: This document states he viewed “radar tapes” and took part in “phone conversations” which convinced him Flight 800 was a victim of friendly fire, and that he later passed on this information to Pierre Salinger (Note such anomalies as the doubling of every statement in the affidavit, the second half being a reworded version of the first half).
Elaine Scarry, in a number of articles in the New York Review of Books, has raised the possibility of electromagnetic interference being responsible for the accident. It has also been suggested that an electronic death ray developed by the brilliant Nicholas Tesla and utilized by a mysterious group calling itself the Hidden Hand brought down the plane in furtherance of a plan that no one seems to know about. The Hidden Hand was supposed to have detonated an atomic bomb over Houston, Texas on Christmas Day of 2004 but apparently was unsuccessful as Houston, unfortunately, is still intact.
A number of strange “alternate theories” surrounding TWA 800 relied on so-called eye witness accounts as collected by the FBI. However, very few of the witnesses were within five miles (8 km) of TWA 800 at the time of the accident, according to a witness map provided by the NTSB. The vast majority of the witnesses were too far away from the accident scene to discern any significant details, and some witnesses describe events that are well beyond the visual acuity of humans
Ex- CBS Investigator Kristina Borjesson, (email: FKLB@aol.com) and co-workers (including Oliver Stone) were on a documentary project for ABC, until it was aborted. Ms. Borjesson’s “documentary” involved the scores of the usual “eyewitnesses” who were desperate for their fifteen minutes of fame and who claimed they saw “something streaking from the ocean toward the plane.” This documentary was for a show, Declassified, that was being produced by Oliver Stone and slated to air on ABC. But the Stone connection grew controversial, and ABC canceled the program. CBS also immediately dissociated itself from Ms. Borjesson. Josh Howard, a senior producer at 60 Minutes, said, “Her official relationship with CBS ended before she pitched that story. (About mythic ‘rocket fuel’ being found on a strip of cloth alleged to have come from one of the passenger seats on Flight 800) She had maybe a month to go on her contract. She was anxiously looking around for other projects to prolong her employment.”
The 800 flight number was retired and replaced with flight 924 after the crash, although TWA continued to operate flights between New York and Paris. In Spring 2001, TWA merged with American Airlines. Of the exposers of the Real Truth, throughly discredited Pierre Salinger has since died and Ms Borjesson has slipped into professional oblivion, along with many others.

Planet X or 10th planet
There is no known Planet X or 10th planet in our solar system. Scientists have been looking for about a hundred years. It was believed that such a planet was required to explain the orbital characteristics of the outer planets Uranus and Neptune. Many searches have been performed and, to date, no evidence of such a planet has emerged. In addition, better information about the masses of outer planets has also now shown that no other planets are necessary to explain the planetary orbits.
You can get a good historical account of the searches for “Planet X” at: http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/billa/tnp/hypo.html#planetx

