#or '70s british journalist brother david?

[fictionadventurer]

My idea for the dumbest Christmas movie ever: A film about Jack Frost and his poet brother, Robert.

[pinkpatiencecreepers]

Izzy Stradlin & Johnny Thunders: An essay in the making lol

Okay, time for the conspiracy theories over here. Nah, just kidding but let's talk about the connections between Izzy Stradlin and Johnny Thunders. Here's my take:

I'm currently reading "Too Much Too Soon", the authorized biography of the New York Dolls by British journalist Nina Antonia, who was also close friends with Johnny. The thing is that I can't help but find a lot of similarities between Izzy and Johnny (of course, taking into consideration how much of an influence was Thunders in Izzy's life, not only on a musical level).

So, let's start analyzing some facts about Johnny's life and observations from the people who knew him. First, he didn't grow up with his dad, since the latter split when Johnny was just a baby and he was raised by his mom and his older sister. 

From an early age, he developed an interest in fashion, rock music, and especially, in Keith Richards. So much, that he dyed his hair jet black and asked his sister to cut his hair in the same style as Keith’s. During his teenage years, Johnny made a reputation as a regular on the NY music scene of the late 60s and was praised for his unique appearance. He didn’t look like any of his peers and people often wondered where he got such rare and incredibly interesting pieces of clothing since they couldn’t be found at any of the local thrift shops. Turns out, he bought his clothes at the women’s department and customized them with the help of his mom and sister. 

In terms of his personality, people described him as a quiet, shy, and reserved guy, except when he was on stage and you could see him jumping around and living his best life. Also, he started dabbling in drugs pretty much since puberty, beginning with pot, and then experimenting with LSD, quaaludes, coke, meth, etc., until getting to the ultimate killer: heroin. 

Also, alongside with frontman of the NYD, David Johansen, Johnny was responsible for writing the most important songs of the band, as well as being praised as a songrwriter. Same as Keith Richards, he was keen on simple and precise compositions and focused mostly on bluesy sounds and nods to old school rock n’ roll with heavy influences from the greats Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc.

.....

Got all that? Okay, now let’s go with our Indiana boy.

At this point we have pretty much nailed down Izzy’s background and biography, right? We know that he was raised by his mom and his grandma Elizabeth back there in Lafayette. He has two younger brothers, Kevin and Joe. His dad split and left for Florida where he remarried and had two other kids. 

Same thing, from a very early age he became interested in music, mainly thanks to his grandma, who was a drummer on a local jazz band. He was also greatly impacted by Don Kirschner’s tv show where lots of the most important musical acts from the 70s made appearances. He definitely saw the Dolls there and they became one of his favorites.

We still don’t know many details about his life as a teenager in boring Lafayette, except the little that he, Axl, or other close sources have shared. Izzy started smoking cigarettes and pot, firecrackers, and the usual soft drugs that all of us have taken during high school years at one time or another. We know that he liked skating, playing drums, and drawing, among other stuff.

Things start to get interesting when he gets to Los Angeles. Being Keith & Johnny MAJOR influences on him, he dyed his hair jet black and styled it the same way as Johnny in the early 70s. Long, straight, and looking like raven feathers. So, if you are a hardcore fan of the NYD and one afternoon you casually bump into Izzy down the Sunset Blvd in 1980, you’d highly lose your shit and think you’re seeing Johhny Thunders himself in front of you.

Also, like Johnny, Izzy didn’t start playing guitar. He was a drummer, then a bass player, and finally a guitarist. The difference in Johnny’s case is that he first played bass and then switched to guitar.

Now, concerning clothing, Izzy also brought attention for his curious looks, being one of the first people in Hollywood to wear creepers (according to Hollywood Rose founder and close friends with Izzy, Chris Weber). Same thing happened in New York to Johnny when he decided to subvert the local style by wearing chunky shoes and platforms. Not saying that he was the creator of the look (neither was Izzy), but they certainly inspired some people to do the same and express themselves through fashion. Izzy also used to customize his clothes, DIY some of them, make jewelry, thrift flips, etc.

On top of that, as a little tribute to his idol Johnny, Izzy embraced the color pink by wearing it in jackets that he spray-painted, socks, shirts, etc. Mix that with his ivory skin, dark hair, and facial features and you have another Mr. Thunders right there (And they DO look like they’re related... as well as Keith, Ronnie Wood, Sami Yaffa, Nasty Suicide, Tracii Guns, etc. On the fandom we call that breed of rockstar: “Emo Rat Boy” lol).

Another thing is that Izzy’s drug of choice was smack and as it also eventually happened to Johnny, it made him all doom and gloom, moody, and vanished the once happy and joyous spirit, both on stage and in real life. 

Even in the dynamic between Axl and Izzy, you can see the same chemistry and looks of Johnny and David Johansen back in the day. Even the essence of the New York Dolls as a whole is visible during the formation days of GNR. Just look at Arthur Kane and Duff McKagan, and this is just a little example.

To finish this, around 1990-1991, Izzy is seen playing the same guitar model that Johnny is most known for, Gibson Les Paul Junior in yellow. And in the late 90s-early 2000s (I’m not exactly sure when) he made a cover of “Do You Love Me?”, really, but really inspired by Thunders. 

And that’s all, folks. THANK YOU FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK.

PLEASE LIKE AND REBLOG IF YOU ENJOYED IT!

UPDATE: @roger-taylors-car please illustrate this with pictures. I can’t do it because my internet connection is SHIT. Thanks and excuse my French. Much love!!!

[riffs-music-notebook-part-2]

It’s still the 70s, but with more guitar

Across from Punk, the way the guitar was being utilized was starting to formulate more intricate like and kick ass than ever before. Becoming the center piece, the shift into guitar chops would see prominence in such classics as Ram Jam’s Black Betty.

At some point, guitar solos had started to become a rite of passage. It’s not the first time guitar mastership was introduced, but it certainly became a mainstay into rock and the newly developed Metal genre. 

Crazy Train - Ozzy Osbourne (1980)

Randall “Randy” Williams Rhoads (1956 - 1982)

Randy was an American heavy metal guitarist who played with Quiet Riot and Ozzy Osbourne. A devoted student of classical guitar, Rhoads combined his classical music influences with his own heavy metal style. He died in a plane accident while on tour with Osbourne in Florida in 1982. Despite his short career, Rhoads, who was a major influence on neoclassical metal, is cited as an influence by many guitarists. Rhoads is included in several "Greatest Guitarist" lists.

Source: Wikipedia

Randy with his collection of signature Jackson Flying V guitars and his Gibson Les Paul. 

There was a major boom in the U.K. that took place as early as the 1960′s when many associated artists and acts would take inspiration from the U.S. and the Blues music. This would lead into the New Wave of British Heavy Metal or in acronym, N.W.O.B.H.M. Punk scenes were taking place in most the world in the emerging 1970s. Bands such as The Beatles and Led Zeppelin have gone on record to have stated taking great strides from Blues musicians such as Muddy Waters. 

The new wave of British heavy metal (commonly abbreviated as NWOBHM) was a nationwide musical movement that started in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s and achieved international attention by the early 1980s. Journalist Geoff Barton coined the term in a May 1979 issue of the British music newspaper Sounds to describe the emergence of new heavy metal bands in the mid to late 1970s, during the period of punk rock's decline and the dominance of new wave music.

Source: Wikipedia

Phantom of the Opera (2015 Remaster) - Iron Maiden (1980)

Of cultural importance the band would create their songs based around historical events. To think that I have learned a bit more about world history from Iron Maiden than some of my own school history textbooks is quite exemplary of the band. The stories told in these songs are taken from real world events. One such song would be Run to the hills. A song which explains the colonialism of the Americas and the brutal ways the Colonists established territory fighting the indigenous natives. I can only imagine textbooks these days gloss over such pivotal moments in world history. 

Run to the Hills (1998 Remaster) - Iron Maiden (1985)

Eddie, the iconic character from Iron Maiden. He is often depicted in the real world events that Iron Maiden bases their songs on. This one is The Trooper, reference to  the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava 1854, which took place during the Crimean War.

Meanwhile back in the U.S. another band would help establish the guitar’s role to shape the Rock and Roll landscape. 

The original Van Halen logo as seen on their debut self titled album. 

Van Halen is an American hard rock band formed in Pasadena, California in 1972. Credited with "restoring hard rock to the forefront of the music scene", Van Halen is known for its energetic live shows and for the work of its acclaimed lead guitarist, Eddie Van Halen. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.

Source: Wikipedia

From left to right David Lee Roth, Alex Van Halen, Eddie Van Halen, and Michael Anthony.

From 1974 until 1985, Van Halen consisted of Eddie Van Halen; Eddie's brother, drummer Alex Van Halen; vocalist David Lee Roth; and bassist Michael Anthony. Upon its release, the band's self-titled debut album reached No. 19 on the Billboard pop music charts. By the early 1980s, Van Halen was one of the most successful rock acts of the time. The album 1984 was a hit; its lead single, "Jump", is the band's only U.S. number one single to date and was internationally known.

Source: Wikipedia

In 1985, Van Halen replaced Roth with former Montrose lead vocalist Sammy Hagar. With Hagar, the group released four U.S. number-one albums over the course of 11 years (5150 in 1986, OU812 in 1988, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge in 1991, and Balance in 1995). Hagar left the band in 1996 shortly before the release of the band's first greatest hits collection, Best Of – Volume I. Former Extreme frontman Gary Cherone replaced Hagar, remaining with the band until 1999; Van Halen then went on hiatus until reuniting with Hagar for a worldwide tour in 2003. The following year, the band released The Best of Both Worlds, its second greatest hits collection. Hagar again left Van Halen in 2005; in 2006, Roth returned as lead vocalist. Anthony was fired from the band in 2006 and was replaced on bass guitar by Wolfgang Van Halen, Eddie's son. In 2012, the band released the commercially and critically successful A Different Kind of Truth.

As of March 2019, Van Halen is 20th on the RIAA list of best-selling artists in the United States; the band has sold 56 million albums in the States and more than 80 million worldwide, making them one of the best-selling groups of all time. As of 2007, Van Halen was one of only five rock bands with two studio albums that sold more than 10 million copies in the United States. Additionally, Van Halen has charted 13 number-one hits in the history of Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart. VH1 ranked the band seventh on a list of the top 100 hard rock artists of all time.

Source: Wikipedia

The change in lineup during the Hagar era was viewed as one of the most controversial and most discussed among music fans over the years. A lot of of original fans turned their backs and retaliated against the new singer. Sammy has still not felt any malice since joining and leaving the band. And personally, I grew up with the album 5150 first. I thought it was really great among some of the David Lee Roth era material as well. I really dig both singers for what they brought to the band. But no matter what, when you set the bar a certain height, filling in that role will always be a major undertaking. When I listened to their earlier songs such as I’m the one, Ice Cream Man, and Romeo Delight really capture the band in it’s purest form. And then along came the most sought after guitar solo ever captured in history.

The outrageous barrage of notes as it’s come to be known is the mighty behemoth, the unmistakable, the renowned Eruption written by Eddie Van Halen. Once this solo was released, all Hell broke loose. Everybody wanted to get in on that guitar shred goodness. Funny thing is though, the word Shred wouldn’t even be a household name until mid to late 80′s. 

It goes without saying that every guitarist at some point has heard of or knows of Eddie Van Halen. I think Eruption was the biggest monument attributed to that. And I just like every other kid would hear this for the first time and would just be blown away and ignited to dedicate my guitar chops. Which would be beneficial to up and coming musicians willing to go the distance. 

Diver down will always be my favorite album, mostly because it features two guitar solos. And if you enjoyed Eruption, you absolutely will love Cathedral and Spanish Fly.

I kinda took Diver down as a format for my own first released album, Allegro. Opening with a guitar solo, and having some (poorly recorded) Heavy Rock tracks ending in a final guitar solo. 

Since we’re discussing Van Halen’s legacy, I would be remiss if I left out the history post Van Halen and David Lee Roth’s solo project, A little ain’t enough.

So based off of what I personally know, David splits from VH, and starts his own side project in late 80s till 1990. He looks around for guitarists. By some miracle he finds Jason Becker. I’ll go deeper in a detailed entry about Jason, but know this; Jason left his own band Cacophony to release a solo album and sent Roth in a demo tape. Dave liked what he heard and immediately signed Jason on contract to record A little ain’t enough. The recording has been completed and Jason is set to tour to promote the album. Except, health complications prevented Jason from attending rehearsals and eventually from the tour at the advice of his doctor. He had been diagnosed with ALS (Ameotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease). The album’s tour tanked in live shows and marked Roth’s decline in commercial success. 

The demo that Jason sent in was actually a cover of Yankee Rose, the guitarist on the original track was Steve Vai. 

[feministdragon]

Peter Jackson’s Cartoon War

When director-producer Peter Jackson’s World War I film, “They Shall Not Grow Old,” which miraculously transforms grainy, choppy black-and-white archival footage from the war into a modern 3D color extravaganza, begins, he bombards us with the clichés used to ennoble war. Veterans, over background music, say things like “I wouldn’t have missed it,” “I would go through it all over again because I enjoyed the service life” and “It made me a man.” It must have taken some effort after the war to find the tiny minority of veterans willing to utter this rubbish. Military life is a form of servitude, prolonged exposure to combat leaves you broken, scarred for life by trauma and often so numb you have difficulty connecting with others, and the last thing war does is make you a man.

Far more common was the experience of the actor Wilfrid Lawson, who was wounded in the war and as a result had a metal plate in his skull. He drank heavily to dull the incessant pain. In his memoirs “Inside Memory,” Timothy Findley, who acted with him, recalled that Lawson “always went to bed sodden and all night long he would be dragged from one nightmare to another—often yelling—more often screaming—very often struggling physically to free himself of impeding bedclothes and threatening shapes in the shadows.” He would pound the walls, shouting “Help! Help! Help!” The noise, my dear—and the people.

David Lloyd George, wartime prime minister of Britain, in his memoirs used language like this to describe the conflict:

… [I]nexhaustible vanity that will never admit a mistake … individuals who would rather the million perish than that they as leaders should own—even to themselves—that they were blunderers … the notoriety attained by a narrow and stubborn egotism, unsurpassed among the records of disaster wrought by human complacency … a bad scheme badly handled … impossible orders issued by Generals who had no idea what the execution of their commands really meant … this insane enterprise … this muddy and muddle-headed venture. …

The British Imperial War Museum, which was behind the Jackson film, had no interest in portraying the dark reality of war. War may be savage, brutal and hard, but it is also, according to the myth, ennobling, heroic and selfless. You can believe this drivel only if you have never been in combat, which is what allows Jackson to modernize a cartoon version of war.

The poet Siegfried Sassoon in “The Hero” captured the callousness of war:

“Jack fell as he’d have wished,” the Mother said, And folded up the letter that she’d read. “The Colonel writes so nicely.” Something broke In the tired voice that quavered to a choke. She half looked up. “We mothers are so proud Of our dead soldiers.” Then her face was bowed.

Quietly the Brother Officer went out. He’d told the poor old dear some gallant lies That she would nourish all her days, no doubt. For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy, Because he’d been so brave, her glorious boy.

He thought how “Jack,” cold-footed, useless swine, Had panicked down the trench that night the mine Went up at Wicked Corner; how he’d tried To get sent home; and how, at last, he died, Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care Except that lonely woman with white hair.

Our own generals and politicians, who nearly two decades ago launched the greatest strategic blunder in American history and have wasted nearly $6 trillion on conflicts in the Middle East that we cannot win, are no less egotistical and incompetent. The images of our wars are as carefully controlled and censored as the images from World War I. While the futility and human carnage of our current conflicts are rarely acknowledged in public, one might hope that we could confront the suicidal idiocy of World War I a century later.

