Ming the Mechanic:
Billions and Billions

The NewsLog of Flemming Funch
 Billions and Billions2002-02-18 14:50
5 comments
pictureby Flemming Funch

There's a story that is part of NCN's earlier history that many of the currently active members probably haven't heard of, so I just want to bring it up again, for possible inspiration.

In short, for a while it looked very, very likely that an extraordinarily huge amount of money would be flowing into what we would call the New Civilization Foundation, which would be used for funding many of the projects we collectively could envision, and that would tangibly build a new civilization.

It is a strange and, for many, completely unbelievable story, so I'm not even going to share all of it, but I'll bring up a few hints.

Now I've for a long time believed that there's a lot going on behind the scenes in the world and that the real power and the real wealth flows in quite different ways than it would seem like if you follow the regular news media. But this was the closest I've been to tapping into all of that.

It started when I ran into Adam Lilien, who was the somewhat unlikely messenger for some rather unusual people with a wild story. A story which I at first were rather skeptical about, but, after being exposed to many aspects of it, and spending time with the people involved, I started to become quite convinced of the veracity of. At first I hesitated greatly to share it with anybody, but I found a way of going about it where it would be productive whether it worked out or not. I sent out this message to everybody in NCN, outlining the possibilities that we might (or might not) receive billions of dollars in financing, and that we ought to get our act together and figure out what we would do with that, if it happened, and how.

The beauty of that is that, no matter if the actual funding opportunity happened or not, it would be a very useful exercise to try to work out how we would organize ourselves and what kind of plans we would make, in case it manifested.

Briefly, the scenario was that a little old Philippino lady named Luz Sta. Romano appeared to be the legitimate heiress to a very large fortune left behind by her late husband Severino Sta. Romano.

This fellow, who most people knew as "Santa" appeared to have been a very shadey behind-the-scenes financing person for a lot of activities amongst governments and big cooperations that couldn't bear the light of day. The sort of person that Chase Manhattan Bank would call if they were missing 30 billion to bail them out of trouble without the public hearing about it, or the sort of person to call if you needed to finance a revolution somewhere without it being visible on any government's official accounting sheets. So, he was mostly dealing in arms trade, drugs, covert operations, and other "good" stuff. And much of the funds flowing through his hands might not technically speaking have been his, but one way or another, a lot of it ended up with his name on it.

And, if that's not crazy enough, the amounts we were talking about were way beyond what the newspaper-reading public believes that the richest people in the world manage to control. You know, Bill Gates 10 times over. And we're not talking about paper value like stocks, but about cash accounts, gold deposits, bearer bonds, and other stuff that rather instantly can be spent or transferred.

But, despite being the sole heir and executor of the estate, Luz was having certain problems on cashing in her inheritance. Sta.Romano died in 1973, and the case didn't make it through the Philippine Supreme Court before 1997. One of the problems was Ferdinand Marcos. The story goes that when Sta.Romano died, Marcos had his folks go in and empty out Romano's vault in Manilla. It only contained a relatively small portion of Romano's wealth, but it was apparently enough to make Marcos stinking rich. And, supposedly, that was the main source of Marcos' wealth. And part of what Marcos found there, he couldn't cash in on, because he was missing some other pieces of information, such as account numbers, etc. At any rate, the idea is that Marcos still had significant support in the Philippines, and it wasn't possible to get that case through before many years later, because the Marcoses still wanted to get hold of the rest of the fortune.

And so did an assortment of other agencies that believed they had a claim to the fortune. Various different groups confiscated the parts of the fortune that they could get their hands on, figuring that Sta.Romano's little widow would never figure out how to stand up to them.

Luz had remarried to an American named Jim Brown. Jim had spent years researching this whole thing, collecting stacks of documents, tapes with interviews and much else, and seemed to be her best ally, so it appeared practical for them to get married so that he could speak for her more effectively.