The Great Mortgage Scandal
MERS = Mortgage Electronic Registration Inc.holds approximately 60 million Amerrican mortgages and is a Delaware corporation whose sole shareholder is Mers Corp. MersCorp and its specified members have agreed to include the MERS corporate name on any mortgage that was executed in conjunction with any mortgage loan made by any member of MersCorp. Thus in place of the original lender being named as the mortgagee on the mortgage that is supposed to secure their loan, MERS is named as the “nominee” for the lender who actually loaned the money to the borrower. In other words MERS is really nothing more than a name that is used on the mortgage instrument in place of the actual lender. MERS’ primary function, therefore, is to act as a document custodian. MERS was created solely to simplify the process of transferring mortgages by avoiding the need to re-record liens – and pay county recorder filing fees – each time a loan is assigned. Instead, servicers record loans only once and MERS’ electronic system monitors transfers and facilitates the trading of notes. It has very conserbatively estimated that as of February, 2010, over half of all new residential mortgage loans in the United States are registered with MERS and recorded in county recording offices in MERS’ name
MersCorp was the created in the early 1990’s by the former C.E.O.’s of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Indy Mac, Countrywide, Stewart Title Insurance and the American Land Title Association. The executives of these companies lined their pockets with billions of dollars of unearned bonuses and free stock by creating so-called mortgage backed securities using bogus mortgage loans to unqualified borrowers thereby creating a huge false demand for residential homes and thereby falsely inflating the value of those homes. MERS marketing claims that its “paperless systems fit within the legal framework of the laws of all fifty states” are now being vetted by courts and legal commentators throughout the country.
The MERS paperless system is the type of crooked rip-off scheme that is has been seen for generations past in the crooked financial world. In this present case, MERS was created in the boardrooms of the most powerful and controlling members of the American financial institutions. This gigantic scheme completely ignored long standing law of commerce relating to mortgage lending and did so for its own prsonal gain. That the inevitable collapse of the crooked mortgage swindles would lead to terrible national reprecussions was a matter of little or no interest to the upper levels of America’s banking and financial world because the only interest of these entities was to grab the money of suckers, keep it in the form of ficticious bonuses, real estate and very large accounts in foreign banks.. The effect of this system has led to catastrophic metldown on both the American and global economy.
MERS, it has clearly been proven in many civil cases, does not hold any promissory notes of any kind.. A party must have possession of a promissory note in order to have standing to enforce and/or otherwise collect a debt that is owed to another party. Given this clear-cut legal definition, MERS does not have legal standing to enforce or collect on the over 60 million mortgages it controls and no member of MERS has any standing in an American civil court.
MERS has been taken to civil courts across the country and charged with a lack of standing in reprossion issues. When the mortgage debacle initially, and invevitably, began, MERS always rotinely broght actions against defauilting mortgage holders purporting to represent the owners of the defaulted mortgages but once the courts discovered that MERS was only a front organization that did not hold any deed nor was aware of who or what agencies might hold a deed, they have been routinely been denied in their attempts to force foreclosure. In the past, persons alleging they were officials of MERS in foreclosure motions, purported to be the holders of the mortgage, when, in fact, they nor only were not the holder of the mortgage but, under a court order, could not produce the identity of the actual holder. These so-called MERS officers have usually been just employees of entities who are servicing the loan for the actual lender. MERS, it is now widely acknowledged by the courty, has no legal right to foreclose or otherwise collect debt which are evidenced by promissory notes held by someone else.
