TBR News November 3, 2019

Nov 03 2019

The Voice of the White House Washington, D.C. November 2, 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 November 3:” We have learned the degree and extent of the weaponry now hidden in the White House air raid bunker. Here it is:

  • SIG Sauer M18 Modular Handgun System (P320 Carry)
  • Mk 18 Mod 0 CQBR (Close Quarters Battle Receiver) (5.56×45mm NATO) (USMC Recon, USCG, USN SEALs, USSOCOM, and USASOC)
  • M1014 (semi-automatic 12 gauge) (US Army and USMC)
  • M84 stun grenade
  • Modular Scalable Vest (MSV) and  Blast Pelvic Protector (BPP)mfg by KDH Defense Systems Inc.

We also have received a file on a far-right, very militant group, located in Charlottesville, Virginia that is also due to received a similar shipment, via MEREX. More later

 

The Table of Contents

  • The international firearms and weapons firm of Merex
  • So Trump is legally moving to Florida? Good riddance
  • Judge blocks Trump rule requiring prospective immigrants have health insurance
  • Facebook and Twitter spread Trump’s lies, so we must break them up
  • US debt surpasses $23 trillion for first time
  • Saudi Arabia officiallyapproves Aramco oil IPO
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
  • Encyclopedia of American Loons
  • False in one matter, false in all
  • Mortgage Fraud, Past, Present and Future

 The international firearms and weapons firm of Merex

November 3, 2019

by Christian Juers

The Merex international weaponry system was founded by Otto Skorzeny’s associate Gerhard Mertins in Bonn after the war and was considered a CIA proprietary firm. Merex was close to and worked with the BND, the German intelligence service evolved from the CIA-controlled Gehlen organization. Atwood was involved with Interarmco, run by Samuel Cummings, an Englishman who ran the largest arms firm in the world. Cummings died in Monaco with a country place at Villars in the Swiss Alps where he resettled in 1960 because he had looted his CIA employers and found European residence safer than Warrenton, Virginia.

Interarms (formerly Interarmco and officially the International Armaments Corporation) was the world’s largest private arms dealer, and once had enough weapons in their warehouses to equip forty U.S. divisions. The sole owner was Sam Cummings, who got his start working with the CIA to procure weapons for the 1954 coup in Guatemala.

During the Iran Contra affair, General Secord’s arms shipments, arraigned through the CIA, transferred weapons destined for Central America to Merex Corp.  (Merex International Arms) of Savannah, Ga. Combat Military Ordinances Ltd., once controlled by the notorious James Atwood , occupied the Merex address. Atwood, a retired Lieutenant Colonel of U.S. Military Intelligence and later a CIA officer station in their Berlin office, was involved in major arms trades with CIA-sponsored international buyers, specifically Middle Eastern Arab states. Monzer Al-Kassar utilized the Merex firm for some of his weapons transactions with the Enterprise.

There are rumors floating around the Beltwar that the Trump people have clandestinely been purchasing weapons which they have shipped to what they consider “reliable” very militant and far-right groups in the event they might be needed to defend Trump’s presidency in the event of impeachment or, even more droll, defeat at the polls in the next presidential election.

 

So Trump is legally moving to Florida? Good riddance

‘Rich New Yorker moves to South Florida for tax purposes’ is a story as old as time

by Hamilton Nolan

Novmber 2, 2019

The Guardian

Here in New York City, the overwhelming initial reaction to the news that Donald Trump was legally moving to Florida was: good. one less asshole in Midtown. That momentary burst of glee, though, was followed by the dispiriting realization that he’s still going to be in the same country. And against all odds, he’s found a way to contribute even less to the collective good than before.

“Rich New Yorker moves to South Florida for tax purposes” is a story as old as time – almost as old as “Rich New Yorker, stricken with sun poisoning and malaria, limps back to Manhattan, vowing never to leave again.” But in most cases, the rich New Yorker in question is not the president of the United States. If you stop and ponder it for a minute, it is really something remarkable for the President of the United States to be practicing tax avoidance boldly, in full view of the voting public. The person most responsible for spending our collective tax payments is, himself, so committed to contributing less of his own money to the public till that he is willing to forgo many relaxing weeks in a Midtown penthouse that looks like what might happen if King Midas stumbled drunkenly into a Pottery Barn.

It takes a very special type of moral fortitude to fly around on your own jumbo jet, bragging about your multi-billion dollar fortune, giving a trillion-dollar tax cut to the rich and ostentatiously dodging income taxes yourself, and then hold rallies in Mississippi and Alabama and Louisiana telling lower middle class people that you are on their side. I almost admire it, in the same way that I can almost admire a dog that unabashedly begs for a treat right after chewing your personal possessions to shreds. In both cases, the absolute lack of self-consciousness is amazing to behold for those of us cursed with normal human emotions.

I grew up in Florida. Thankfully not in the ghoulish billionaire-infested Palm Beach part of Florida, but Florida nonetheless. It is a beautiful state. Yet the burden now being placed on Floridians is now becoming wholly unreasonable. In order to live there and enjoy the beaches and sunshine, it has always been necessary to tolerate a few natural obstacles: hurricanes; mosquitoes; alligators in the drainage ditch, snakes in the backyard, and jellyfish in the tide pools. Then there are the more man-made dangers: the racist sheriffs; the real estate developers stubbornly building gleaming condo towers on rapidly eroding sand; and, of course, the assholes who moved in from New York.

The truth is that Donald Trump will fit right in in Florida. As a rule, rich New Yorkers who move to Florida are jerks. They think that the atmosphere of the Sunshine State is more relaxed, when in fact it is just that the lower population density means fewer people staring menacingly at them when they do something rude. Floridians understand this well. They have built an entire economy on attracting these people with the lure of lower state taxes, and then making up the difference by selling them plots of rattlesnake-infested swampland at unimaginable prices and getting their children addicted to Disney World. Florida, a paradise that exists only because of air conditioners and advertising campaigns, is a scam. It attracts con men. And usually, it cons them too.

It is ethically revolting that a sitting US president would rearrange his entire life in order to avoid paying the taxes that fund public goods and services for the citizens that he serves–but then again, there are many ethically revolting things about Donald Trump. It is legitimately concerning that a sitting US president is so mentally incoherent that he would issue a statement attributing his move to the fact that someone poured water on a New York police officer–but we all know that there are many legitimately concerning things about Donald Trump.

We can’t go getting upset about every major ethical scandal by a dangerously demented man holding the most powerful position on earth, can we? Of course not. We must be selective. The only takeaway from this Trumpian change of venue that is really worth remarking on is the effect that it will have on Florida itself. The state will now have one more loud, ignorant, pasty New York guy talking Republican politics at the golf club. The more of these people that trickle into the state, the more pissed off all the normal residents get, and the bluer the state turns.

Every time a man with a Titleist hat and a Queens accent makes an ignorant remark about immigrants in the checkout line of an Orlando-area Starbucks, the Democratic party in Florida gains a vote. The presence of Donald Trump will amount to this dynamic magnified by a million. Is his self-serving, dishonorable action an affront to good government and moral leadership? Certainly. Is he a big coward who can’t stand the heat of the collective honesty of New Yorkers unafraid to direct obscenities up towards the penthouse of Trump Tower? No doubt about it. And will his irritating, mendacious presence itself be enough to turn a swing state blue in protest? The outlook is promising, yes.

