Ancient Roman Goddesses for kids – Cybele
The myths and legends surrounding Cybele, the Roman goddess of fertility
Cybele
Discover the legends, myths and religious beliefs surrounding Cybele, the exotic Roman fertility goddess who personified Mother Earth. The worship of Cybele was renown for its bloody and orgiastic ceremonies performed by her transgender, eunuch priests called the Galli. Cybele was introduced into Greece by its first colonists from Phrygia, in Asia Minor and was worshipped in Greece under the name of Rhea who was identified with Ops, the goddess of plenty. Cybele was also worshipped by the Romans as Magna-Mater or Mater-Deorum. Cybele was represented as a matron crowned with a high, cylindrical hat, seated in a chariot drawn by lions. Additional information about ancient gods is also available via:
Cybele, the Roman goddess of fertility
In Rome, Cybele was known as Magna Mater (“Great Mother”). In the Punic Wars, the Roman commander Scipio Africanus, on the advice from the Sibylline Books (Libri Sibyllini), introduced the goddess Cybele from Pessinos and estalished her worship to Rome. As a goddess of fertility she personified the earth and its abundant benefits, and was regarded as the Great Mother and unceasing producer of all plant life. She was also believed to exercise unbounded sway over the animal world including wild animals, especially the lion. Her exotic cult also introduced the masochistic and orgiastic rites (similar to those of Bellona, the goddess of war) performed by priests. Cybele is usually represented in art wearing a polos (a high, cylindrical hat) and seated on a throne, with lions crouching at her feet. Cybele is sometimes depicted sitting in a chariot, drawn by lions. The symbol of Cybele was the Pine Cone.
Ancient Mythology – Cybele and Attis Some of the rituals performed by the priests of Cybele related to the ancient myths about the goddess, in particular the Myth of Cybele and Attis. According to ancient mythology, Cybele discovered that her handsome and youthful lover called Attis had been unfaithful to her and planned to marry a nymph called Sagaris. In an uncontrollable fit of anger, jealousy, rage and frenzy Cybele burst into the wedding feast. A panic seized the guests, and a terrified Attis, became afflicted with a wild, temporary madness and fled to the mountains. Attis fell under a pine tree and inflicted terrible mutilations by slashing himself in his madness. He bled to death under the pine tree. Cybele had made him go mad and mutilate himself and bitterly regretted her actions. Cybele mourned her loss and Jupiter promised her that the pine tree would remain sacred forever. The practise of self-mutilations was adopted by the priests of Cybele, the notorious Galli.
The Priests of Cybele – The Gallus (plural Galli) aka the Corybantes The eunuch priests of Cybele were called the Gallus (pl. Galli) who practised a variety of masochistic rituals and ceremonies. In 205 BCE the goddess Cybele was adopted by the Romans, imported to Rome from Phrygia (part of Asia Minor, now called Turkey). Her priests, the Galli, and their practises were imported with her. In Greece the Galli of Cybele were also known as Corybantes.
The cult of Cybele also introduced the masochistic and orgiastic rites that were performed by her priests. The notorious transgender Galli were known for their self inflicted castrations, loud music, use of hallucinogenic plants and frenetic dancing. Roman citizens were forbidden to become Galli priests, join in the frenzied celebrations or undergo ritual castration.
The Galli priests of Cybele practised transgenderism and made every effort to appear and behave as women. Their linen and silk clothes were a combination of fashionable feminine and priestly dress. They wore their hair long which was arranged in elaborate hairstyles that were complimented by various wreaths, ribbons and other adornments. They also wore the high, cylindrical hat called the polos. The Galli adopted female mannerisms and speech patterns and applied an extensive range of cosmetics to enhance their feminine appearance. The Galli participated in orgiastic rituals and ceremonies accompanied by loud, ecstatic cries and the frenzied music of flutes, drums, and cymbals.
Re-enactment of the Myth of Cybele and Attis
During the festival in honor of Cybele elements of the Cybele and Attis myth were re-enacted. Ceremonies and rituals involved cutting down a pine tree that represented the dead Attis. The tree was honored, wrapped in bandages and taken to the temple of Cybele. The pine tree was decorated it with violets, which were believed to be the flowers that had sprung from the blood of Attis. As part of this religious ceremony, the Galli priests of Cybele cut their arms so that their blood fell on Cybele’s altar and on the sacred pine tree. They also danced to the music of cymbals, drums, and flutes. During these wild rites, some followers of Cybele even mutilated themselves, as Attis had in ancient mythology.
The Festivals of Cybele – The Megalesia
The Megalesia was the festival of the Magna Mater, or Cybele, and celebrated between April 4 – 10 by games and theatrical performances. Sumptuous feasts were held on the first day of the Megalesia and ended with chariot races at the Circus Maximus. The festival and ceremonies were opened by the sacrifice of the moretum (a dish of herbs). The Galii, the eunuch priests of Cybele, carried her image (bearing a polos crown) through the city of Rome to the sound of tambourines, horns, flutes and cymbals. As they danced through the streets of Rome, they beat themselves bloody in an ecstatic ritual. Another festival called dies sanguinis, the “day of blood” took place on the 24 March in honor of Bellona the goddess of war. Her priests, called the Bellonarii, also practised mutilation and the use of hallucinogenic plants leading to incorrect historical connections between the worship of two goddesses and their festivals. The cult of the Cybele was a foreign cult and as such the citizens of Rome were forbidden to become Galli priests or walk in the procession. However, some Romans became archigalii, who sacrificed a bull’s genitals to the goddess Cybele instead of their own. This led to the rite of the taurobolium.