The American media routinely identifies MERS as a mortgage lender, creditor, and mortgage company, when in point of fact MERS has never loaned so much as a dollar to anyone, is not a creditor and is not a mortgage company. MERS is merely a name that is printed on mortgages, purporting to give MERS some sort of legal status, in the matter of a loan made by a completely different and almost always,a totally unknown enitity.
The infamous collapse of the American housing bubble originated, in the main, with one Angelo Mozilo, CEO of the later failed Countrywide Mortgage.
Mozilo started working in his father’s butcher shop, in the Bronx, when he was ten years old. He graduated from Fordham in 1960, and that year he met David Loeb.. In 1968, Mozilo and Loeb created a new mortgage company, Countrywide, together. Mozilo believed the company should make special efforts to lower the barrier for minorities and others who had been excluded from homeownership. Loeb died in 2003
The standard Countrywide procedure was to openly solicit persons who either had no credit or could not obtain it, and, by the use of false credit reports drawn up in their offices, arrange mortgages. The new home owners were barely able to meet the minimum interest only payments and when, as always happens, the mortgage payments are increased to far, far more than could be paid, defaults and repossessions were inevitable. Countrywide sold these mortgages to lower-tier banks which in turn, put them together in packages and sold them to the large American banks. These so-called “bundled mortgages” were quickly sold these major banking houses to many foreign investors with the comments that when the payments increased, so also would the income from the original mortgage. In 1996, Countrywide created a new subsidiary for subprime loans..
At one point in time,Countrywide Financial Corporation was regarded with awe in the business world. In 2003, Fortune observed that Countrywide was expected to write $400 billion in home loans and earn $1.9 billion. Countrywide’s chairman and C.E.O., Angelo Mozilo, did rather well himself. In 2003, he received nearly $33 million in compensation. By that same year, Wall Street had become addicted to home loans, which bankers used to create immensely lucrative mortgage-backed securities and, later, collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.s—and Countrywide was their biggest supplier. Under Mozilo’s leadership, Countrywide’s growth had been astonishing.
He was aiming to achieve a market share—thirty to forty per cent—that was far greater than anyone in the financial-services industry had ever attained. For several years, Countrywide continued to thrive. Then, inevitably, in 2007, subprime defaults began to rocket upwards , forcing the top American bankers to abandoned the mortgage-backed securities they had previously prized. It was obvious to them that the fraudulent mortgages engendered by Countrywide had been highly suceessful as a marketinig program but it was obvious to eveyone concerned, at all levels, that the mortgages based entirely on false and misleading credit information were bound to eventually default. In August of 2007, the top American bankers cut off
Countrywide’s short-term funding, which seriously hindered its ability to operate, and in just a few months following this abandonment, Mozilo was forced to choose between bankruptcy orselling out to the best bidder.. In January, 2008, Bank of America announced that it would buy the company for a fraction of what Countrywide was worth at its peak. Mozilo was subsequently named a defendant in more than a hundred civil lawsuits and a target of a criminal investigation. On June 4th, 2007 the S.E.C., in a civil suit, charged Mozilo, David Sambol, and Eric Sieracki with securities fraud; Mozilo was also charged with insider trading. The complaint formalized a public indictment of Mozilo as an icon of corporate malfeasance and greed.
In essence, not only bad credit risks were used to create and sell mortgages on American homes that were essentially worthless. By grouping all of these together and selling them abroad, the banks all made huge profits. When the kissing had to stop, there were two major groups holding the financial bag. The first were the investors and the second were, not those with weak credit, but those who had excellent credit and who were able, and willing to pay off their mortgages.
Unfortunately, as no one knows who owns the title to any home, when the legitimate mortgage holder finally pays off his mortgage, or tries to sell his house, a clear title to said house or property cannot ever be found so, in essence, the innocent mortgage payer can never own or sell his house. This is a terrible economic time bomb quietly ticking away under the feet of the Bank of America and if, and when, it explodes, another bank is but a fond memory.

