Triple agent Oswald Herbert Philbrick

[David Guyatt]

I slept like a log last night -- but woke up in the fireplace. Blazes!

[Charles Drago]

I slept like a baby.

Wet the bed and woke up crying.

[Magda Hassan]

I can see the boys from SIS sniggering at Le Winter's conning Al-Fayed out of $20 mil for his fake paperwork. Rubbing salt in the wound of a "wog" who thought he was good enough to have his son marry a royal castoff.

What is the thing they have against Al-Fayed? Is it just that they don't like Egyptians with Anglophilic pretensions or is there more to it? They've handed out gongs and citizenship to some real sleeze buckets over the years so I don't know why they haven't with him.

[David Guyatt]

Well, my take is that the story of Al-Fayed's success in buying Harrod's is behind all this. Lonrho's Tiny Rowland (ya mein herren und damen zat Herr Tiny) had his eyes on Harrods but the bloody cheeky wog got it first - thanks to Arab money.

And Tiny, bless his Hitler Youthness and SISness, wasn't pleased. And so, while the gun-running Al-Fayed may have acquired Harrod's the Establishment will be damned in hell before they will a) allow him to become a passport holding British citizen, and b) forgive him in all eternity.

But I may, of course, be entirely wrong... :itsme:

[Magda Hassan]

Well, Rowland sure knew how to hold a grudge. It continues from the grave.

I wonder why he funded the Maltese Double Cross movie? The one about Lockerbie. It didn't get much of a run at the cinemas or TV so I can't imagine that he got a good return on his money. Which is so unlike him.

He is also not one that I remember being terribly active in the anti-apartheid movement but he is given South Africa's highest honor, the Order of Good Hope from Nelson Mandela in 1996.

On the other hand a not very well known fact about Lockerbie is that the 28 member South African delegation that was due to travel on the Pan Am Lockerbie flight cancelled at the last minute. Mmmmm.....

Which of course brings us back to Oswald Le Winter. Such a small world.

[David Guyatt]

http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:eaB...cd=8&gl=uk

Profile of Mohamed Al Fayed
Colourful and charismatic, Mohamed Al Fayed is not just the owner of a football club and one of the highest profile shop owners in the UK.

The death of his son Dodi, alongside Diana, Princess of Wales, has thrust him even further into the public spotlight.

The loss of his son led to Mr Al Fayed feeling a deep sense of injustice, and several times he has pointed the finger at those he holds responsible for the accident.

Mr Al Fayed believes the Paris crash resulted from a conspiracy, another example of the barriers he constantly faced to gain acceptance into British society.

It is an ambition that has seen him donate millions to British charities and assume control of Harrods, the department store which was once a by-word for Britishness itself.

He resurrected the satirical magazine Punch and also moved into the mainstream British pursuit of football, buying Fulham FC.

He was born in Alexandria, Egypt, the son of a poor school teacher. Fittingly, for a man synonymous with controversy, even his birth date is disputed.

A Department of Trade inquiry into his takeover of the House of Fraser group gave it as 27 January 1929. Yet the logbook of the rich and famous, Who's Who, has listed him as a full four years younger.

His own website also states the year of his birth as being 1933.

His career began with menial jobs, from selling lemonade on the streets of his home city to working as a sewing machine salesman.

Fiercely ambitious

The young Mr Fayed - the "Al" was added in the 1970s - oozed ambition and his lucky break came when he met businessman Adnan Khashoggi, who employed him in his Saudi Arabian import business.

Back in Egypt, he launched his own shipping business, before becoming an adviser to one of the world's richest men, the Sultan of Brunei, in 1966.

Already a wealthy and successful man, Mr Al Fayed moved to Britain in the 1970s.

He joined the board of the mining conglomerate Lonrho in 1975, but left nine months later after a disagreement.

It was the seed of a long-running feud between Mr Al Fayed and the head of Lonrho, the late Tiny Rowland.

In 1979, with his brother Ali, Mr Al Fayed bought the Paris Ritz Hotel.

Harrods - at that time subject to a Lonrho takeover campaign - became the Al Fayeds' next target. In 1985, the brothers succeeded in clinching a £615m takeover bid.

Report uncovers lies

But Tiny Rowland refused to accept defeat, mounting a bitter campaign against the Al Fayeds which resulted in a Department of Trade inquiry.