The Taurobolium
The taurobolium involved the blood sacrifice of a bull to the goddess Cybele and also to the goddess Venus. Following a rowdy, ecstatic procession emphasized by violent gesticulations, shouting, dancing the procession would reach the Temple of Cybele (Magna Mater) on the Palatine Hill in Rome. A platform was constructed over a trench, pierced with holes that would have been erected outside the temple of Cybele in preparation for the taurobolium. White animals were sacrificed to the goddesses of the upper world and the sex of a sacrificial animal had to correspond to the sex of the goddess to whom it was offered. A white sacrificial cow, complete with a garland of flowers, a crown of leaves taken from pine tree was therefore prepared for the sacrifice to Cybele. The word “Sacrificium” was generally referred to the “victim” of the more important public ceremonies. The animal was sprinkled with salt and incense. A priest dressed in fine, pure white linen, wearing a wreath on his head, would conduct the sacrifice. He would offer prayers to Cybele and sip wine in her honor. The ceremonial killing of the beast, or Immolatio, would follow. Music was played in order to drown out any unwanted, negative noises from the animal. The blood of the sacrificial animal poured through the platform onto the Galli priest or archigalii below, who received it on his face and body, he literally bathed in the blood. After the bloody baptism he would present himself before his fellow worshippers of Cybele, purified and regenerated, and received their salutations.
The Taurobolium – Blood Sacrifice to Cybele
Symbol of Cybele – the Pine Cone The Pine Cone was the symbol of Cybele and related to the myth of Attis. Pine cones were worn by her priests and worshippers as a symbol of the goddess. The priests of Cybele were famous for their strange, unfathomable behaviour, and like their goddess, and were treated with the utmost caution. People believed they had supernatural powers and practised a form of witchcraft. Followers of Cybele, called metragytes, were roaming Galli who would wander the countryside, begging for alms and telling fortunes. As a protective and cautionary measure it became customary to the symbol of Cybele, the Pine Cone, on a pole in the vineyards, to protect them from blight and witchcraft. The pine cone was also mounted as an ornament on the gateways and rails of the entrances of some houses in the countryside – a tradition that still exists in Italy modern times and a reminder of the ancient goddess Cybele.
Cybele
Interesting information and Facts about the exotic Roman goddess Cybele
Cybele, the Roman goddess of fertility
Stories and Legends in Roman Mythology and history
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Everything Che Guevara did was directed by Fidel Castro. Early on, when they were in the mountains, Castro realized that Che seemed to relish executing little farm boys. There were executions carried out, carried out in the mountains, of so-called informers. I interviewed many people who witnessed those executions. There was no due process.
Che Guevara wrote a letter to his father in 1957 and to his abandoned wife. In the letter to her, he wrote, “I’m here in Cuba’s hills, alive and thirsting for blood.” Then, to his father, “I really like killing.” The man was a clinical sadist, whereas Fidel Castro you could describe as a psychopath in that the murders did not affect him one way or the other. It was a means to an end – the consolidation of his one-man rule. Che has a famous quote, where he wrote, a revolutionary has to become “a cold killing machine.” The thing was, Che Guevara was anything but cold. He was a warm killing machine. He relished the slaughter.
Stopped in 1967. Guevara, who was born in Argentina, was at Castro’s side during the 1959 takeover of Cuba. As he tried to spread Communist repression in Bolivia in 1967, Guevara was shot to death by Bolivian troops. In spite of his bloody record, his long hair and dashing face appear on many a pseudo-liberal’s T-shirt.
Fontova has no compliments for legendary CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow where it came to Castro or Guevara:
Oh, Ed Murrow snarled when he got in front of Joe McCarthy. He was the grand inquisitor when he got in front of a right-winger. Well, Murrow actually went to Havana to interview Castro, and he complimented his dog, “That’s a cute puppy, little Fidelita!” In that interview, he got no further than some talk about Castro’s son — who Castro never took care of and abandoned — and his “little puppy.” That’s the type of investigative journalism we’ve come to expect when investigating things in Cuba.
Suspended skepticism. I suppose that’s the nature of democracy. When free people debate, they’re likely to be more skeptical of close friends than mortal enemies.
Occasionally, we ought to remind ourselves that there are political predators who routinely abuse the weak and count on strong democrats to look the other way.
Look hard, not away.
Frank Warner
* * *
Related: CHE GUEVARA QUOTES ON BLACK PEOPLE:
“We’re going to do for blacks exactly what blacks did for the revolution. By which I mean: nothing.” 1959, immediately after the Cuban revolution.
“The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new kind of slave: the Portuguese. And the two ancient races have now begun a hard life together, fraught with bickering and squabbles. Discrimination and poverty unite them in the daily fight for survival but their different ways of approaching life separate them completely: The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations.” From Guevara’s “Motorcycle Diaries,” written earlier in the 1950s.
Introduction: With the supposed “outsider” Donald Trump having locked up the Republican nomination, we take a look at the underbelly of Trump’s business career. Noted for his supposed business acumen, Trump has benefited from financial dealings with organized crime figures and people with long-standing intelligence connections. Underlying his associations are relationships stretching back to the secreting of Axis loot during, and after, World War II.
Do not fail to note that real estate projects and gambling casinos are major vehicles for laundering money–the available evidence suggests that Trump’s business dealings may well have been money laundering operations.
Some of these people may even make it into a Trump cabinet, such as Treasury-Secretary-to-be Carl Icahn: ” . . . There’s Trump buddy, and favorite for a Cabinet post in a Trump Administration, shady financier Carl Icahn, whose checkered career may finally get the attention it deserves. Example: Icahn made a $100 million investment in a bogus St. Petersburg Florida company whose only “product” turned out to be 5.5 tons of cocaine busted on a company plane. The plane, a DC‑9, was also used to give illegal free rides during the 2000 election to soon-to-be Florida Senator and later nationwide GOP Campaign Finance Chair Mel Martinez. . . .”
