10-02-2015, 01:20 PM
I've arrived late to this discussion. I just happened to see the name "Colby" and clicked the link.
Many years ago now I spent some good money and time tracking Len's personal and family background (to see who he really was) -- and focused mostly on his god awful father who was an important and influential apologist scientist for the tobacco industry -- Frank Gerhardt Colby worked for R J Reynolds 1969-75, and then moved over to Jacob Medinger & Finnegan, the tobacco law firm, as Chief Scientist in 1983. His professional life was about shooting down in flames anyone or anybody in a position to connect cancer to tobacco smoking. He was good at it too, I think.
Being a completely nasty, lying, irresponsible bastard proved to be a very lucrative experience - with a Park Avenue address and invites to the Augusta National (Masters) golf championship.
I tracked Frank G back to his post WWII German roots -- and much more besides. I think it possible that the name "Colby", may be an Americanization of the German name -- "Kolbe", but this is largely guesswork (because of the Swiss connection and probably fanciful thoughts of Allen Dulles residency and the Boy in Brazil, Len). I tracked Frank G to Switzerland for the war years until 1944 and thence to Cuba before entering the US (the potted history he told a journalist). But to perfectly honest, so much didn't check out back in those war days, it was an impossible task to verify it all. Frank G's ridiculous claim that his father Fritz married the Jewish heiress Paula Oppenheimer is easily dismissed as completely untrue by the briefest of checks on the Oppenheimer family ancestry. But it speaks volumes about the guy's relationship to truth and honesty.
But for me this foolish exaggeration also explains Len's tortured and deceitful nature - it's an inferiority complex in action. Like father like son is my view.
In the end I came away from my researchers feeling, well, a little tarnished to be honest. Yes, Len's nasty, yes he's deceitful and yes he's vindictive and petty, I felt. And no, he doesn't discriminate between truth and falsehood - these are moral and ethical voids beyond his ability to grasp imo; the absence of a paternal moral compass doesn't help either - and no, he's never going to change, either, I think. He's locked in his bloodline and just can't bust out.
It's sad really.
Why John Simin continues to let Len ply his trade over there raises a big question in my mind about Simkin's own ethical/moral compass (or should it be turpitude?), imo.
But in the last analysis, I have to thank Len and Simkin. Were it not for them (and a couple of others also), Deep Politics Forum would never have been. It was only due to what we founders of the DPF felt to be the continuous, objectionable one sidedness of the Education Forum's balance, trustworthiness and pursuit of truth that we birthed this forum and all moved, lock, stock and barrel over here.
I'll butt out now.
Many years ago now I spent some good money and time tracking Len's personal and family background (to see who he really was) -- and focused mostly on his god awful father who was an important and influential apologist scientist for the tobacco industry -- Frank Gerhardt Colby worked for R J Reynolds 1969-75, and then moved over to Jacob Medinger & Finnegan, the tobacco law firm, as Chief Scientist in 1983. His professional life was about shooting down in flames anyone or anybody in a position to connect cancer to tobacco smoking. He was good at it too, I think.
Being a completely nasty, lying, irresponsible bastard proved to be a very lucrative experience - with a Park Avenue address and invites to the Augusta National (Masters) golf championship.
I tracked Frank G back to his post WWII German roots -- and much more besides. I think it possible that the name "Colby", may be an Americanization of the German name -- "Kolbe", but this is largely guesswork (because of the Swiss connection and probably fanciful thoughts of Allen Dulles residency and the Boy in Brazil, Len). I tracked Frank G to Switzerland for the war years until 1944 and thence to Cuba before entering the US (the potted history he told a journalist). But to perfectly honest, so much didn't check out back in those war days, it was an impossible task to verify it all. Frank G's ridiculous claim that his father Fritz married the Jewish heiress Paula Oppenheimer is easily dismissed as completely untrue by the briefest of checks on the Oppenheimer family ancestry. But it speaks volumes about the guy's relationship to truth and honesty.
But for me this foolish exaggeration also explains Len's tortured and deceitful nature - it's an inferiority complex in action. Like father like son is my view.
In the end I came away from my researchers feeling, well, a little tarnished to be honest. Yes, Len's nasty, yes he's deceitful and yes he's vindictive and petty, I felt. And no, he doesn't discriminate between truth and falsehood - these are moral and ethical voids beyond his ability to grasp imo; the absence of a paternal moral compass doesn't help either - and no, he's never going to change, either, I think. He's locked in his bloodline and just can't bust out.
It's sad really.
Why John Simin continues to let Len ply his trade over there raises a big question in my mind about Simkin's own ethical/moral compass (or should it be turpitude?), imo.
But in the last analysis, I have to thank Len and Simkin. Were it not for them (and a couple of others also), Deep Politics Forum would never have been. It was only due to what we founders of the DPF felt to be the continuous, objectionable one sidedness of the Education Forum's balance, trustworthiness and pursuit of truth that we birthed this forum and all moved, lock, stock and barrel over here.
I'll butt out now.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14