Leon Wolff, in his book “In Flanders Fields: The 1917 Campaign,” writes of World War I:

“It had meant nothing, solved nothing, and proved nothing; and in so doing had killed 8,538,315 men and variously wounded 21,219,452. Of 7,750,919 others taken prisoner or missing, well over a million were later presumed dead; thus the total deaths (not counting civilians) approach ten million. The moral and mental defects of the leaders of the human race had been demonstrated with some exactitude. One of them (Woodrow Wilson) later admitted that the war had been fought for business interests; another (David Lloyd George) had told a newspaperman: ‘If people really knew, the war would be stopped tomorrow, but of course they don’t—and can’t know. The correspondents don’t write and the censorship wouldn’t pass the truth.’

There is no mention in the film of the colossal stupidity of the British general staff that sent hundreds of thousands of working-class Englishmen—they are seen grinning into the camera with their decayed teeth—in wave after wave, week after week, month after month, into the mouths of German machine guns to be killed or wounded. There is no serious exploration of the iron censorship that hid the realities of the war from the public and saw the press become a shill for warmongers. There is no investigation into how the war was used by the state, as it is today, as an excuse to eradicate civil liberties. There is no look at the immense wealth made by the arms manufacturers and contractors or how the war plunged Britain deep into debt with war-related costs totaling 70 percent of the gross national product. Yes, we see some pictures of gruesome wounds, digitalized into color, yes, we hear how rats ate corpses, but the war in the film is carefully choreographed, stripped of the deafening sounds, repugnant smells and most importantly the crippling fear and terror that make a battlefield a stygian nightmare. We glimpse dead bodies, but there are no long camera shots of the slow agony of those dying of horrific wounds. Sanitized images like these are war pornography. That they are no longer jerky and grainy and have been colorized in 3D merely gives old war porn a modern sheen.

“When the war was not very active, it was really rather fun to be in the front line,” a veteran says in the film. “It was a sort of outdoor camp holiday with a slight spice of danger to make it interesting.”

Insipid comments like that defined the perception of the war at home. The clash between a civilian population that saw the war as “a sort of outdoor camp holiday” and those who experienced it led to profound estrangement. The poet Charles Sorley wrote: “I should like so much to kill whoever was primarily responsible for the war.” And journalist and author Philip Gibbs noted that soldiers had a deep hatred of civilians who believed the lies. “They hated the smiling women in the streets. They loathed the old men. … They desired that profiteers should die by poison-gas. They prayed to God to get the Germans to send Zeppelins to England—to make the people know what war meant.”

Military studies have determined that after 60 days of continuous combat, 98 percent of those who survive will have become psychiatric casualties. The common trait among the 2 percent who were able to endure sustained combat was a predisposition toward “aggressive psychopathic personalities.” Lt. Col. David Grossman wrote: “It is not too far from the mark to observe that there is something about continuous, inescapable combat which will drive 98 percent of all men insane, and the other 2 percent were crazy when they got there.”

The military cliques in American society are as omnipotent as they were in World War I. The symbols of war and militarism, then and now, have a quasi-religious aura, especially in our failed democracy. Our incompetent generals—such as David Petraeus, whose surges only prolonged the Iraq War and raised the casualty figures and whose idea to arm “moderate” rebels in Syria was a debacle—are as lionized as the pig-headed and vainglorious Gen. Douglas Haig, the British commander in chief, who resisted innovations such as the tank, the airplane and the machine gun, which he called “a much overrated weapon.” He believed the cavalry would play the decisive role in winning the war. Haig, in the Battle of the Somme, oversaw 60,000 casualties on the first day of the offensive, July 1, 1916. None of his military objectives were achieved. Twenty thousand lay dead between the lines. The wounded cried out for days. This did not dampen Haig’s ardor to sacrifice his soldiers. Determined to make his plan of bursting through the German lines and unleashing his three divisions of cavalry on the fleeing enemy, he kept the waves of assaults going for four months until winter forced him to cease. By the time Haig was done, the army had suffered more than 400,000 casualties and accomplished nothing. Lt. Col. E.T.F. Sandys, who saw 500 of his soldiers killed or wounded on the first day at the Somme, wrote two months later, “I have never had a moment’s peace since July 1st.” He then shot himself to death in a London hotel room. Joe Sacco’s illustrated book “The Great War,” a 24-foot-long wordless panorama that depicts the first day of the Battle of Somme, reveals more truth about the horror of war than Jackson’s elaborate restoration of old film.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/peter-jacksons-cartoon-war/

Jackson closes the film with an army ditty about prostitution. “You might forget the gas and shell,” the song goes, “but you’ll nev’r forget the Mademoiselle! Hinky-dinky, parlez-vous?”

Tens of thousands of girls and women, whose brothers, fathers, sons and husbands were dead or crippled, and whose homes often had been destroyed, became impoverished and often homeless. They were easy prey for the brothels, including the military-run brothels, and the pimps that serviced the soldiers. There is nothing amusing or cute about lying on a straw mat and being raped by as many as 60 men a day, unless you are the rapist.

“Give sorrow words,” William Shakespeare reminded us, “The grief that does not speak whispers the o’erfraught heart and bids it break.”

It is fortunate all the participants in the war are dead. They would find the film another example of the monstrous lie that denied their reality, ignored or minimized their suffering and never held the militarists, careerists, profiteers and imbeciles who prosecuted the war accountable. War is the raison d’être of technological society. It unleashes demons. And those who profit from these demons, then and now, work hard to keep them hidden.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/peter-jacksons-cartoon-war/

[ahouseoflies]

The Best Films of 2018, Part I

I’ll associate my moviegoing this year with two things: subscription models and superhero films. Realizing that I was the target audience, I signed up for Moviepass in March, then canceled just before they started extorting people in July. (I’ll remember you all semi-fondly, conniving alarmists in the Moviepass Reddit thread.) Thanks to Moviepass, I took full advantage of my free time over the summer, and I found some nice surprises that I wouldn’t have checked out otherwise. From there I joined AMC A-List, which is the rare corporate service that I cannot complain about in any way. Moviepass always felt like some kind of drug deal, whereas A-List is as easy and inviting an experience as possible. I get to seek out Dolby, IMAX, or 3-D showings instead of getting locked out of them, and the electronic ticketing helps with my last-minute availability. (I’ve mastered the art of lovingly putting my daughter to bed, only to desert her and my wife five minutes later. “You know, there’s an 8:10 showing of The Predator, which means 8:30 after previews...”) My overall viewing was up 11% this year, which I have to attribute to these subscriptions. Perhaps I saw too much though. After a self-righteous five-year ban on superhero movies, I caught up in 2019 like the madman completist that I am. On the plus side, I enjoyed Wonder Woman and Guardians of the Galaxy, and I vaguely feel more connected with the culture-at-large. But I could have been more selective. The diligence required to watch X-Men: Apocalypse late on a Thursday night took away from, say, my Orson Welles project or...reading books. To get some of the business out of the way, I haven’t seen Burning, Shoplifters, Destroyer, Cold War, The Sisters Brothers, Tomb Raider, The Wife, or The House That Jack Built. Not all of us get screeners or care about seeing The Wife.  Mostly for argument purposes, I list everything I saw and divide the movies into the categories of Garbage, Admirable Failures, Endearing Curiosities with Big Flaws, Pretty Good Movies, Good Movies, Great Movies, and Instant Classics. Hey, speaking of superheroes:  GARBAGE

123. Venom (Ruben Fleischer)- Venom was first announced as an R-rated film until it was neutered into PG-13 at some point in the development road. That was the right choice because this is a movie, in all of its broad, careless storytelling, for children. "So he's going to get married to her but then he looks at her email and then he interviews the guy and he gets fired so then she leaves him and he drinks now?" This is a dummy's version of what a journalist is or what a scientist is, and it never shades into more subtlety than exactly what is on the expected surface. I guess that Tom Hardy gets to jump into a lobster tank if that floats your boat, but the story is stuck on fast-forward for the whole movie, never relenting to develop character or do anything other than communicate information that we don't really need.

Venom is almost--almost--interesting as a new branch in the superhero economy. Why shouldn't Tom Hardy and National Treasure Michelle Williams trade the equity they've built for caring about their work into this trash? I don't begrudge them that for a second. I hope they make more money for the sloppy sequels. 122. The Equalizer 2 (Antoine Fuqua)- The first Equalizer was flat and pointlessly long with pedantic dialogue too, but at least it had the Home Depot sequence. This one makes very basic stuff incoherent and dawdles all the way to the end. Your boy is now an expert hacker too? I guess it's too late for Fuqua to start caring about scripts.

121. Mandy (Panos Cosmatos)- I need somebody to explain to me why, dramatically, this is good without something like, "It's so metal! What a midnight movie! Chainsaw fight lol!" If you want to talk about the visuals that are stylized within an inch of reality, then I'll listen. But there's nothing to hold onto dramatically. I think I've developed an overall irritation with revenge films, but this filthy dirge of a movie felt empty and endless by any standard. 120. Fifty Shades Freed (James Foley)- Its intentions are too guileless to upset me, but Fifty Shades Freed uses up the goodwill I sort of had for the first two by tugging the viewer relentlessly through conflict that always seems temporary. Part of the fun has always been how bizarre basic human interactions seem in this universe. (Has anyone ever returned from a vacation to be surprise-promoted?) But this entry expects way too much from its viewer's loyalty. 119. On Chesil Beach (Dominic Cooke)- There's supposed to be a disconnect to the behavior of the couple in On Chesil Beach, a movie that asks us to harken back to a time when newlyweds were so sexually innocent that they had trouble figuring out how to consummate a marriage. Their fumbling seems foreign to us, which is the point. But what's the excuse for none of the behavior in the movie ringing true to any human experience?

I'm talking about Florence refusing to tell her string quartet that she's engaged because she thinks they'll assume that her marriage will break up the group even though she's sure that it won't. I'm talking about her father, who feels the need to humiliate his son-in-law in tennis because that would prove that he's dominant over the boy in some way that being his employer does not already prove. I'm talking about a plot that literally would not exist if the characters had just engaged in one conversation that it seems like they would have had in the flashbacks, which frame them as a kind of open, reasonably affectionate, easy-going couple. But by all means, McEwan, change that whenever it suits you. 118. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (J.A. Bayona)- I reject the whole premise of this deliberate lowering of stakes that never rises above obligation. To paraphrase a Griffin Newman joke, it makes Jurassic Park 4 look like Jurassic Park 1.

While we're here though: Can I have a movie about the guy who compiled the guest list for the dino auction? I want to see a guy looking at a spreadsheet--or is it an Access file?--and getting to, like, Mark Cuban and weighing the options: "He probably has the $27 million to spare on weaponized recombinant DNA. He would definitely appreciate the wow factor of having his own Indoraptor. But is he more of a neutral evil or a chaotic evil? I guess I'll reserve a seat for him and send the invitation. If he says no, then he says no. Okay, we're still in the C's..."

117. Tag (Jeff Tomsic)- Tag is going to show up on a lot of "worst movies to ever win an Oscar" lists when Jeremy Renner wins an Oscar for it. 116. A-X-L (Oliver Daly)- This is a melodramatic movie about a weaponized robotic dog and the dirtbike kid who befriends it. Nothing wrong with that; a ten-year-old boy might like it, and there aren't enough movies specifically for that audience. But what's weird is how nonchalant the main character is about the whole thing. He immediately starts training this one-of-a-kind "war dog" android and imprints it with his DNA like this is a regular Tuesday. It's one of many things that is just kind of off in this picture.

This being a cheap genre film, you do get treated to those L.A. locations that have been around the block. I think the nondescript complex that houses Craine Industries is also the one from Sneakers and The Lawnmower Man. You know, Craine Industries, the company that is working on a $70 million prototype for the military but, because this is a cheap genre film, seems to have two employees.

I do think there's an interesting movie to be made about motocross. The movie kind of works when it's just about an underdog father and son fixing bikes, before it gets into all of the robot stuff. ADMIRABLE FAILURES

115. The Little Stranger (Lenny Abrahamson)- Dr. Faraday: "Wanna marry me?" Caroline: "Maybe. Do you actually love me?" Dr. Faraday: "Probably not." Caroline: "Hmm, I think I would marry you only as an excuse to go to London to get away from my dying mother and this crumbling house that probably has a ghost." Dr. Faraday: "Oh. Well, glad we're discussing it now because I want to marry you specifically to give me a reason to stay in this crumbling house that probably has a ghost. I'm drawn to it for some reason." Caroline: "Is it because you grew up poor?" Dr. Faraday: "Yes. All dry, cold British stuff ultimately comes down to that.

114. Damsel (David Zellner and Nathan Zellner)- Had I done my research, I wouldn't have watched this Zellner Brothers follow-up to Kumiko the Treasure Hunter, one of my least favorite films of that year. Like that movie, Damsel is a story of two halves, punctuated by a shocking moment that happens halfway through. Unfortunately nothing interesting happens before, and nothing interesting happens after. 113. Suspiria (Luca Guadignino)- This is a movie about duality that gets extended. English, German, and just a sprinkle of French. Six parts and an epilogue. A dual role (and a bit part). Personalities that clash until one pulls ahead. There are ideas here. But, especially considering I don't like the original Suspiria, I didn't find much to hold onto as a visceral experience. It's a long, foreboding sit. Guadagnino knows how to end his movies, but he still doesn't have much to say for the long middle parts. Shout-out to Amazon; I hope that, in some circuitous way, betting on maximalist Italians helps them to sell paper towels or whatever.

112. Early Man (Nick Park)- I still love the Aardman aesthetic, but this material was thin. It's too juvenile for adults and too adult for juveniles. 111. Beirut (Brad Anderson)- The screenplay takes an hour to set up what should have taken twenty minutes. Some of that time is dedicated to developing Hamm's burnt-out alcoholic wheeler-dealer, but he's a character we've seen a hundred times before anyway. Some shorthand would have done some good. Once the plot gets going, it's serviceable, but I was bored by that point. Pike and Hamm need to fire their managers. 110. Upgrade (Leigh Whannell)- I'll admit that I owed the film more attention than I gave it since I was nodding off the whole time, but nothing in the gloomy programmer interested me enough to want to go back.

109. Red Sparrow (Francis Lawrence)- Good as a steamy blank check provocation from the director and star--not much else. I'm sure people will take down the easy target of Jen Larry's Russian accent, but they're ignoring just how much she tries in something like this. She is a gargantuan Movie Star who commands the screen, and a lot of that presence comes from the commitment of, say, learning how to ballet dance for what must have been months. She hasn't slept through a performance yet.

I didn't think this endless movie made much sense, especially near its conclusion. Perhaps it's my personal distaste for the way that spy movies introduce major plot points without so much as a music sting to guide you. As soon as anyone says the term "double agent," my brain turns off.

108. Hot Summer Nights (Elijah Bynum)- If you want to direct a music video, just direct a music video. I like all of the actors in this, but the filmmaker has nothing to say. 107. The First Purge (Gerard McMurray)- Even James DeMonaco seems to be admitting that the bloom is off the rose a bit, since he only wrote this entry in the franchise--and his direction is missed in the action scenes. Just enough of the political subtext remains, (The New Founding Fathers get funding from the NRA, and a character uses "pussy-grabbing" as an insult. Thankfully, a Black church getting shot up by men with Iron Cross flags happens off-screen.)