And, now, they went through an assortment of different attempts of getting hold of parts of her inheritance. They didn't go about any of it in any terribly logical way, though. They're both rather stubborn and possibly naive about how to make things happen. I was privy to various attempts along the way where they pulled out in the last moment for less than rational reasons. They were about the enter into a contract with a Scottish recovery company that professionally did that kind of thing, and I was reading over the contracts, which looked very reasonable. But they felt they wanted too high of a percentage. And they repeatedly rejected various settlement offers. Like, for example, the 3 billion dollar settlement offer, in writing, from the CIA, for having made off with the 100 billion from Santa's account in Chase Manhattan Bank. They rejected that, as it was too little money.

Anyway, this is all wild stuff, of course, and there are lots of things that would raise warning flags for anybody who hears about it. And most people would not believe it at all. For one thing, the Philippines is full of phoney people who claim to have access to gold or bearer bonds or other treasures. And none of these people tell a very clear and straight story, and they have various other agendas that make things difficult. Jim was always more interested in the story itself, and he just wants to write books about it, and tell the story about it, and he writes in the same colorful manner that he speaks, which is always interesting, but which doesn't always inspire confidence in people. Luz doesn't say much, but easily makes emotional decisions that get her in trouble. And it seems the most unbelievable thing that they didn't manage to get hold of any of those accounts at all, despite having been very close many time. Their story is full of times when it almost happened. Like, being in Switzerland, having signed the right paperwork with the president of Union Bank, to transfer just a few hundred million into their U.S. account. And, hearing it would take a few days to arrange the funds, and that they didn't have to stick around, they went home. And the bank then suddenly came up with something else they needed to verify, and it never happened.

Now, I'm not particularly a gullible person. I like to be optimisic, but I don't believe just any wild story. But I'm fairly well trained in recognizing whether people are telling the truth or not. So, despite all the reasons why it was unlikely, I had to conclude that these people were telling the truth, but were just either unusually inept in carrying their case forward, or, probably more likely, they were up against forces much bigger than themselves, in a game which they were only pawns in.

What this has to do with NCN at all is that Luz expressed great willingness in channeling a significant amount of the money into a non-profit foundation. Jim and her are old people who didn't actually need a whole lot. They would be perfectly happy with a mansion in Palm Springs and playing golf and going on cruises. So, she was definitely in the mind of doing some good with the money.

And I sort of grasped the potential of this, of how it might represent a much bigger switch of energy from the dark agendas over to the light ones. If I didn't look at that, it seemed sort of very odd that those would be the people potentially controlling the largest fortune on the planet, and very odd that they would choose to hang out with people like myself, Julie and Adam. But then, on a second thought it would be kind of perfect, as a front for channeling funds in a different direction. I mean, maybe a New Civilization Foundation would be the perfect vehicle for it, and somebody operating at another level in the game might recognize that.

At any rate, I decided that the way to introduce it to NCN was as an experiment of "what would we do with a few billion dollars?". If it happened, we would be somewhat prepared. If it didn't happen, we'd have done some good work in visualizing a much bigger game for us.

So, what happened was that a workgroup came together to work on creating a foundation of such a potential scale.

Now, it is interesting how the prospect of money brings a lot of people out of the woodword who wouldn't have shown up otherwise. So, there was some of that. But mostly it was a group of dedicated people who came together, who truly wanted to create something wonderful.

The group worked first of all on a Mission Statement and then on a set of plans for what such a foundation would do in different sectors of society. Very intense work went into this, and continued refinement over a number of months. You can see a version of the results here. The group that worked on this went through various transformations, but essentially turned into a very tight-knit virtual community of people, which still exists today.

Despite various signs that things were about to come through for Jim and Luz, they never did. So, the focus on making a huge New Civilization Foundation also somewhat dwindled with it. It was, however, an important piece of collective visualization, I think, which might turn out to be important at some point.