It’s not such a bad thing that Trump is relocating now. When he’s evicted from Washington next year, he’ll have somewhere warm to go cry.

 

Judge blocks Trump rule requiring prospective immigrants have health insurance

November 2, 2019

Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal judge in Oregon on Saturday temporarily blocked a Trump administration proclamation that would have required prospective immigrants to prove they would have U.S. health insurance within 30 days of their arrival or enough money to pay for “reasonably foreseeable medical costs.”

Judge Michael Simon in U.S. District Court in Portland, Oregon, granted a 28-day temporary restraining order that prevents the rule from taking effect on Nov. 3. The legal challenge against it will continue.

In an 18-page order, Simon said the potential damage to would-be immigrants and their families justified a nationwide block.

“Facing a likely risk of being separated from their family members and a delay in obtaining a visa to which family members would otherwise be entitled is irreparable harm,” he wrote.

Seven U.S. citizens and an advocacy organization filed a lawsuit to block the rule, arguing it “rewrites our immigration and healthcare laws by Presidential fiat” and could bar hundreds of thousands of prospective immigrants.

Prospective immigrants had been scrambling to figure out how to get the necessary coverage, navigating a complex healthcare bureaucracy that has, for the most part, not previously catered to those who are not yet in the country.

The Trump proclamation said it aims to stop healthcare providers and taxpayers from bearing “substantial costs in paying for medical expenses incurred by people who lack health insurance or the ability to pay for their healthcare.” It cited data that “lawful immigrants are about three times more likely than United States citizens to lack health insurance.”

Healthcare policy experts say immigrants use the U.S. system less often than Americans. According to an analysis by Leighton Ku, director of the Center for Health Policy Research at George Washington University, recent immigrants without insurance accounted for less than one-tenth of 1% of U.S. medical expenditures in 2017.

Reporting by Ted Hesson and Kristina Cooke; Editing by Daniel Wallis, Dan Grebler and Cynthia Osterman

 

Facebook and Twitter spread Trump’s lies, so we must break them up

The social media giants have a monopoly on news but no interest in protecting democracy

November 3, 2019

by Robert Reich

The Guardian

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook says he’ll run political ads even if they are false. Jack Dorsey of Twitter says he’ll stop running political ads altogether.

Dorsey has the correct approach but the debate skirts the bigger question: Who is responsible for protecting democracy from big, dangerous lies?

Donald Trump lies like most people breathe. As he’s been cornered, his lies have grown more vicious and dangerous. He conjures up conspiracies, spews hate and says established facts are lies and lies are truths.

This would be hard enough for a democracy to handle without Facebook sending Trump’s unfiltered lies to the 45% of Americans for whom it is the main source of news. Twitter sends them to 66 million users every day.

A major characteristic of the internet goes by the fancy term “disintermediation”. Put simply, it means sellers are linked directly to customers with no need for middlemen.

Amazon eliminates the need for retailers. Online investing eliminates the need for stock brokers. Travel agents and real estate brokers are obsolete. At a keystroke, consumers get all the information they need.

But democracy can’t be disintermediated. We’re not just buyers and sellers. We’re citizens who need to know what’s happening around us in order to exercise our right to self-government, and responsibility for it.

If a president and his enablers are peddling vicious and dangerous lies, we need reliable intermediaries that help us see them.

Intermediating between the powerful and the people was once mainly the job of publishers and journalists – hence the term “media”.

This role was understood to be so critical to democracy that the constitution enshrined it in the first amendment, guaranteeing freedom of the press.

With that freedom came public responsibility, to be a bulwark against powerful lies. The media haven’t always lived up to it. We had yellow journalism in the 19th century and today endure shock radio, the National Enquirer and Fox News.

But most publishers and journalists have recognized that duty. Think of the Pentagon Papers, Watergate and, just weeks ago, the exposure of Trump’s withholding $400m in security aid to Ukraine until it investigated his major political rival, Joe Biden.

Zuckerberg and Dorsey insist they aren’t publishers or journalists. They say Facebook and Twitter are just “platforms” that convey everything and anything – facts, lies, conspiracies, vendettas – with none of the public responsibilities that come with being part of the press.

Rubbish. They can’t be the major carriers of the news on which most Americans rely while taking no responsibility for its content.

Advertising isn’t the issue. It doesn’t matter whether Trump pays Facebook or Twitter to post dishonest ads about Joe Biden and his son, or Trump and his enablers post the same lies on Facebook and Twitter. Or even if Russia and Iran repeat the lies in their own subversive posts.

The problem is we have a president who will say anything to preserve his power, and two giant entities that spread his lies uncritically, like global-sized bullhorns.

We can’t do anything about Trump until election day or until he’s convicted of an impeachable offense. But we can and should take action against the power of these two super-enablers. If they’re unwilling to protect the public against powerful lies, they shouldn’t have as much power to spread them.

The reason 45% of Americans rely on Facebook for news and Trump’s tweets reach 66 million is because these platforms are near monopolies, dominating the information marketplace. No TV network, cable giant or newspaper even comes close. Fox News’ viewership rarely exceeds 3 million. The New York Times has 4.7 million subscribers.

Facebook and Twitter aren’t just participants in the information marketplace. They’re quickly becoming the information marketplace.

Antitrust law was designed to check the power of giant commercial entities. Its purpose wasn’t just to hold down consumer prices but also to protect democracy. Antitrust should be used against Facebook and Twitter. They should be broken up.

So instead of two mammoth megaphones trumpeting Trump’s lies, or those of any similarly truth-challenged successor, the public will have more diverse sources of information, some of which will expose the lies.

Of course, a diverse information marketplace is no guarantee against tyranny. But we now have a president who lies through his teeth and two giant uncritical conveyors of those lies. It is a system that invites it.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. He is also a columnist for Guardian US

 

US debt surpasses $23 trillion for first time

November 1, 2019

by Niv Elis

The Hill

The federal government’s outstanding public debt has surpassed $23 trillion for the first time in history, according to data from the Treasury Department released on Friday.

Growing budget deficits have added to the nation’s debt at a speedy rate since President Trump took office. The debt has grown some 16 percent since Trump’s inauguration, when it stood at $19.9 trillion. It passed $22 trillion for the first time just 10 months ago.

Of the $23 trillion figure, just under $17 trillion was in the category of debt held by the public, which is a more useful gauge of the debt the government has to pay down, and the number typically used in calculating the nation’s debt burden. The other $6 trillion comes from loans within government bodies.

Still, the $23 trillion figure marks a milestone.

“Reaching $23 trillion in debt on Halloween is a scary milestone for our economy and the next generation, but Washington shows no fear,” said Michael A. Peterson, CEO of the fiscally conservative Peter G. Peterson Foundation.

“Piling on debt like this is especially unwise and unnecessary in a strong economy,” he added.