But there are more characters I didn't care about than characters I did care about. Since its prequel setting doesn't reveal much about the world that we didn't already know, the film needed to do a bit more with the survive-the-night scenario that we already saw in the second film.

106. Vox Lux (Brady Corbet)- A movie that, up to and including the last minute, keeps promising something better than it actually is. Everyone here is making...choices… 105. Madeline’s Madeline (Josephine Decker)- I'm glad David Ehrlich liked this as much as he did. There are some intriguing ideas, most notably the suggestion that a mentally unstable person would be better suited for acting than a healthy person. What a debut for Helena Howard as well. But for it to add up to something by the end, I think I needed it to have more dramatic structure--the sort of fall of the Molly Parker character feels invented and insincere--or go all the way into experiment. 104. Shirkers (Sandi Tan)- One of those "you won't believe what happens next" documentaries that positions itself as an example of truth being stranger than fiction. But removed from a festival context, does it ever rise above its logline? Is it really even that odd?

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 7.12

70 – The armies of Titus attack the walls of Jerusalem after a six-month siege. Three days later they breach the walls, which enables the army to destroy the Second Temple. 927 – King Constantine II of Scotland, King Hywel Dda of Deheubarth, Ealdred of Bamburgh and King Owain of the Cumbrians accepted the overlordship of King Æthelstan of England, leading to seven years of peace in the north. 1191 – Third Crusade: Saladin's garrison surrenders to Philip Augustus, ending the two-year siege of Acre. 1470 – The Ottomans capture Euboea. 1493 – Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle, one of the best-documented early printed books, is published. 1527 – Lê Cung Hoàng ceded the throne to Mạc Đăng Dung, ending the Lê dynasty and starting the Mạc dynasty. 1543 – King Henry VIII of England marries his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr, at Hampton Court Palace. 1562 – Fray Diego de Landa, acting Bishop of Yucatán, burns the sacred idols and books of the Maya. 1576 – Mughal Empire annexes Bengal after defeating the Bengal Sultanate at the Battle of Rajmahal. 1580 – The Ostrog Bible, one of the early printed Bibles in a Slavic language, is published. 1691 – Battle of Aughrim (Julian calendar): The decisive victory of William III of England's forces in Ireland. 1776 – Captain James Cook begins his third voyage. 1789 – In response to the dismissal of the French finance minister Jacques Necker, the radical journalist Camille Desmoulins gives a speech which results in the storming of the Bastille two days later. 1790 – The Civil Constitution of the Clergy is passed in France by the National Constituent Assembly. 1799 – Ranjit Singh conquers Lahore and becomes Maharaja of the Punjab (Sikh Empire). 1801 – British ships inflict heavy damage on Spanish and French ships in the Second Battle of Algeciras. 1806 – At the insistence of Napoleon, Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg and thirteen minor principalities leave the Holy Roman Empire and form the Confederation of the Rhine. 1812 – The American Army of the Northwest briefly occupies the Upper Canadian settlement at what is now at Windsor, Ontario. 1862 – The Medal of Honor is authorized by the United States Congress. 1913 – Serbian forces begin their siege of the Bulgarian city of Vidin; the siege is later called off when the war ends. 1917 – The Bisbee Deportation occurs as vigilantes kidnap and deport nearly 1,300 striking miners and others from Bisbee, Arizona. 1918 – The Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Kawachi blows up at Shunan, western Honshu, Japan, killing at least 621. 1920 – The Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty is signed, by which Soviet Russia recognizes the independence of Lithuania. 1943 – German and Soviet forces engage in the Battle of Prokhorovka, one of the largest armored engagements of all time. 1948 – Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion orders the expulsion of Palestinians from the towns of Lod and Ramla. 1960 – Orlyonok, the main Young Pioneer camp of the Russian SFSR, is founded. 1961 – Indian city Pune floods due to failure of the Khadakwasla and Panshet dams, killing at least two thousand people. 1961 – ČSA Flight 511 crashes at Casablanca–Anfa Airport in Morocco, killing 72. 1962 – The Rolling Stones perform for the first time at London's Marquee Club. 1963 – Pauline Reade, 16, disappears in Gorton, England, the first victim in the Moors murders. 1967 – Riots begin in Newark, New Jersey. 1971 – The Australian Aboriginal Flag is flown for the first time. 1973 – A fire destroys the entire sixth floor of the National Personnel Records Center of the United States. 1975 – São Tomé and Príncipe declare independence from Portugal. 1979 – The island nation of Kiribati becomes independent from the United Kingdom. 1995 – Chinese seismologists successfully predict the 1995 Myanmar–China earthquake, reducing the number of casualties to 11. 1998 – The Ulster Volunteer Force attacked a house in Ballymoney, County Antrim, Northern Ireland with a petrol bomb, killing the Quinn brothers. 2001 – Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched on mission STS-104, carrying the Quest Joint Airlock to the International Space Station. 2006 – The 2006 Lebanon War begins. 2007 – U.S. Army Apache helicopters engage in airstrikes against armed insurgents in Baghdad, Iraq, where civilians are killed; footage from the cockpit is later leaked to the Internet. 2012 – Syrian Civil War: Government forces target the homes of rebels and activists in Tremseh and kill anywhere between 68 and 150 people. 2012 – A tank truck explosion kills more than 100 people in Okobie, Nigeria. 2013 – Six people are killed and 200 injured in a French passenger train derailment in Brétigny-sur-Orge.

[nijjhar]

Politicians are the greatest hypocrites who deliver sugar-coated Sermons... Politicians are the greatest hypocrites who deliver sugar-coated Sermons of Sweeter than honey Falsehoods called KOORR, Kuffar, etc. and people die in millions. Jesus died fighting against them and today, they are most welcomed in the Churches of Mammon that employ hireling Dog-Collared Priests who steal money from the Church Purse as their salaries or they are Judas Iscariots in Sheep's clothing. Greatest Blasphemers and Killers Blair and Bush being considered by Anti-Christ Bishops for Nobel Peace Prize. Nobel Peace Prize should rather go to Asange and the Iraqi Journalist who threw both his shoes at the hypocrite Bush in Iraq. https://youtu.be/9qHdTpTXHvE Christ Jesus was killed by the Temple High Priest Hypocrite/Blasphemer against the Holy Spirit and so are these Bush and Blair who at the backing of Jewish people in the USA destroyed one country after the other starting with the cradle of Humanity Iraq, the Land of the forefather of the Chosen People who are no more faithful to Abragam but has become sons of the Highest Satan Al-Djmar Al-Aksa. Blair and Bush blasphemies against Holy Spirit are bearing Fruit in economic chaos created by Virus https://youtu.be/0WBYOmpDuCs George Bush Nobel Prize Nomination Has President Bush been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize? DAVID MIKKELSON Claim:   President George W. Bush was nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Well, it seems that GWB has just been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Origins:   Despite a rumour that circulated late in 2001, President Bush there was no substantive evidence to support the claim that President George W. Bush was amongst the nominees for the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize (which was awarded to the United Nations and its Secretary-General, Kofi Annan): The deadline for Nobel Peace Prize nominations is February 1, which put the cutoff period well before the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. (President Bush’s actions during the aftermath of which were the putative basis for his nomination), and Bush wasn’t sworn in as president until January 20. For a U.S. president to have produced accomplishments worthy of Nobel Prize recognition after a mere eleven days in office would have been a truly remarkable feat indeed. (Apparently, the Nobel Peace Prize committee didn’t consider this scenario too remarkable, though, as they later awarded the prize to President Barack Obama in 2009 under similar circumstances.) Norwegian Nobel committee had let it slip that George W. Bush was among the 156 persons (along with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. ATOMIC WAR PREDICTION – MATT. 13V24-30 – 14/05/2023. The Bible has all the answers for the twice-born of the holy spirit, “common sense” or Surti. “CHOSEN PEOPLE” have the Keys to this Secret: - Abram = Adam, Sarah = Eve and Promised Land = Garden of Eden. “Abraham” is the “Father of the Faithful”. Watch my Youtube videos on Hajj for “The Kingdom of Heaven”:- www.gnosticgospel.co.uk/faithfat.pdf BIRTH OF JOHN: - https://youtu.be/RNXvv-WwdI4 And the Proofs of the Virgin Birth of Jesus: - www.gnosticgospel.co.uk/bojes.htm We are the sons of Elohim. We should display His qualities for Salvation. https:// - Facebook banned this link. ISRAEL WAS ESTABLISHED ON 14/05/1948 + 70 YEARS OF FULL PROTECTION TO MAY, 2018. Youtube Video: - Facebook banned this link. Then, Real Tribulations world had never seen before for FIVE years to May 2023 when ATOMIC WAR COULD TAKE PLACE. Our Supernatural Father God (Elohim, Allah, ParBrahm, etc.) knows better. Grim American Jewish Reaper waving sickle to kill more in Venezuela as they did in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, etc. www.gnosticgospel.co.uk/GrimReaper.htm REMEMBER THAT PROPHET ELIJAH, JOHN, THE BAPTIST CAME TO LOOK AFTER THE CREATION OF DEMIURGE LORD YAHWEH, BRAHMA, KHUDA, ETC. FOR REINCARNATION WHILST OUR ANOINTED ELDER BROTHER CHRIST JESUS DELIVERED US GOSPEL OF OUR SUPERNATURAL FATHER FOR SONS OF ELOHIM, ALLAH, PARBRAHM, ETC. FOR RESURRECTION. No raw brick, no baked brick; no born of water, no born of Allah. KUDRATT KHUDAYE DI (NATURAL CREATION FLESH + SOUL IS OF YAHWEH); NOOR BY GRACE IS OF ALLAH (FLESH + SOUL + HOLY SPIRIT, WHICH IS COMMON SENSE, SURTTI, ETC.) Child-like Donald Trump has pressed the Tribulations Button on 14/05/2018 by declaring Jerusalem to be the Capital:- https://- Facebook banned this link. that if someone hits you on one cheek then present the other? 6. What are the names of the Prodigal son, his elder brother and the father? 7. What is the difference between..... URL:- http://www.gnosticgospel.co.uk/sikhism.htm  – Menorah:- http://www.gnosticgospel.co.uk/Menorah.pdf Banned by Facebook www.gnosticgospel.co.uk/Youtbe.htm John's baptism:- www.gnosticgospel.co.uk/johnsig.pdf Trinity:- www.gnosticgospel.co.uk/trinity.pdfsten. Many links on my special website:- Banned by Facebook Videos:- www.gnosticgospel.co.uk/Youtbe.htm John's baptism:- www.gnosticgospel.co.uk/johnsig.pdf Trinity:- www.gnosticgospel.co.uk/trinity.pdf

[whatisonthemoonarchive]

Mr. Moon & Neil Salonen! - Lets talk about Brian Crozier and the USGSC! - Part 2

https://isgp-studies.com/le-cercle-pinay

Since about the time that Crozier became a leading member in the mid to late 1970s, Le Cercle seems to have forged closer links with the more hard-right elements in the US government. Besides the Reagan and Nixon administrations, Cercle members were involved with institutions at the Jamestown Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, the United States Global Strategy Council, the Committee on Present Danger, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Americares, and the Israeli-US Jonathan Institute. All these groups were interwoven with the World Anti-Communist League and religious organizations as the Knights of Malta and the Moonies.

Seemingly one of the closest associates of mainly the British Cercle members was CIA officer and American Security Council co-chair Ray Cline. Cline is never mentioned in Crozier's biography even though both were involved in two very important organizations: the Jonathan Institute and the Foreign Affairs Research Institute (FARI), of which, interestingly, Crozier also forgets to mention his involvement. He also does not discuss the United States Global Strategy Council (USGSC), which was founded in the same period and headed by Ray Cline for most of its existence. The USGSC counted Cercle members General Richard Stilwell and William Colby among its earliest members and there's most likely more overlap.

The Washington-based U.S. Global Strategy Council (USGSC) existed from 1981 to about 1995 and was a think tank focused on setting coherent long range strategic goals for the United States. Clearly a bastion of America's permanent government, it mainly focused on worldwide anti-communist subversion. It also pushed for the development of non-lethal weaponry...

In complete contrast to the Carter and Clinton administrations, the USGSC was part of the hawkish new-right and neoconservative movements that came to the forefront with Reagan and remained quited prominent under Bush, Sr...The whole idea of a global war on terror, including the use of pre-emptive strikes, goes back to ideas that were proposed by this neocon group in the late 1970s and early 1980s. George Shultz is the most crucial player from the American side, which obviously is the most important. However, he had allies in the other parts of the world, including leading Israeli politicians from both Likud and Labour, fascist terrorists from France, and also Cercle president Brian Crozier and his clique in Britian. They came together at two conferences about international terrorism sponsored by the Jonathan Institute, an Israeli think tank named after the brother of Netanyahu. According to former SAS/MI5 agent Collin Wallace, it was a Mossad front.

The first meeting was in June 1979. Crozier and his Cercle sidekick Robert Moss were two of the speakers at this conference of which the purpose was to blame all international terrorism on the USSR. Richard Pipes, the later associate of Crozier at the White House, also spoke at the conference. Ray Cline and George H.W. Bush of the CIA were there, just as retired General George J. Keegan who had recently stepped down as head of Air Force Intelligence. OAS terrorist Jacques Soustelle attended, together with Benjamin Netanyahu, Jack Kemp, and a whole range of international journalists who promoted the view that the USSR was behind worldwide terrorism.

The only thing that was disagreed upon was if this movement supporting a global war on both terror and the USSR should be incorporated within the United Nations or not...Crozier's close associate Lord Alun Chalfont, together with intelligence connected religious extremists as Michael Ledeen and Arnaud de Borchgrave, were among contributors to papers read at the conference.

Chalfont had already been working with Cercle presidents Brian Crozier and Julian Amery in their Foreign Affairs Research Institute (FARI), together with Sir Frederic M. Bennett and Cercle member Robert Moss. Like Chalfont, Crozier and Moss were involved with the Jonathan Institute. FARI was set up in 1976...Reports that it was linked to the CIA are rather obvious today.

Conferences of FARI were attended by Crozier's money man Richard Mellon Scaife and Cercle members William Casey and Edwin Feulner. Ray Cline of the CIA and the Jonathan Institute has been in attendance, just as General Daniel O. Graham of the CIA and DIA. Like Stilwell, both Graham and Cline were involved with the US Global Strategy Council. Cline was among the founders of the USGSC and chairman of the institute from 1986 to 1994.

