Earthshell News: Bankruptcy Proceedings are, erm, proceeding.

Hey folks.

For those of you new to the Rizzn-ite army, who haven't read the backstory, this might be a bit confusing to you, but for you long time Rizzn-ites, you'll remember my squabbles with Simon Hodson and his Khashoggi backers.

Well, today, there seems to be some big news from the world of Hodson. As you may recall, Hodson removed himself from Earthshell, after driving the company into utter shambles. Essam Khashoggi also left, making it look like rich guys fleeing like rats from a sinking ship.

It can't be coincidence that the same day that Forbes publishes an AP piece about how EarthShell (ERTH) is moving on it's Chapter 11 plan (one that incidentally, it filed all the way back in January), that I get a flood of letters from folks asking about Simon and his ilk, after having read my less than complimentary blog posts about the fellow.

This is something that Bert didn't understand, Simon didn't understand, and Essam could probably care less about, being as rich as he is... You may have more money than me, but if you send your corrupt business practices my way and end up screwing me, the words documenting your actions will not only be forever immortalized here on these pages, but every screwup from here till eternity will be documented here. People will find those documents, and then ask me about them, and I'll explain every sordid detail my photographic memory can recall about you.

I suppose, basically what I'm saying is that it's okay to be a corrupt and slimy business man, just don't be one around me. It won't benefit you in the long run.

Here's the complete article documenting the proceedings:

Earthshell Chapter 11 Plan Set to Vote

EarthShell Corp. moved a step closer to leaving bankruptcy protection in the hands of private equity firm Cornell Capital Partners when a judge said creditors could vote on the eco-friendly packaging company's Chapter 11 plan.

Judge Kevin Gross of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., Monday signed off on the plan outline, called a disclosure statement, allowing EarthShell to send its plan to exit Chapter 11 to creditors for a vote.

Companies operating in Chapter 11 must obtain a judge's approval of the disclosure statement, which describes how creditors will be paid, before creditors are able to vote on the plan.

EarthShell and its unsecured creditors committee last month jointly proposed a Chapter 11 plan that would give private equity firm Cornell Capital Partners 100 percent of the reorganized company's equity.

Under the proposed Chapter 11 plan, Cornell Capital would receive all of the new equity and a $2.5 million note in exchange for its $5.2 million secured claim against the company.

General unsecured creditors will receive an undisclosed amount of funds through a "grantor trust," while holders of subordinated claims and equity interests won't receive anything under the plan.

The deadline for voting on EarthShell's plan is July 16. A confirmation hearing is scheduled for July 23.

The plan is premised on a deal the company reached with one of its sub-licensees, Renewable Products Inc., and Cornell.

Renewable Products, founded by St. Louis-based private equity firm Thompson Capital Partners, teamed with Cornell in submitting a joint bid for the company's assets at a March 26 auction.

The plan slices $2.7 million of Cornell's secured debt from the books of EarthShell, a maker of environmentally friendly disposable food- service packaging. Cornell has agreed to pay $300,000 to fund the company's administrative expenses pending court approval of the plan.

Renewable Products, or RPI, has agreed to pay $500,000 to EarthShell, and to forgive any amounts EarthShell borrowed under the bankruptcy loan RPI provided EarthShell. In exchange, EarthShell agreed to an amended sub-license pact, which was approved by the court April 20, that expands RPI's territory to include Canada.

The amended pact also places caps on royalties otherwise payable by RPI. Previously, RPI paid EarthShell a royalty fee equal to 20 percent of net sales, not to exceed 50 percent of its gross margin.

Founded in 1992, EarthShell makes biodegradable foam plates and bowls from materials such as limestone as well as starch from potatoes, wheat and corn. At one time, the company's clients included McDonald's Corp. (nyse: MCD - news - people ), Aramark Corp. and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Company founder Essam Khashoggi - brother of Saudi Arabian arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi - retired from EarhShell's board in 2005.

The Lutherville, Md.-based company filed for Chapter 11 protection on Jan. 19, saying it couldn't meet payroll and other obligations due to a lack of long-term financing.

Want to be part of the Rizzn-ite army? Indoctrination instructions here.

FlyDLUX: E. Khashoggi/Simon Hodson update... Earthshell cracking financially.

This via Kelly Carson of The Examiner:

BALTIMORE - A Baltimore manufacturer is facing financial meltdown after it was unable to find additional funding on Friday.

EarthShell Corp., a publicly traded company on the Over the Counter Bulletin Board under the symbol ERTH, said in a release that it would be unable to meet its payroll and other financial obligations after Friday because of the funding shortfall.

"The company has not been able to secure the resources to complete our mission at this time," company chairman and chief executive Vincent J. Truant said in a statement.

Data compiled by the financial research firm Morningstar shows that major shareholder Essam Khashoggi and E. Khashoggi Industries LLC began dumping blocks of shares in the company last month. Shareholder Lavla Khashoggi also sold blocks of EarthShell stock throughout November.

Essam Khashoggi, who is chairman of E. Khashoggi Industries LLC, resigned as chairman of EarthShell's board of directors in July 2005. He held the position since the company was founded in November 1992.

The shareholders sold a combined portfolio of more than 65,000 shares at prices ranging from $1.55 per share to $1.33 per share. Late Friday, shares of EarthShell were trading on the OTCBB at 29 cents per share. Its 52-week high was $2.30 per share and its 52-week low was 23 cents per share.

Calls to Truant, chief financial officer D. Scott Houston and company spokeswoman Cindy Eikenberg were not returned.

EarthShell manufactures and markets paper products for the food-packaging industry. At the beginning of the year, the company had six employees.

In its reports to the Securities Exchange Commission, EarthShell said it is involved in litigation involving two equipment vendors seeking to collect about $600,000 for manufacturing equipment for the company's facility in Goettingen, Germany.

The company also reported to the SEC this year that it has suffered "significant losses since inception, has minimal revenues and has a working capital deficit of $11,458,467" at the end of last year.

Another one of Simon Hodson's shell games coming to a close. What will that kooky millionaire do next?
--
/mark "rizzn" hopkins
For my blog, profile, wikipedia and digg entries, simply Google "rizzn"
Check out Season 1 of Podded Meat, my new Vodcast Network (SFW): http://poddedmeat.com
Check out: http://ModernOpinion.com

Humpday Roundup

[rizzn's note: this entry contains paid placement]

Hey there Rizznites. What's the good word? Still fielding suggestions for the new blogging network - The best one so far is 32D. We also added a new person to the blogging lineup. Just to preview who's going to be writing for us, I'll give you the list so far:

MADshow's Newsguy Jon aka Jonboy - Armasystema: it'll be a daily blog and periodic podcast continuation of his show Respect Knuckles.
Darrell - I Gave Darrell A Dollar: the latest incarnation of infectious insanity.
Wendy - Borrowed Fire: The daily life of a Texan twenty-something.
Matthew - GonzoBlogger: The globetrotting Jew tells all, Hunter S. Thompson-style.

Over the next few days, the splash pages will be up on the site, and I'll have the next few names dropped here on the site. Look out for updates!

Places in Florida
I've been looking to get on the road and do some vacationing, so I've been getting information about travel out in Florida. One of the things that crossed my desk was this deal about Winter Park, and it was actually pitching me Winter Park Real Estate. I've actually driven through the area, and much like most of South Florida, it is like an endless suburb ... it's sort of in the middle of the state. Not sure exactly what the draw is to the place, other than its proximity to Orlando, but I know that there are a good deal of tourism agencies based out of there, and from what I understand quite a bit of money flowing through there for the average businessman. Back in the FlyDLUX days, a good number of our agents were out in that area.