High levels of debt can push up borrowing costs and interest rates, “crowd out” private borrowing and weigh down budgets. In the 2019 fiscal year, for example, the government had to devote $376 billion just to pay the interest on the debt, equivalent to nearly half the defense budget, and more than the amount spent on the combined costs of education, agriculture, transportation and housing.

The deficit for 2019 came in just under $1 trillion, at $984 billion, and is only expected to grow in coming years.

While the main drivers of spending are mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicare and anti-poverty programs, major legislation has grown the deficit considerably since Trump came to office.

The 2017 GOP tax law was estimated to cost $1.9 trillion over a decade, while bipartisan deals to boost defense and domestic spending ramped up outlays each year

 

Saudi Arabia officially approves Aramco oil IPO

The kingdom’s regulatory authority has approved the listing of the state-run oil giant. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman hopes to bag a $2 trillion valuation, but reports suggest a different possible price.

November 3, 2019

DW

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s financial regulator officially gave the green light to the initial public offering (IPO) of its state-run oil company Saudi Aramco on Sunday, a move that had been promised by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman since 2016. It is one of the largest companies in the world and could result in the largest-ever IPO.

The listing announcement was made by the Capital Market Authority, the government’s financial regulatory agency.

“The Capital Market Authority board has issued its resolution approving the Saudi Arabian Oil Co. application for the registration and offering of part of its shares,” the authority said in its statement. “The company’s prospectus will be published prior to the start of the subscription period.”

No timeline for the IPO was provided.

Only part of Aramco’s shares will be initially listed on Riyadh’s Tadawul stock exchange. However, the hope is that the move will generate billions of dollars for the kingdom to put towards economic development plans as it attempts to tackle high unemployment and reduce its dependence on the oil industry.

$2 trillion, or too much?

Aramco is a significant player in the global oil industry, producing 10 million barrels of crude oil a day, and meets some 10% of world demand. Salman had hoped for a $2 trillion (€1.79 trillion) valuation of the company, though recent reports made by trade media suggested a valuation of $1.6-$1.7 trillion was more likely.

Saudi-owned channel Al-Arabiya announced last week that stock pricing will begin November 17, with a final stock price to be set in early December.

Until now Aramco — formally known as Saudi Arabian Oil Company — has been solely controlled by the Saudi Arabian government. It is overseen by the country’s Ministry of Energy, which is headed by Abdulaziz bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, a son of King Salman.

In September, an Aramco oil facility was the site of a drone attack that raised tensions between Saudi Arabi and rival Iran, sent production spiraling downwards and raised fears of skyrocketing prices.

cmb/sms (AFP, AP)

 

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

November 3, 2019

by Dr. Peter Janney

On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.

Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal, Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment.

Three months before, on July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.

After Corson’s death, Trento and the well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.

The small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento’s house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.

When published material concerning the CIA’s actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA’s horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA’s activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious ‘Regional Interrogation Centers’ in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..

A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid “historians” and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world.

The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley’s survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton conspired to secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files out of the agency. Crowley did the same thing right before his own retirement, secretly removing thousands of pages of classified information that covered his entire agency career.

Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks. ”

Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago, Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at its inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations.

Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas in 1993 when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. In 1996, Crowley told Douglas that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley’s story but only after Crowley’s death. Douglas, for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publication.

 

Conversation No. 13

Date:  Wednesday, May 8, 1996

Commenced:  9:54 AM CST

Concluded: 10:32 AM CST

 

RTC: Good morning, Gregory. Have you been reading about the resurrection of brother Colby?

GD: Good morning, Robert. Yes, I saw this piece of news yesterday but I was too busy to call you. I’m trying to finish up the translation of Mueller’s journals and when I get on a rush, I don’t let up. He floated…no some divers found him. Right?

RTC: As I understand it, yes. Oddly enough, they had searched the same place before but without success.

GD: Maybe they took him from a fishpond somewhere and planted him before he got too ripe.

RTC: It’s an odd case, Gregory. Here we have a man in his late ‘70s staying at his little summer place out on Rock Point, coming downstairs about eleven in the evening, putting on the computer and the television and then running outside in bad weather, jumping into his canoe and paddling out onto the river which was very rough about then what with the wind and rain. And, most interesting, he left his life belt behind. Bill always wore his vest when he went out in his canoe but he seems to have forgotten it. Careless.

GD: Getting old.

RTC: But no older.

GD: Can I do a scenario for you, Robert? Just to show you how really clever I am?

RTC: Why not?

GD: Some friends came to visit him a little earlier. Unannounced of course. Friendly talk, maybe a glass or two of wine and then poor Colby drank something that made him a little disoriented. Nothing to remain in the body afterwards, of course. Then I’ll bet they picked him up, took him out and put him in the boat they came in on, hooked the canoe up behind them with a painter and out onto the bounding main. Then into the nice cold water, unhitching the canoe and back to shore and the warmth of home and hearth. There was no mention of a hole in his head or missing body parts at all. A careless and confused old man out for a refreshing little trip and then tragedy strikes. I don’t think they’ve had time for a full post but I’ll just wager you they won’t find any cyanide or ricin in him. Another skillfully planned CIA wet action.

RTC: That’s an interesting analysis, Gregory. You haven’t been talking to anyone about this, have you?

GD: From that, I must have guessed right. The reports mentioned the computer and the bad weather and I put the rest together. I always loved jigsaw puzzles, Robert. In the summer, when Chicago got hot, we had no air conditioning in those days so we used to go up to Vilas County in upper Wisconsin to get cool. Nice summer house on a quiet lake. On the front screen porch, there were two large ping pong tables and boxes of very complex jigsaw puzzles. While everyone else was out swimming or fishing for the really delicious lake trout, I was on the porch for hours, putting the puzzles together. I love puzzles. On this one, the pieces were all there.

RTC: I told Kimmel once that you would have made a first class agent for us and he was outraged that I would even think of such sacrilege.

GD: I don’t disagree with you Robert. Kimmel once told me, seriously, that I suffered from the worst case of hubris he had ever seen. Do you know what I told him?

RTC: Were you rude?

GD: No, merely accurate. I told him that I had thought I was wrong about something once but found out later I was mistaken.

RTC: Delightful response, Gregory. And his?

GD: He was not amused, but I was. Anyway, the errant Colby has returned to the land of the living but in worse shape than when he left it.

RTC: Thank God for that.

GD: We can anticipate solemn statements from the White House, a weeping wife and black-suited friends and then off to the bone yard in a bronze box, tightly sealed lest eau d’Colby annoy people downwind. By now he probably smells like a big Camembert cheese. And soon forgotten by most. And from what you said, you won’t be going to the services.

RTC: I think not.

GD: But you do have your memories.

RTC: So do a lot of others. Perhaps we can discuss something more cheerful than the loss of a valued friend and freedom fighter, Gregory.

GD: How is the blessed box working?

RTC: The birds still flee but no ambulances at the door.

GD: Yes. Wait until valued secretary Mitzi Rumpleberger hangs herself in an electronically inspired fit of depression in the ladies’ lavatory with a pair of silk stockings.

RTC: The Ambassador would be more spectacular.

GD: His office is probably in the back. And one would hope he doesn’t wear silk stockings. Or a bra either.