Iran-Contra scandal player Adnan Khashoggi is also a Trump crony. (Khashoggi has also been among the financiers of Al-Qaeda, AND the so-called “Truther” movement.) ” . . . . And there’s Saudi wheeler-dealer Adnan Khashoggi, who sold Trump his yacht at a bargain-basement price, winters in Palm Beach, and is similarly fabulous. . . .”
In his Atlantic City operations, Trump benefited from a mob-linked milieu: ” . . . . in Atlantic City New Jersey a crowd gathers at the launch of New Jersey’s glitziest new hotel/casino, “Harrah’s Trump Plaza” to hear the Governor and Atlantic City’s Mayor heap praise on Donald Trump for investing in the future of Atlantic City.Trump wasn’t a tycoon yet, just a budding real estate wunderkind. . . .
The land where Trump Plaza stands in Atlantic City was owned at the time by several Trump partners. One, Dan Sullivan, was a Teamsters official and friend of Jimmy Hoffa whose arrest record, according to “Boardwalk Jungle” by Ovid Desmaris, included “impersonating a police officer, larceny, grand larceny, felonious assault and possession of a dangerous weapon.”
Sullivan was also famous, at least in certain circles (see clipping below) as the last person to have seen a dissident Teamster lawyer named Abraham Bauman alive. “Bauman disappeared after speaking with Sullivan,” read a Casino Gaming Commission report. “Neither he nor his body were ever found.”
“Neither he nor his body.”
Mankind is grateful New Jersey state troopers never found one without finding the other, making it clear that one big reason for Trump’s enviable success there is that state officials were—and, probably, still are—morons.
Being the last person seen with a guy everyone presumes is dead can be quite a burden.
Dan Sullivan shouldered it manfully. He was a useful person to know, with excellent connections on the labor negotiation front. He had influence with Mob-run unions like the Teamsters; Laborers International; and Hotel & Restaurant Employees.
So on a building project experiencing bargaining problems with the hotel and restaurant workers union, Trump arranged for Sullivan to be hired as a labor negotiator.
“Trump advised [the FBI] that [Sullivan] is involved as a labor consultant to their firm,” noted a September 1986 FBI memo.
The role of “labor consultant,” someone specializing in producing “labor peace” on large construction projects, can be fraught with danger. But the FBI showed itself to be understanding of people whose jobs involve potentially questionable activities.
“They are aware that it is a very rough business and that [Sullivan] knows people, some of whom may be unsavory by the simple nature of their business,” stated the FBI memo. . . . Trump told the New Jersey Casino Commission he met Sullivan “probably at one of the closings or during negotiations, let’s say, and then ultimately at the closings for Holiday Inn’s parcel. He had the middle parcel. Without that piece in the middle the deal wouldn’t have worked.”
For his part, Sullivan confirmed to The Casino Commission that he hadn’t met Trump until their negotiations for the land beneath Trump Towers. But a smirking Sullivan later called Trump “an old friend from New York. . . .”
These connections are representative of Trump business associations. He also had what might be described as a “sweetheart deal’ with Holiday Inn: ” . . . . Newsday reported that no other commercial developer had ever received a tax abatement from the city, yet Trump was awarded a 40-year tax abatement on the Grand Hyatt Hotel which saved him $3 million a year. The Wall Street Journal called it “the tax deal of the century.” Yet local activists complained Trump that despite the huge tax breaks he got in Atlantic City, he gave nothing back to the city. All that money went somewhere. But where? When Trump Plaza finally closed amid Atlantic City’s crumbling casino scene, the hotel “The Donald” built for $250 million back in 1984, couldn’t fetch $20 million at auction. . . .”
Trump begun buying properties in Atlantic City in the early 1980s, but didn’t build a casino until he had a partner, Holiday Inn, which already owned Harrah’s Casinos, that was a lock to win regulatory approval from New Jersey officials.
In fact, Donald Trump built Trump Plaza only after Holiday Inn secured financing of $250 million. Trump had no previous track record of successful large development. But the young entrepreneur was lucky enough to get to build a big building with other people’s money. Good for him.
Then I read something I couldn’t believe. Donald Trump also got to put his own name on it? It wasn’t called Holiday Inn-World or Harrahs-Land? Adding insult to injury:
Holiday Inn had secured $250 million to finance the build, but Trump Plaza only cost $220 million to erect. Trump and company, who didn’t risk a dime, presumably made $30 million on construction.
Trump also got to take home half the take from the glitzy, new, and already paid for casino. He even got a clause holding him harmless for casino losses for five years. If somebody walked in and placed 37 winning bets in a row on ‘black’ at roulette while letting the winnings ride each time, it wasn’t Trump who was then forced to eat tuna fish out of cans for a month.
What I was looking at was not just the deal of the century. It was the greatest deal since the Universe began. . . .”
In his Western deals, Trump has followed in the footsteps of mob real estate figures like Louis Lesser, an associate of Howard Hughes. ” . . . . Louis Lesser was a partner with Syndicate legend Meyer Lansky and Kirk Kerkorian in buying up Las Vegas hotels and casinos. He had extensive ties with Howard Hughes. He developed, owned, and leased many properties to Hughes’ Aircraft, including a massive project in Newport Beach.
Lesser helped Hughes buy up hotels and casinos in Las Vegas. When Lesser sold his Frontier Hotel and Casino to Hughes, it was the beginning of Hughes’ take-over there. In an example of Trump’s synergistic Great Chain of Life, years later, Donald Trump erected the Trump Hotel Las Vegas on a portion of the property.