The subsequent report, issued in 1990, concluded that the Al Fayeds had lied about their background and wealth.

The feud with Mr Rowland appeared to end in 1993, when the pair came together for the cameras in Harrods food hall.

But Mr Rowland later accused his business rival of breaking into a safety deposit box at the store. Without admitting responsibility, Mr Al Fayed settled the dispute with Mr Rowland's wife after his death.

It has been suggested that the feud contributed to Mr Al Fayed's being refused British citizenship the first time.

He viewed that refusal as an affront, saying: "Why won't they give me a passport? I own Harrods and employ thousands of people in this country."

Further attempts to gain British citizenship have also failed.

In 1999, his application for a UK passport was rejected by Home Secretary Jack Straw, and he failed to overturn this on appeal.

Wealthy benefactor

This is despite Mr Al Fayed having four British children by his second wife and paying millions in tax. He has also given millions to charities, such as the Great Ormond Street Hospital, and financed films, including Chariots of Fire.

After his first passport refusal, Mr Al Fayed revealed he had paid two Conservative ministers - Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith - to ask questions related to his interests, in the House of Commons. Both left the government in disgrace.

Mr Hamilton had wanted to clear his name of accusations that he had accepted envelopes stuffed with cash from Mr Al Fayed in exchange for asking parliamentary questions, but subsequently lost a libel case against the businessman.

Mr Al Fayed claimed another political scalp in Jonathan Aitken, the cabinet minister who resigned after the Harrods boss revealed he had been staying free at the Ritz in Paris at the same time as Saudi arms dealers.

Aitken's downfall began in April 1995 when he decided to sue for libel over a series of allegations made against him by the Guardian and World in Action, regarding his stay at the Ritz.

When, in 1997, it emerged Dodi had become a close friend of Diana, a new avenue appeared to be opening to Mr Al Fayed's acceptance by the British establishment.

But everything changed on 31 August when Dodi and the princess were killed while being driven and guarded by Mr Al Fayed's employees.

Angry exchanges

The high alcohol level in driver Henri Paul's blood may have embarrassed Mr Al Fayed, but he laid the blame elsewhere.

This emerged in the High Court libel trial brought by Mr Hamilton - which the former MP eventually lost - following comments the Harrods boss made on a Channel 4 programme in 1997.

In court, the Harrods owner accused the Duke of Edinburgh of masterminding a conspiracy to kill the Princess of Wales and his son.

The case saw highly personal accusations flying in both directions.

In 2003 he announced that he was to leave Britain for Switzerland "with a heavy heart" because of alleged persecution by the establishment, following his inability to obtain a British passport and trouble with the tax authorities.

However, he returned in 2005, and according to his website he "regards Britain as home".

In 2008 Mr Al Fayed achieved his long-standing wish to give evidence at the inquest into the death of Princess Diana and Dodi, saying he had been "fighting for 10 years".

During his evidence he made a number of claims, including that Diana, Dodi and Henri Paul were "murdered" in an act orchestrated by MI6 on the instructions of the Duke of Edinburgh - a claim dismissed by the coroner Lord Justice Scott Baker as having "not a shred of evidence" to support it.

This alleged plot also involved former Prime Minister Tony Blair, the CIA and Sir Michael Jay, at that time the British ambassador to France.

"I am a father who lost his son," he said to the coroner.

"I am fighting unbelievable forces. But with your power as a judge, you have to force MI6 to open their box and find the result."

Mr Al Fayed also said that Diana and Dodi told him one hour before the crash that the princess was pregnant, and that the couple would announce their engagement days later.

[Terry Mauro]

Triple agent Oswald Herbert Philbrick, a Boston advertising executive who infiltrated the U.S. Communist Party on behalf of the FBI in the 1940s, wrote a bestselling book on the life of a double agent, "I Led Three Lives: Citizen, 'Communist', Counterspy" (1952). "I Led Three Lives" was an American television show which was syndicated by Ziv Television Programs from 1953 to 1956 and lasted 117 episodes. The part of Philbrick was played by Richard Carlson. According to Judyth Vary Baker, Lee Harvey Oswald's girlfriend in New Orleans, "I Led Three Lives" was Oswald's favorite TV show. This particular film was produced before the Bay of Pigs fiasco which Oswald was believed by some to have participated in with David Ferrie, his instructor in the Lousiana Civil Air Patrol. Conspiracy theorists believe that Oswald was the "lone nut assassin" who killed JFK. To maintain this farce requires ignoring his family's long involvement with organized crime in New Orleans, his personal involvement with New Orleans-based anti-communists, and his strange status as a US Marine who "defected" to the Soviet Union and was permitted back in the US with the financial support of the US State Department. In the midst of all this, Oswald posed dramatically, though unconvincingly, as a Castro sympathizer. "I Led Three Lives" indeed...