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 inaccuratre.

Frienze, Italy
July 2018-August 2019

Chapter 99

There were more platitudes and finally he finished by quoting from Hamlet:
“’May flights of angles sing him to his rest.’”
There was a rustling in the church as he descended and returned to the pew. Sitting next to him, Claude poked Chuck in the ribs and said out of the corner of his mouth,
“Jesus, Charlie, you do lie, don’t you? I had to reach over and jab old Alex to keep him from screwing up. What do we do now?”
“Wait until the circus is over, look sad, walk out, get into the car, go home and get ready for dinner tonight.”
Lupin leaned over.
“Mr. Rush, there are two gentlemen from the French Embassy who are frantic to talk with you. I took the liberty of advising them that you might give them a few moments of your time after the services. Was I amiss?”
It was the Virgin of St. Malo, Chuck thought, and he might as well do something about her now that he had control over her destiny.
“Of course. Bring them over after the services.”
The services ended, the casket was wheeled down the aisle with the family behind it as the string orchestra in the choir loft played the opening section of the Requiem by Gilles. To the solemn beat of drums, Charles Rush moved towards the front portal of his father’s church and permanent oblivion in a cemetery miles away from the marble family vault. He had kept his murdered sister and brother from being interred on the estate and now his nephew had returned the courtesy.
As the casket was being pushed into the hearse and attendants were carrying a number of the floral tributes up the aisle to put into the second vehicle, Chuck endured the attentions of the television media once again before climbing into his own car.
“My God, what a pleasant way to spend the afternoon,” he said as he leaned back against the seat.
Gwen kicked off her expensive Italian shoes and rubbed her feet.
“Tell me about it. My feet really hurt. And Alex, love, Chuck ought to slap the shit out of you for mugging him. Jesus Christ, what an asshole!”
“Well, don’t bend over,” Alex said, and she hit him on the top of his head with a shoe.
“Chill out, Gwen,” Claude said. “If it wasn’t for Alex, we wouldn’t be riding in this great car, would we?”
“My feet wouldn’t be killing me either you French freak. When I get home, I’m going to get in a hot tub and stay there for hours and hours.”
“My,” Alex said, rubbing his head, “can we all join you, Gwen?”
“Shut up, asshole!”
“Oh, Mommy, that’s not nice to talk that way to your very own kid. You’ll turn me into some kind of a psycho that wets his bed and puts cats in the microwave.”
Alex suddenly remembered Mr. Smoky and smiled.
That was the name of the gray, bloated and very lethargic Persian cat that was beloved by Miss Geer, his detested math teacher. On very special days, she would bring her obese cat to school in a special cage and let the class admire him as he lay like a hairy stuffed toy on her desk. Little Ardelia Crotchrot (her real name was Krockman) was permitted to attend Mr. Smoky and feed him treats from a box old Geer kept in her desk.
Alex loathed his pinch-faced teacher because she obviously hated him and took every opportunity to humiliate him in front of the class. Why she did this Alex never knew but in truth it was because his mother once called her a dried up old whore when Miss Geer took exception to Bambi’s torrid romance with her favorite school janitor.
Alex paid the price for his mother’s crudity and eventually, his math teacher paid her own bill with Alex.
One pleasant spring day after a particularly prolonged session of mockery in class, Alex walked past the Geer house with the intention of breaking one of her windows.
The teacher had gone out but he saw the detested cat asleep on the front porch.
Observing that its ornate cage was sitting beside it on the doormat, Alex immediately lost interest in glass smashing and instead, picked up the unresisting cat and stuffed it into its cage.
The teacher lived within view of the river and it was only a matter of minutes before Alex found himself and Mr. Smoky on the edge of the bluff. They soon parted company as the cage and its contents described an arc through the air and plunged into the water.
The cat, who was so fat that he spent most of his time asleep, came fully awake as he sank into the water and then drowned in a flurry of unaccustomed activity.
Alex walked home filled with satisfaction and a chocolate shake he bought at a local store. He never patronized places that catered to students because they generally made his life miserable but today, he decided to risk mockery.
The next day, the math class was taught by a substitute and someone commented that the regular teacher had been seen tacking notices to utility poles and trees throughout her neighborhood.
The police had been called but they had better things to do than to search for kidnapped cats and Mr. Smoky gradually turned into something very ugly as the battered cage lay on the bed of the murky river, jammed up against the decaying remains of a bicycle.
Miss Geer was never quite the same again and seemed to have lost her interest in harassing the weaker of her students. She also lost interest in a number of other things and one Monday morning when she failed to show up for classes, the police found her hanging from a rafter in her garage with a picture of her cat propped up on an old refrigerator.
When Ardelia passed a styrofoam cup around the class for contributions for a wreath, Alex spit into it.

(Continued)