Louis Lesser, when he resigned as chairman of Louis Lesser Enterprises in 1967, was replaced by an associate of Henry Salvatori, who the L.A. Times called a “GOP Kingmaker.”
In 1964, Salvatori chaired Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign in California. He convinced Goldwater to allow Ronald Reagan to give a televised fundraising speech entitled “A Time for Choosing,” which launched Reagan’s political career. Salvatori became a prominent member of Ronald Reagan’s “kitchen cabinet.”
Later, when the casino went bankrupt, a court filing in the bankruptcy proceedings revealed Trump’s Taj Mahal Casino listed Fincen (The U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) as an unsecured creditor, meaning it hadn’t paid the record $10 million penalty (the largest the agency ever levied on a casino) for what FINCEN called “money laundering failures.” . . . .”
Lesser’s son Craig was involved with the Marcos fortune, derived from the Golden Lily loot compiled by the fascist Japanese in World War II: ” . . . . In the late 1980’s Louis Lesser’s son Craig became partners in real estate with Imelda Marcos, fronting for the real principals, Louis Lesser and Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos. On an outing with Imelda and a military contingent, Craig Lesser helped uncover part of the fabled cache of gold buried by the Japanese in the Philippines at the end of Word War II.
In Gold Warriors (2002), Sterling and Peggy Seagrave detail a “great fortune discovered by U.S. intelligence services in 1946 … $13-billion in war loot amassed by underworld godfather Kodama Yoshio who, as a rear admiral in the Imperial Navy working with Golden Lily in China and Southeast Asia, was in charge of plundering the Asian underworld and racketeers. He was also in charge of Japan’s wartime drug trade throughout Asia
Craig Lesser sent back a solid gold antique vase to his father, which took several men to lift, and which was displayed on the mantle at Louis Lesser’s mansion, once the largest private residence in Beverly Hills.
Until TV producer Aaron Spelling built “The Manor,” a home that rivals a mid-sized hotel in square footage, Louis Lesser lived in the largest house in Beverly Hills. In fact, his house at 1156 Shadow Hill Way was used extensively during production of Beverly Hills 90210.
Its current occupant, Pearlasia Gamboa, is a Filipino-American business woman who’s been involved in massive fraud, and was the president of a “micro-nation” called theDominion of Melchizedek, an atoll in the South Pacific which lies underwater at high tide, used as a front for fraudulent criminal activity.
Bank of England officials raided the London premises of a company which offered get-rich-quick investment schemes backed by a phony bank ”registered” in Melchizedek. ”It appears to exist mainly so that money can be whisked through shell banks,”reported the Washington Post. . . .”
Program Highlights Include:
Trump’s flipping of a Palm Beach luxury home to Russian mobster Dimitry Rybobolev.
Imelda Marcos’s association with Trump associate Adnan Khashoggi.
Trump’s links to Joseph McCarthy attorney Roy Cohn, and the latter’s links to mob figures.
Louis Lesser’s association with the Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan milieux.
1. The first of Daniel’s articles highlights mob influence in Donald Trump’s various projects. In this context, we should note that both real estate and gambling casinos are frequent (and ideal) vehicles for laundering money.
Donald Trump’s history with the Mob—beginning with early business partners in Atlantic City who were ‘dese dem & dose’ guys with crooked noses who knew where Jimmy Hoffa was really buried —is a virtual travelogue through 30 years of ever-more sophisticated organized crime.
Relying on the Mob for support in Atlantic City and during construction of his signature New York projects is certainly lamentable. But Trump’s questionable early partners are only half of the story.
At a moment when Americans have begun registering their anger at having been swindled financially, Trump’s ‘homies’ in Palm Beach, whose exploits have victimized entire nations, could provoke real outrage. If, that is, they ever receive exposure.
There’s a corrupt nursing home magnate, at least one Russian Mobster, and a serial thief who may have “hidden out on a Trump property in Palm Beach” while INTERPOL was looking to serve a criminal warrant for looting a big bank in Thailand.
There’s Trump buddy, and favorite for a Cabinet post in a Trump Administration, shady financier Carl Icahn, whose checkered career may finally get the attention it deserves.
And there’s Saudi wheeler-dealer Adnan Khashoggi, who sold Trump his yacht at a bargain-basement price, winters in Palm Beach, and is similarly fabulous.
While Khashoggi specializes these days in robbing banks from the inside, (PDF, pg 8), and evading INTERPOL arrest warrants, he periodically rapes the American financial system for hundreds of millions of dollars—with STOCKWALK, for example, a scam that cost Deutsche Bank $278 million in fines.
Trump’s Palm Beach homies may be slightly more genteel… But they’ve stolen far more money than Trump’s Mob partners back in Jersey ever dreamed possible.
The subject surfaced thanks to some inarticulate heavy breathing recently by Sen. Ted Cruz, who speculated last week that Trump hasn’t released his tax returns because they show ties to the Mob.
Then on Sunday Cruz doubled-down, accusing the media of knowing all about it, but waiting for just the right time. “The media is sitting on ‘bombshell’ exposes on Donald Trump,” he said, “but won’t publish it until the tycoon is the Republican nominee.”
When a taken-aback Chuck Todd asked Cruz if he had any basis to suggest Trump has mob ties, he replied: “Oh sure. ABC, CNN, multiple news reports have reported about his dealings with…‘Fat Tony’ Salerno, who is a mobster who is in jail. And that has been reported in multiple media outlets.”
Ted Cruz’ statement seems, for him, to be only slightly more than typically-inaccurate.