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/555.html

Does this guy look Amer-asian, or Japanese-American to any of you guys? Kind of reminds me of a one of the Mission Impossible episodes that did a take-off on The Manchurian Candidate movie that was released in the late 50's, whereby a Western-looking POTUS candidate is giving a speech, and ends up ripping off his American fabricated face mask to reveal his true ethnicity as an Asian Communist president-elect, by the unsuspecting U.S. electorate. Anyone remember that episode, by any chance?

[David Guyatt]

Wotcha Ter. I have no idea, so will leave for others here to comment.

Where've you been girl?

[Terry Mauro]

Hi Dav,

I've been working my ass off and trying to cash in these worthless 401K plans that keep dropping like flies. And, getting my teeth repaired from all the grinding I apparently do to them while working at The Hill.

Monday, one of the transporters told me that he caught my face in profile while I was transferring a patient from a bed to my scanning table, and he could see my jawbone and mandible set and flexing like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. LOL LLH

I told him that from now on they could just start referring to me as T. Rex, instead of Cholita, which is a Mexican name meaning "Little Gangster Girl," that they had given me fifteen years ago. Because on the job, I've always pulled my own weight, and have never asked for any help, from anyone.

Jobs are drying up, and we're told to be thankful we even have one, which is hard, especially when you work for 8 hours, and only get paid for 4. But, that's how the CEO's end up making up for any extra money the union gets us in the form of a raise. You get a raise, and they cut your hours.

They also won't allow me to accrue anymore than 30 hours in any given 2 week work period. Working 32 hours constitutes Part Time, and they don't want to have to pay medical benefits to you which is what they'd have to do if you racked up 32 hours in a 2 week work period, too many times in a row. Even though they need you there to work, there's no more OT. At least, not since the new boss took over 18 months ago. They've literally taken the workplace back to Charles Dickens' era. "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times..."

And, they wonder why people are committing murder-suicide. They're not counting the people who've already fallen off the unemployment rolls, so they say we're at 10 % unemployment. A bald-faced lie. It's more like 35 % and climbing. I've always told the truth, and when I warned about the coming crash from the ridiculous bubble market, back in 1994, citing the Milton Friedman - Friedrich Hayek, Chicago School of Greed, I was called a pessimist, a crazy person, and how could that possibly happen?

How? How about when Reagan de-regulated the banks back in 1982, for starters. How about the cursed Federal Reserve Act of 1913, and the blind-sheep acceptance of it by an ignorant electorate, back then?

How about the dumbing down, and anesthesizing of a whole generation of society made traumatized by the murders of their heroes, the murder and maiming of the sons and daughters of their teachers and mentors, riding the Freedom Rider buses, marching against racism, the loss of fathers, brothers, husbands, sisters, and wives in that worthless Vietnam War. Ban the bomb. Make love, Not War.

I've been told that the initials of my name really stand for "Trouble Maker." Well, so be it. Someone's got to yell it out, shout it out, and get pummeled for doing so, in the process. I guess that's what I'm really here for.
I just wish I had more time.

There's been a lot of information forthcoming from Downsizer Dispatch I've wanted to post, but who really reads it with eyes wide open? Some folks seem like they just don't even care to know. The ostriches, if you will.
Besides, it seems as if I'm only preaching to the choir most of the time, anymore.

But, you did ask, and I had to answer.

Love,
Ter

[David Guyatt]

Thanks Ter. I want to say write to your Congressman and get him to do something. But I lost my virginity a loooong time ago. :help:

It will soon be the case that you pay corporations to slave for them. Then they will be truly happy. Mind you, you'll need to work a couple of hours extra (for free) to pay their taxes too.