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

The Encyclopedia of American Loons

James Redfield

James Redfield is the author of the novel The Celestine Prophecy, which has come to be viewed as something of a spiritual guide for the New Age by a substantial group of very silly people (“This book is very simply about how we get and use energy. When we get enough energy, in the right ways, we can ‘raise our vibration.’ With a higher vibration we are better able to tap into our psychic and intuitive skills, and thus are better able to discover and live our true purpose in life,” says one reader who, we suspect, wouldn’t be able to define “energy” (or “vibration”) if her or his life depended on it. Redfield himself treats his novel very much that way, too, in addition to using it as the basis for a very material industry that includes newsletters (The Celestine Journal: Exploring Spiritual Transformation), sequels (The Tenth Insight, which “will take you through portals into other dimensions,” The Secret of Shambhala; In Search of the Eleventh Insightand The Twelfth Insight: The Hour of Decision), audio tapes and CDs. The book is discussed in detail here. There are hints of L. Ron Hubbard. This is a cult.
Most of the teachings gleaned from his writings consist of vague gesturing about (never-defined) energies and vibrations, and, in particular, on how to increase your energy level in order to vibrate harder, because that is apparently good for you. However, for some reasons these energies and vibrations mean that for “half a century now, a new consciousness has been entering the human world, a new awareness that can only be called transcendent, spiritual. If you find yourself reading this book, then perhaps you already sense what is happening, already feel it inside.” Like most millenialist prophecies, we are always already on the verge, it seems. And how should you prepare for this consciousness? You should, according to Redfield, avoid the negative (you can tell good from bad people by their eyes), quell your doubts, follow your intuitions, adopt a teleological worldview, tap into collective consciousness and evolve. Apparently it is no coincidence that coincidences are happening more and more frequently at present, as Redfield sees it, though there are of course really none. Good lord.
In fairness, there are some more concrete events described in the novel, too (concerning mysterious insight into vibrations set down by Mayans in the 6thcentury in Aramaic(!)), but those are fictional, and Redfield’s followers should take them seriously but not literally (perhaps you should vibrate at the frequency of their post-truth truthiness?). The novel also reminds you about the restlessness of contemporary life and focus on material goods – a deeply profound revelation, isn’t it? – and advices readers to care about auras instead.
In any case, the book is supposed to convey nine “deep” insights, primarily about subtle energies (previously undetected by science, but which forms the basis of all things – how does he know about them? The insights of the Arameic-speaking Mayans that he invented, of course; silly you) that you can freely tap into by mystical experiences (unless blocked by childhood traumas, which can make you a psychic vampire) and which, if everybody does, will allow us to vibrate ourselves off the planet, which is apparently good. The sequels promise three more “insights”. Redfield has also written God and the Evolving Universe: The Next Step in Personal Evolution, with Sylvia Timbers and Michael Murphy.
The effectiveness of his message rests not on the contents but on its championship of solipsism and self-centered, self-serving egotheistic subjectivism (with a dash of victim blaming): truth is whatever you make it, follow yourself, evolve your spirituality, don’t care about reality. Subjective validation and communal reinforcement are everything you need. “Post-truth” is the currently popular word for it, we think.
Diagnosis: Redfield seems, at least superficially, to be a true believer, so we will assume he is. It doesn’t make him significantly less disgusting. And to his fans (and fans of similar tripe):youare the reason for fake news, post-truth nonsense, conspiracy theories and inauthentic living (yes: go read some Sartre instead, though we suspect you are too dimwitted to get anything out of it).

David Reaboi

David Reaboi is a wingnut, founder and senior vice president of the think tank Security Studies Group (SSG) and previously spokesperson for the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a conspiratory-minded rightwing group focusing for instance on the myth of creeping sharia. The CSP has tried to prop up that myth with a study called “Shariah Law and American State Courts: An Assessment of State Appellate Court Cases”, which is – considered as a study– as fraudulent as you get them. It was even pimped by the WND for months: that’s how ridiculous it was. The study ostensibly outlined numerous cases in which the Islamic system of law has been applied in the US. However, anyone bothering to actually look at the cases used would note that every single example in the report in fact shows the opposite of what the authors conclude that they show (“Shariah enters U.S. courts through the practice of comity to foreign law,” Reaboi explained, which “happens, for example, when a judge decides to allow the use of say, Pakistani or Saudi family law (Shariah) in a dispute between Pakistanis or Saudis”); instead, the cases involved the courts refusingto impose laws from Muslim countries (some details here). However, what matters to people like Reaboi is that the cases involved an Arab or a Muslim; thatis what it takes for it to be a case of the courts imposing Sharia law.
Otherwise, Reaboi seems to have been very concerned about what he perceived to be Obama’s sharia sympathies and “the infiltration of the conservative movement” by GOP figures who have suggested that Islamophobia is real. He was also a diligent pusher of various and increasingly insane Huma Abedin conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, SSG’s social media director, Nick Short, wrote about “the sheer amount of money being allocated by Congress to fund what is essentially an invasion of the third-world in the form of refugees and illegal aliens [which] is outright treasonous,” and SSG’s president Jim Hanson described the Orlando shooting as “in keeping with totalitarian Islamic code” and suggested that a homemade clock brought to a school by a 14-year-old American Muslim “was half a bomb.” (What else would a Muslim use a clock for?)
The CSP, on the other hand, is of course the group founded by Frank Gaffney, who has claimed that Obama is a Muslim and that Gen. David Petraeus submitted to Islamic Sharia law.
Oh, and in 2017 Reaboi and his group were apparently – at least according to the group – advising the White House on the dispute between Qatar and other U.S. partner nations in the Persian Gulf. It really should worry you that not only they, but the White House, think that they are remotely competent to say anything meaningful about the topic.
Diagnosis: Though the topic concerns issues that are partially outside of what we usually cover, the case in question is such a striking case of paranoia-fuelled fraud (without recognizing it as such) that it would be negligent not to call it out. You probably shouldn’t trust a single word that comes out of David Reaboi’s mouth about anything.