I've also got some info on Orlando, as well, which I haven't read through yet. More on that tomorrow.

On the Subject of Flash and Splash Pages
One of the companies I work with is having a huge internal debate on the topic of a splash page. The debate they are having is meritorious on both sides, but the debate itself is the developer's attempt at a distraction from having to do real work. It's reverse from most situations... usually it's the developer pushing a splash page, but here it's the client wanting one.

Coincidentally to this conflict, I saw this on Techdirt:

The common use of "flash intros" to corporate websites has never made much sense. Generally, they're a pain, and even for the few folks who want to watch them, after seeing it once, why should they ever want to go back again? Yet, for some reason, web designers love them, and somehow keep convincing corporations to use them. However, a usability expert studying these things now says that " the skip intro button is the most used button on the Internet." While you can quibble over the hyperbole, it does make sense to question why so many firms keep using these types of entryways, when it clearly keeps people from the content they actually want -- such as how to buy your product.

[via Techdirt]

Interestingly enough, I see this as one of the few design situations where a splash page is beneficial. We're talking about a gaming site, and the site is going to be graphically and textually driven, so to entice people in and to spark imagination, images are going to play a big role. The designer in this case is saying that having a splash page is going to reduce the pagerank of the site overall. A way to breach this deficit in pagerank that a splash page can cause is including a blogstyle update on the page that changes periodically, so that weblogs.com and all the other ping services are aware of the site, and that it'll get referenced periodically in other's blogs.

Quote of the Entry:
[from a resignation letter my friend Charlene recently recieved] "I wish you continued success in your goals to turn vibrant, productive, dedicated employees into an aimless, inept group of dehydrated, lifeless carcasses."
- Misti Gensler

Large Set of Small Updates

Quite an interesting day it's been. I've been saving these blog posts to put into a long newspost for about a week or so. Good stuff in here. As for me, I'm keeping busy, and business is finally picking up again after a weeklong slump. Expect a project progress report later this week.

f o u r [ ] 2 n i t e
For those of you in the East Texas area thie evening, FourSquare behind IHOP. It's the secret way to meet cool Tyler people. Starts at 9PM.


Suge Knight declares bankruptcy
Death Row Records label head Suge Knight has filed for bankruptcy, after he refused to pay US$107 million in an ownership dispute of his record company. Knight had lost a lawsuit filed by Lydia Harris last year. Harris had claimed that Knight had swindled her out of her 50 percent stake in Death Row Records.

Harris had alleged that Knight concocted a scheme to "destroy her ability to lay claim to her rightful share of the ownership and profits" of the label. The presiding judge had awarded the massive sum to Harris after discovering that Knight and his attorneys had not provided certain financial data.

Nanowires to Power Your Implants
Researchers at Georgia Tech have come up with a new way to power medical implants, using the motion of the body to generate electricity. By implanting fibers called nanowires, which are just 20-40 billionths of a meter in diameter, the researchers believe they can produce enough energy to drive implantable devices or even smart apparel. The zinc-oxide nanowires are piezoelectric, like the quartz crystals in a wristwatch, so the more you bend 'em, the more energy they produce.

Adnan Khashoggi Sued by SEC
Our good buddy Adnan is in the news again. Boy we love those Krazy Khashoggi's over here at Rizzn.Com. For those of you who don't know, Adnan's brother Essam was involved in the FlyDLUX ordeal back in 2003. Khashoggi is best known as an arms broker in the Iran- Contra scandal of the mid-1980s, when he served as middleman for illegal sales of weapons to Iran. He was often described then as one of the world's richest men.

In 1993, El-Batrawi founded GenesisIntermedia as a telemarketing and infomercial company. In 1999, the company's 100 sales agents made more than 1 million calls a month selling courses such as ``Secrets of Stock Investing'' and ``Ted Thomas' Personal Fortune Real Estate Investment Program'' with price tags of as much as $5,000.

Saudi financier Adnan Khashoggi and former GenesisIntermedia Inc. Chief Executive Officer Ramy El- Batrawi were sued by U.S. regulators over claims they orchestrated a $130 million stock loan and manipulation scheme. Khashoggi, 70, and El-Batrawi, 44, loaned 15 million GenesisIntermedia shares to Deutsche Bank Securities Ltd. while artificially inflating the stock price by engaging in large numbers of buys and sells, the Securities and Exchange Commission said in a lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles. They failed to repay the loans to intermediary brokers when the scheme collapsed, the SEC said.

Attorneys for El-Batrawi and Khashoggi couldn't be immediately located to comment. SEC attorney Kara Brockmeyer said the agency hadn't determined yet who their attorneys are. El-Batrawi has no listed telephone number in Los Angeles, and Khashoggi's place of residence isn't known, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit is the third the SEC has brought related to the GenesisIntermedia fraud. In 2004, Kenneth D'Angelo, who helped facilitate the stock loans settled with the SEC after pleading guilty to securities and wire fraud. A lawsuit against Smith in Los Angeles is still pending.

The case is SEC v. Ramy El-Batrawi et al, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, 06-2247.

peace or something like that
My good buddy Rob is still out in Africa bringing good will to all mankind. He writes the following on his blog (of interest to those of you following his series on the Lords Resistance Army).

I just found out that the lord’s resistance army that was causing so much trouble in the place I was working last year has recently met with representatives of the Government of Southern sudan and that they have come to some sort of agreement to cease hostilities and work towards a peaceful solution. The details are a bit sketchy at the moment.

i am a little jealous. apparantly the peace talks took place very close to maridi and the officials that came, stayed in the compound that I was living in while i was there. Would have been interesting to get a chance to sit and talk with a few of those guys that came through.

so hopefully the official news will come out very soon and we will get to find out what the agreements were.

That's the word for the moment, folks. Be good.

/rizzn

Lights out man.

This update has been a long time in coming. I've been outlandishly swamped lately, and simply haven't had the energy to devote to a number of pressing matters. I will try to address as many of them as possible here for you, as I've also been swamped with emails, too.

BlipMedia
Not a day goes by that I don't get an email about the status of Blip. Basically, what has happenned is we've outgrown our servers, and we no longer have any available diskspace. We've purchased new servers to move to (as of several months ago), but I've been so busy with new projects that I haven't had the time to devote to maintaining the service. At one point we were talking a merger through with a couple of our next biggest competitors, but unfortunately, those talks fell apart. I don't have any ill will towards them - quite the contrary. I had a good time meeting my competitors, and we saw eye-to-eye on almost everything, but we were both so busy maintaining our own businesses that we just didn't have time to join forces. Sad but true.

As a result, Blip has sort of ... degenerated. I had hoped to be able to announce an alternative service in a reasonable fashion and a way to migrate your podcasts over, but again, no time.

Here's the bottom line: Blip's future is uncertain at the moment. If I can find a few good cheap (or even better, free) programmers willing to take up my slack, I can revive Blip. We have the servers and the capital to return it to it's former glory, just not the time. If you are or know a programmer willing to help out with this, let me know. You must know ASP, batch programming, and have a good working knowlege of WAV and MP3 file formats as well as RSS. I can offer cash compensation and even points in the company (believe it or not, there is a pending profit model for Blip).

As for your files and RSS feeds, all MP3s will remain on the server and available to public download. All RSS files will stay static, and available, but not updatable.

You can contact me at mark@5tribe.com with any comments, questions, and concerns you have re: Blip. If you have a problem uploading, direct that to mark@blipmedia.org.

T. Evan Fisher for Texas House of Representatives, District 108

Politics! Yes! I've finally taken the final plunge into politics. A few months ago, I made it official, and took the headlong plunge into politics by accepting a position with T. Evan Fisher's Libertarian campaign for a Texas legislature spot. Without a doubt, it's going to be an interesting campaign. It's already becoming interesting, as there's some drama forming already in the form of one of our Democratic opponents being outed as a former male prostitute.