RTC: Such imagery.

GD: If you don’t laugh, Robert, you will go crazy. People don’t realize that life is a huge practical joke that always has a bad ending. Like Brother Colby, but enough of forbidden topics. Someday, I will tell you how I nailed Pollard.

RTC: This is not another joke?

GD: Not at all.

RTC: I have some knowledge of this business, Gregory, and I would like to compare it to your own. Do go on.

GD: I knew a military collector when I was living in California. He used to collect SS items which was rather weird because he was Jewish. His father had been a host for a kiddie television show and after he and the mother got a divorce, she married a big cheese in the insurance business. Jack Beckett.

RTC: Transamerica Beckett?

GD: The same. They lived in Atherton in a gated house. I used to visit there from time to time and met Beckett a few times. A very decent, down to earth person, easy to talk to and I would say very honest. Did you know him?

RTC: I believe we knew him.

GD: He mentioned he knew Stansfield Turner so you must be right. Anyway, Abenheim, that’s his name, Donald Abenheim, had a fellow student from Stanford named Jay Pollard. Pollard used to come over and the two of them would war game and I sat in on a few sessions. Pollard was a very pleasant, smart fellow but a raging nebbish. A Walter Mitty type, if you know what I mean. Lived in a fantasy world of his own making. Pollard’s father was a dentist or something dull living in Ohio but Pollard was a downright fanatical Israeli supporter and he went on about working as a kibbutz guard, being an officer in the Mossad and so on. Obvious bullshit. It didn’t make him a bad person but he was a little hard to take at times. We never believed a word he said on that subject. Anyway, later, after Abenheim had graduated from Stanford, he told me Pollard had tried to get into your agency as an analyst but they discovered his Israeli lust and turned him down. Don told me that in their yearbook, Pollard put down that he was a major in the Mossad. But then he went to work for naval intelligence….

RTC: Naval Fleet Intelligence. Then he transferred over to the Anti-Terrorist Alert center of the NIS.

GD: The what?

RTC: Naval Investigative Service. They dealt with top secret military communications. Go on.

GD: When Don told me about this, I remarked that perhaps, given his attitudes, this was really not the place for Pollard to work.

RTC: In hindsight, you were perfectly right.

GD: So I pumped Abenheim about what Pollard was doing. Jay was in touch with him and they both had motor mouths. When Abenheim got specific, I suggested that he mention this to someone because he was fooling around with the national intelligence community but he only laughed at me.

RTC: And then what?

GD: Well, I thought about this and don’t forget I knew Pollard’s fanatic attitudes…I mean they were obsessive, believe me…so after stewing about this, I called up someone I knew who was connected with the Pacifica Foundation. He was a friend of Cap Weinberger, the Secretary of Defense. I told him all about Pollard and said that in my opinion, this was a man who should not have any access to secret governmental material dealing with anything in the Middle East. I made it a point to tell this fellow that if he couldn’t get Weinberger’s attention, I would take it to the press. Oh no, he said, give me some time. I did. He called me back in about a week and said he had passed the word along and begged me to keep quiet about it. Fair enough. Then we all know what happened.

RTC: Yes, we all do. So you were the “unidentified source.”

GD: Yes. Beats Mr. Sunshine.

RTC: Did you hear about what Weinberger did to Pollard?

GD: Not really.

RTC: Pollard cut a deal with the government for a lighter sentence but Weinberger hated him and got Wolf Blitzer to have an interview with Pollard and trick him into breaking his agreement. Pollard got life for being stupid.

GD: He wasn’t stupid, but he had no common sense.

RTC: Well, now he’s got life in the slammer.

GD: I told Abenheim what I did and he was terrified I would drag him into it. He was living off of Beckett, who put him into Stanford and bought him new cars and so on, and he was afraid of the consequences if Beckett got wind of his own lack of concern. He used to babble all kinds of family gossip around, including myself, and I always thought that if you take a man’s bread, you owe him at least some loyalty. But Don was not a man to contemplate honor. I remember once when I was having certain conversation with a German diplomat in San Francisco, this fellow encountered Don at some function. Don was an outrageous ass-kisser and at any rate, the German told him he knew me and that I was a “brilliant scholar” on the German scene. He said that Abenheim got annoyed and said I was only self-educated, which I am not and I said that considering that I had written Abenheim’s doctoral thesis, that was hardly appropriate. The German found this rather shocking.

RTC: If Stanford ever found out about that, they would jerk his degree, you know. I don’t think that would do his intelligence career any good. What was the thesis on?

GD: The Imperial German Navy’s etappendienst or resupply system, in the First World War. After this episode, I mentioned it to Charlie Burdick, the German military historian and Dean at San Jose State, very reputable and I’ve known him since ’52…anyway, he said that this paper struck him as much better than Abenheim’s usually pompous and turgid works. He knew my work and said that he could see in an instant that I was right. I asked him, since he was Abenheim’s sponsor for the doctorate, what he was going to do about it. As usual, nothing. But he would never talk to Don again.

RTC: What happened to him?

GD: Burdick?

RTC: No, Abenheim. Does he work for us?

GD: No, although Beckett wanted to get him into the CIA via his contacts with Turner. He does intelligence work for the Navy, I think. After I had a talk with him about his mouth problem, we haven’t spoken.

RTC: You should tip them off. We have too many treacherous people like that.

GD: Well, I don’t worry about it. The Germans and Burdick know, and believe me, and he can deal with that knowledge. I don’t think you have to worry about his selling secrets to Israel. He and his mother hate the Zionists. Reformed Jews usually do.

RTC: What does he think about your writings on Mueller?

GD: I would hate to think. Fortunately, that is outside his interest so I am probably safe.

RTC: What is his specialty?

GD: He likes to think he’s an expert on German military tradition but he most certainly is not. Abenheim is the moon and Beckett is the sun. Abenheim drove expensive sports cars, lived in an expensive house, went to an expensive school and met famous people but only because his mother married an important, and very generous, man. I remember once, Don and his friends were planning on raiding a military storage area in San Francisco when he was working in the Presidio museum. They heard there was morphine stored there and planned to sell it. I told him that I would tell his mother if he didn’t drop that idea and it scared him off. I mean, what an utterly stupid thing to do. He should have thanked me for keeping him out of jail instead of trash mouthing me to others.

RTC: Given what you’ve told me, he’s probably just jealous. I imagine he loved to pick your brains.

GD: Yes, like Corson.

RTC: There are certain similarities there.

GD: God save us from those of the small mind and large ego.

RTC: Anyway, Gregory, you did the right thing in the Pollard matter. And while your name is not known in this, your good deeds certainly are.

GD: But no good deed goes unpunished, does it, Robert? At least, Abenheim will be more cautious in the future or I might start writing nice letters to Stanford. After all, I have all the original work on his thesis. His useless notes and my handwritten pages. I remember once when he told me that brave Israeli commandos raided a Libyan secret plant, deep in the desert, and destroyed it. I got tired of his pomposity so I told him, very offhand, that that was a hoax. I said Kadaffi had put some oil and old tires into 55 gallon drums and set them on fire. I said the satellites showed clouds of black smoke but there was nothing to it. He got very irate and asked me how I knew such things? I said I had seen the side-angle satellite pictures…

RTC: My God, Gregory, you didn’t? Those satellites are very, very secret. He must have had a fit about that.

