More Melchizedek
Highights, reflections and recommendations from your pals at This Day Podcast
Hey Everyone,
This is Khawla, I transcribe episodes for the podcast and contribute to the newsletter. Last week we did an episode on the Dominion of Melchizedek, a fake country created to engage in bank fraud and other scams. This story is so fascinating! This scheme makes Saul Goodman bow down in awe. Here are some interesting tidbits about the Dominion of Melchizedek that we didn’t mention on the show.
This scam started with a bible that David Pedley wrote in a Mexican jail called the Melchizedek Bible, an expansion of Christian Science mysticism. (You can still buy it on Amazon) His son Mark would continue work on this bible, and then expand the ideas into forming the fake nation-state that he argued would protected by its religious founding, a la The Vatican.
David Pedley in Mexican prison. David himself was a scammer going back to the 1960s when he and his crew specialized in “Prime Bank Securities” fraud. One author referred to the elder Pedley as “the world’s greatest con man".”
One of the Dominion’s scams was a so-called "60/40 Investment Programme" offered by Credit Bank International, run by Roger Rosemont and registered in the DoM. It was a Ponzi scheme that convinced at least 1,400 people to invest over $4,000,000.
One of the people associated with the DoM’s efforts to forge passports was John Gillespie, an Australian felon who was also involved in the Fine Cotton horse substitution scam. [[note from Jody: we really wanted to do this as a 30 for 30! It never materialized, but it’s a wild story.]]
The Dominion wasn’t a fan of French President Jacques Chirac after France conducted nuclear tests near an atoll that the DoM had claimed as part of their territory. They put out a press release declaring war with France. It read, in part:
It is with reluctance that the Polynesian Melchizedek Dominion declares war on France, since up till recently France was considered a silent ally. The Ruthenian Melchizedek Dominion is considering aiming at France the nuclear weapons left behind in the Carpatho mountains by the Soviet Union as leverage in the war.
Quotes of the Week
Here are the most interesting quotes from last week’s episodes.
He’s a Black conservative that is close to the Kennedy’s, votes for Carter, then votes for Reagan, then endorses Pat Robertson — and then votes for Obama. And then, plot twist, votes for Trump. It seems like there’s no consistency with this man. And yet I think some will say that there is total consistency, because when you think of how Black people vote along social, religious and theological lines, his rationale does make more sense.
- Kellie Carter Jackson, from our episode on Rosey Grier, who had a Forrest Gump-esque political life — as well as a side hustle in needlepoint. For more on Black conservatives, read our pal Leah Wright Riguer’s excellent book.
I do think this brings up all these deeper questions about sovereignty and what defines a nation. And at some point it is a collective fiction. This reminds me of the episode we did about John Lennon, and how he tried to avoid the FBI coming after him for his immigration status by claiming that he was a citizen of Nutopia. They came up with a flag and a national anthem. What’s to say that isn’t a country too?
- Jody Avirgan, from our episode on the Dominion Melchizedek, a fake-nation-bank-scam.
We see this happening over and over again. It’s like — we can’t give you land. We can’t give you money. Here’s a plaque or here’s a participation badge, here’s a holiday. Everything about that feels very hollow, for the descendants and certainly for those people who were promised land and money and never saw that for themselves.
- Kellie Carter Jackson, from our episode on Randolph freed-people, a group of formerly enslaved people who fought for 13 years for the land and money they were promised.
In NYC? Join us for an Oprahdemics live show!
Our sister show Oprahdemics is going a live show at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 15th with special guest Wesley Morris. Obviously Kellie and Jody will be there, and there may be others from the “extended This Day universe.” Come say hi!
Radiotopia Pairings
You may have noticed that we’re taking an early-summer break and re-airing some of our favorite episodes. But we’re trying something cool — the idea is to pair those episodes with episodes from other Radiotopia shows that have taken on the same story or theme. We’ll be featuring work from Radio Diaries, The Memory Palace, Ear Hustle, and more. It’s been really fun to come up with these pairings and we hope they make for interesting listening. Let us know if you think of any other connections, to Radiotopia shows or elsewhere.
We’ll continue the pairings this week, then back with a bunch more new stories — including the Pig War! — on the 19th.
Thanks for listening, thanks for reading, be in touch.