T. Evan Fisher is one of our own - from the old Tyler Denny's Crew. Most of you from there probably know him better as "Thos."

Thos is running for the 108th District of Texas' State Legislature under the Libertarian Party ticket. We had discussed informally before working together, but this weekend we made the arrangement official - I am the designated campaign treasurer for the T. Evan Fisher for Texas Legislature campaign. This means, in effect, I'll be functioning as a campaign manager as well. We're going to really try to organise a strong grassroots campaign as well as some innovative fundraising techniques.

I know I've got a lot of Libertarian readers out there, and I could use all the promotion from my friends and associates as possible. We'll be putting up the official website very soon, and I'll be putting out position and platform papers here and there for your review.

As for political views, the Libertarian Party, if you're not aware, is a very inclusive party that despite conservative or liberal bents, almost everyone finds attractive when they examine their tenets closely. I'd encourage you to do so at http://lp.org - and stay tuned for more on our buddy's quest for office.

Project Catarl
Those of you involved with the Alpha Catarl project may look forward to your handhelds very soon. We should be wrapping up development within the next few weeks and start rolling out prototypes. The Free Alpha signup is closed, but we will be opening up a paid Alpha Program soon, as well. Stay tuned for updates here.

Mystery Radio Project
There is a radio project that I and several very big movers and shakers in the streaming, satellite, and podcast world are putting together. We intend this to be the child project of what was started with BlipMedia, and somewhat closer to what we originally intended with the Blip project. I can't say more right now, but I can tell you that development is almost finished, and I'll be pointing you to the new hubbub very soon. We're talking to our new PR guy, our front end design guy is sending us our final layouts soon, we've hired a program director, and the talent should be getting their official invites to the new company within the next couple weeks. I, of course, am handling the backend work, and am, as usual, behind schedule. I expect to see this project off the ground in less than a month. I will probably be dissappointed, but that's what I expect as well. :-)

Peer-to-peer Banking Project

I've been enticed into a Peer-To-Peer banking project by some good friends of mine. I'm footing the bill on this one because of the promise of some VC coming our way. I can't go too far into the details at the moment (as per usual), but we could be looking at a peer-to-peer banking launch for American users within the next few months here.

Don't know what peer-to-peer banking is? Neither did I when I first heard the term. Go google it, you'll find some food for thought.

My Personal Life Update
Much like the rest of my life - very hectic. I have to say, I enjoy having money again. Ever since I've been back in town, I've been enjoying periodic windfalls of cash in addition to my steady stream of income from the contract job. It has allowed me a number of luxuries I've been denying myself over the last few years: a new car, a nice big apartment, new furniture, a new computer, and a little bit of investment and savings cushion.

A lot of money, however, gets sunk into a new apartment - more than I remember, at least. Down in SouFla, furnished apartment and living situations are common, and I've been used to packing everything up in a couple boxes, loading them up into whatever POS model car I happen to be driving at the time, and moving on a moments notice. Now that I'm actually accruing stuff now, I'm actually dreading the eventual move in six months to a year after I grow tired of whatever it is I'm doing and need to move on!

At least these are good problems to have. Some not so good problems to have include the tiff I've been engaged in this week with the electric company. I'm not going to out them just yet as they haven't completely worn out my patience (but they're quickly moving towards that end), but I've been without power for the coldest week in my memory. The reason is that I transferred my power over from the apartment complex's name on Tuesday to my own, and Tuesday afternoon, the power went out and hasn't come back on yet. Every day they promise to have it on by the end of the day, and every day I'm disappointed.

Very annoying. Ah well, on to the news!

For All My Austinian Friends
Better than your boyfriend posts about secret tunnells under UTA. It's quite an engaging and interesting read. Click the link and check out the full thing. My Austin crew should try this out and tell me what they find.

...there were the tunnels. We’d heard about them before - supposedly there was a secret network of tunnels underneath UT that connected almost all of the buildings. It was a farfetched concept, but it became credible to us when we read an article that said it was the way they got to the tower without being shot to take out Whitman. Soon after moving into UT, we started looking for the tunnels.

Any expectations we had were instantly shattered. No longer were we on campus - we’d be transported into another world. The narrow concrete path was flanked with a host of steam pipes, bundles of wires, and even toxic waste pipes. Intermitently, the steam pipes would makes scary noises which sent our hearts jumping. It was surreal.

Be careful how you read that.
Mz6 writes "According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I've only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they've correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time. "That's how flame wars get started," says psychologist Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago, who conducted the research with Justin Kruger of New York University. "People in our study were convinced they've accurately understood the tone of an e-mail message when in fact their odds are no better than chance," says Epley. The researchers took 30 pairs of undergraduate students and gave each one a list of 20 statements about topics like campus food or the weather. Assuming either a serious or sarcastic tone, one member of each pair e-mailed the statements to his or her partner. The partners then guessed the intended tone and indicated how confident they were in their answers. Those who sent the messages predicted that nearly 80 percent of the time their partners would correctly interpret the tone. In fact the recipients got it right just over 50 percent of the time."

Earthshell Corporation Board Chairman Resigns
EarthShell Corporation announced today that one of its directors, Simon K. Hodson (whom faithful Rizznites will remember was firmly entrenched in the FlyDLUX debacle), has resigned as a director of EarthShell, effective immediately. Mr. Hodson has also been serving as chairman of the Board. According to a company press release, Simon has resigned in order to focus his efforts on his recent appointment as Chief Executive Officer of E.Khashoggi Industries, LLC. This has confirmed longstanding rumors amongst the FlyDLUX crowd that Simon is somewhat of a "right-hand man" to Essam Khashoggi.

EKI, LLC is (not so coincidentally) EarthShell's largest stockholder. EarthShell holds an exclusive license on a worldwide basis from EKI to commercialize patented material technology for the manufacture of foodservice disposable packaging (but as of yet, the corporation has yet to actually do anything with this patent). A new chairman of the Board will be elected at the next regularly scheduled meeting of EarthShell's Board of Directors and the corporate governance committee of the Board will initiate a search for a new director to fill the vacancy on the Board.

Get Your Bags of Money Here
Matt Marshall over at the San Jose Mercury News does a nice job pointing out how VCs are back to funding startups with 20-somethings running the show -- something that was quite common during the bubble years, but which fell out of favor quickly. However, there's one big difference this time around that isn't mentioned in the article. During the original bubble years, for many of these companies the fact that the founders were inexperienced 20-somethings was often used as a major selling point for the company. There were tons of articles profiling young founders, where it seemed like what the companies actually did was secondary. This time around, it seems like more companies have at least figured out that it helps to focus more of the attention on the company and its products.

Yay, East Texas
It would appear that patent trolls (even if the article refers to them as "patent pirates") have found a friend in the form of a federal judge in the East Texas town of Marshall. Not only does he not waste time and push cases through quickly (a good thing), he sides with the patent holder nearly every time (and much higher than in cases throughout the rest of the country). Apparently, patent trolls around the world are learning that if you want to get your money quickly, file your claim in Marshall, Texas. In fact, many defendants are more likely to settle, rather than have to head into the courtroom of Judge T. John Ward. So, who has the patent on speedy trials?

Free Sports TV. Sort of.
NBC is significantly expanding its Olympics video offerings for the internet and cell phones, a sure sign of its increased comfort with technologies that erect geographic boundaries online. The network's official Olympics site, NBCOlympics.com, will show for free, on a delayed basis, the complete runs and routines for the top finishers and for all U.S. participants in almost every event, with highlights provided for team sports like hockey, said Gary Zenkel, president of NBC Olympics.