GD: Oh, he did. It turned out later I was right about the burning tires so he rushed to his superiors to tell them all about the horrid person who had access to the sacred satellite pictures. And about a month later, a military collector friend of mine was approached by someone at a collector’s club meeting. A nice, clean-cut fellow named Mason. Anyway, this fellow made friends with my collector connection and developed a great interest in me and my doings. I checked on this Mason fellow and discovered from Petersen that Chris was a CIA operative so I led him a wonderful chase, feeding him all kinds of nonsense until he finally, after several months, realized he was being made a fool of and he went back to Washington. He was not very bright, Robert. I had written a book on German paratroopers in the campaign on Crete so he had my friend send me a mint copy of the book to autograph. The cover was heavy coated stock so I put on a pair of cotton gloves, went over to my next door neighbor and handed the book to him. I had told him earlier that I had written a number of studies of military actions and he was interested. I said I had hurt my hand and could he autograph the book?

RTC: Gregory, that was a terrible thing to do. Now someone has your neighbor’s fingerprints and handwriting in a file somewhere. What a wicked thing to do.

GD: Ain’t I awful, Robert? And I told my collector friend about all the lovely aerial pictures I had. I was going to get a Russian publisher to do a book called, “The World from the Air.”

RTC: Jesus Christ…

GD: Oh and I said they were Cosmic pictures. From Top Secret/Cosmic of course.

RTC: And I suppose he told his new friend and consternation ensued in Washington.

GD: I said I was meeting a Russian publisher’s rep in ‘Frisco down at his office on Green Street.

RTC: That’s the Russian consulate. That’s a KGB center, Gregory.

GD: No, don’t disillusion me.

RTC: That is really wicked. You never saw any side-angle satellites pictures, never had any secret pictures, had no Russian publisher but just imagine the furor.

GD: Kept me warm at night for months, Robert. Abenheim later told someone that I was pure evil and should never be talked to. He wasn’t specific but my friend thought he might have an involuntary bowel movement at any time.

RTC: I said several times you would make a great agent, Gregory.

GD: Whatever makes you think I’m not, Robert?

RTC: On that depressing note, I’ll let you go. We’re supposed to go shopping and let’s do this again. You’re better than television, Gregory.

GD: And a lot more accurate, Robert.

(Concluded at 10:32 AM CST)

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Conversations+with+the+Crow+by+Gregory+Douglas

 

Encyclopedia of American Loons

 

 Jane Skrovota

 

Jane Skrovota is hardly a big name in bigotry; indeed, she is just a Lincoln, Nebraska local lady whose only claim to notability is a graphic diatribe she delivered during a public hearing before the Lincoln city council in 2012 on a proposed ordinance to ban discrimination against gays and transgender citizens in employment, housing and public accommodations. That rant is, however, deliriously insane. Some choice quotes:

“Winter Wipe Out TV Show have broken bones and man slaughter every minute. Winter wipeout show is produced in Holland by gay bi’s and orgiers. Why do gays like to see people perishing?”

“P.E.N.I.S. goes into the anus to rupture intestines, the more a man does this more likely he will be a fatality or a homicider. Getting pleasure while the other man passes away reverberates another homicide later.”

“UNESCO United Nations has gender and bioethics conferences combined. Only gays go to gender studies. Gays are the bio ethic genociders in hospitals Ah, children can be eliminated the FEDS stated in this December 11th article ah the Lincoln General Star page six. Gays should not be employed in hospitals or any health occupation.”

“Lesbians and Gays rarely live past 40 years old because it is common for the partner to do away with them or they self inflict.”

“Have No Gays in Education. A high percentage of gay men in school grounds molest boys partly because they do not have AIDs yet! Be on the side of the innocent boy who gets Fs and Ds a year after being molested.”

“To avoid going gay like Hillary Clinton did, college students need single rooms and single-gendered dorms. Going lesbian is not normal. A college woman is seduced with illegal Rohypnol to go gay, otherwise they think it’s abhorrent.”

“AIDS is a Candida fungus disease. Roman senators went to Roman baths to be promiscuous gays, bis, and orgiers, and then went to The Colosseum to watch Christians get mauled and perish. Do gays become sadistic? Yes. They cuss after coupling, don’t like the land they lay on, and 80% of those that did treason by the year 2000 were gays. Don’t employ gays in military, education, health, or psychology. They are the genociders, molesters, treasoners, deranged.”

“Jesus was kissed by Judas, a homo, who tried to sabotage Jesus’ kind ideas. Do you choose Jesus, a celibate, or Judas, a homo? You have to choose.”

Don’t worry, there is plenty more where those quotes came from.

Diagnosis: So no, not an influential public figure by any stretch of the imagination, but we just had to include her all the same.

 

Wade Nobles

Wade W. Nobles is professor emeritus in the Department of Africana Studies at San Francisco State University, and a pioneer of the African-American psychology movement. Now, Nobles has indeed made some serious and notable contributions to research. But Nobles is also a promoter of some baffling pseudoscience and pseudohistory, including the magic melanin theory. According to Nobles, white people stopped evolving with the development of the central nervous system (CNS), whereas black people continued to evolve an essential melanic system (EMS). Accordingly, Nobles proposed, in his book Seeking the Sakhu: Foundational Writings for an African Psychology (he appears to reject any distinction between his roles as a psychologist, as a spiritual healer and as a prophet), an “equation”, CNS + EMS = HB, where “HB” is short for “human being”. So yes: white people are not fully human, because they are deprived of humanity-defining melanin: “That the central nervous system combined with the essential melanic system is what makes you human. That in fact, to be human is to be black” (and no: people with albinism need not apply for the category of being fully humaneither.) Together with pseudoscientists like Hunter Adams, Leonard Jeffries and Frances Cress Welsing, Nobles apparently thinks that such nonsense should pass as educational material for African-American kids. One can probably imagine some possible consequences of going down this road.

Diagnosis: Yes, as a response to racist IQ-“research” this kind of stuff is eminently understandable. It is no less dumb for that.

Sandy Nichols

Sandy Nichols is an alleged alien abductee and Founder and President of the Alien Research Group (ARG) , a Tennessee organization ostensibly created “for the study of alien abductions” but that really just works to help alleged abductees get their stories out. The ARG laments that people tend to limit their beliefs to “only those things that can be detected by our five senses or confirmed in a scientific laboratory,” and considers itself (or himself – it’s probably just Nichols) to be a group working in the spirit of Galileo by disregarding narrow-minded scienceand mathematicsin its investigation of alien activities and abductions. Nichols himself is an abductee whose memories of alien abductions “resurfaced” later in life, as detailed in his self-published book Different Child.

Apparently the ARG doesn’t limit itself (himself) to UFOs and alien abductions, but do “extensive research” (they keep using the word “research”, but with a strange and new meaning) into the “paranormal realm” related to “ghosts, ESP, poltergeist activity, life after death experiences, astrology, dimensional beings, time shifts and time travel and spiritual enlightenment to name just a few.” The ARG “welcomes submission stories, strange photos, drawings, etc dealing with unusual phenomena,” which strongly suggests that what they are doing is not research (hypothesis testing) but attempting to judiciously select evidence that confirms what they have already convinced themselves is true.