One-line memo to Cruz: Fat Tony Salerno isn’t in jail. He’s been dead since 1992.
But first, because its colorful, and because it goes to the heart of his claim that he would be the best President for America because he’s the best negotiator, a brief recap of Trump’s early Mob ties:
Before becoming big enough to rub elbows with the beautiful people who “winter” in Palm Beach and their friends from transnational organized crime, Donald Trump had to make his bones the same place almost everyone else does: In Jersey.
It’s July 16, 1985… Lightning strikes four golfers making a dash for the clubhouse during a storm in Michigan… Helicopter assault teams launch airborne marijuana-eradication raids in California (which in hindsight look like a ridiculously-huge waste of taxpayer money)…
And in Atlantic City New Jersey a crowd gathers at the launch of New Jersey’s glitziest new hotel/casino, “Harrah’s Trump Plaza” to hear the Governor and Atlantic City’s Mayor heap praise on Donald Trump for investing in the future of Atlantic City.
Trump wasn’t a tycoon yet, just a budding real estate wunderkind. But already he was a showman. 30 years before the current Presidential brouhaha, his bombastic style and tone were fully in place.
“I think this is going to be an incredible building!” Trump enthused at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. “I think its going to be the largest and one of the most spectacular hotels anywhere in the world. It’s magnificent! Three blocks long! A megastructure! Its incredible. The largest casino in the world! The tallest building in Atlantic City! It just dominates!”
“I stand in front of you as the newly-elected mayor of a city which will be the recipient of the largess of two fine organizations, Trump and Harrah’s,” gushed the new Mayor.
The new Mayor’s enthusiasm may have been the aftermath of adrenaline over not being indicted for taking bribes from one of Donald Trump’s partners on the very projectbeing launched that day, as the previous Mayor had.
The heavy burden of suspicion
The land where Trump Plaza stands in Atlantic City was owned at the time by several Trump partners. One, Dan Sullivan, was a Teamsters official and friend of Jimmy Hoffa whose arrest record, according to “Boardwalk Jungle” by Ovid Desmaris, included “impersonating a police officer, larceny, grand larceny, felonious assault and possession of a dangerous weapon.”
Sullivan was also famous, at least in certain circles (see clipping below) as the last person to have seen a dissident Teamster lawyer named Abraham Bauman alive. “Bauman disappeared after speaking with Sullivan,” read a Casino Gaming Commission report. “Neither he nor his body were ever found.”
“Neither he nor his body.”
Mankind is grateful New Jersey state troopers never found one without finding the other, making it clear that one big reason for Trump’s enviable success there is that state officials were—and, probably, still are—morons.
Being the last person seen with a guy everyone presumes is dead can be quite a burden.
Dan Sullivan shouldered it manfully. He was a useful person to know, with excellent connections on the labor negotiation front. He had influence with Mob-run unions like the Teamsters; Laborers International; and Hotel & Restaurant Employees.
So on a building project experiencing bargaining problems with the hotel and restaurant workers union, Trump arranged for Sullivan to be hired as a labor negotiator.
“Trump advised [the FBI] that [Sullivan] is involved as a labor consultant to their firm,” noted a September 1986 FBI memo.
The role of “labor consultant,” someone specializing in producing “labor peace” on large construction projects, can be fraught with danger. But the FBI showed itself to be understanding of people whose jobs involve potentially questionable activities.
“They are aware that it is a very rough business and that [Sullivan] knows people, some of whom may be unsavory by the simple nature of their business,” stated the FBI memo.
“By the simple nature of their business.”
How Trump and Sullivan first met was a question of some interest to New Jersey officials.
Trump told the New Jersey Casino Commission he met Sullivan “probably at one of the closings or during negotiations, let’s say, and then ultimately at the closings for Holiday Inn’s parcel. He had the middle parcel. Without that piece in the middle the deal wouldn’t have worked.”
For his part, Sullivan confirmed to The Casino Commission that he hadn’t met Trump until their negotiations for the land beneath Trump Towers. But a smirking Sullivan later called Trump “an old friend from New York.”
“It’s nice being friends with a millionaire,” he added.
As Trump’s Tower and Casino was opening, two of his partners in the venture were under a cloud for bribing Atlantic City Mayor Michael Matthews, who at his sentencing uttered the immortal phrase, “Greed got the best of me.”
Trump partner Dan Sullivan was “an unindicted co-conspirator,” while a second Trump partner, Kenneth Shapiro, was less lucky.
A year later Australian officials conducting an investigation into Trump’s suitability to operate a casino in Sydney were given access to FBI surveillance transcripts of conversations between Trump and Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno.
The phone conversation was enough to convince Australian officials to turn his bid down. In addition to being a capo in the Genovese Mafia family, “Fat Tony” owned a concrete company doing a lot of work, as might be expected, for Donald Trump.
The FBI report indicated Trump met Salerno through notorious attorney Roy Cohn, who represented both men.
Cohn had been red-baiting U.S. Senator McCarthy’s right-hand man in the 50’s. He was famous for once telling a client,” Don’t tell me what you’re charged with. Just tell me who the Judge is.”
In addition to being Donald Trump’s stablemate in Roy Cohn’s client roster, Fat Tony Salerno won the title of “richest and most powerful gangster in America” in a 1986 article in Fortune magazine.
Salerno earned tens of millions from loan sharking, Fortune reported, skimming at Nevada casinos and charging New York City construction projects a “Mafia tax.” Convicted in 1988 for payoffs on concrete in 16 Manhattan buildings, including the Jacob Javits Convention Center, he was sentenced to 70 years in prison, where he died 4 years later.