The members of the USGSC (initially 70 or so) had close ties to the Military Industrial complex, including highest level (often retired) representatives of the Navy, the Air Force, the Army, the intelligence agencies, shady defense corporations as Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), private business groups, and unusual religious interests as the Moonies and Knights of Malta. Over the years, known members have included:

*William Colby - CIA director 1973-1976; deep insider of many black programs, including CIA drug trafficking; Opus Dei

*Henry Luce III - Time Magazine; president of the Pilgrims of the United States since 1997; grandfather bought and held on to the JFK Zapruder film

*Clare Booth Luce - Dame of Malta

*Ray Cline

*Admiral Bobby Ray Inman - director ONI; director DIA; director NSA; deputy director CIA; director Wackenhut; director SAIC; Trilateral Commission; chairman of the "Jet Propulsion Laboratory Oversight Committee", which is not supposed to exist

*Michael Alan Daniels - Special assistant for political science research at the Office of Naval Research 1969-1971; section vice president SAIC since 1986; chairman of SAIC's Network Solutions since 1995

*General Brent Scowcroft - major Kissinger protege; reportedly visited Le Cercle

*General Daniel O. Graham - American Security Council

*Edward Teller - American Security Council

*Arnaud de Borchgrave - CIA contact of Belgian pedophile entrapper Baron de Bonvoisin; hard-right journalist; good friend of Sun Myung Moon

*Lynn Francis Bouchey - organizer of CAUSA operations in Central and South America

*General E. David Woellner - chairman of the Sixth CAUSA-USA Foundation Conference and a defender of the Moon Cult

*Lev Eugene Dobriansky - American Security Council

*Jeane Kirkpatrick - co-chair USGSC; Le Cercle

*General Maxwell Taylor - former chair Joint Chiefs; Institute for Defense Analyses; Pilgrims

*General Albert Wedemeyer - American Security Council

*General Robert Schweitzer - served under Alexander Haig at NATO; served under Haig, Kissinger and Richard Allen at the NSC; chair Inter-American Defense Board 1982-1987; national strategy program director USGSC since 1987; friend of General Singlaub; publicly supported Oliver North after Iran Contra

*Christopher Morris - chair and vice-president of M2 Technologies, which focuses on non-lethal weapons; research director at the USGSC, working directly under Cline, and later heading the council's Non-Lethality Policy Review Group; member of the 1995 Council of Foreign Relation's Task Force on Non-Lethal Technologies; of which Don Zakheim and Jason scholar Richard Garwin also were members

*Janet Morris - president & CEO of M2 Technologies; also member of the 1995 Council of Foreign Relation's Task Force on Non-Lethal Technologies; research director on non-lethal technologies at the USGSC 1993-1994; consultant at Los Alamos and close associate of Col. John Alexander

http://whatisonthemoon.tumblr.com/post/166024552889/mr-moon-neil-salonen-lets-talk-about-brian

http://whatisonthemoon.tumblr.com/post/166549462164/dr-durst-tell-us-about-le-cercle-now

[jeremyhodge2]

Syria’s Cersei Lannister Is Back and Now She Wants Revenge

The Daily Beast: 11 May 2020

By Jeremy Hodge

GAZIANTEP, Turkey—Last February, at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale in London, David Hockney’s iconic 1966 painting “The Splash” was sold to an unidentified buyer for a record-setting price of £23.1 million ($28.6 million). News quickly surfaced that the mystery buyer was billionaire entertainment magnate David Geffen, who decided to splurge shortly after selling his Beverly Hills mansion to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for $165 million. Geffen had owned the painting previously, but sold it in 1985 to another private buyer. 

Why are we telling you this in a story about Syria?

Amid the chaos and carnage there, news of the secretive “Splash” purchase was used to fuel a wholly separate tale of intrigue among the ranks of a very different, and very sinister international elite. In this version of events, picked up throughout the region’s press outlets and social media, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad bought the painting as a gift for his British-born wife, Asma, once dubbed “The Desert Rose” by Vogue magazine, but now emerging more like the Cersei Lannister of her devastated country.

Whatever the truth of the Hockney sale, for many in the Middle East the notion that the Assads would make such a selfish purchase at a time when their country lies in ruins seemed perfectly believable. 

When Asma was celebrated in Vogue nine years ago (the article has since been deleted), she and her husband were portrayed as a dynamic young couple (he was 46, she was 36) and potential reformers among the retrograde dictatorships and monarchies of the Arab world. She was attractive, well educated and comfortable in her well-cultivated, upper-middle-class London accent (more so than her local Arabic), and it was easy to imagine her capable of curbing her husband’s worst authoritarian tendencies while steering Syria toward greater openness. They had cute kids. She was espousing worthy causes and working with non-profit NGOs. 

So, if she was known for spending lavishly on jewelry and clothes, nobody much cared outside the country’s borders, and for Vogue, so much the better. 

But that was before Assad treated protests as rebellion, responded with savagery, and a civil war began that to date has killed some 500,000 people, even as half the country’s population is displaced internally or has fled to exile as refugees. The conflict spawned huge migration flows to Europe in 2015 that massively disrupted its politics, feeding into the hateful xenophobia of the far right. The chaos, and to some extent Bashar al-Assad’s cynical tactics, also helped nurture the rise of the barbarous little terror empire that called itself the Islamic State.

Inside Syria there had always been skepticism about the fawning international coverage of Asma, which even before the hard times served to strengthen the perception that despite her charitable enterprises, the First Lady lacked any real connection to ordinary citizens. It was clear to anyone who dared look that the regime her husband led was structured to serve a shrinking class of ever more wealthy elites, and Asma was no paradigm, she was a problem.

Certainly that’s the way her husband’s mother saw things.

THE MOTHER-IN-LAW

Anissa Makhlouf, wife of the dynasty’s founder, Hafez al-Assad, grew up in humble rural surroundings in a nation where members of the Alawite sect that she and her husband and his closest allies belonged to were regarded as heretical peasants, even after Hafez, an air force general, seized power in 1970. Following the death of Hafez in 2000, and the succession of Bashar, Anissa became very much a power in her own right. She did not trust her son’s London born wife, and she used her influence to marginalize Asma’s public role as well as Asma’s access within the regime.

But Mother Anissa died in February 2016 at the age of 86, and since then Asma, now only 44, has seen her star rise considerably, cultivating an independent power base for herself and her immediate family that challenges other more established members of the extended Assad clans.

Once upon a time, many in the West thought that Asma could help restrain Syria’s crony capitalism and brute backdoor dealings, but Bashar’s wife has proved herself highly skilled—indeed, among the most adept and potentially deadly—at navigating the country’s maze of rival cliques for her own benefit. 

Anissa Makhlouf’s dislike for her daughter-in-law was a reflection of her concern about Bashar al-Assad’s own lack of popular support within the ruling family and the highest echelons of the regime. Known for being meek and underappreciated with a distinct inability to look people in the eye, prior to 1994 Bashar had never been considered for the role of President. His father had groomed his far more charismatic and handsome older brother, Bassel, as heir apparent. But Bassel died in a car crash in 1994. 

Even then, Bashar kept a low profile in London, studying optometry in Britain, where he first met Asma, far from palace intrigues. 

In the BBC documentary, A Dangerous Dynasty: House of Assad, a British tutor hired by the family to teach English to the late Bassel remembered his first experience with Bashar as an entirely unremarkable exchange. “I once met Bashar as he was coming into the home, and he didn't make eye contact with me,” the tutor said. “He just, kind of was looking down at my hand, and stuck out his own hand, and that was it. I remember thinking that the father certainly made a good choice in choosing Bassel as his successor.” 

After Bassel’s death, Anissa pushed Hafez to select Bashar’s younger brother, Maher, to take Bassel’s place as the next President of Syria. But Hafez knew Maher’s reputation as a hothead prone to violence. Bashar’s other brother, Majid, was purportedly a heroin addict who suffered from a mental disability and could not be trusted to lead. This left Bashar, much to the chagrin of Anissa, the disapproving mother, to take the reins. 

Following Hafez’s death in 2000 and Bashar’s appointment as President, Anissa used her influence to strengthen the position of her other relatives to become the true centers of power within Syria, operating around Bashar rather than through him. 

Maher al-Assad, the favorite, was given control of key military units such as the Republican Guard and 42nd Tank Battalion, which oversaw and controlled profits from key oil wells in the country’s eastern Deir Ezzor province. 

Anissa’s brother, Muhammad Makhlouf, and his sons, Hafez, Ayyad and Rami, already towering figures within the regime, significantly expanded their influence beginning in 2000, following Bashar’s appointment. 

That year, Rami Makhlouf founded and became CEO of Syriatel, one of only two telecommunications companies in Syria that would go on to dominate 70 percent of the domestic market. Makhlouf and his father Muhammad eventually would build a massive business empire and net worth estimated to top $5 billion, while Hafez and Ayyad Makhlouf exerted increased dominance over state security apparatuses. Asma meanwhile, remained largely on the sidelines. 

“Before the revolution, regime censors wouldn’t even let us journalists refer to Asma as ‘First Lady,’” according to Iyad Aissa, a Syrian opposition journalist who has written extensively about the inner workings of the Assad family, speaking on an Arabic language broadcast. “We were only allowed to describe Asma as ‘the President’s wife,’ unlike Anissa, Bashar’s mother, who was always known as ‘First Lady’ during the reign of the father, Hafez.”

Over the years, rivalries within rivalries developed. Maher al-Assad saw Muhammad Makhlouf, who chaired Syria’s Euphrates Oil Company, as a threat to his de facto control of petroleum resources in Deir Ezzor. 

The Makhloufs would also develop increasingly close ties to the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), a secular ultranationalist political party founded in 1932. Hafez al-Assad had built his power through the revolutionary Arab nationalist Baath party, which first seized power in 1963, and the SSNP over the years was seen sometimes as a rival, sometimes an ally. But it had a strong base of popular support, especially in the Alawite heartlands, including the Makhlouf’s hometown of Bustan Basha.

The vast majority of Syrians are Sunni Muslims, many of whom eventually became sympathetic to the the Muslim Brotherhood or other Islamist groups. Secular parties like the SSNP and Baath became especially attractive for ambitious religious outsiders, including Christians as well as Alawites. Although the religious-ideological dynamic changed when the Islamic Republic of Iran forged a Shi’a-Alawite alliance with Hafez al-Assad in the 1980s, the party structures remained.

Throughout the 2000’s, Rami Makhlouf and other members of the family regularly drew on the SSNP to cultivate an independent source of support for themselves outside the scope of the ruling Baath, and before long the SSNP came to be called, only half jokingly, “Rami’s party.” After the popular uprising began in 2011, SSNP cadres would serve as the core of pro-regime militias specifically loyal to the Makhlouf clan. 

In the first decade of Bashar al-Assad’s presidency, the British-born Asma, whose roots are among Sunni merchant families from Homs and Damascus, was not a significant player. Hacked emails published in 2012 quoted her saying, “I am the real dictator”. But after Anissa’s death, Asma would take the opportunity to involve herself and her relatives more directly in Syria’s politics and economy, going after her rivals in the Makhlouf clan, and in particular it’s leading mogul, Rami Makhlouf. 

ASMA’S REVENGE

On May 4, 2020, Rami Makhlouf went missing. 

Guernica37, an international law and human rights NGO based in the UK, issued a press release that day claiming Makhlouf fled to the United Arab Emirates, but it is unclear whether Makhlouf, sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department since 2008, is truly in the UAE or seeking refuge elsewhere. That same day, Syrian Republican Guard units seeking to arrest Makhlouf raided his villa on the outskirts of Damascus, failing to turn up evidence of his whereabouts. 

Previously, security forces stormed the offices of Syriatel, arresting 28 high-ranking officials, and arrested Wadah Abd al-Rabu, editor in chief of the al-Watan newspaper, one of Syria’s most prominent pro-regime media mouthpieces, which Makhlouf has owned since 2006. 

As the showdown took shape, Rami Makhlouf issued a series of stunning rebukes to President Bashar al-Assad and his regime in two videos uploaded to his personal Facebook page on April 30 and May 3. “Can you believe it?” Makhlouf asked in the second video, “Security services have stormed the offices of Rami Makhlouf, their biggest funder and supporter, most faithful servant, and most prominent patron throughout the whole of the war… The pressure being put on us is intolerable, and inhumane.” 

The crux of the dispute is control of Syriatel, a joint public-private partnership half owned by the state, which is entitled to roughly 50 percent of the company’s profits in addition to taxes and other state fees. On April 27,  Syria’s Telecommunications and Post Regulatory Authority (TPRA) announced that Syriatel and the country’s only other telecommunication service, MTN, collectively owed $449.65 million to the country’s treasury in annual profits required to be shared with the state.  MTN has announced that it intends to pay its $172.9 million share, but Makhlouf has remained defiant. 

“The state has no right to this money, and it’s turning its back on previous agreements made years back,” Makhlouf declared. “I'll soon be releasing documents that I've already submitted to the relevant authorities clearly demonstrating why they have no right to this money,” he added. 

In a state known for carrying out the wholesale slaughter of those who test its authority, Makhlouf’s audacity addressing the president like that sent shockwaves throughout the country. But it’s not surprising. This is the culmination of explicit efforts by Asma, Maher and Bashar al-Assad over the last year to strip Rami Makhlouf and his relatives of their power in Syria. 

These maneuvering began last August, following Russian demands that the Syrian regime pay back between $2 billion and $3 billion in past due loans, at which point regime security forces put Rami Makhlouf under house arrest in an attempt to force the telecoms mogul to foot the bill.  

By September, Asma and a cadre of loyal officials who previously worked in her network of NGOs launched a hostile takeover of the Bustan Cooperative, a charitable organization run by Makhlouf through which the salaries of SSNP and other militiamen loyal to Rami had been paid. 

In October 2019, it was also announced that Asma would be establishing a third telecommunications company in Syria that aimed to seize market share from Syriatel. Lastly, Syria’s Ministry of Finance issued two separate orders on December 24 and March 17 to freeze assets owned by Rami Makhlouf’s Abar Petroleum Services company that were later used to plug budget deficits within the country’s General Customs Directorate. 

The targeting of Makhlouf’s assets meanwhile comes as those belonging to a number of Asma’s Sunni relatives have grown significantly.

Beginning in 2016, shortly after the death of Anissa al-Makhlouf, members of Asma’s family reportedly took control over significant parts of the market for basic goods in Syria. This followed the introduction of a smart card program to purchase products including rice, gas, bread, tea, sugar and cooking oil. 

The contract allegedly was given to Takamal, a company run by one of Asma’s brothers and Muhannad al-Dabagh, Asma’s cousin via her maternal aunt. Local media investigations of the company have alleged that a percentage of proceeds reaped from the purchase of goods using smart cards are re-deposited into accounts owned by Takamal’s governing board, run by Asma’s relatives. 

In December 2019,while many of Rami Makhlouf’s assets were being frozen, those of Asma’s paternal uncle, Tarif al-Akhras, were being thawed.  Syria’s Ministry of Finance had had them locked down for more than a year. 

Al-Akhras, who owned a small trucking business in Homs prior to 2000, used his niece’s connection to the ruling family to expand his networks. He then began taking part in shipments of food and other goods that ran through Syria into Iraq as part of the Oil for Food Program prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion. Ever since, al-Akhras’ work has expanded into the maritime shipping, construction, real estate and meat packing sectors. Currently, he and other members of Asma’s inner circle stand to see their fortunes continue to improve.  

Asma’s move into the economic sphere has coincided with her victory over a year long struggle with breast cancer. The First Lady formally announced her recovery in August, just before security services put Rami Makhlouf under house arrest. Since then, Syria’s Desert Rose has continued if not increased her prolific media appearances documenting her seemingly tireless charitable work across the country. 

With her newfound economic foothold in place, Asma appears most focused on grooming her children to take their place in the 50 year Assad-Baath party dynasty, often bringing young Hafez, Zain and Karim al-Assad on frontline trips to visit wounded soldiers and inaugurate the opening of new facilities from children’s hospitals to newly built schools for the gifted. 

As the war winds down, and Asma’s oldest, Hafez, begins his 18th year, talk has already emerged in pro-regime news outlets and on social media discussing his qualifications to succeed Bashar. Taking the lead himself, recently Hafez has begun conducting his own visits to sites across the country, following clearly in his mother’s footsteps.

The Russians who saved Bashar’s regime over the last five years, have grown weary of his corruption and wary of his Iranian allies. Maybe Asma imagines they would be open to new faces, albeit with the same name.

The Russians who saved Bashar’s regime over the last five years, have grown weary of his corruption and wary of his Iranian allies. Maybe Asma imagines they would be open to new faces, albeit with the same name.