The website posts include (in addition to “How Can I Receive the Best Auto Insurance in Maryland”) posts about mothman sightings in Tennessee, orbs, telepathic contact with aliens and an incoherent ramble (possibly) about alien viruses. Apparently, Nichols himself is the father of alien-human hybrid children.

Diagnosis: One of many such websites littering the internet, and Nichols’s is overall a rather toned-down, friendly and boring example. That the nonsense is common doesn’t make it any less nonsensical, however.

 

False in one matter, false in all

November 3, 2019

by Alexander Koppel, DD

In all the confusion of the new Testment, a number of incident of some interest appear

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. It should be 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.  On the other hand: some commentators have suggested that it was a common practice in Judea at that time for heterosexual man to lay his head on another’s undergarment. Such behavior was common between two heterosexuals in an emotionally close but non-erotic relationship during the first century CE.

There are five words for love in Greek (the language in which the Gospels were written:

Agape: spiritual, unconditional love,

Eros: erotic love,

Philia: love between friends,

Storge: familial love.

The Gospels references to “the disciple whom Jesus loved” use the word “agape.” Whether the authors originally used “eros” and the word was subsequently changed is open to speculation.

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.

“The disciple whom he loved”, as the evidence for a censored relationship between Jesus and him is quite similar. (John 19: 26-27), (John 13:23-25), (John 21:20). Granted, the accepted translation of the love bit is agape (brotherly love), rather than eros (romantic love), but it is not above speculation that this word was conveniently edited at some point by a homophobic cleric, or even simply mistranslated/misunderstood in the days before there was a written record. In any case, Jesus loved all his Apostles with agape, so why there is one apostle who is repeatedly singled out as the one that Jesus loved above all the rest? I thought God loved all his children equally.

  • Jesus never married.
  • He did not condemn and vilify as his so-called followers do today.
  • He surrounded himself with men whom he loved.
  • The Bible says nothing of Jesus’ sexuality, yet we are taught that he was both divine and fully man.
  • Why did he never marry?
  • Why is the New Testament silent about his sexuality?
  • On balance, Jesus was probably gay and that he understood hatred and bigotry first-hand.

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.” 11 (Emphasis in the original.)

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.” 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. However, physical sex, both hetero- and homosexual 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 very well have been gay.

Bishop Clement of Alexandria has 3 surviving books Exhortation to the Greeks, The Insructor, and the Miscellanies, and several fragments and lesser works.  One is a letter to a disciple named Theodore who had asked for advice regarding the Caprocratians, (a Gnostic Christian sect) use of the “Secret Gospel of Mark.”  Clement not only confirmed the existence and authority of “Secret Mark” in his reply, but actually denounced Carpocrates for using black magic to steal a copy “Secret Mark” from the church library!

It should be noted that Morton Smith is a Christian, and typical of them, even in their critical scholarship, they are committed to certain conclusion that the evidence fails to uphold.  They invariable fail to address several compelling criticisms of the New and Old Testaments.  They assume certain truths, which upon scrutiny aren’t truths.  In the case of Morton Smith, he holds that there is an historical Jesus, a viewpoint that has been shown to be without merit by the German School of biblical scholars at the beginning of the 20th century and improved upon by later scholars.

Scholars have long wondered at a curious passage in the canonical Gospel of Mark (undisputedly the oldest of the canonical gospels) which seems to hint that a detail or two might have been left out:  “Then they came to Jericho.  As he was leaving Jericho with his disciples…” (Mark 10:46).  But what happened in Jericho on Jesus’ whistle-stop tour of the provinces?  Did Jesus simply pass through and then leave without doing or saying anything to anyone? If the visit was so irrelevant to Jesus’ mission, why is it even mentioned?  The gap suggests a mission portion of Mark’s Gospel.  The Letter—supplied below–of Clement’s, who had access to the complete version of Mark’s gospel, places the events in Jericho.

a copy of a letter in the 1646 edition of letters of Ignatius of Antioch (a 2nd century church writer) at the monastery of Mar Saba, twelve miles south of Jerusalem.  The letter consists of 3 pages of Greek manuscript bound in as end-papers.  This letter contains quotes from what Saint Clement of Alexandria (c.156-211) refers to as “The Secret Gospel of Mark.”

Bishop Clement of Alexandria has 3 surviving books Exhortation to the Greeks, The Insructor, and the Miscellanies, and several fragments and lesser works.  One is a letter to a disciple named Theodore who had asked for advice regarding the Caprocratians, (a Gnostic Christian sect) use of the “Secret Gospel of Mark.”  Clement not only confirmed the existence and authority of “Secret Mark” in his reply, but actually denounced Carpocrates for using black magic to steal a copy “Secret Mark” from the church library!

So scandalous was the Carpocratian “The Secret Gospel of Mark” that Clement advised Theodore never to admit that Mark even wrote it:  “You did well in silencing the unspeakable teachings of the Carpocratians.  For… priding themselves in knowledge, as they say, “of the deep things of Satan,” they do not know that they are casting themselves away into “the nether world of darkness”… For even if they should say something true, one who loves the truth should not, even so, agree with them….

“Now of the things they keep saying about the divinely inspired Gospel of Mark… even if they do contain some true elements, [these] are not reported truly….

“As for Mark then, during Peter’s stay in Rome [Mark] wrote an account of the Lord’s doings, not, however, declaring all of them, nor yet hinting at the secret ones, but selecting what he thought most useful for increasing the faith of those who were instructed. But when Peter died a martyr, Mark came over to Alexandria, bringing both his own notes and those of Peter, from which he transferred to his former book the things suitable to whatever makes for progress towards knowledge.  Thus he composed a more spiritual gospel for the use of those who were being perfected.  Nevertheless, he yet did not divulge the things not to be uttered, nor did he write down the hierophantic teaching of the Lord… [and] he left his composition in the church in… Alexandria, where it is… most carefully guarded, being read only by those who are being initiated into the great mysteries

“But since the foul demons are always devising destruction for the race of men, Carpocrates… using deceitful arts, so enslaved a certain presbyter in the church that he got from a copy of the secret gospel, which he interpreted according to his blasphemous and carnal doctrine…

“To them, therefore, as I said above, one must never give way… [or] even concede that the secret gospel is by Mark… but deny it on oath. For, ‘Not all true things are to be said to all men…”

This portrayal of the Messiah Jesus as partaking in sexual union fits well with the view of Jesus as a prophet, like Mohammed, Elijah, and others.  Much has been written on the meaning of the Messiah (“anointed leader”) and the meaning of the “Son of God” needs to be set in its proper context.  A number of heroes were the son of god, including Heracles, Helen, and more recently, it was widely believed that Philip of Macedonia was not the real son of Alexander, but rather a god.  Mark was first, his Gospel was incorporated with aggrandizements, and revisions by Matthew and Luke.  Mark saw Christ as a mortal unto whom the spirit of god has entered when he was baptized. [2]  If he was a god or part of Yahweh (as is currently maintained) then God would not need to inform his son [3] that he is his son, unless “son of God” meant something like chosen one—a position held by the Gnostic Christians.  “Son of God, most scholars agree, is an ambiguous title at best, so too, is lord from the Aramaic mare, which could be interpreted in a spectrum of ways from the mundane “sir” to the divine “lord.” [4]  As a mortal, having intercourse with women would be fitting, and to be celibate would be very abnormal.  Having sex with a young man, in the Hellenized world also was quite unexceptional,

It should be noted that Morton Smith is a Christian, and typical of them, even in their critical scholarship, they are committed to certain conclusion that the evidence fails to uphold.  They invariable fail to address several compelling criticisms of the New and Old Testaments.  They assume certain truths, which upon scrutiny aren’t truths.  In the case of Morton Smith, he holds that there is an historical Jesus, a viewpoint that has been shown to be without merit by the German School of biblical scholars at the beginning of the 20th century and improved upon by later scholars.