Sailing “The Octopussy” with another “vulgarian-at-large”
Fast forward to 2006. Trump did a deal in Palm Beach that illustrates the better class of crook with whom he was now consorting.
At a bankruptcy auction, Trump bought Maison de L’Amitie, situated on one of Palm Beach’s largest properties.
Its previous owner was a man one reporter called “nursing home magnate and vulgarian-at-large Abe Gosman,” whose career offers ample clues to what happens when Medicare money goes missing.
Gosman went belly up after Federal auditors began probing his nursing home chain. In time-honored tradition, he parked his assets in his wife’s name.
So far, so good. However, Lin Gosman, Abraham Gosman’s new wife, had not yet been divorced before the two lovebirds staged a big “theme” wedding aboard “The Octopussy,” Gosman’s luxury yacht, and a federal bankruptcy judge ruled he wasn’t legally married.
That’s right. The Octopussy.
When Gosman died, Lin was not mentioned in the family obituary notice. In 2009, she was charged with bankruptcy fraud, mortgage fraud and other charges, pled guilty, and was sentenced to house arrest.
Good-by, Maison de L’Amitie. Adieu, Octo-Pussy.
A ‘cosmetic upgrade’ from gangster to ‘businessman’
After a cosmetic upgrade, Trump sold the waterfront mansion for a then-record $100 million to Russian “businessman” Dmitry Rybolovlev.
Dozens of news reports trumpeted Trump’s big sale—everywhere from the Wall Street Journal to Entertainment Tonight. But although The Journal called Rybolovlev “one of Russia’s richest and most discreet businessmen, no U.S. news outlet (except the MadCowMorningNews, which hardly counts) saw fit to mention Palm Beach’s newest resident’s prominent “ties” to the Russian Mafiya, which were hiding in plain sight.
Instead they focused on billionaire mogul Trump’s massive windfall in scooping it up for a bargain-basement price of just $40 million before flipping it for a reported $100 million, one of the highest prices ever paid for a home in the United States.
Official Russian news agency TASS had reported that Russian law enforcement authorities had accused Rybolovlev of being behind the murder of his chief rival for control of Russia’s lucrative fertilizer business, a man who had been “shot five times at the entrance to his apartment in Perm, a regional center in the Urals.”
On the day after the murder, TASS called the murder a “contract killing.” The suspected murderers and organizers of the crime, including the head of the FD-Kredit Bank, Dmitry Rybolovlev, have been arrested,” TASS reported.
It wasn’t as if the U.S. news media was ignorant of what is going on in Russia, which was being described as “a kleptocracy from top to bottom;” and a “semi-criminal state.”
Russia’s own Interior Ministry estimated two-thirds of the Russian economy was under the sway of organized crime, which enjoyed protection from the ruling oligarchy during Yeltsin’s long drunken twilight during the late 90’s.
Today two hundred of Russia’s largest crime gangs are global conglomerates.
“The Art of the Deal”
When surveying the “art” of Donald Trump’s deals, the question is whether he’s the dealmaker of the century, or… were invisible forces involved? If the man who authored “The Art of the Deal” was secretly getting a big hand up from his buddies in organized crime, that would be relevant to claims Trump’s been making during the campaign.
What follows is public record.
Newsday reported that no other commercial developer had ever received a tax abatement from the city, yet Trump was awarded a 40-year tax abatement on the Grand Hyatt Hotel which saved him $3 million a year. The Wall Street Journal called it “the tax deal of the century.”
Yet local activists complained Trump that despite the huge tax breaks he got in Atlantic City, he gave nothing back to the city. All that money went somewhere. But where?
Is this the ‘giant sucking sound” third party candidate Ross Perot warned about back in 1992? Let’s take a quick look.
Trump begun buying properties in Atlantic City in the early 1980s, but didn’t build a casino until he had a partner, Holiday Inn, which already owned Harrah’s Casinos, that was a lock to win regulatory approval from New Jersey officials.
In fact, Donald Trump built Trump Plaza only after Holiday Inn secured financing of $250 million. Trump had no previous track record of successful large development. But the young entrepreneur was lucky enough to get to build a big building with other people’s money. Good for him.
Then I read something I couldn’t believe. Donald Trump also got to put his own name on it? It wasn’t called Holiday Inn-World or Harrahs-Land? Adding insult to injury:
Holiday Inn had secured $250 million to finance the build, but Trump Plaza only cost $220 million to erect. Trump and company, who didn’t risk a dime, presumably made $30 million on construction.
Trump also got to take home half the take from the glitzy, new, and already paid for casino. He even got a clause holding him harmless for casino losses for five years. If somebody walked in and placed 37 winning bets in a row on ‘black’ at roulette while letting the winnings ride each time, it wasn’t Trump who was then forced to eat tuna fish out of cans for a month.
What I was looking at was not just the deal of the century. It was the greatest deal since the Universe began.
Later, when just a few a years after it opened, Harrah’s Trump Plaza became “Trump Plaza Casino and Hotel,” and Trump purchases the nearby Hilton Hotel and Casino because the chain is denied a casino license… the question arises: Where can an ambitious young man go to get a deal like that? Where indeed?
“If you have to ask,” goes the short answer, “you probably don’t qualify.”
2. Further developing the Trump narrative, Daniel notes the web of associations surrounding Trump and the history of those associations.
When asked to describe what they like most about Donald Trump, supporters usually say “He’s been doing it all without dirty money.” They mean his campaign is self-funded, and takes no money from lobbyists, special interests, and Republican Party kingmakers.
But what if Trump’s ownmoney is dirty? Could a sizable chunk of Trump’s net worth come from selling real estate to drug lords, mobsters, and international financial criminals?