More than ever, since her recovery from cancer, Asma has been keen to re-cultivate the image of the savior queen that she held and then lost in 2011, one ready and poised to bring up the next generation of Syrians, a woman whose soft touch can heal the country’s wounds. 

Some world leaders, having long ago succumbed to grim fatigue where Syria is concerned, may be willing to pay lip service at least to this charade. Following a near 10 year lapse, Syria’s Desert Rose could be looking to bloom once more.

[political-fluffle]

Hey Donald Trump, apparently you want to mix it up with me, son of a Holocaust survivor because I don’t agree that Israel—another sovereign nation—should be able to act as an oppressive occupier of Arab-owned land.

I’m not impressed with your offensive but limp, stupid statements about “Jewish Democrats” all because you think it plays well with your re-election campaign. You want a piece of me, bring it. You have done enough to piss me off.

Even given an extra day of reporter questions to suggest that you had missteps in accusing Jewish Democrats who don’t back the kowtowing policies of right-leaning Benjamin Netanyahu to remain as Israeli prime minister, you doubled down.

My children and my grandchildren are forever going to know you as one who hates Jews and everything for which Jewish values stand.

You driving the dividing rod into the American psyche to split Jewish voters – people who are already very split on this question – by insulting whether I owe dual-loyalties to Israel and the United States. You say I am disloyal because I don’t like Netanyahu – or you – to be acting as an authoritarian racist who wants to quash Muslim votes in each country, who wants to pick who wins and who loses in the economy and education, who wants Muslims to live a life of second-class status.

It’s going to take a lot more of your empty arguments to hurt me, but let me be clear that my children and my grandchildren are forever going to know you as one who hates Jews and everything for which Jewish values stand. You can’t even tell the difference between Jews and Israelis. The fact that no Israeli politician can currently pull a majority vote in the Knesset ought to tell you that even among Israelis there is no uniformity about the direction of Israeli-enforced policy. 

Your white supremacist supporters do a much better job of anti-Semitism than you; they want to kill me or drive me and all people who are The Other into exile to leave them a whiter,  homogeneous Christian nation. Your Christian evangelicals want us to find Christ. Your friends in Poland, whom you are about to visit, have passed a law to imprison anyone who says out loud that Poles killed Jews.  The neo-Nazis, in whom you find plenty of good people, don’t need much extra oomph; they just grew into their hate-filled polemics and worse from the Daddy Nazis.

Those were the good Germans who spit on my Mom as she walked on the street, who forced her into a Jewish school on the top floor of a building in British bombing runs, who locked her up for weeks separate from her family on a trumped-up charge, who forced her to flee with parents and a young brother half a world away to China just in time to be locked up for the rest of World War II by the Japanese Axis allies, open to tuberculosis, scorpion bites and hunger. Oh yeah, there was no escape possible to America because the borders were summarily shut down to them, even as the same nostalgic America was corralling Japanese-Americans into containment camps.

My grandfather’s attempt at a family tree was fine until it hit 1945. The generations just stopped at the Nazi death camps. An older uncle and aunt spent the winter iced into the Danube, only to get out and have to run the British blockade of Palestine to find safety. I don’t need any lecturing about how I view 70 years of Israeli independence either.

Perhaps closing borders sounds a little too close to your own policies? It does for me, but then I’m disloyal – to something. To you, for sure. To capitalism that operates without empathy and fairness. To Netanyahu? Guilty as charged. To American values, I am loyal. To the Israeli government, particularly as aimed towards the right, nope. I care because relatives and a lot of Jews live there, understanding that there are fewer Jews there than in New York and Los Angeles.

I come by my disloyalty naturally, the son of Jews whose very lives were held,  hungry and sick,  at the point of German Shepherds and a gun on the other side of the barbed wire.

You’ve called me a Socialist and a Commie before, you’ve used anti-Semitic advertising in your campaign, you’ve attacked me a disloyal journalist, someone weak on immigration and an abortion rights nut. Now we can add verbal anti-Semite. How else do we explain singling out Jewish Democrats from all Democrats, or recognizing that there has been plenty of specific criticism from Jewish America of the words used by those two House Squad members?

Israel itself has Jews and Arabs in its tax-paying population and in its Knesset, the legislature where there are lots of arguments about settlements and occupation and shooting unarmed Gazans in the name of security. The right-wing Orthodox in Israel don’t think most American Jews are even Jews. That small minority of Jews who are your circle, people like casino owner Sheldon Adelson and Seagram’s original owners, the Bronfmans, and your former lawyer David Friedman whom you named as ambassador, don’t represent me. So, let’s knock off the stereotypes, shall we?

You think two U.S. congresswomen are going to overrun all the entrenched political interests in two nations? You’re not only anti-Jew, anti-Muslim, and anti-woman, you are anti-knowledge.

So, if you think this is your political fastball, to pick on two Muslim congresswomen but blame Jewish Democrats, you have a few things to learn.

Real anti-Semitism, the kind you try to wash your hands of as you sling you anti-Jewish tropes, meant telling my dad where he couldn’t teach, or my father-in-law from being able to practice medicine in the largest area hospital. Nice way to treat military veterans, right? How about all the Green Book-like hotels that refused my parents entry, along with every black and brown person in the country.  It is about control and labeling The Other problematic and disposable – you know, deplorable.  It was what pushed me as a young reporter to the newspaper publisher’s office to deplore an editorial cartoon about Israel that used figures with Der Stormer-like big noses.

Sometimes you just need to be disloyal, because that’s the right thing to do.

How do you explain your own behavior? You’re the one disloyal to the ideas of America, the guy who loves America but hates Americans.

If you want to shill for Netanyahu, go right ahead. But leave the Jewish tropes about dual loyalties home. If you can’t tell the different between anti-Jew and anti-Israeli right-wing government, don’t say anything at all.

[thatsnotcanonpodcasts]

Solar Farms, C.O.D Child Soldiers & Zoids

We wear horn-rimmed glasses with a heavy duty lens, button down shirts and a pocket full of pens. That’s right the Nerds are back again with another episode that some may say is entertaining, a few might go so far as to describe it as educational, but it is Nerd operated and focused. This week we don’t have a fabulous show for you all, sorry, no it is in fact AWESOME!!! We have some absolutely mind blowing news that is as revolutionary as going from an 8 bit operating system to a 32 bit IBM back in the 70’s.

First up Buck has news about the English finally realising that the areas around solar farms etc can actually be used as green space and help provide habitat for the endangered wildlife. We don’t mean the DJ after he gets a bit of static electricity from scuffing his feet in the wool carpet either. No, we mean birds and the like that some grotty people have destroyed the homes of. This sparks the discussion of how can we implement similar measures to improve society. Have you heard about the bladeless wind turbines? We have and even have a link, they are so cool and even more environmentally friendly.

Next up is the Professor with child soldier. Oops, sorry, that is supposed to read Call of Duty Modern Warfare (the latest of the latest of the most recent up to date Modern Warfare – we think). Yep, if you are still wondering why the put in the Airport chapter in the other Modern warfare (don’t ask or we will look at you like a dog when you do something silly) we have something equally confronting, pointless and kind strange even. No not DJ either for those smarty pants who were going to say it. Nope, they have child soldiers in the latest instalment of, oh you get the drift. Well apparently some people are upset about it, surprise surprise surprise, you just put on the Robin Williams voice for that didn’t you. Well we talk about this and Mobile Suit Gundam, how do these topics link? Listen in, and find out.

The next topic is about the Zoids franchise delivering a new manga series for us all to enjoy. That’s right folks, a new series to further expand your library, your mind, and lighten your wallet. We are still light on the details but hopefully it is going to maintain that high level of fun, entertainment and action that we all love.

Now, for the Marvel fans we apologise (Buck says no we don’t); but, Batman is getting a star on the Hollywood walk of fame. That’s right, the caped crusader is being recognised and celebrated. The first Super hero to be so recognised, and it is DC first once again. This is part of our usual line up of shout outs, remembrances, birthdays and special events. We hope you enjoy, take care of yourselves and look out for each other, remember to stay hydrated, catch you all next Bat time, on the same Bat channel.

EPISODE NOTES:

Solar Farms - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/07/solar-farms-to-create-natural-habitats-for-threatened-british-species

Call of Duty modern warfare’s child soldier - https://www.greenmangaming.com/newsroom/2019/06/21/call-of-duty-modern-warfares-child-soldier-level-raises-eyebrows/

Zoids franchise gets a new manga - https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2019-06-23/zoids-franchise-gets-new-manga-in-august/.148187

Games currently playing

Professor

– My Friend Pedro - https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/my-friend-pedro-switch/

Buck

– Assassin’s Creed 2 - https://store.steampowered.com/app/33230/Assassins_Creed_2_Deluxe_Edition/

DJ

– Mortal Kombat 11 - https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/mortal-kombat-11-ps4/

Other topics discussed

2016 South Australia Blackouts

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_South_Australian_blackout

Bladeless wind turbines

Photo- https://www.technologyreview.com/i/images/bladeless.turbinex392.jpg?sw=280

Vortex Bladeless Turbine - https://vortexbladeless.com/

Protest at South Brisbane

- https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-27/brisbane-protestors-lock-themselves-together/11251358?WT.ac=localnews_brisbane

German nuclear power plants shutting down

- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-13592208

7 Years later, Fukushima is still leaking radioactive waste

- https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/03/29/national/seven-years-radioactive-water-fukushima-plant-still-flowing-ocean-study-finds/

Chernobyl (2019 HBO miniseries)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_(miniseries)

Off with the Fairies (That’s not Canon Podcast)

- https://thatsnotcanon.com/offwiththefairies

Famous Assassinations

- Georgi Markov: Death by Ricin via umbrella - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgi_Markov

- Alexander Litvinenko: Death by radioactive polonium-210 poisoning - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko

- Other famous assassinations - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/06/poisoned-umbrellas-and-polonium-russian-linked-uk-deaths

No Russian (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 mission)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Russian

Spec Ops: The Line’s new feature

- https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-02-09-spec-ops-the-line-lets-you-shoot-unarmed-civilians-angry-mobs

Songs of a War Boy by Deng Adut

- https://www.amazon.com.au/Songs-War-Boy-bestselling-biography-ebook/dp/B01HDL3LI6

Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans (Mecha anime series)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Suit_Gundam:_Iron-Blooded_Orphans

First impressions of 2019 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare by Dean Takahashi

- https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/30/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-impressions-taking-war-in-a-frightening-direction/

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 no single campaign

- https://www.polygon.com/2018/5/18/17366980/call-of-duty-black-ops-4-no-single-player-campaign

EA calls loot boxes “surprise mechanics”

- https://www.pcgamer.com/au/ea-calls-loot-boxes-surprise-mechanics-and-compares-them-to-kinder-eggs/

Zoids (Franchise)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoids

Zoids anime series in chronological order

- Zoids: Chaotic Century (1999 anime series) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoids:_Chaotic_Century

- Zoids: New Century (2001 anime series) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoids:_New_Century

Internet Chat Programs

IRC (Internet Chat Relay) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat

ICQ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICQ

Dial up internet

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dial-up_Internet_access

Napster (file sharing program)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster

Chris Hemsworth gets a Hollywood star

- https://metro.co.uk/2019/06/21/chris-hemsworth-scores-himself-a-star-on-the-hollywood-walk-of-fame-10023662/

R.I.P Bryan Marshall (1938 – 2019)

- Bio - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Marshall

- Captain Talbot (007 character played by Bryan Marshall) - https://jamesbond.fandom.com/wiki/Commander_Talbot

Criminal penguins narrated by David Attenborough

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M--8devfaaA

Shoutouts

21 Jun 2019 - BATMAN Finally Gets a Star on HOLLYWOOD Walk of Fame - https://www.newsarama.com/45714-batman-finally-gets-a-star-on-hollywood-walk-of-fame.html

24 Jun 2019 – 30 Years since Australia First Connected To The Internet - https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/06/30-years-since-australia-first-connected-to-the-internet-weve-come-a-long-way/

25 Jun 2019 – 10 years since Michael Jackson died - https://news.yahoo.com/looking-back-michael-jacksons-legacy-195632565.html

Remembrances

25 Jun 1997 - Jacques Cousteau was a French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water. He co-developed the Aqua-lung, pioneered marine conservation and was a member of the Académie française. Cousteau described his underwater world research in a series of books, perhaps the most successful being his first book, The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure, published in 1953. Cousteau also directed films, most notably the documentary adaptation of the book, The Silent World, which won a Palme d'or at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. He died of a heart attack in Paris - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Cousteau

25 Jun 2009 – Michael Jackson was an American singer, songwriter, and dancer. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest entertainers. Jackson's contributions to music, dance, and fashion, along with his publicized personal life, made him a global figure in popular culture for over four decades. Michael made his professional debut in 1964 with his elder brothers Jackie,Tito,Jermaine, and Marlon as a member of the Jackson 5. He began his solo career in 1971 while at Motown Records, and in the early 1980s, became a dominant figure in popular music. His music videos, including those for "Beat It", "Billie Jean", and "Thriller" from his 1982 album Thriller. Through stage and video performances, Jackson popularized complicated dance techniques such as the robot and the moonwalk, to which he gave the name. His sound and style have influenced artists of various genres. He died of homicide at 50 in Los Angeles, California - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson

25 Jun 2011 - Annie Easley was a female African-American computer scientist, mathematician, and rocket scientist. She worked for the Lewis Research Center (now Glenn Research Center) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). She was a leading member of the team which developed software for the Centaur rocket stage, and was one of the first African-Americans to work as a computer scientist at NASA. She died of natural causes in Cleveland, Ohio - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Easley

Famous Birthdays

25 Jun 1903 - George Orwell, was an English novelist and essayist, journalist and critic, whose work is characterised by lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism. As a writer, Orwell produced literary criticism and poetry, fiction and polemical journalism; and is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In 2008, The Times ranked George Orwell second among "The 50 greatest British writers, since 1945". Orwell's work remains influential in popular culture and in political culture, and the adjective "Orwellian" — describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices — is part of the English language, like many of his neologisms, such as "Big Brother", "Thought Police", and "Hate week", "Room 101", the "memory hole", and "Newspeak", "doublethink" and "proles", "unperson" and "thoughtcrime". He was born in Motihari,Bengal Presidency which is present-day East Champaran, Bihar - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell

25 Jun 1928 – Peyo, Belgian cartoonist, best-known for his comic strips The Smurfs and Johan and Peewit, in which the Smurfs first appeared. In 1960, Peyo founded a studio to accommodate his assistants such as François Walthéry, Gos, and Marc Wasterlain and created the series Steven Strong and Jacky and Célestin. Peyo's output diminished in the 1970s, at first due to the time he invested in the film The Smurfs and the Magic Flute (1976); in the 1980s, he put in more time, despite recurring health problems, into an American adaptation of The Smurfs as an animated television series. He was born in Brussels - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peyo

25 Jun 1864 - Walther Hermann Nernst, German chemist known for his work in thermodynamics, physical chemistry, electrochemistry, and solid state physics. His formulation of the Nernst heat theorem helped pave the way for thethird law of thermodynamics, for which he won the 1920 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He is also known for developing the Nernst equation in 1887. He was born in Briesen,West Prussia which is now Wąbrzeźno,Poland - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walther_Nernst

Events of Interest

23 Jun 1989 – Tim Burton’s Batman was released worldwide - https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/batman-turns-30-all-of-the-big-screen-batmen-definitively-ranked-20190624-p520m4.html

24 Jun 1994 – The Lion King was released worldwide - https://www.eonline.com/news/1049787/the-lion-king-turns-25-everything-you-need-to-know-about-disney-s-original-trip-to-pride-rock

25 Jun 1678 – Venetian Elena Cornaro Piscopia is the first woman awarded a doctorate of philosophy when she graduates from the University of Padua. - https://wordsmusicandstories.wordpress.com/2017/06/25/25-june-1678-the-first-woman-who-graduated/

25 Jun 2018 - Harley-Davidson plans to shift some motorcycle production away from the US to avoid the "substantial" burden of European Union tariffs. - https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44604280

Intro

Artist – Goblins from Mars

Song Title – Super Mario - Overworld Theme (GFM Trap Remix)

Song Link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GNMe6kF0j0&index=4&list=PLHmTsVREU3Ar1AJWkimkl6Pux3R5PB-QJ

Follow us on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/NerdsAmalgamated/

Email - Nerds.Amalgamated@gmail.com

Twitter - https://twitter.com/NAmalgamated

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6Nux69rftdBeeEXwD8GXrS

iTunes - https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/top-shelf-nerds/id1347661094

RSS - http://www.thatsnotcanonproductions.com/topshelfnerdspodcast?format=rss

[gyrlversion]

Rees-Moggs sister tells Jacob: You stole nanny!