Scholars have long wondered at a curious passage in the canonical Gospel of Mark (undisputedly the oldest of the canonical gospels) which seems to hint that a detail or two might have been left out:  “Then they came to Jericho.  As he was leaving Jericho with his disciples…” (Mark 10:46).  But what happened in Jericho on Jesus’ whistle-stop tour of the provinces?  Did Jesus simply pass through and then leave without doing or saying anything to anyone? If the visit was so irrelevant to Jesus’ mission, why is it even mentioned?  The gap suggests a mission portion of Mark’s Gospel.  The Letter—supplied below–of Clement’s, who had access to the complete version of Mark’s gospel, places the events in Jericho.

Both what is missing and why is supplied by Morton Smith, the Columbia University professor scholar whose 1958 research expedition culminated in the discovery of a copy of a letter in the 1646 edition of letters of Ignatius of Antioch (a 2nd century church writer) at the monastery of Mar Saba, twelve miles south of Jerusalem.  The letter consists of 3 pages of Greek manuscript bound in as end-papers.  This letter contains quotes from what Saint Clement of Alexandria (c.156-211) refers to as “The Secret Gospel of Mark.”   Professor Smith writes, “Based on this letter we can conclude that “The Secret Gospel of Mark” was the older and more complete, and the version we have is an edited version with the troubling passages left out by the Church fathers.  The portions supplied by Clement in this letter found by Professor Morton Smith fill in the gap at Mark 10:46.

Morton Smith published his findings in 1973 in two different books:  one was a rigorously academic volume from Harvard entitled Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark, while the second was a popular explanation The Secret Gospel.  It is the latter which I have read.

Bishop Clement of Alexandria has 3 surviving books Exhortation to the Greeks, The Insructor, and the Miscellanies, and several fragments and lesser works.  One is a letter to a disciple named Theodore who had asked for advice regarding the Caprocratians, (a Gnostic Christian sect) use of the “Secret Gospel of Mark.”  Clement not only confirmed the existence and authority of “Secret Mark” in his reply, but actually denounced Carpocrates for using black magic to steal a copy “Secret Mark” from the church library!

So scandalous was the Carpocratian “The Secret Gospel of Mark” that Clement advised Theodore never to admit that Mark even wrote it:  “You did well in silencing the unspeakable teachings of the Carpocratians.  For… priding themselves in knowledge, as they say, “of the deep things of Satan,” they do not know that they are casting themselves away into “the nether world of darkness”… For even if they should say something true, one who loves the truth should not, even so, agree with them….

“Now of the things they keep saying about the divinely inspired Gospel of Mark… even if they do contain some true elements, [these] are not reported truly….

“As for Mark then, during Peter’s stay in Rome [Mark] wrote an account of the Lord’s doings, not, however, declaring all of them, nor yet hinting at the secret ones, but selecting what he thought most useful for increasing the faith of those who were instructed. But when Peter died a martyr, Mark came over to Alexandria, bringing both his own notes and those of Peter, from which he transferred to his former book the things suitable to whatever makes for progress towards knowledge.  Thus he composed a more spiritual gospel for the use of those who were being perfected.  Nevertheless, he yet did not divulge the things not to be uttered, nor did he write down the hierophantic teaching of the Lord… [and] he left his composition in the church in… Alexandria, where it is… most carefully guarded, being read only by those who are being initiated into the great mysteries.

“But since the foul demons are always devising destruction for the race of men, Carpocrates… using deceitful arts, so enslaved a certain presbyter in the church that he got from a copy of the secret gospel, which he interpreted according to his blasphemous and carnal doctrine…

“To them, therefore, as I said above, one must never give way… [or] even concede that the secret gospel is by Mark… but deny it on oath. For, ‘Not all true things are to be said to all men…”

This letter is strong evidence that the Secret Gospel of Mark was in fact the complete version of Mark, and what we have is the edited version by the Church fathers.  Barnstone at 340 lists as being visible signs of this editing process Mark 4:ll; 9:25-27; 10:21, 32,38-39; 12:32-34; 14:51-52.  What, then, were these “true things” that the Church fathers hoped to hide from the untutored eyes of the average Christian?  What was the unspeakable?

St. Clement quotes from this complete, “Secret” Gospel of Mark” at length towards the end of his letter.  Clement in the last third of his letter to Theodore wrote:  “To you, therefore I shall not hesitate to answer the questions you have asked refuting the falsifications by the very words of the [Secret] Gospel” (Barnstone 342). “And they come into Bethany. And a certain woman whose brother had died was there.  And she prostrated herself before Jesus and says to him, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me.’ But the disciples rebuked her.  And Jesus, being angered, went off with her unto the garden where the tomb was, and straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb.  And going near, Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb.  And straightway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand.  But the youth, looking upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him. And going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth came to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of God. And thence, arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan.”

“After these words follows the text, “And James and John come to him,” and all that section.  But “naked man with naked man,” and the other things about which you wrote, are not found. And after the words, ‘And he comes into Jericho,’ the secret Gospel adds only, ‘And the sister of the youth whom Jesus loved, and his mother and Salome were there, and Jesus did not receive them.  But many other things about which you wrote both seem to be and are falsifications.

“Now the true explanation and that which accords with the true philosophy. “ [1]

This passage quoted by Clement from the Gospel, could be interpreted as an account of a baptism preformed by Jesus on this young lad—and some do—but for 3 facts.  One that Clement and the Church fathers not only suppressed the passage but found it “scandalous.”   Second, the plain meaning of the words “naked man with naked man” and “whom Jesus loved” support the conclusion that Sexual union with a man as part of the sacrament was practiced.  Third, that it was a practice of some Christian sects for (like in Tantra Yoga) to engage in sexual intercourse as part of a union with God.  Such was said of some Christian communities.  There are passages in the Pauline Epistles which admonishing certain unnamed sexual practices and there is a letter from a Roman physician describing in detail this practice.