The answer is: There’s no way to tell. Secrecy hides the identity of the crooked, violent and corrupt who invest cash in U.S. real estate through shell companies registered in Delaware, managed by a bank in the Grand Caymans for a trust in Guernsey. And its all perfectly legal.
Even Swiss banks these days have to know who their customers are. Not American real estate developers. There’s no legal requirement whatsoever that U.S. real-estate developer Donald Trump know who his clients are. Probably, he couldn’t care less. Or even worse, he’d rather not know.
“The Great Circle of Life,” Trump-Style
A closer look at Trump reveals names which recur with his—and with each other—in odd and unexpected places. It’s as if Trump belongs to the “Great Circle of Life” from a “Lion King” movie shot in an alternative Universe.
From Palm Beach, winter home to well-known and well-heeled scammers from around the world, here’s a thumbnail sketch of “The Great Circle of Life,” Trump-Style.
Donald Trump has repeatedly taken advantage of this huge loophole in American law, never more blatantly than when he made a cool $90 million dollar profit on a Palm Beach mansion he sold to a man who someone must have worked really hard to convince the American mainstream media to identify as a “Russian businessman,” or “Russian fertilizer oligarch.”
Yet the Donald was pocketing $90 million of dirty cash from the Russian Mob at the same time a minor politician in California was taking tons of heat for accepting—from that same Russian Mobster—a $400 pen.
As for Trump, there’s no way of knowing if he’s used any dirty money from the Russian Mob to fund his campaign. In fact, there’s no way of knowing so much about Donald Trump’s business career that the best way to get a clearer picture of who he is may be to check out who he does business with.
How Donald Trump became Donald Trump
For anyone lucky enough to have never seen an episode of “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous,” here’s a quick reminder of how Donald Trump became Donald Trump.
Long before becoming a Presidential candidate, Trump was a famous icon from an especially questionable time in America, the “go-go” ‘80’s,” when robber barons walked the earth unafraid, while on TV a British twit named Robin Leach rhapsodized about them between commercials.
It was a time when things—at least law enforcement-wise—were clearly well out of hand. The enormous amount of cocaine money sloshing around the banking system in Miami made some banks there seem to bulge outwards over the sidewalk and drive-through window.
In the American economy in the 1980’s, drug money was as visible as an alligator in the Everglades sliding down the throat of a Burmese python.
Trump and Ivana were the first couple of the Greed Decade. Trump was Gatsby with weird hair. His Daisy was a former Czech Olympian skier. A blond girl from the South with a syrupy smile waited in the wings. Gold fixtures everywhere. Everything was “real class.”
“In a decade of glitz, they were the glitziest; in a decade of greed, they were the greediest,” reported People magazine, laying it on a little thick. “The scrappy investor wheeling and dealing his way to a fortune… And an outsider charming and clawing her way into New York’s most refined social circles.”
Being a big-time real estate developer was never more fun. Romantic three-day weekends in your many-splendored mansion by the sea in Palm Beach. Dancing in the disco in your designer art deco hotel in South Beach.
That was then, this is now. See any difference?
In “Stash Pad” in New York Magazine, Andrew Rice reported, “The New York real-estate market is now the premier destination for wealthy foreigners with rubles, yuan, and dollars to hide.”
Imagine what Florida must be like… Today in Miami, rising above miles of strip malls, convenience stores, pawn shops, and gas stations, is a row of skyscrapers so baroque that they conjure up only one man: Donald Trump.
Three Trump Towers, and three other Trump-branded properties in Sunny Isles, including the Trump International Beach Resort, loom over beachfront Collins Avenue, where they are a favorite home away from home for Russian Mobsters.
Sunny Isles has numerous real estate agencies owned by Russians that cater heavily to Eastern European clients, among them Exclusively Baranoff Realty, which operates from an office in the lobby of the Trump International Beach Resort. Thanks to its heavy Russian presence, Sunny Isles has acquired the nickname “Little Moscow.”
“One night I had dinner and felt like I’d been transported into a Russian version of Goodfellas. A Russian singer performed on a stage with disco lights while customers ordered skewered sturgeon, and clinked forks on glasses to announce toasts before downing shots of vodka. A man who looked 70 spoke in Russian to his wife, who appeared at least 40 years younger. At another table, a man about the same age was seated with a young woman in blue jean shorts, a halter top and cowboy boots.”
Trump welcome mat out for international grifters
Just how easy does Donald Trump make it for foreign representatives of organized crime to buy real estate from him? Silverstein writes:
“She took me to see a unit on the thirty-eighth floor of Trump Palace, which looked out on the turquoise waters of the Atlantic and was on the market for $2.3 million. “Living in a Trump property is like living in a hotel,” she told me, as we stood on a balcony. The unit was attractively priced, she said cheerfully, and all the more so as the owner, a Russian looking to buy a bigger condo elsewhere in the area, had spent at least $350,000 on improvements.
Later that day, I obtained the property records for the condo. The legal owner is a company registered in Belize, an offshore haven where, according to a government website, there “is no requirement to file annual returns or public disclosure of directors, shareholders, charges, loans or agreements.”
In other words, the true owner of the Trump Palace unit is untraceable.
Even the New York Post, which could be excused for being sensitive to talk about lax immigration letting in the world’s richest undesirables, chimed in.” New York’s swankiest skyscrapers have become the new Swiss banks for the world’s richest undesirables.”
“Today, Switzerland has cleaned up its act and the “filthy” rich have turned to New York City, turning it into a secrecy haven to stash their cash through the use of shell companies.”
Donald Trump called him “The Legend.”