None of the video will be live however; in most cases it won't be available online or on phones until the end of NBC's broadcast day, generally 11:30 p.m. ET. By contrast, the BBC's website is simulcasting five television feeds, though only to U.K. residents.

Peak Oil, Hamachi, and Blip Stats. Discuss!

My Album Download Update
Okay, I realized there is a problem today with downloading the album with Hamachi.  You have to have the password to join the network my hamachi client is on. I’m not going to give it out on the blog, because it happens to be the same password I use for some other sensitive information.  Until I figure out a way to fix this, I’m going to put the files on the server available for download.  Click here to go to the Hamachi/StmC entry and DOWNLOAD MY ALBUM!

BlipMedia News
In other news, if you are a Blip user and have sent a tech support request via email lately, and I’m not responding back in my usual 10 seconds later fashion, it’s because I’m SWAMPED with requests lately.  We’ve added 200 some odd users in the last week and a half (record growth!) which is bringing with it new sorts of problems, challenges, and technical questions.  I’ll get back with you in the order I got your email in, I promise.  If I’m not getting to you after about four days, send another email, or you could try leaving a message on the public forum in the hopes that someone in the community may have run into your problem and can help you solve it more quickly.

In another podcasting related trend that’s worth mentioning, podcasting has reached another plateau busting growth trend in the search engines.  I know this because I basically own the keywords “podcast hosting” and a few others similar to that, and my GoogleAds bill has shot through the roof this week.  It’s up from about 15 clickthroughs per day to around 30 or 40.  I’ll get some hard stats and graphs here in the next few days and put some real analysis up.  I’ve not been monitoring the news for podcasting lately, so if anyone has some insight as to where this influx is coming from, I’d be open to learning.

Peak Oil Fervor on the Rise; World Looks to Rizzn for Help
There has been a fair amount of concern amongst the Peak Oil alarmist crowd recently that has a couple of people in my sphere of influence up in arms, and urging me and anyone I care about to move to an agrerian population center or join a commune.  I’m open minded, and I listen to what my comrades have to say before  Most of the ruckus has been started by a certain Michael Rupert article published at From the Wilderness.

As I pack my bags to head to Washington for Congressional Black Caucus hearings on the September 11th attacks (to be conducted this Friday and Saturday) my inbox is being progressively flooded with emails from inside sources in the energy industry about what Hurricane Rita is now likely to accomplish – the near-complete destruction of an already teetering US economy.

Coup de Grace.  If you hear these words, know that they come from this article.  I’m not going to go through and point by point rebuttal everything in this article, I’m simply going to go over the highlights and share my thoughts.  I’m not the authority on Peak Oil, and I’m not the authority on rebutting Peak Oil.  I am a very learned and avid student of Ray Kurzweil, and I ‘survived’ Y2K as an industry insider, and I believe that my insight given those two facets of me makes my analysis unique and pertinent.

According to Michael Rupert:

1. 30% of America’s refining capability is likely to be destroyed by Hurricane Rita
2. 30% of America’s domestic natural gas production is shut down.
3. Saudi replacement oil is useless, because it’s not even a bargain at $10–$12 below market cost.
4. Rupert agrees with the mainstream media (MSM) that Rita will indeed be a worst case scenario when it hits Texas, effectively destroying anything it touches.
5. The Chairman of Valero Energy says that this could destroy America’s economy as we know it.
6. CNN is now predicting $5/gallon gasoline prices post-Rita
7. The largest nuclear plant in America is being shut down in response to Rita preperation.
8. FEMA will not protect lives, only protect assets.

I must admit, before reading the article by Michael Rupert, I was a lot more convinced of a crisis hearing this information from trusted members of my inner circle.  Unfortunately, if you read through his article, the bulk of the ‘crisis’ is based on MSM sources. What is it we here at the Blip community have been screaming for almost a year now?  The MSM distorts in favor of sensationalism!  Why?  Because it sells more advertisements!

As soon as my life settles down a bit, I’m going to finish a little documentary I’m working on about FlyDLUX, focusing on the distortion the media placed on our company in relationship with the facts.  It was the most real example in my life I’ve ever had that showed me how much of our ‘news’ is simply entertainment, not factually based. As to the Chairman of Valero Energy, of course he’s going to agree with him.  He’s a chairman of a large energy conglomorate.  He’s looking for corporate welfare, in an era of corporate entitlement.  The more he plays up the crisis, the more he’s likely to recieve in federal aide.  There is no self-interest in him downplaying the crisis.  Just like Enron, if the public wants a crisis, he and others like him are in a position to ‘create a crisis.’

Speaking to FEMA, P.J. O’Rourke on Real Time with Bill Maher brought up an interesting point a week ago.  FEMA is an agency that shouldn’t exist.  It’s a creation of the Carter administration, and it’s responsibilities are essentially redundant to pre-existing private and military operations.  Emergency management shouldn’t be taken care of on a federal level.  It should be the responsibility of the first responders, the National Guard (implemented from state-level authority), and if needed, individual executive orders and acts of congress.  The necessity for a government organisation like FEMA to muck things up simply isn’t there, as it seems to only get in the way of other, more capable organisations, private and governmental.

Most importantly, and on a grander vision that simply this one hurricane and the last, those concerned and even panicked by the Peak Oil prognosis in general (and these disasters in specificity) in my opinion are missing the larger capability of a capitalist system and the Law of Accelerating Returns.  I’m not saying we as a country should ignore the dwindling world oil supplies, and if I was saying that, it simply wouldn’t happen.  I guarantee you all over this country and indeed this planet, there are people quietly positioning themselves to take up world slack with alternative energies onces the world runs out of it’s favorite crude juice.  That’s the nature of economics, and indeed the nature of the law of Accelerating Returns.

Let me quote Ray Kurzweil, one of the worlds leading proponents of AI and technology in general:

The Law of Accelerating Returns: As order exponentially increases, time exponentially speeds up (that is, the time interval between salient events grows shorter as time passes).

But the growth predicted by the Law of Accelerating Returns is an exception to the frequently cited limitations to exponential growth.  Even a catastrophe, as apparently befell our reptilian cohabitants in the late Cretaceous period, only sidesteps an evolutionary process, which then picks up the pieces and continues unabated (unless the entire process is wiped out).  An evolutionary process acclerates because it builds on its past achievements, which includes improvements in its own means for further evolutions.

The Law of Accelerating Returns applies equally to the evolutionary process of computation, which inherently will grow exponentially and essentially without limit.  The two resources it needs – the growing order of the evolving technology itself, and the chaos from which an evolutionary process draws its options for further diversity – are unbounded.

Kurzweil, in the context from which I drew this quote, was attempting to persuade us that machines would one day build themselves, based upon the Law of Accelerating Returns, the Law of Increasing Entropy and The Law of Time and Chaos. (for more on all this, I suggest The Age of Spiritual Machines, by Ray Kurzweil).  The point that I’m driving at, however, is that as time progresses, and chaos increases (that is to say, increasing uncertainty in the energy and the oil markets), the laws previously mentioned dictate that alternative energy forms to fill the voids created will be found, and our way of life will be only slightly disrupted (if at all).

In simpler terms, these criseses and new technologies seem to function on a pendulum swing, and we are entering an age where there seems to be a number of pendulums swinging into their low points, and when a pendulum reaches it’s lowest point in the swing, the chicken littles of the world seem to run out of the woodwork, because it sells papers, issues, advertisement, or otherwise allows them to cash in.

I’m not 100% convinced that my analysis applies here, but I’m hovering around a high 80% to low 90% degree of certainty.  I invite criticism and response to this to distill this down to it’s essential truth.