Last Julie and I met with Jim and Luz together, cooking spaghetti together in their hotel room, Luz looked through the mission statement and plans and budget for the foundation. She didn't blink at all at the $10 billion per year proposed budget, but rather apologized profusely that things hadn't yet come through for her, but she would really like to do it.

Anyways, since then Jim and Luz no longer are getting along and don't even see each other, and it seems like the whole thing is much further from ever happening than it was before. Jim is mostly focused on writing and telling the story. The book he had written at the time has now grown into four books, which, however, still haven't gotten published. But you can get a sense of it at his very sketchy website: The Golden Karat. I hear from him every couple of months or so.

I'm mentioning all of this to indicate that big things can happen. The deck might suddenly be reshuffled a bit and a little group like us might suddenly be connected with things in quite different ways than we're used to.



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5 comments

19 Feb 2002 @ 00:46 by mmmark : What A Saga
I think it would be a good idea to have our ducks in a row. And yet there is so much that could be done here without money. One thing would be networking vocational talent within the community so we are less dependent on corrupt money/jobs. Another would be to pay dues to hire programmers to help evolve the site. We need to talk more about $.  


19 Feb 2002 @ 01:55 by ming : Economies
I've always figured that if things were arranged in the right constellation, money would not be needed. But money certainly helps for motivation and helps prime the pump. And of course there needs to be some kind of economy going on. I'm very keen on setting up some economic networking facilities, for people finding jobs or customers or resources or whatever.  


19 Feb 2002 @ 14:06 by maxtobin : Oh my gosh
Thanks for sharing this ming it makes sense of some threads I have noticed in the New civ org. It is funny but the 'old energy' would just love to have a new face and there are agents in many corners just waiting for suitable new faces. however it is all a part of the dis-eased poverty mentality (there isn't enough for us all, so watch your back and guard you pockets!) Hypothetically speaking, there is a huge amount of cash floating about (most controlled by the gnomes of Zurich, but there are others play the game also) The US govt is close to the action through some of their agencies, for it was often their wishing to control another culture that created this situation. The plates to print money have been entrusted to others in a few places, and now the govt cannot acknowledge what they have done (to covertly manipulate another country and be cheated at the same time)So the funds are 'controled' by channelling them through suitable 'green' or 'humanitarian' projects. Once 'in the loop' so to speak it is believed that the players would become as the corrupted ones and play the secret game. I can't reveal a lot more, but such stories are designed to catch the pure of heart and corrupt them in my experience. (control is through the bankers) If you are pure and honourable as I am sure you are, then the funds will never eventuate. I speak as one who has had to rebuild a life (still happening) after being promised billions for projects in China. The deals requirements kept changing and got quiet wierd when we had the Chinese Govt there in support of our projects. A lesson which I still process. Stiil loss of face does not effect me as it does others, but I have lost a couple of business partners through a Lazarus kind of story. Keep up the good work as the universal ocean of possibilities has a few surprises for us yet in our journeying. May the goddess bless us all with abundance!!  


15 Jul 2008 @ 03:31 by Theodore Ad Garcia @122.53.215.47 : NCHumanitarian Foundation
Your NCHF was an excellent idea for world/nationwide application. There's still HOPE that the vision and mission of NCHF will be a reality. This reality cannot in anyway be related with the likes of LUZ and other fake/scam artists/pretenders in relation with SGSR/JAD. I am related to SGSR by blood and he was one of our mentor in highschool at Cabanatuan City, N. E. PH. SGSR immediate family knew that the share/proceeds from his estate must be used for humanitarian purposes not personal. tads  


16 Jul 2008 @ 00:16 by ming : Humanitarian Foundation
There would certainly be some kind of universal justice in that. It is quite unbelievable (really not) how many greedy scam artists have gotten attracted to this affair, and it is hard to know what is what. If anything will ever come of it, I have a sense that it wouldn't be any one of them who succeeds in getting their hands on the estate. But, yes, humanitarian purposes, that's the only thing that would make sense.

Good to meet you, Theodore!  



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2002-12-18 18:16: Comments



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