New loyalties: Annunziata Rees-Mogg at the launch of the Brexit Party’s European election campaign

She is the loyal family retainer who nurtured both Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg and his sister Annunziata to adulthood – and beyond.

But now Westminster’s most famous nanny – 77-year-old Veronica Crook – is at the centre of a ‘tug of love’ between the siblings after Ms Rees-Mogg complained that Jacob, 49, had ‘stolen’ her for his own family.

Ms Rees-Mogg, 40 – a former parliamentary candidate under David Cameron – burst back on to the political scene on Friday when she appeared at the launch of Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party, announcing that she was quitting the Tories to become one of Mr Farage’s 70 candidates standing in the European elections.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday to mark her return to politics, the former journalist for the Daily Telegraph savages Theresa May as ‘the worst Prime Minister in the Conservative Party’s history’, slates her former party for trying to ‘de-toff’ her name to ‘Nancy Mogg’ – and bemoans that she has lost Ms Crook to Jacob.

Ms Crook, who has spent 53 years as the Rees-Mogg family nanny, has accompanied Jacob on the campaign trail during elections and now helps to look after the six children he has with wife Helena.

She was splashed across the newspapers last year when she rushed to confront a group of class-war protesters as they ambushed Jacob and his young family outside their Central London home.

Jacob’s response to his sister’s defection from his party was to say gently that Mr Farage was ‘fortunate to have such a high-calibre candidate’ while Ms Rees-Mogg speaks with affection about her highly protective older brother.

‘Jacob was a fantastic big brother,’ says Ms Rees-Mogg, who also has three other siblings. ‘He would include me in play dates with his contemporaries, even though there is a ten-year age gap – I was always part of the team.

‘He always looked out for me, treating me as a more grown-up person than necessarily I was. He also taught me algebra long before it came into the school curriculum.’

Only ‘nannygate’ threatens to come between them. Ms Rees-Mogg, who like her brother speaks Edwardian-era English, says: ‘Nanny will, for the rest of her days, be my nanny as well as his. But he has just stolen her, which is very unfair! All of us grew up with Nanny in the house and she was a huge influence on all of us.’ Last night, Jacob responded teasingly, saying: ‘I plead guilty to stealing Nanny but, in mitigation, I did have first call as I had children before my sister did.’

Family bonds: Jacob Rees-Mogg, aged four, with family nanny Veronica Crook in the 1970s, left, and, right, aged 12 with younger sister Annunziata

Ms Rees-Mogg – who now lives in Lincolnshire with her husband Matthew Glanville, a management consultant, and daughters Isadora, eight, and Molly, one – fought the Somerton and Frome seat for the Tories at the 2010 election.

Her selection as an ‘A’ list candidate led to an astonishing row about her upper-crust moniker after The Mail on Sunday revealed that she had been infuriated by a suggestion from Mr Cameron that she should ‘widen her appeal’ by ‘de-toffing’ her name to ‘Nancy Mogg’. She flatly refused. She will not face a similar demand from Mr Farage, who told this newspaper this weekend: ‘We are delighted to have Annunziata as she is, unlike that Tory attempt to be lowlier than thou. People in the UK don’t like fakes – and Annunziata is in no way a fake.’

Ms Rees-Mogg still bridles at Mr Cameron’s suggestion, saying: ‘My name has professionally and personally always been Annunziata Rees-Mogg and I am not going to change it.’ But she saves her strongest words for Mr Cameron’s successor in Downing Street: it was Mrs May’s failure to deliver Brexit, and the ‘humiliating’ extension until the end of October – leading to the likelihood of the UK fighting European Parliament elections next month – which persuaded Ms Rees-Mogg to return to the political frontline.

‘Theresa May has proven to be quite possibly the worse Prime Minister in the Conservative Party’s history,’ she said.

‘She has not only betrayed her party, she has betrayed the referendum result and she has betrayed her manifesto. She has been no good at all at negotiating. It is tragic that such a successful and historic party has been brought to its knees by one woman – who was never selected by its membership in the first place.’

Ms Rees-Mogg contacted Mr Farage through ‘mutual acquaintances’. She said: ‘I have a lot of long-standing Eurosceptic friends, I’ve been in that world for at least 15 or more years and it was becoming increasingly apparent that I couldn’t stand by and watch the British people being let down so strongly by an appalling leadership.

‘One thing after another made me more and more upset with what was going on.

‘I made it clear that I was considering it, and Nigel then suggested that I could join his party.’

She said that Jacob, the powerful chairman of the pro-Brexit European Research Group of Tory MPs, ‘understood completely’ why she had left the Conservatives.

‘He isn’t of the view it would be the best way for him to achieve Brexit, but he understands why I think it is for me, and all either Jacob or I want is to restore faith in democracy and to leave the European Union as was promised to the electorate.’

Does she agree with her brother that Boris Johnson would be the best candidate to succeed Mrs May as Tory leader?

‘Jacob is backing Boris and that’s his choice. It is for the Conservative Party to decide, not for outsiders like me to tell them who would be the best option. In my view it has to be a Leaver, but one they can rally round.’

Ms Rees-Mogg, whose late father was former Times editor William Rees-Mogg, dodges the question about whether she would return to the party if Mr Johnson became leader, saying: ‘Once you’ve left a club I don’t think that you are always welcomed back. Events change, people change, circumstances change. I am not going to predict the future, for now I am fighting for Brexit, fighting for the Brexit Party and focusing on that.

‘I would still call myself a Tory – I just can’t be part of Theresa May’s Conservative Party.’

The post Rees-Moggs sister tells Jacob: You stole nanny! appeared first on Gyrlversion.

from WordPress https://www.gyrlversion.net/rees-moggs-sister-tells-jacob-you-stole-nanny/

[dani-qrt]

A Spy’s Tale: The TV Prankster Who Says He Became a Double Agent

Today, Mr. Moore and K2 Intelligence are the ones under scrutiny. After activists learned of his ties, they filed a lawsuit in London against him and the firm’s British affiliate, charging that their personal information had been illegally taken during the operation. Mr. Moore has been pilloried in press accounts of the episode as a duplicitous spy for hire. Public health advocates who embraced him as an ally feel betrayed.

Photo

Part of Mr. Moore’s presentation during a speech he gave on “The Duty of Journalists to Protect the Public Health.” His supervisor at K2 Intelligence was irate afterward, Mr. Moore said. Credit No credit required

“He said I had given him a purpose in his life,” said one of the activists, Laurie Kazan-Allen. “I bought it all. I bought the store.”

The corporate intelligence business has boomed into a billion-dollar industry that provides companies, lawyers and Wall Street firms with due diligence inquiries, “strategic” information and investigations into potential business partners as well as adversaries. K2 Intelligence, started in 2009 by Jules Kroll, a man regarded as the father of corporate intelligence, and one of his sons, Jeremy, is one of the industry’s best-known companies.

Continue reading the main story

But of late, attention has focused on the unsavory tactics some firms use to gather information. Last year, it emerged that the producer Harvey Weinstein had hired four investigative firms, including K2 Intelligence, to dig up information about women who accused him of sexual misconduct. One of those companies, Black Cube, had an operative pose as a women’s rights advocate to try to win the confidence of one of his accusers.

Mr. Moore, who has denied any wrongdoing, insisted in recent interviews and in court papers that he had become a double agent not long after getting his assignment from K2 Intelligence and had secretly worked to help anti-asbestos advocates. His self-appointed mission: to expose the person he believed was behind the firm’s operation, a Kazakh oligarch with interests in asbestos mines in Kazakhstan and Russia.

“I took huge personal risks and put my security and my family’s security on the line,” said Mr. Moore, who has cropped hair and a long, narrow face. “I was utterly motivated by what I saw.”

The asbestos case poses a potential minefield for K2 Intelligence. Several private investigators said they would not have an operative assume a fake identity or work for an industry selling a product as dangerous as asbestos. Such ethical issues aside, having an operative publicly go rogue is not the best advertisement for an investigative firm.

In its filings in the London lawsuit, K2 Intelligence has also denied any wrongdoing and maintains that its asbestos-related investigation was legitimate and used reasonable measures.

“The matters and methods of investigative work undertaken by K2 Intelligence employees are assessed and evaluated regionally as appropriate,” the company said in a statement. “It is our practice to maintain the highest ethical standards at all times and to comply with the laws of the jurisdictions in which we operate.”

Citing the active litigation, K2 Intelligence declined to make executives available for interviews, and the company did not respond to written questions from The New York Times. A lawyer for the firm urged Mr. Moore not to speak with a Times reporter, an email shows.

“It would be in all our interests for you not to engage,” the lawyer, Dan Morrison, wrote in an email. “That is the approach that K2 will take and I hope you will agree that this is the correct approach.”

Continue reading the main story

Making ‘Mischief’

Mr. Moore’s curious life as a corporate operative started unexpectedly on a British beach in 2007 when he bumped into an old television acquaintance. The friend had since gone to work for Kroll Inc., a major corporate intelligence firm, and offered to make an introduction for him.

Two years earlier, Mr. Moore had lost his job as head of television comedy at a production company. After a career of orchestrating pranks, he had hit a creative wall. “I thought I had lost my way,” he said.

Mr. Moore eventually decided that being a private investigator would pay more than gardening. And over the next few years, he got sporadic assignments on due diligence and fraud investigations from Kroll, started in 1972 by the senior Mr. Kroll, who later sold it.

On some cases, Mr. Moore, who had dabbled in journalism before his comedy career, posed as a reporter. He also once disguised himself as a deliveryman with a large floral bouquet to get into a mansion owned by a Russian oligarch. Mr. Moore, who was eager to get back into television, saw cases as possible fodder for documentaries.

“I found the work fun,” he said. “I enjoyed the mischief.”

In late 2011, he also started working as a contractor for K2 Intelligence. And after a few small jobs, the firm’s top executive here, Matteo Bigazzi, offered him the biggest and best-paying assignment of his career as an operative.

According to Mr. Moore, Mr. Bigazzi told him that a new client, described to him as a “U.S. investor,” wanted to know if American plaintiffs’ lawyers handling asbestos cases were financing efforts by activists to ban the material. One of those lawyers was Ms. Kazan-Allen’s brother, Steven Kazan.

The firm’s client, Mr. Bigazzi said, suspected that American lawyers like Mr. Kazan were trying to drum up lawsuits by foreign workers. And he added that producers of the material believed that the type of asbestos still widely used in some developing countries — chrysotile, or so-called white asbestos — did not cause mesothelioma, a fatal lung cancer tied to the material, if properly handled.

“He told me chrysotile was safe,” Mr. Moore said. “So if the law firms were doing this, I felt that it was a legitimate investigation.”

Continue reading the main story

The initial targets of the inquiry, which was code-named Project Spring, were Ms. Kazan-Allen and an international coalition of activists she founded, the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat. And court papers show that Mr. Moore seized on the assignment with unbridled enthusiasm.

In one memo, he told Mr. Bigazzi that the best way to infiltrate the group without arousing suspicions would be to present himself as a documentary filmmaker eager to develop a series of films about dangerous industries, not just asbestos.

“The advantage of going into this world with a bigger agenda than simply asbestos is that it might make my entry seem less deliberate,” he wrote. He added that he planned to win Ms. Kazan-Allen’s confidence by engaging her in “the most genuine and heartfelt way possible.”

‘Completely Believable’

When Ms. Kazan-Allen met Mr. Moore, she found him, as most people do, bright, charming and energetic. She also glimpsed in him a future leader of efforts to expand national bans on asbestos use, particularly in developing areas such as Southeast Asia.

“He was very polite, incredibly engaging and completely believable,” Ms. Kazan-Allen, 70, said.

Mr. Moore had planned their encounter to mask his motives, according to court papers. He first befriended one of her associates, who introduced him to Ms. Kazan-Allen. Soon, he was sending her fawning notes thanking her for recommending books about the asbestos industry, the court papers show. He also mentioned that his sister was a top executive at the British Broadcasting Corporation.

“Once I’m completely up to speed I would very much like to start meeting other experts and campaigners,” he wrote Ms. Kazan-Allen in mid-2012.

Mr. Moore also asked her to arrange for him to attend an asbestos conference in Brussels. She agreed to do it, unaware that his real reason for going was to see if American lawyers like her brother were funding it, filings indicate.

When Mr. Moore reported back to Mr. Bigazzi, his supervisor at K2 Intelligence, that he had not seen financial involvement by American lawyers, he said, he was told that the client next wanted him to go to Thailand, where activists were pushing for an asbestos ban. It was around then, Mr. Moore said, that he began to question what he was doing.

Continue reading the main story

Mr. Moore said he learned that independent groups viewed chrysotile as being as deadly as other varieties of asbestos. He also believed that activists were right to want it banned and started to wonder whether K2 Intelligence’s client was someone other than the “U.S. investor” that had been mentioned to him.

“I don’t see the work of an arch mastermind who is unreasonably using disingenuous statistics,” he wrote to Mr. Bigazzi in late 2012, court papers show. “I see the work of campaigners who have a good argument on their side.”

Mr. Moore acknowledges that he could have simply walked away. Instead, he decided to discuss his situation with fellow Buddhists. He said he had told them that if he quit, K2 Intelligence would simply replace him. But if he stayed he might be able to do something positive by exposing the asbestos industry.

“I was told that I could absolutely do this from a Buddhist perspective providing I didn’t cause harm to anyone,” he said.

Photo

Laurie Kazan-Allen, founder of the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat, was the initial target of Mr. Moore’s investigation. “He was very polite, incredibly engaging and completely believable,” she said. Credit David Dare Parker for The New York Times

Activists suing Mr. Moore say they believe he had a more prosaic motive — money. Court papers indicate that K2 Intelligence paid him about $100,000 annually, far more than he had made since losing his television job. Whatever the case, Mr. Moore said he soon began to deceive K2 Intelligence and its client.

Although he continued to secretly record activists, Mr. Moore insists that the reports he sent back to K2 Intelligence were filled with worthless information. And when Mr. Bigazzi assigned him to monitor the World Health Organization, he persuaded officials there to underwrite a short film he produced, “Victims of Chrysotile Asbestos.” It showed a worker in India stricken with lung cancer.

Anti-asbestos advocates believe Mr. Moore made the film to enhance his cover story as a journalist. But its director, Greg Atkins, said that was not the case. “He used to laugh about the concept of the industry paying him to screw the industry,” Mr. Atkins said.