/mark

Not to harp on Hodson/Khashoggi

I really don’t have it out for Hodson and Khashoggi, but I found something you ERTH and FLYDLUX people might get a kick out of.

This out of the Urban Dictionary:

1. EarthShell

To spend large amounts of corporate or taxpayer money while leaving no impact on the environment or any lasting evidence of the effort.

After spending hundreds of millions developing a new manufacturing process only to have it fail before production begins, one might say:

"We really earthshelled that one."

Or after a year of effort to meet corporate goals, management decides to enhance the goal definition so that they appear to have been met.

"We're having a meeting this afternoon to earthshell this years goals."

Source: buddybradle, Jul 2, 2003

/rizzn

FlyDLUX Related: Khashoggi retires from EarthShell Corp. board

[Rizzn’s Note: If you remember, Simon Hodson and Essam Khashoggi were big investors in the whole FlyDLUX debacle.]

In news that’s only semi-related to FlyDLUX in that respect, I found this on the wires today:

July 7 -- Essam Khashoggi, the co-founder and chairman of EarthShell Corp., is stepping down from the company´s board of directors.

Khashoggi said June 7 that he would not seek re-election to the board as part of his scheduled plan to retire. He will provide assistance and guidance to the company on an as-needed basis. Khashoggi, EarthShell´s largest shareholder, plans to maintain his holdings in the company, he said.

EarthShell, based in Santa Barbara, Calif., is involved in licensing and commercializing disposable food-service utensils and wraps that are biodegradable and can be composted. The products are made primarily from limestone and starch from potatoes, corn and wheat.

In a different press release, I found the following public statements made by Hodson and Khashoggi:

 Mr. Khashoggi stated, "We have strong executive leadership in place that has effectively dealt with many challenges to bring the Company to its current level of accomplishment. EarthShell will be implementing changes that will enable top management to perform to even higher standards and increase shareholder value. I will always feel that I am a part of EarthShell. It is a dynamic and important part of my business life, and I want to stay as close as possible to the Company as product commercialization begins. I believe that EarthShell has a bright future."

"Mr. Khashoggi helped establish EarthShell's environmental vision and mission," commented Simon Hodson, EarthShell co-founder and chief executive officer. "He has seen the Company through many transitions and the achievement of milestones, including development of its comprehensive patent portfolio and the establishment of important business relationships in both the public and private sectors. We all genuinely appreciate Mr. Khashoggi's contributions to the creation and development of EarthShell. EarthShell's success, through its new plans for the future, will always reflect the legacy of his passion and commitment."

Simon Hodson and Essam Khashoggi played a very interesting part in the whole FlyDLUX debacle.  Almost half of the money lost by FlyDLUX was Simon Hodson’s and Essam Khashoggi’s, and it was in the millions.  About halfway into their adventures with FlyDLUX, they began sending money directly to either Lida Benham or James “Tony” Wimmer.

If I understand their original stated intent in buying massive quantities of underpriced ticket vouchers through FlyDLUX, it was to force the airlines to go into bankruptcy, and then subsequently purchase the airline itself at a devalued rate.  Apparently, many years ago, I’m told, when Delta Airlines was in bankruptcy, they were the second or third highest bidder on it’s purchase, and unfortunately for them, did not end up pocketing the airline.

A lot of our financial problems stemmed from the Hodson deal.  If it were not for Hodson/Khashoggi continuously stringing us along for the last few months we attempted to remain operating, we would have closed up shop.  It’s hard to do that when you constantly have millions of dollars dangled in front of your face.

The last I heard, Hodson/Khashoggi were buying tickets directly from Wimmer as recently as a year ago.  I have no validation on this, only rumor and innuendo (which is what the majority of the post-FlyDLUX crowd lives on, apparently.  I mean, you are reading this, right?)

As for my own personal opinions of Hodson/Khashoggi – I don’t like them.  I don’t suppose I can say too much bad about Khashoggi as a person, as Hodson et. al. kept us pretty insulated from him.  I think we were on one phone call with Essam, and a conference call at that.  Hodson, however, is an imbecile of the highest order, or a shark of the most devious variety.  I’m not sure which, and given his family member’s opinion of him, I’m more likely to say shark.  All of his money was made, so the grapevine tells me, by either defrauding or cheating his sisters out of their inheritance.  As for my personal experience with the man, he kept us on and past the edge of bankruptcy for so long that we’d have to offer him majority ownership in the company.

In retrospect, we should have signed that deal instead of folding shop.  I’d love to have the legal team Simon’s money could buy pursuing the likes of Tony Wimmer.  But then again, I’m just as happy that I have been able to put all of this behind me.

/rizzn

FlyDLUX Update

[Rizzn's Note: I got this from George Conner, counsel for FlyDLUX.]

Forrest, on Tuesday of this week, for the first time, I located the old divorce decree for James Wimmer's parents. On Wednesday, I sent Lawrence E. Finkelstein to Ft. Worth to get the documents yesterday. Of course the old decree had the family names and social security numbers. Although all of the contracts list James Wimmer's mother as Linda Meccurro, who died and left a large estate for him and various trusts, her real name is Sharon E. Wimmer and I called her today. I prepared a memo about our conversation, and the memo is attached hereto.

I learned of these things for the first time this afternoon. Lawrence E. Finkelstein learned of these things for the first time this afternoon. This has all happened in the last hour, and I think Larry is in shock at the moment. Let me say it again, Larry just found out these things when I called Sharon Wimmer.

George Conner

---

Memo

In the past 48 hours, new facts about James Dow Wimmer have been uncovered and this memo will attempt to set them out.

James Dow Wimmer
TxDL: 0090606884
SSN: 326-60-2140
DOB 12-14-1970

James was born in Detroit, has one brother named Jeffrey Wimmer, and has no other siblings.

Jeffrey Wimmer
SSN: 449-55-0951
DOB: 4/15/1974.

James’ mother is Sharon E. Wimmer

Sharon E. Wimmer
SSN: 577-64-9651
DOB: 8/28/1944
8141 Gibraltar Dr.
Tuscon, AZ 85704

Sharon's telephone number is ***************. I called Sharon Wimmer this afternoon and learned that

1. She is the mother of James Dow Wimmer;
2. She never worked for American Airlines;
3. She never established any trusts for James Dow Wimmer, although she recently changed her last will and testament with regardes to James;
4. She knows that James has no assets;
5. She loaned James money recently because James was saying that he was having financial troubles and that things were bouncing all over the place;
6. She forgave the loan to James recently because things were so tough for him;
7. She said James was working in the Washington D.C. area for some nice people and that he would lose his job over this (meaning the car deals and the airline ticket deals);
8. She said she is Presbyterian, and before that Methodist; and that no one in the family is Jewish;
9. She said that some friends of James thought he looked Jewish, and that James converted to Judiasm;
10. She [WINDOWS-1252?]confirmed that James Wimmer’s telephone number is 410-977-8236;
11. She said that when she was 4 years of age, she was in an automobile accident, and suffered a blow to the right temporal lobe of her brain; as a result she suffered a memory loss, seizures, and emotional swings; only recently did the new medication catch up to her medical problem and make things significantly better.
12. She said that James has no sister named Stephanie, but has a brother named Jeffrey;
13. She said that James was never called Tony by the family and did not know to whom I was referring when I used the name Tony; 14. She said that James father is Stanley Wimmer, whose SSN: 235-58-5174, dob: 7/2/1937,and resides at 4116 Brookmore, Arlington, Texas and whose telephone number is ***************;
15. She said [WINDOWS-1252?]that Dorothy Paige was James’ maternal grandmother, who resided in Tuscon and is now deceased;
16. She said that she is not Linda Meccurro;
17. She seemed surprised and heartbroken by the news of the car contract problems and the airline ticket problems;
18. She [WINDOWS-1252?]called back later and said she left a message on James’ telephone and asked him to call me, which he has not done;
19. She asked me how I located her, if I thought her name was Linda Mecurro, and I told her that we found a divorce decree between her and Stanley; Cause No. 325-90905, in the 325th District Court of Tarrant County, Texas, Mbook251, Page 128-151, signed September 17, 1987. gc

FlyDLUX Update

James Anthony Wimmer represented to a number of people, including me, that he had access to steeply discounted airline tickets from American Airlines and all carriers that they partnered with to provide both domestic and international flights. Wimmer had supplied small numbers of domestic airline tickets to my family since 1994. Wimmer approached me in December 2002 with a proposal to sell tickets in larger numbers. Several people, including me, tested Wimmer by purchasing small blocks of tickets and securing flights for people in January and February 2003. After two months of Wimmer successfully fulfilling flights, Flydlux.com, Inc. was established in March 2003 to broker the purchase and sale of airline tickets.