Morton Smith, the discoverer of the letter writes:  “Freedom from the [Mosaic] law may have resulted in completion of the spiritual union by physical union. This certainly occurred in many forms of Gnostic Christianity; how early it began there is no telling” (Morton Smith, The Secret Gospel, p. 94, The Secret Gospel: The Discovery and Interpretation of the Secret Gospel according to Mark. New York: Harper & Row, 1973).  From the tone of the letter of Clement, the fact that our present Gospel of Mark is incomplete in a way that indicates deliberate suppression of the passage, from the quoted passages of in the letter, and from the practices of early Christian communities it is quite reasonable to conclude that the Secret Gospel. Mark described the sexual union of Jesus with a young disciple. This portrayal of the Messiah Jesus as partaking in sexual union fits well with the view of Jesus as a prophet, like Mohammed, Elijah, and others.  Much has been written on the meaning of the Messiah (“anointed leader”) and the meaning of the “Son of God” needs to be set in its proper context.  A number of heroes were the son of god, including Heracles, Helen, and more recently, it was widely believed that Philip of Macedonia was not the real son of Alexander, but rather a god.  Mark was first, his Gospel was incorporated with aggrandizements, and revisions by Matthew and Luke.  Mark saw Christ as a mortal unto whom the spirit of god has entered when he was baptized. [2]  If he was a god or part of Yahweh (as is currently maintained) then God would not need to inform his son [3] that he is his son, unless “son of God” meant something like chosen one—a position held by the Gnostic Christians.  “Son of God, most scholars agree, is an ambiguous title at best, so too, is lord from the Aramaic mare, which could be interpreted in a spectrum of ways from the mundane “sir” to the divine “lord.” [4]  As a mortal, having intercourse with women would be fitting, and to be celibate would be very abnormal.  Having sex with a young man, in the Hellenized world also was quite unexceptional.

Would it be very abnormal for Jesus to take a young man and in the religious initiation have sex with him?

The Greeks and Romans both approved such if done with the spirit of a mentor.  Bisexuality was the norm.  Three centuries of Greek and Roman domination had its effects.

Mark had written in his fiction on the life of Jesus  things that were deemed proper in the Hellenized world?  Could not Mark, who was most certainly not Mark of the disciples, be Hellenized?  “Modern research often proposes as the author an unknown Hellenistic Jewish Christian, possibly in Syria and perhaps shortly after the year 70.”

 

Mortgage Fraud, Past, Present and Future

November 3, 2019

by Aaron Johnson

MERS Inc. is the BIGGEST SCAM in American history. It is being perpetuated by the BANKERS and being protected by their croanies in the FBI. It was the brainchild of a guy named Alan Shapiro- who is “counsel” for JP Morgan Chase, B of A, and Wells Fargo (look who’s left in the banking industry). He was also “Private Counsel” to the Bush White House and “Private Counsel” to the US Supreme Court. Mr. Shapiro also was the “Ethics Board Chairman” of the SEC when the ENRON scandal came down (that’s how all of the thousands of complaint letters were destroyed). He owns a company called TAG Inc. that developed all of the “Fraud Tracking” software that the banks use and has access to literally EVERYBODY’S bank accounts. It is because of this reason alone that the DOJ pays him $117,000 annually to be their “Expert Witness on Forensic Economic Crimes”. Why obtain a warrant for somebody’s banking information when all you need to do is call Alan Shapiro? Truth be told, this Alan Shapiro is an “expert” in only one thing- FRAUD!!!!! Here is the SOURCE of the problem folks! I brought my extensive research into the FBI in San Diego about

And when home-office hobbyists could flip a tract house every six months and walk away with a sweat-free windfall, no one would have minded if, say, Countrywide Financial was paying exotic dancers to sort the M&Ms on board the corporate jet of its chief executive officer, Angelo Mozilo. But after Countrywide collapsed, and more than 12,000 people lost their jobs and many more lost their life savings, Mozilo was a pariah. How could he stand to make $110 million in total severance (later reduced) after driving the nation’s largest home lender into the ground?

WHO OWNS YOUR HOUSE????

The scenario reflects my personal experience with Wells Fargo Bank over the last several years. After banking with them for over 16 years, I realized that I was a victim of identity theft, which was controlled and perpetrated by the bank.

Wells Fargo Bank. If the bank owns the mortgage company (Wells Fargo Home Mortgage) and is also the trustee for the loan (American Securities Company of Nevada) and the title companies (pick one), and the insurance company, the only thing they need to make a deal is the consumer. They issue one loan to the consumer and one to themselves. One is recorded in the county the property is located with the lender as the beneficiary; one is recorded with MERS with MERS as the beneficiary. Since the consumer only pays on the loan he signed up for, the second loan eventually goes into default because of non-payment, which activates the foreclosure process by the trustee. These non-judicial foreclosures are kept in-house and are only known about by the insiders (the MERS network).

This includes the lenders, real estate brokers, lawyers and title companies and other criminals, all of whom are breaking the law. Three months later the non-judicial foreclosure takes place without public knowing about it. The trustee for the lender adds the outstanding debt on the second bogus loan to the bid price for the property. Since the bid is now 80% +(typical value of second loan) of the original appraisal, the lender is able to clear the first and second loan off their books and now owns the property. The owner never knows what has happened but technically, the real first loan and bogus second loan is cleared by right of the non-judicial foreclosure, the lender now owns the property free and clear and the owner becomes a renter. If someone other than the lender buys the foreclosure, they are issued a Substitution of Trustee and a Deed of Reconveyance from MERS (Mortgage Electronic Recording System).

The payment for the foreclosure (generally the amount of the borrowers loan balance at the time) is the price of admission into the loan pool of funds. Instead of getting to take ownership of the foreclosure property, they now have an investor number and an investor loan number which puts them in the real estate investment trust and secures there position in line to collect..There is always the title policy that is often time collected on by the group as well since most of the title policies issued pay the lender for the property because of unmarketable title either because of easements, restrictions or other title flaws that are placed on the property using DMS Order Management Software. The title company can pick a start date and a plant date to insert negative history on the property that never really happened but clouding the title so they can collect once the home has closed. These encumbrances are added to the property history after the preliminary title report is issued but before the property closes escrow.

The public doesn’t know about any of this or else it would be anarchy. To add injury to insult, the government ends up paying for the fraud as well through RESPA, HUD claims and through a Federal Reserve bank account held by Wells Fargo unbeknownst to the Federal Government. The RESPA and HUD claims are made possible by keeping the limit of the transactions below the HUD insured thresholds. The Federal Reserve account is an retired payroll withholding account Wells Fargo was supposed to close when Bank of America took over payroll (EFTPS) withholding electronic transfers for the government in the early 90’s.

This country will not survive if the very people paid to properly transact and control the home buying process are double dipping. This is not an isolated case. It is happening everywhere. The only way to stop it is to make these institutions and their employees responsible for their actions. Because of the very nature of the fraud, the people in the network are not rookies. Most of them are educated professionals holding well paying, respectable jobs and position in their communities. Unfortunately, our local, state and federal government is infected with people that help facilitate the transactions of these fraudulent activities as well. The war is not in IRAQ. It is here in the United States. Where do you think the money goes? Hidden originally in a trust account that is not audited and then electronically transferred OFFSHORE. Out of the reach of our government. All tax-free. Money Laundering at the Speed of the Internet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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