In court filings, K2 Intelligence said its executive, Mr. Bigazzi, had become aware of the film only after Mr. Moore billed the firm for time he had spent working on it. And Mr. Bigazzi apparently was not amused by how asbestos was depicted.

Continue reading the main story

Mr. Moore said that when he showed the K2 Intelligence official the film, he was told halfway through to turn it off. “He said he had seen enough,” Mr. Moore recalled.

A short film that Robert Moore produced about workers in India. Video by the World Health Organization

A Dangerous Ride

Investigative firms usually keep client names secret. But Mr. Moore said he was told during a chance conversation in late 2013 that the client in the asbestos case was a little-known investment firm in Singapore, the Kusto Group.

Unsure whether it was true, Mr. Moore tried to ferret out more information. He said he had found nothing at first on Kusto’s website to connect the firm or its founder and chairman, a Kazakh businessman named Yerkin Tatishev, to asbestos. Rather, Mr. Moore said, he stumbled over a link in 2014 when K2 Intelligence assigned him to go back to Thailand.

He kept striking out initially when he asked officials of roofing tile companies there if they had heard of Kusto. Then he showed one local official photographs of executives from Kusto’s affiliate in Vietnam.

Mr. Moore said the official had recognized two of the executives from their work with a previous company and told him that “those are the guys who sold us asbestos from the oligarch.” The same official added that Mr. Tatishev had once visited a roofing tile company in Thailand to urge it to keep using asbestos, according to Mr. Moore.

Those leads weren’t conclusive. But Mr. Moore says he began to focus his efforts on understanding what part, if any, Kusto or Mr. Tatishev was playing in the asbestos industry. In one 2015 email, for instance, he suggested to an anti-asbestos activist that they start looking into Kusto and the role of Russian asbestos producers in blocking bans in Southeast Asia. And he contacted journalists and filmmakers about making a documentary with him about the asbestos trade.

He also met at a London restaurant with a director, Dan Reed, to discuss a film project based on his experience as a corporate operative. Mr. Moore envisioned the film as having a climactic scene in which he would out himself as a whistle-blower at an asbestos conference.

“He said, ‘I don’t want to be a part of this,’ and thought there was an opportunity to expose it,” Mr. Reed said.

Continue reading the main story

Mr. Moore said he started secretly recording his meetings with Mr. Bigazzi of K2 Intelligence. While in Vietnam for the firm, he also gave a speech to reporters titled “The Duty of Journalists to Protect the Public Health,” in which he urged them to investigate the role of Kazakhstan and Russia in asbestos use. One slide he showed had a photograph of Mr. Tatishev and bags of asbestos.

Mr. Moore said he had received an irate phone call afterward from Mr. Bigazzi, who had somehow learned about the talk. But Mr. Moore said he had defused the situation by telling Mr. Bigazzi that he had repeated the contentions of anti-asbestos advocates only to maintain his cover as a journalist.

The strain of his life appeared to be taking a toll on Mr. Moore, friends of his said. Bill Lawrence, an occupational safety expert who was helping him analyze asbestos export data, said that he called Mr. Moore at home. During the conversation, Mr. Lawrence overheard Mr. Moore’s companion express fear about their safety.

“This is getting too dangerous, Rob,” Mr. Lawrence said he had heard the woman say.

Legal Repercussions

Mr. Moore’s life as an operative soon unraveled. In late 2015, Mr. Moore said, K2 Intelligence offered him another assignment, this time to get close to leaders of a major anticorruption group, Global Witness.

Global Witness was then working with the authorities in several countries investigating two major oil producers for suspected bribery. Mr. Moore said K2 Intelligence had wanted to find out on behalf of one of the companies what the group knew about those inquiries. But he took another approach.

In June 2016, he met with a co-founder of Global Witness, Simon Taylor, in a setting worthy of an espionage novel — a restaurant inside London’s bustling St. Pancras train station. Soon, Mr. Moore placed a book, “Agent Zigzag,” on the table between them. The book chronicles the real-life adventures of a famous British double agent against the Nazis.

Mr. Taylor recalled Mr. Moore saying words to the effect of: “If you know this story, this is what I want to do for you.” Mr. Moore proposed playing the part of a double agent, sharing that K2 Intelligence had also paid him to spy on anti-asbestos advocates, Mr. Taylor said.

Global Witness considered Mr. Moore’s proposal but decided it could not trust him, Mr. Taylor said. The group also urged him to alert activists such Ms. Kazan-Allen about his work. When Mr. Moore balked, Global Witness contacted a law firm. That firm then sued K2 Intelligence, Mr. Moore and Mr. Bigazzi in 2016 on behalf of several activists.

Continue reading the main story

Mr. Moore said he felt that Global Witness had betrayed him and insists that he was close to telling activists the truth. But Mr. Taylor said it was not Mr. Moore’s role to set the timetable, adding that his reports to the intelligence firm’s client might have jeopardized the safety of activists.

“He is not in a position to play God,” Mr. Taylor said.

Mr. Moore has struggled since the lawsuit. He said he had spent his life savings, over $375,000, on legal fees and was now represented by pro bono attorneys.

Mr. Moore said he understood why advocates like Ms. Kazan-Allen felt betrayed. He believes that they will come to see him differently if he has a chance to tell his story in court.

In its filings in London, K2 Intelligence said it had undertaken the asbestos inquiry on behalf of a trade group called the Chrysotile Cement Industry of Kazakhstan.

A spokesman for the Kusto Group, Michael Farrant, said the firm had never had any asbestos-related holdings. However, Kusto’s website notes that Mr. Tatishev, before starting Kusto, was a major player in the asbestos industry who revived the fortunes of two large asbestos mines, one in Kazakhstan and the other in Russia.

The Kazakh mine, Kostanai Minerals, is a member of the Chrysotile Cement Industry of Kazakhstan. “The town and its operations were on the brink of bankruptcy,” Kusto’s website states. “Something profound had to change.”

Mr. Tatishev declined through Mr. Farrant to be interviewed for this article and did not respond to written questions about his current interests in any entities involved with asbestos.

Efforts to settle the lawsuit are underway, though Mr. Moore said he had resisted doing so. Some activists have rejected his tale of intrigue as a product of his imagination. “How can you believe that anything he says is true?” Ms. Kazan-Allen said.

Continue reading the main story

Others, while finding Mr. Moore’s tactics unacceptable, believe his intentions were genuine. “Every part of my bones tells me there is truth in what he is saying,” said Mr. Lawrence, the occupational safety expert.

Meanwhile, Mr. Moore said, he has gone back to developing prank comedy shows, though he is not sure what the future holds.

“Do I strike you as someone who knows how to plan?” he asked.

Continue reading the main story

The post A Spy’s Tale: The TV Prankster Who Says He Became a Double Agent appeared first on World The News.

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[brookstonalmanac]

Events 7.12

AD 70 – The armies of Titus attack the walls of Jerusalem after a six-month siege. Three days later they breach the walls, which enables the army to destroy the Second Temple. 927 – King Constantine II of Scotland, King Hywel Dda of Deheubarth, Ealdred of Bamburgh and King Owain of the Cumbrians accepted the overlordship of King Æthelstan of England, leading to seven years of peace in the north. 1191 – Third Crusade: Saladin's garrison surrenders to Philip Augustus, ending the two-year siege of Acre. 1470 – The Ottomans capture Euboea. 1493 – Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle, one of the best-documented early printed books, is published. 1527 – Lê Cung Hoàng ceded the throne to Mạc Đăng Dung, ending the Lê dynasty and starting the Mạc dynasty. 1543 – King Henry VIII of England marries his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr, at Hampton Court Palace. 1562 – Fray Diego de Landa, acting Bishop of Yucatán, burns the sacred books of the Maya. 1576 – Mughal Empire annexes Bengal after defeating the Bengal Sultanate at the Battle of Rajmahal. 1580 – The Ostrog Bible, one of the early printed Bibles in a Slavic language, is published. 1691 – Battle of Aughrim (Julian calendar): The decisive victory of William III of England's forces in Ireland. 1776 – Captain James Cook begins his third voyage. 1789 – In response to the dismissal of the French finance minister Jacques Necker, the radical journalist Camille Desmoulins gives a speech which results in the storming of the Bastille two days later. 1790 – The Civil Constitution of the Clergy is passed in France by the National Constituent Assembly. 1799 – Ranjit Singh conquers Lahore and becomes Maharaja of the Punjab (Sikh Empire). 1801 – British ships inflict heavy damage on Spanish and French ships in the Second Battle of Algeciras. 1806 – At the insistence of Napoleon, Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg and thirteen minor principalities leave the Holy Roman Empire and form the Confederation of the Rhine. 1812 – The American Army of the Northwest briefly occupies the Upper Canadian settlement at what is now at Windsor, Ontario. 1862 – The Medal of Honor is authorized by the United States Congress. 1913 – Serbian forces begin their siege of the Bulgarian city of Vidin; the siege is later called off when the war ends. 1917 – The Bisbee Deportation occurs as vigilantes kidnap and deport nearly 1,300 striking miners and others from Bisbee, Arizona. 1918 – The Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Kawachi blows up at Shunan, western Honshu, Japan, killing at least 621. 1920 – The Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty is signed, by which Soviet Russia recognizes the independence of Lithuania. 1943 – German and Soviet forces engage in one of the largest armored engagements of all time. 1948 – Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion orders the expulsion of Palestinians from the towns of Lod and Ramla. 1960 – Orlyonok, the main Young Pioneer camp of the Russian SFSR, is founded. 1961 – Indian city Pune floods due to failure of the Khadakwasla and Panshet dams, killing at least two thousand people. 1962 – The Rolling Stones perform for the first time at London's Marquee Club. 1963 – Pauline Reade, 16, disappears in Gorton, England, the first victim in the Moors murders. 1967 – Riots begin in Newark, New Jersey. 1971 – The Australian Aboriginal Flag is flown for the first time. 1973 – A fire destroys the entire sixth floor of the National Personnel Records Center of the United States. 1975 – São Tomé and Príncipe declare independence from Portugal. 1979 – The island nation of Kiribati becomes independent from the United Kingdom. 1998 – The Ulster Volunteer Force attacked a house in Ballymoney, County Antrim, Northern Ireland with a petrol bomb, killing the Quinn brothers. 2006 – The 2006 Lebanon War begins. 2007 – U.S. Army Apache helicopters engage in airstrikes against civilians in Baghdad, Iraq; footage from the cockpit is later leaked to the Internet. 2012 – Syrian Civil War: Government forces target the homes of rebels and activists in Tremseh and kill anywhere between 68 and 150 people. 2012 – A tank truck explosion kills more than 100 people in Okobie, Nigeria. 2013 – Six people are killed and 200 injured in a French passenger train derailment in Brétigny-sur-Orge.

[nijjhar]

Greatest Blasphemers and Killers Blair and Bush being considered by Anti... Greatest Blasphemers and Killers Blair and Bush being considered by Anti-Christ Bishops for Nobel Peace Prize. Nobel Peace Prize should rather go to Asange and the Iraqi Journalist who threw both his shoes at the hypocrite Bush in Iraq. https://youtu.be/9qHdTpTXHvE Christ Jesus was killed by the Temple High Priest Hypocrite/Blasphemer against the Holy Spirit and so are these Bush and Blair who at the backing of Jewish people in the USA destroyed one country after the other starting with the cradle of Humanity Iraq, the Land of the forefather of the Chosen People who are no more faithful to Abragam but has become sons of the Highest Satan Al-Djmar Al-Aksa. Blair and Bush blasphemies against Holy Spirit are bearing Fruit in economic chaos created by Virus https://youtu.be/0WBYOmpDuCs George Bush Nobel Prize Nomination Has President Bush been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize? DAVID MIKKELSON Claim:   President George W. Bush was nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Well, it seems that GWB has just been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Further comment and editorial evaluation would be premature, but it’s interesting, IMO Origins:   Despite a rumour that circulated late in 2001, President Bush there was no substantive evidence to support the claim that President George W. Bush was amongst the nominees for the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize (which was awarded to the United Nations and its Secretary-General, Kofi Annan): The deadline for Nobel Peace Prize nominations is February 1, which put the cutoff period well before the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. (President Bush’s actions during the aftermath of which were the putative basis for his nomination), and Bush wasn’t sworn in as president until January 20. For a U.S. president to have produced accomplishments worthy of Nobel Prize recognition after a mere eleven days in office would have been a truly remarkable feat indeed. (Apparently, the Nobel Peace Prize committee didn’t consider this scenario too remarkable, though, as they later awarded the prize to President Barack Obama in 2009 under similar circumstances.) Although Nobel Prize nominations are officially kept confidential for fifty years, in February 2002 reports began circulating that members of the Norwegian Nobel committee had let it slip that George W. Bush was among the 156 persons (along with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani) being considered for the 2002 Peace Prize. The Reuters news agency noted, however: ATOMIC WAR PREDICTION – MATT. 13V24-30 – 14/05/2023. The Bible has all the answers for the twice-born of the holy spirit, “common sense” or Surti. “CHOSEN PEOPLE” have the Keys to this Secret: - Abram = Adam, Sarah = Eve and Promised Land = Garden of Eden. “Abraham” is the “Father of the Faithful”. Watch my Youtube videos on Hajj for “The Kingdom of Heaven”:- www.gnosticgospel.co.uk/faithfat.pdf BIRTH OF JOHN: - https://youtu.be/RNXvv-WwdI4 And the Proofs of the Virgin Birth of Jesus: - www.gnosticgospel.co.uk/bojes.htm We are the sons of Elohim. We should display His qualities for Salvation. https:// - Facebook banned this link. Natural bastards versus supernatural Bastards. ISRAEL WAS ESTABLISHED ON 14/05/1948 + 70 YEARS OF FULL PROTECTION TO MAY, 2018. Youtube Video: - Facebook banned this link. Then, Real Tribulations world had never seen before for FIVE years to May 2023 when ATOMIC WAR COULD TAKE PLACE. Our Supernatural Father God (Elohim, Allah, ParBrahm, etc.) knows better. Grim American Jewish Reaper waving sickle to kill more in Venezuela as they did in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, etc. www.gnosticgospel.co.uk/GrimReaper.htm REMEMBER THAT PROPHET ELIJAH, JOHN, THE BAPTIST CAME TO LOOK AFTER THE CREATION OF DEMIURGE LORD YAHWEH, BRAHMA, KHUDA, ETC. FOR REINCARNATION WHILST OUR ANOINTED ELDER BROTHER CHRIST JESUS DELIVERED US GOSPEL OF OUR SUPERNATURAL FATHER FOR SONS OF ELOHIM, ALLAH, PARBRAHM, ETC. FOR RESURRECTION. No raw brick, no baked brick; no born of water, no born of Allah. KUDRATT KHUDAYE DI (NATURAL CREATION FLESH + SOUL IS OF YAHWEH); NOOR BY GRACE IS OF ALLAH (FLESH + SOUL + HOLY SPIRIT, WHICH IS COMMON SENSE, SURTTI, ETC.) Child-like Donald Trump has pressed the Tribulations Button on 14/05/2018 by declaring Jerusalem to be the Capital:- https://- Facebook banned this link. that if someone hits you on one cheek then present the other? 6. What are the names of the Prodigal son, his elder brother and the father? 7. What is the difference between the “kingdom of heaven” of the Rabbis and the “Royal Kingdom of God” that Jesus ushered in? Why Jesus is not the Lord: - Facebook banned this link. URL:- http://www.gnosticgospel.co.uk/sikhism.htm  – Menorah:- http://www.gnosticgospel.co.uk/Menorah.pdf Many links on my special website:- Banned by Facebook Videos:- www.gnosticgospel.co.uk/Youtbe.htm John's baptism:- www.gnosticgospel.co.uk/johnsig.pdf Trinity:- www.gnosticgospel.co.uk/trinity.pdf

[cleopatrarps]

A Spy’s Tale: The TV Prankster Who Says He Became a Double Agent

Today, Mr. Moore and K2 Intelligence are the ones under scrutiny. After activists learned of his ties, they filed a lawsuit in London against him and the firm’s British affiliate, charging that their personal information had been illegally taken during the operation. Mr. Moore has been pilloried in press accounts of the episode as a duplicitous spy for hire. Public health advocates who embraced him as an ally feel betrayed.