Wimmer was paid for more than 3,000 undelivered domestic roundtrip “Y” class coach tickets that were receipted by him to Flydlux.com, Inc. He was also paid for more than 500 undelivered international roundtrip “Y” class coach and smaller number of first class tickets that were receipted by him to Flydlux.com, Inc.

Before launching Flydlux.com, Inc., Wimmer provided Finkelstein with sworn statements claiming assets in excess of $10 million. Wimmer engaged in numerous phone conversations with Lawrence E. Finkelstein and others between June and October 2004, all of them legally recorded, in which he repeatedly affirmed that he would deliver the tickets or reimburse all persons who paid Flydlux.com, Inc. or Wimmer or Wimmer’s agent, Lida Travel, Inc. for undelivered tickets. Wimmer estimated that he may owe us all as much as $1.2 million in restitution.

Wimmer never provided the tickets or the reimbursements. Finkelstein engaged the services of attorney George M. Conner III to obtain one or the other. Conner engaged in negotiations by phone with Wimmer from October 2003 until late January 2004. Wimmer and attorney Richard H. Rosenblum assured Conner that a written settlement agreement secured by verifiable assets would be concluded in early January. It never happened.

On January 22, 2004, Conner filed a Petition for Involuntary Bankruptcy against Wimmer in the United States Bankruptcy Court, Northern District of Texas, in Ft. Worth, Texas. That venue was chosen because Wimmer made his home in Arlington, Texas for over a decade. Also, that was where he did business with American Airlines. Case No. 04-40762-7 was assigned to Judge D. Michael Lynn.

Wimmer negotiated a Settlement Agreement that he executed and submitted to Conner on March 21, 2004 that included the following provisions:

3. WIMMER shall make restitution to all persons who invested in or made payment for the purchase of undelivered airline tickets from Flydlux.com, Inc., hereinafter referred to as Flydlux, Champion Recruiters, Inc. and/or LEF.

A. Flydlux, LEF and WIMMER will cooperate with one another and make diligent efforts to identify and contact all qualified claimants due restitution pursuant to the terms of this Paragraph.

B. Each such claimant shall present reasonable proof of such claim for restitution based upon payment for such undelivered airline tickets unless otherwise provided for herein.

C. Upon the establishment of such proven or admitted claims, WIMMER accepts full and sole responsibility for such claims and shall make restitution to each such claimant as soon thereafter as is practicable.

4. WIMMER shall make restitution to all persons connected with or referred to him who invested in or purchased undelivered airline tickets from either WIMMER, or, Lida Travel, Inc., acting in her capacity as agent for WIMMER from December, 2002 until October 31, 2003.

B. Each such claimant must present reasonable proof of such claim for restitution based upon payment for such undelivered airline tickets unless otherwise provided for herein.

C. Upon the establishment of such proven or admitted claims, WIMMER accepts full and sole responsibility for such claims and shall make restitution to each such claimant as soon thereafter as is practicable.

When Wimmer learned that the Settlement Agreement could not be adopted by the Bankruptcy Court unless it was submitted to all of his creditors for approval, he elected to return to court and contest the involuntary bankruptcy petition. When it finally came to trial, after two days of testimony, Judge Lynn entered the following order in the Wimmer bankruptcy on May 25, 2004: “the court having considered the testimony and other evidence presented by the petitioning creditors and the arguments of counsel, it is ordered, adjudged and decreed that relief should be, and hereby is, granted as to the named debtor, and this case shall proceed under chapter 7 of title 11 of the United States Code.”

Wimmer was ordered to file a comprehensive schedule of all assets, debts and creditors by or before June 9, 2004 and attend a first meeting of creditors on July 7, 2004. He did neither. Shawn K. Brown, the bankruptcy trustee, filed a Motion to Compel Debtor to Comply With Debtor’s Duties to File Schedules Pursuant to Section 541of the Bankruptcy Code, and for Sanctions. That motion reads, in part, as follows:

2. The Debtor has not filed a list of creditors, a schedule of assets and liabilities, a schedule of current income and current expenditures, and a statement of the debtor’s financial affairs as required by Section 521(1) of the bankruptcy code. Further, the Debtor has failed to file the statement of intention required by Section 521(2).

3. The first meeting of creditors was originally set for July 7, 2004 at 2:00 p.m. The meeting was rescheduled to August 31, 2004 at 4:00 p.m. due to the Debtor’s failure to file the documents required by Section 521. The Trustee discussed the requirements with the Debtor on July 6, 2004, and advised the Debtor that failure to file the documents would result in a motion to compel the filings. During that conversation, the Debtor assured the Trustee that he would seek counsel and would comply with his duty to file the required documents. To date, the required filings have not been made. The Trustee has not received any further contact from the Debtor or any counsel for the Debtor. No counsel has appeared in the case on behalf of Debtor since the order for relief was entered.

4. The failure of the Debtor to file the required documents has caused the Trustee to file this Motion, to postpone the meeting of creditors, and will require the Trustee to seek additional time within which to file any objections to the discharge or dischargeability of debts. As such, the Debtor has failed to cooperate with the Trustee as necessary to allow the Trustee to perform his duties pursuant to Section 521(3) of the Bankruptcy Code.

5. Due to the Debtor’s knowing and flagrant disregard of this Court and the duties imposed by the Bankruptcy Code, the Trustee requests that the Court impose appropriate sanctions on the Debtor…”

The Trustee’s motion is set for hearing before Judge Lynn on September 2, 2004. It seems likely that Judge Lynn will act forcefully to require Wimmer to provide the Trustee with the cooperation required by law.

Soon, Wimmer will be required to attend the first meeting of creditors. When he does, he will be placed under oath and required to answer questions from the creditors in attendance. All of us will be able to purchase the official tape recording of that proceeding.

Flydlux.com, Inc. has no assets other than the undelivered tickets for which Wimmer has repeatedly taken full responsibility. The involuntary bankruptcy action seeks to hold Wimmer to that responsibility. This site will continue keeping you posted.

Please remember that all of the employees of Flydlux, including me, were wiped out financially and emotionally by Wimmer’s actions. We will not desist until he has been brought to justice. While we ask your forgiveness, we require your patience and cooperation.

Sincerely yours,
Lawrence E. Finkelstein

All documents filed by the debtor are available online at www.txnb.uscourts.gov.

Resignation Reiteration

Despite allegations or indications to the contrary, I have remained resigned from FlyDLUX.com, Inc. I did not re-enlist my post as CFO. Any support for the principals or creditors of FlyDLUX has been strictly pro bono work, and has been limited to turning over documentation I had in my possession during my tenure at the company.