Instead of one of the many famous names in Trump’s “Great Circle,” let’s begin with someone who’s no longer well-known. Louis Lesser was once as big a name in real estate development as Donald Trump’s, but by the time he died he had become a forgotten man.
Lesser (third from right in pic) was once the biggest developer in the history of the western U.S., developing housing for military personnel during World War II, then grew wealthy developing, owning and leasing properties to the U.S. military during the Cold War, locking up numerous contracts under Kennedy and Johnson for developments for military industrial complex clients.
Louis Lesser was a partner with Syndicate legend Meyer Lansky and Kirk Kerkorian in buying up Las Vegas hotels and casinos. He had extensive ties with Howard Hughes. He developed, owned, and leased many properties to Hughes’ Aircraft, including a massive project in Newport Beach.
Lesser helped Hughes buy up hotels and casinos in Las Vegas. When Lesser sold his Frontier Hotel and Casino to Hughes, it was the beginning of Hughes’ take-over there. In an example of Trump’s synergistic Great Chain of Life, years later, Donald Trump erected the Trump Hotel Las Vegas on a portion of the property.
Louis Lesser, when he resigned as chairman of Louis Lesser Enterprises in 1967, was replaced by an associate of Henry Salvatori, who the L.A. Times called a “GOP Kingmaker.”
In 1964, Salvatori chaired Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign in California. He convinced Goldwater to allow Ronald Reagan to give a televised fundraising speech entitled “A Time for Choosing,” which launched Reagan’s political career. Salvatori became a prominent member of Ronald Reagan’s “kitchen cabinet.”
Trump’s “Great Circle” buddy Louis Lesser (cont.)
Later, when the casino went bankrupt, a court filing in the bankruptcy proceedings revealed Trump’s Taj Mahal Casino listed Fincen (The U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) as an unsecured creditor, meaning it hadn’t paid the record $10 million penalty (the largest the agency ever levied on a casino) for what FINCEN called “money laundering failures.”
What follows is an example of how Trump associates blend into each other, and manage to stay just a step or two in front of the law.
In the late 1980’s Louis Lesser’s son Craig became partners in real estate with Imelda Marcos, fronting for the real principals, Louis Lesser and Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos. On an outing with Imelda and a military contingent, Craig Lesser helped uncover part of the fabled cache of gold buried by the Japanese in the Philippines at the end of Word War II.
In Gold Warriors (2002), Sterling and Peggy Seagrave detail a “great fortune discovered by U.S. intelligence services in 1946 … $13-billion in war loot amassed by underworld godfather Kodama Yoshio who, as a rear admiral in the Imperial Navy working with Golden Lily in China and Southeast Asia, was in charge of plundering the Asian underworld and racketeers. He was also in charge of Japan’s wartime drug trade throughout Asia
Craig Lesser sent back a solid gold antique vase to his father, which took several men to lift, and which was displayed on the mantle at Louis Lesser’s mansion, once the largest private residence in Beverly Hills.
Until TV producer Aaron Spelling built “The Manor,” a home that rivals a mid-sized hotel in square footage, Louis Lesser lived in the largest house in Beverly Hills. In fact, his house at 1156 Shadow Hill Way was used extensively during production of Beverly Hills 90210.
Its current occupant, Pearlasia Gamboa, is a Filipino-American business woman who’s been involved in massive fraud, and was the president of a “micro-nation” called theDominion of Melchizedek, an atoll in the South Pacific which lies underwater at high tide, used as a front for fraudulent criminal activity.
Bank of England officials raided the London premises of a company which offered get-rich-quick investment schemes backed by a phony bank ”registered” in Melchizedek. ”It appears to exist mainly so that money can be whisked through shell banks,”reported the Washington Post.
Is it oddly telling, or mere happenstance, or just another illustration of Trump’s “Great Circle of Life,” that Trump business associate Louis Lesser, who had much to do with providing entree into the world of casino gambling, owns a home (he’s dead, his son Craig is still associated with the property) that’s a nexus for international financial swindlers?
Time out for a little comic relief
When Imelda Marcos went on trial in New York in 1990 for laundering tens of millions of dollars belonging to the people of the Philippines, her co-defendant was another close Trump associate, Adnan Khashoggi. (Both Marcos and Khashoggi were acquitted.)
The first time I saw Donald Trump’s name linked with Adnan Khashoggi’s was in a wickedly funny article from the early 90’s in Spy Magazine called ”Who is America’s cheapest zillionaire?”
Spy magazine— cruel, brilliant, beautifully-written, and feared by all—incorporated a company called the National Refund Clearinghouse, gave it its own checking account, and zipped out refund checks to 58 “well-known, well-heeled Americans” for $1.11 apiece.
Chortling, the magazine’s editors settled back to see who cashed them.
26 frugal people—“The Bargain-Basement 26,” including Cher, Harry Helmsley, Michael Douglas, Shirley MacLaine, Kurt Vonnegut, and Donald Trump and Adnan Khashoggi, who partied together in swank Palm Beach Florida—cashed their $1.11 checks.
Each then receive a second “National Refund Clearinghouse” check, for 64 cents, half the amount of the first check as compensation said a cover letter, for ”a computer error.’ Trump, Khashoggi, and 11 other extraordinarily cheap people each cashed checks for 64 cents apiece.
“The Chintzy 13” then each received a final check for 13 cents.
Donald Trump & Adnan Khashoggi were the last men standing. Trump, who the magazine called a “short-fingered-vulgarian,” and Khashoggi, who personally endorsed his on the back, each cashed checks totaling one dime and three pennies.
Whether by accident, coincidence, or cosmic design, over the next two decades Trump and Khashoggi’s names will be inextricably linked.