Photo

Part of Mr. Moore’s presentation during a speech he gave on “The Duty of Journalists to Protect the Public Health.” His supervisor at K2 Intelligence was irate afterward, Mr. Moore said. Credit No credit required

“He said I had given him a purpose in his life,” said one of the activists, Laurie Kazan-Allen. “I bought it all. I bought the store.”

The corporate intelligence business has boomed into a billion-dollar industry that provides companies, lawyers and Wall Street firms with due diligence inquiries, “strategic” information and investigations into potential business partners as well as adversaries. K2 Intelligence, started in 2009 by Jules Kroll, a man regarded as the father of corporate intelligence, and one of his sons, Jeremy, is one of the industry’s best-known companies.

Continue reading the main story

But of late, attention has focused on the unsavory tactics some firms use to gather information. Last year, it emerged that the producer Harvey Weinstein had hired four investigative firms, including K2 Intelligence, to dig up information about women who accused him of sexual misconduct. One of those companies, Black Cube, had an operative pose as a women’s rights advocate to try to win the confidence of one of his accusers.

Mr. Moore, who has denied any wrongdoing, insisted in recent interviews and in court papers that he had become a double agent not long after getting his assignment from K2 Intelligence and had secretly worked to help anti-asbestos advocates. His self-appointed mission: to expose the person he believed was behind the firm’s operation, a Kazakh oligarch with interests in asbestos mines in Kazakhstan and Russia.

“I took huge personal risks and put my security and my family’s security on the line,” said Mr. Moore, who has cropped hair and a long, narrow face. “I was utterly motivated by what I saw.”

The asbestos case poses a potential minefield for K2 Intelligence. Several private investigators said they would not have an operative assume a fake identity or work for an industry selling a product as dangerous as asbestos. Such ethical issues aside, having an operative publicly go rogue is not the best advertisement for an investigative firm.

In its filings in the London lawsuit, K2 Intelligence has also denied any wrongdoing and maintains that its asbestos-related investigation was legitimate and used reasonable measures.

“The matters and methods of investigative work undertaken by K2 Intelligence employees are assessed and evaluated regionally as appropriate,” the company said in a statement. “It is our practice to maintain the highest ethical standards at all times and to comply with the laws of the jurisdictions in which we operate.”

Citing the active litigation, K2 Intelligence declined to make executives available for interviews, and the company did not respond to written questions from The New York Times. A lawyer for the firm urged Mr. Moore not to speak with a Times reporter, an email shows.

“It would be in all our interests for you not to engage,” the lawyer, Dan Morrison, wrote in an email. “That is the approach that K2 will take and I hope you will agree that this is the correct approach.”

Continue reading the main story

Making ‘Mischief’

Mr. Moore’s curious life as a corporate operative started unexpectedly on a British beach in 2007 when he bumped into an old television acquaintance. The friend had since gone to work for Kroll Inc., a major corporate intelligence firm, and offered to make an introduction for him.

Two years earlier, Mr. Moore had lost his job as head of television comedy at a production company. After a career of orchestrating pranks, he had hit a creative wall. “I thought I had lost my way,” he said.

Mr. Moore eventually decided that being a private investigator would pay more than gardening. And over the next few years, he got sporadic assignments on due diligence and fraud investigations from Kroll, started in 1972 by the senior Mr. Kroll, who later sold it.

On some cases, Mr. Moore, who had dabbled in journalism before his comedy career, posed as a reporter. He also once disguised himself as a deliveryman with a large floral bouquet to get into a mansion owned by a Russian oligarch. Mr. Moore, who was eager to get back into television, saw cases as possible fodder for documentaries.

“I found the work fun,” he said. “I enjoyed the mischief.”

In late 2011, he also started working as a contractor for K2 Intelligence. And after a few small jobs, the firm’s top executive here, Matteo Bigazzi, offered him the biggest and best-paying assignment of his career as an operative.

According to Mr. Moore, Mr. Bigazzi told him that a new client, described to him as a “U.S. investor,” wanted to know if American plaintiffs’ lawyers handling asbestos cases were financing efforts by activists to ban the material. One of those lawyers was Ms. Kazan-Allen’s brother, Steven Kazan.

The firm’s client, Mr. Bigazzi said, suspected that American lawyers like Mr. Kazan were trying to drum up lawsuits by foreign workers. And he added that producers of the material believed that the type of asbestos still widely used in some developing countries — chrysotile, or so-called white asbestos — did not cause mesothelioma, a fatal lung cancer tied to the material, if properly handled.

“He told me chrysotile was safe,” Mr. Moore said. “So if the law firms were doing this, I felt that it was a legitimate investigation.”

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The initial targets of the inquiry, which was code-named Project Spring, were Ms. Kazan-Allen and an international coalition of activists she founded, the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat. And court papers show that Mr. Moore seized on the assignment with unbridled enthusiasm.

In one memo, he told Mr. Bigazzi that the best way to infiltrate the group without arousing suspicions would be to present himself as a documentary filmmaker eager to develop a series of films about dangerous industries, not just asbestos.

“The advantage of going into this world with a bigger agenda than simply asbestos is that it might make my entry seem less deliberate,” he wrote. He added that he planned to win Ms. Kazan-Allen’s confidence by engaging her in “the most genuine and heartfelt way possible.”

‘Completely Believable’

When Ms. Kazan-Allen met Mr. Moore, she found him, as most people do, bright, charming and energetic. She also glimpsed in him a future leader of efforts to expand national bans on asbestos use, particularly in developing areas such as Southeast Asia.

“He was very polite, incredibly engaging and completely believable,” Ms. Kazan-Allen, 70, said.

Mr. Moore had planned their encounter to mask his motives, according to court papers. He first befriended one of her associates, who introduced him to Ms. Kazan-Allen. Soon, he was sending her fawning notes thanking her for recommending books about the asbestos industry, the court papers show. He also mentioned that his sister was a top executive at the British Broadcasting Corporation.

“Once I’m completely up to speed I would very much like to start meeting other experts and campaigners,” he wrote Ms. Kazan-Allen in mid-2012.

Mr. Moore also asked her to arrange for him to attend an asbestos conference in Brussels. She agreed to do it, unaware that his real reason for going was to see if American lawyers like her brother were funding it, filings indicate.

When Mr. Moore reported back to Mr. Bigazzi, his supervisor at K2 Intelligence, that he had not seen financial involvement by American lawyers, he said, he was told that the client next wanted him to go to Thailand, where activists were pushing for an asbestos ban. It was around then, Mr. Moore said, that he began to question what he was doing.

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Mr. Moore said he learned that independent groups viewed chrysotile as being as deadly as other varieties of asbestos. He also believed that activists were right to want it banned and started to wonder whether K2 Intelligence’s client was someone other than the “U.S. investor” that had been mentioned to him.

“I don’t see the work of an arch mastermind who is unreasonably using disingenuous statistics,” he wrote to Mr. Bigazzi in late 2012, court papers show. “I see the work of campaigners who have a good argument on their side.”

Mr. Moore acknowledges that he could have simply walked away. Instead, he decided to discuss his situation with fellow Buddhists. He said he had told them that if he quit, K2 Intelligence would simply replace him. But if he stayed he might be able to do something positive by exposing the asbestos industry.

“I was told that I could absolutely do this from a Buddhist perspective providing I didn’t cause harm to anyone,” he said.

Photo

Laurie Kazan-Allen, founder of the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat, was the initial target of Mr. Moore’s investigation. “He was very polite, incredibly engaging and completely believable,” she said. Credit David Dare Parker for The New York Times

Activists suing Mr. Moore say they believe he had a more prosaic motive — money. Court papers indicate that K2 Intelligence paid him about $100,000 annually, far more than he had made since losing his television job. Whatever the case, Mr. Moore said he soon began to deceive K2 Intelligence and its client.

Although he continued to secretly record activists, Mr. Moore insists that the reports he sent back to K2 Intelligence were filled with worthless information. And when Mr. Bigazzi assigned him to monitor the World Health Organization, he persuaded officials there to underwrite a short film he produced, “Victims of Chrysotile Asbestos.” It showed a worker in India stricken with lung cancer.

Anti-asbestos advocates believe Mr. Moore made the film to enhance his cover story as a journalist. But its director, Greg Atkins, said that was not the case. “He used to laugh about the concept of the industry paying him to screw the industry,” Mr. Atkins said.

In court filings, K2 Intelligence said its executive, Mr. Bigazzi, had become aware of the film only after Mr. Moore billed the firm for time he had spent working on it. And Mr. Bigazzi apparently was not amused by how asbestos was depicted.

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Mr. Moore said that when he showed the K2 Intelligence official the film, he was told halfway through to turn it off. “He said he had seen enough,” Mr. Moore recalled.

A short film that Robert Moore produced about workers in India. Video by the World Health Organization

A Dangerous Ride

Investigative firms usually keep client names secret. But Mr. Moore said he was told during a chance conversation in late 2013 that the client in the asbestos case was a little-known investment firm in Singapore, the Kusto Group.

Unsure whether it was true, Mr. Moore tried to ferret out more information. He said he had found nothing at first on Kusto’s website to connect the firm or its founder and chairman, a Kazakh businessman named Yerkin Tatishev, to asbestos. Rather, Mr. Moore said, he stumbled over a link in 2014 when K2 Intelligence assigned him to go back to Thailand.

He kept striking out initially when he asked officials of roofing tile companies there if they had heard of Kusto. Then he showed one local official photographs of executives from Kusto’s affiliate in Vietnam.

Mr. Moore said the official had recognized two of the executives from their work with a previous company and told him that “those are the guys who sold us asbestos from the oligarch.” The same official added that Mr. Tatishev had once visited a roofing tile company in Thailand to urge it to keep using asbestos, according to Mr. Moore.

Those leads weren’t conclusive. But Mr. Moore says he began to focus his efforts on understanding what part, if any, Kusto or Mr. Tatishev was playing in the asbestos industry. In one 2015 email, for instance, he suggested to an anti-asbestos activist that they start looking into Kusto and the role of Russian asbestos producers in blocking bans in Southeast Asia. And he contacted journalists and filmmakers about making a documentary with him about the asbestos trade.

He also met at a London restaurant with a director, Dan Reed, to discuss a film project based on his experience as a corporate operative. Mr. Moore envisioned the film as having a climactic scene in which he would out himself as a whistle-blower at an asbestos conference.

“He said, ‘I don’t want to be a part of this,’ and thought there was an opportunity to expose it,” Mr. Reed said.

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Mr. Moore said he started secretly recording his meetings with Mr. Bigazzi of K2 Intelligence. While in Vietnam for the firm, he also gave a speech to reporters titled “The Duty of Journalists to Protect the Public Health,” in which he urged them to investigate the role of Kazakhstan and Russia in asbestos use. One slide he showed had a photograph of Mr. Tatishev and bags of asbestos.

Mr. Moore said he had received an irate phone call afterward from Mr. Bigazzi, who had somehow learned about the talk. But Mr. Moore said he had defused the situation by telling Mr. Bigazzi that he had repeated the contentions of anti-asbestos advocates only to maintain his cover as a journalist.

The strain of his life appeared to be taking a toll on Mr. Moore, friends of his said. Bill Lawrence, an occupational safety expert who was helping him analyze asbestos export data, said that he called Mr. Moore at home. During the conversation, Mr. Lawrence overheard Mr. Moore’s companion express fear about their safety.

“This is getting too dangerous, Rob,” Mr. Lawrence said he had heard the woman say.

Legal Repercussions

Mr. Moore’s life as an operative soon unraveled. In late 2015, Mr. Moore said, K2 Intelligence offered him another assignment, this time to get close to leaders of a major anticorruption group, Global Witness.

Global Witness was then working with the authorities in several countries investigating two major oil producers for suspected bribery. Mr. Moore said K2 Intelligence had wanted to find out on behalf of one of the companies what the group knew about those inquiries. But he took another approach.

In June 2016, he met with a co-founder of Global Witness, Simon Taylor, in a setting worthy of an espionage novel — a restaurant inside London’s bustling St. Pancras train station. Soon, Mr. Moore placed a book, “Agent Zigzag,” on the table between them. The book chronicles the real-life adventures of a famous British double agent against the Nazis.

Mr. Taylor recalled Mr. Moore saying words to the effect of: “If you know this story, this is what I want to do for you.” Mr. Moore proposed playing the part of a double agent, sharing that K2 Intelligence had also paid him to spy on anti-asbestos advocates, Mr. Taylor said.

Global Witness considered Mr. Moore’s proposal but decided it could not trust him, Mr. Taylor said. The group also urged him to alert activists such Ms. Kazan-Allen about his work. When Mr. Moore balked, Global Witness contacted a law firm. That firm then sued K2 Intelligence, Mr. Moore and Mr. Bigazzi in 2016 on behalf of several activists.

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Mr. Moore said he felt that Global Witness had betrayed him and insists that he was close to telling activists the truth. But Mr. Taylor said it was not Mr. Moore’s role to set the timetable, adding that his reports to the intelligence firm’s client might have jeopardized the safety of activists.

“He is not in a position to play God,” Mr. Taylor said.

Mr. Moore has struggled since the lawsuit. He said he had spent his life savings, over $375,000, on legal fees and was now represented by pro bono attorneys.

Mr. Moore said he understood why advocates like Ms. Kazan-Allen felt betrayed. He believes that they will come to see him differently if he has a chance to tell his story in court.

In its filings in London, K2 Intelligence said it had undertaken the asbestos inquiry on behalf of a trade group called the Chrysotile Cement Industry of Kazakhstan.

A spokesman for the Kusto Group, Michael Farrant, said the firm had never had any asbestos-related holdings. However, Kusto’s website notes that Mr. Tatishev, before starting Kusto, was a major player in the asbestos industry who revived the fortunes of two large asbestos mines, one in Kazakhstan and the other in Russia.

The Kazakh mine, Kostanai Minerals, is a member of the Chrysotile Cement Industry of Kazakhstan. “The town and its operations were on the brink of bankruptcy,” Kusto’s website states. “Something profound had to change.”

Mr. Tatishev declined through Mr. Farrant to be interviewed for this article and did not respond to written questions about his current interests in any entities involved with asbestos.

Efforts to settle the lawsuit are underway, though Mr. Moore said he had resisted doing so. Some activists have rejected his tale of intrigue as a product of his imagination. “How can you believe that anything he says is true?” Ms. Kazan-Allen said.

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Others, while finding Mr. Moore’s tactics unacceptable, believe his intentions were genuine. “Every part of my bones tells me there is truth in what he is saying,” said Mr. Lawrence, the occupational safety expert.

Meanwhile, Mr. Moore said, he has gone back to developing prank comedy shows, though he is not sure what the future holds.

“Do I strike you as someone who knows how to plan?” he asked.

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The post A Spy’s Tale: The TV Prankster Who Says He Became a Double Agent appeared first on World The News.

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