Furthermore, all communication regarding FlyDLUX should be directed towards an email account, preferrably guesswho@rizzn.com rizzn@phreaker.net, as this is a personal email account, not a company email account. All calls to my office regarding FlyDLUX, unless directed from a governmental agency, will not be taken. This is not my decision, but a decision made by principals in the company I now work for. On the other hand, I will respond to emails, and I still do not wish ill will upon anyone involved in FlyDLUX in any capacity, as there is more than enough ill-fated events to go around without my spreading more of the same.

/rizzn

Dear Folks:

Dear Folks:

An action was filed against James Wimmer (WIMMER) on 1/22/04 as a Petition for Involuntary Bankruptcy. It was filed in the United States Bankruptcy Court, Northern District of Texas, in Ft. Worth, TX, and was assigned Case No. 04-40762, before Judge D. Michael Lynn. The person appointed as Bankruptcy Trustee is Carey Dalton Ebert, Hurst, TX (817) 268-2468.
All documents filed by the debtor are available online at www.txnb.uscourts.gov.
Flydlux.com, Inc. (FLYDLUX) is now preparing and will certainly be filing a claim against WIMMER. We currently estimate that the claim for restitution alone will amount to approximately $1.2 million. Because this and related causes of action against WIMMER are the only remaining assets left to FLYDLUX, it may become necessary for FLYDLUX to also file a petition for liquidation in bankruptcy.

All airline tickets purchased by Flydlux.com, Inc. (FLYDLUX) were bought from WIMMER. Payment for all tickets was made in accordance with directions from WIMMER. All such payments were made either by wire transfer or direct deposit, excepting one cash transaction before a credible witness for which was also a receipted transaction. Accordingly, FLYDLUX paid for every ticket it sold and has receipts from WIMMER and his flight fulfillment agent, Lida Travel, Inc. (LIDA). The payments made to them and the receipts furnished by them conclusively demonstrate that FLYDLUX paid in good faith for thousands of airline tickets that were never delivered by WIMMER and/or LIDA.

This action – or inaction – by WIMMER and LIDA caused FLYDLUX to default on all of its obligations to its creditors, including all customers, investors and employees. Lawrence E. Finkelstein (FINKELSTEIN) and all of the employees of FLYDLUX were totally wiped out by the failure of WIMMER and/or LIDA to deliver tickets. FINKELSTEIN is now impoverished and abandoned by family and friends alike. FINKELSTEIN’S father, older brother and other family member also suffered significant financial losses, along with numerous close friends who invested hundreds of thousands of dollars as investments in or purchases from FLYDLUX. The devastation brought about by these losses has done irreparable harm to many of us.
FLYDLUX will soon be filing for liquidation in bankruptcy. Its only assets are causes of action for the undelivered paid tickets purchased from and through WIMMER, and an action for the purchase price of option agreements for the purchase of additional tickets plus lost profits when WIMMER and LIDA defaulted on them.

The financial records of FLYDLUX show that its operating expenses were reasonable – if not modest – at all times. Not only were salaries modest, but also they went unpaid more often than not since all of us were waiting for the delivery of large batches of tickets before the company went out of business. Those deferred salaries were never paid. This visited catastrophic losses upon all of us who were relying upon the unpaid wages to support our families and ourselves.
We believe that there is evidence of fraud on WIMMER’s part. There may have been collusion on LIDA’s part, as well. FLYDLUX paid for far more tickets than it sold, and acted in good faith at all times. We are confident that the record established in the WIMMER bankruptcy and all related actions will conclusively vindicate us and accurately identify the responsible villains.
Unfortunately, there is nothing more we can do at this juncture, other than keep you informed. We have given you the website for the WIMMER bankruptcy. All other information will be publicly posted at Flydlux.com. We advise you to check there periodically for additional information and instructions.

We deeply regret these tragic developments. Even after we are vindicated, we will long bear the scars of this terrible experience.

Sincerely yours,
Lawrence E. Finkelstein, President
Mark A. Hopkins, former CFO

Letter from Bobbye Finkelstein

I just found this message in the old FlyDLUX sales account. It's from one of my least favorite clients from FlyDLUX, Bobbye Finkelstein. No matter what we did, even when flights went through for Jennifer Link and Bobbye Finkelstein, it was never good enough. But my posting of this letter shows two things: A) That even Rabbi's own family was affected by this, and who wants to screw one's own family? and B) Bobbye Finkelstein is a moron.

----- Original Message -----
From: Bobbye Finkelstein
To: FlyDLUX
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 12:18 PM
Subject: 10 months and counting

Rabbi,

since I wired you $4,000 into your PERSONAL account at Wachovia Bank, Larry, for ticket vouchers on American Airlines. Again, I ask where our returned funds are, which now total more than $5,000, with your bogus promises of $839.00 reimbursement for New York tickets last June and your bogus promise of 2 international tickets, gratis? I will assume that after being evicted for non-payment of rent that our money was not used to pay for your housing, so how did you spend our $5,000?

Loved the news footage of you slinking away and your latke, Mark Hopkins perfecting the art of the lie.

What goes around comes around, Rabbi.

---

Bobbye:

First of all, you didn't wire $4,000 into a personal account of Rabbi's at Wachovia Bank. Rabbi didn't have a personal account at Wachovia Bank. We had two business accounts there.

Secondly, the two international tickets, gratis obviously would be contingent on the company being in business. Obviously it is not.

Thirdly, we were not evicted for non-payment of rent. We simply moved out of the Woodbury when we realized we were not going to be able to make the next months payment. There was no eviction. It was a month to month contract.

Fourth, and finally, like it says on the website and in every public statement we've issued, dear moron, the $5,000 went to James Anthony Wimmer. Ask him what he did with the money. He was who we were buying tickets from. He didn't produce the tickets. I saw the wires, and the copies of the wires are available on the internet, currently. If you weren't such a retarded duck, you would have found this out yourself. That you believe everything you see on TV is very telling about what your intelligence level is.

Additionally, I'd be curious to know exactly how this math works out: $4,000 + $839 > $5,000.

Finally, if you ever call me a latke (did you mean lackey?) again in public or in private and it reaches my eyes and ears, expect another public spanking like this one on my website.

I say to you good day.

/rizzn

Horrible News from the FlyDLUX front.

I got a memo today informing me thusly:

"...I also spoke with Rabbi M---- B----- today. Not good news. The Orthodox Union is bringing him up on charges of conspiring with FlyDLUX to defraud congregants and organizations out of money for tickets that don't exist!"

"The scoundral Kellman from the Kollel is leading the charge against M----. This would divest M---- of his positions in A----- as rabbi of his synagogue and head of the Vad, the board that certifies food kosher in his region and the agency that employs his wife as an inspector."

This is outrageous. This man did nothing wrong -- he didn't defraud congregants, the accusations are baseless, and I hope Rabbi Kellman reaps exactly what he sows in this endeavor. It is HIS greedy and malicious actions that caused the problems for Rabbi B----- in the first place.

If Rabbi B----- is guilty of anything, it's having too big of a heart. He saw an opportunity with FlyDLUX to get people to Israel for cheap, reuniting families and the like. It was simply unfortunate (for all of us involved, but Rabbi B----- and those like him especially) that Tony was a greedy theiving bastard who decided to take everyone's money and not produce any tickets.

Very soon, I'm reposting all the FlyDLUX Tony Tapes, with highlights on the ones that indicate what Rabbi B-----'s and Tony's involvement was -- what will be shown is that Tony is the culpable party, and Rabbi B----- had nothing to do with defrauding anyone.

/rizzn

I blog therefore I am...

I blog therefore I am...