John Rabe

John Rabe is a fundamentalist maniac and conspiracy theorist affiliated with Truth in Action Ministries (TiAM), and yes, we could really end this entry right there. Rabe is also a regular cohost, with Carmen Pate, of TiAM’s radio program Truth that Transforms, which is an instance of (the generalized version of) Badger’s Law (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Badger%27s_Law).
In 2012 Rabe said that idolatry and the worship of government is to blame for the protests and recall movement in Wisconsin over Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s push to eliminate the collective bargaining rights of public workers, calling it a “theological issue” (apparently climate science is idolatry, too, according to TiAM – policies targeting climate change could, according to Rabe, lead to the return of communist dictatorships that left “over 100 million people killed”). According to Rabe Wisconsinites who have rallied against Walker’s move are people who have made government “a replacement for God” and moreover that government employees shouldn’t look to government to provide for them. Yeah, it’s not exactly unexpected given the source, but it is worth taking a moment to think about how delusionally insane it is.
Then, of course, there is the anti-gay tirades, including complaints about “activists” with a “harmful agenda” that attack “two thousand years of traditional marriage” by striking down homosexual marriage bans like Proposition 8, as detailed in Rabe’s and Jerry Newcombe’s “documentary” “We the People: Under Attack”. The courts’ discovery of “so-called ‘right to sodomy’ [not so-called by the courts, obviously] in the Constitution” comes of course on top of all their other sins, such as having “silenced voluntary prayer in schools,” which is emphatically not illegal anywhere in the US. Honesty has never been a central virtue for people like John Rabe. As for homosexuality, Rabe has likened it to “bondage” and even “slavery” because it is a communist, liberal un-Godly ploy. Indeed, Marxism and sex seem to be deeply intertwined in the twisted mind of John Rabe, which is why he thinks sex education, for instance, “isn’t just basic biological information; this is really ideological indoctrination form a very liberal standpoint.” He has also claimed that supporters of marriage equality are “unscientific” when it comes to family stability and have “completely ignored” evidence showing that same-sex parenting harms children. Then he lamented the irony that bigots like him often get labeled “unscientific” for their nonsense. The irony is, indeed, fascinatingly many-layered here.
Rabe, who regularly toys with dominionism, is also a fan of the myth of the US as a Christian nation, claiming that “[i]t’s the Christian foundation of our foundation that brought us freedom.” This is, of course, false, but Rabe and TiAM are unsurprisingly not above using fake Founding Father quotes to suggest otherwise.
The decidedly silly commenter chiming in here may or may not be the same John Rabe.
Diagnosis: Yes: bigoted fundie conspiracy theorist. We seem to be repeating ourselves here, but then there is little new or surprising in Rabe’s moronic rants.