"I have real feelings of ambivalence regarding the maintenance of a regular blog. It tends to cause me to reflect on life in terms of "bloggability" or "blogworthiness." Analogous to the evil of carrying a camera everywhere you go on vacation. Attempts to capture and synopsize the "essence" of things ruin the whole experience. Hate cameras. "



[Rizzn's Note: Don't we do that already with our life? I mean, we all have stories from our life that we tell to everyone. Two examples to demonstrate my point, from each extreme. Most people who know me know that I don't talk a lot. I've got stories about my life, but usually they are extraordinary in some respect or another. (my drug stories, my FlyDLUX stories, my Aircraft stories, Skydiving stories.... if you've heard these stories, you get the point). They are all true, but I have a limited number of them. On the other hand, take Rae for example. Rae was the best friend at the time of my ex-fiance. She talked INCESSANTLY. One of the first times I met her, she was werking in a breakfast house with some friends of mine, and I was sitting at the bar, so she'd come over about every four minutes and talk with me. She actually went back into the kitchen, dropped a fork or something unbreakable like that, and walks back in to the bar area and tries to pass it off as a hilarious anecdote to me while I'm sitting there. This was not atypical for her, this, I learned through extended contact with her, was her modus operandi -- everything that ever happened to her was fodder for her 'funny' and/or 'interesting' anecdotes.



Do you see my point? Blogging is just another way to share information with people, in a multimedia sense. We're simply having to make the same judgement calls we'd already be making about information as it occurs to us. We just have an uber-hip classification for the data: blog material.]

FlyDLUX Update

I got this email today >>

From: Yutkanany@aol.com
Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 23:52:28 EST
Subject: flydlux
To: mailto:markhopkins@broadcast.net

DEAR MARK,
I HOPE YOU NOW KNOW WHO YOU'RE GOOD FRIEND "THE RABBI" IS
HE WOULD EVEN BURY YOU, WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO WISEN UP AND SPILL THE BEANS. HE DOES NOT DESERVE YOUR DEVOTION, OR PROTECTION......DO EVERYONE A BIG SERVICE AND HELP PUT HIM AND HIS FRIENDS BEHIND BARS, AND HELP EVERYONE RECOUP THEIR MONIES

---

I'm a bit tired of you people not understanding the concept of what is being put in front of you. There are reasons for the things that are going on. I'm going to start putting up some audio blogs if I can set this up properly tonight with full details ... but let me send you here (go to the downloads section) -- what you see here is all the documents relating to FlyDLUX's finances that I've pulled together -- it indicates that the burden of proving innocence lies not with me, or Rabbi, but with Tony. Tony is the person all this money went to. Tony is the one holding hostage all the tickets. Tony is the one who should provide an accounting. If anyone of you has ANY viable arguments to that, speak up now on this public or private forum with cogent, well designed arguments, or stop lobbing baseless accussations at me or anyone else.

As always, be well, and stay tuned here for details.

/rizzn

PS: Apparently, Paypal has once again decided to steal money from me. Again. This time fifty bucks. For no reason. I hate my life.

Robin Kish - Factchecker Extraordinaire

Robin Kish - Factchecker Extraordinaire - brings you her slandereport about FlyDLUX!

Care to see the atrocious FlyDLUX report that aired on WFOR? Click Here.

Disclaimer: Just because the report is full of incorrect facts and slander does not mean it is true or I purport to believe it.

[Listening to: LOFI Richtig by Rizzn Phitt - Rizzn and Phit - (04:19)]

Feelings on the FlyDLUX Report

I really don't like how they portrayed me as a liar -- FlyDLUX piece portrays me as some sort of a crook -- I'm not a crook.

Neither is Rabbi. I'm faxing, this evening, a list of the customers we actually flew, and maybe a photocopy of my genitalia. I'm a little perturbed by her unbalanced report.

---

Okay -- I've had time to think about this report, and soak it in, and watch it a second time. I really feel insulted. There are a number of facts that were completely wrong and reported incorrectly. First of all, we issued a refund to Yoram Maimoni (the jeweler in the report) if memory serves. Second of all, from the time of the report until it's airing (a time span of several months) we have issued no tickets, nor have we sold any. This is because we knew we couldn't deliver. We couldn't deliver because a man by the name of James Anthony Wimmer took all our money, and never delivered tickets we could sell. We have paid Mr. Wimmer right around a million dollars -- and we haven't recieved this fabled block of "3500 tickets" he was supposed to deliver to us to sell.

I am hurt and afraid this will permanently damage my reputation as a businessman -- look at my bio. I'm a respectable fellow. I've got a lot of big accomplishments. This report is almost purely slander. If I come up with the time to think about dealing with this, it will be more widely and publicly addressed.

/rizzn

FlyDLUX Grand Send-Off

The FlyDLUX.com, Inc Grand Send Off

Well, I really don't have a minute to do an update, but I'm going to do one anyways. I'm taking a break (as the picture indicates) from the rigors of moving. Yes folks I'm moving. Don't get excited, I'm not moving to Texas just yet (although I will be coming back for a visit during the holidays). Well, down to what this update is about.

FlyDLUX is being featured tonight on Miami's CBS4 tonight -- the lead video showed Rabbi going into his apartment. I'm watching the news now -- they haven't gotten to the segment yet, but I'm sure they'll be using part of the segment where they interviewed me, and we'll see how badly they twist my words. The lady who interviewed me was very cordial and presented it as if she was going to present a balanced report, but that's already not panning out as the title of the report indicates that it won't. I'll post an addendum to this post after the report airs.

Where am I moving to? I'm moving within the area. If we were such a fraud, how come I don't have money to pay rent? Simply put, because we aren't a fraud. I haven't been paid by FlyDLUX.com since the third week I've been in Florida. As to the cause of this problem, pay attention to this website. We are going to the FBI and the appropriate DA's and AG's offices this week.

I just know our phones will be ringing off the hook this evening. I hope this doesn't ruin my reputation. I'm as much a victim of this as all these purported victims interviewed by Robin Lish or Dish or whatever her name is.

/rizzn

what Googlism thinks of me

Googlism for Rizzn
rizzn is a big pimp
rizzn is tired, he tried yoga yesterday
rizzn is the guy who designs the pages and edits the entries for grammar and takes care of promotion and owns the domain
rizzn is our typical computer geek
rizzn is a cool guy
rizzn is crashed out
rizzn is one cool [shut yo mouth?]"

Googlism for FlyDLUX
flydlux is the answer to all my travel dreams
flydlux is not a scam
flydlux is what's referred to as a ticket broker

Googlism for HOVTOL
hovtol is to take advantage of certain gyroscopic forces where other aircraft have to try to overcome them as is the case with the bell v
hovtol is also designed to take off horizontally and vertically from an airstrip
hovtol is equipped with twin high power engines it will be capable of both vertical and horizontal flight even if one engine is non

Googlism for Bill Gates
bill gates is not just a genius with computers
bill gates is just the baddest mofo ever
bill gates is not the only one who needs to think about antitrust
bill gates is quite possibly the anti
bill gates is not happy because he cannot buy linux just like he has bought every other good peice of software that has come out
bill gates is the best ceo this country ever hadbill gates is ceo of microsoft corporation and author of the road ahead
bill gates is betting that you want an alarm clock that knows your schedule and can wake you in time for that 9 o'clock meeting
bill gates is william henrybill gates is "biggest mac supporter at microsoft" by bryan chaffin
bill gates is scheduled to testify in antitrust case in dc
bill gates is saving india from linux
bill gates is smiling
bill gates is the devil
bill gates is on the bus
bill gates is darth vader
bill gates is the antichrist
bill gates is sharing his fortune
bill gates is a satanic worshiper who uses microsoft