Philippine Hoaxes: Of Cabbages and Kings, Grifters and Trolls
/There’s one Allan Carreon, a self-styled “Intergalactic Ambassador of Planet Earth,” whose political ads on Facebook for the 2016 Philippine presidential election were “Paid for by the Friends of Anunnaki and the Reptilian Race.” Come again?
Carreon ran on a higher plane of existence, being in communication with alien lifeforms, but stated that he wasn’t for “legalizing four seasons in the Philippines.” Okay.
Allan Carreon, “Intergalactic Ambassador of Planet Earth.”
Two other far-out screwballs are one Elly Spike Pamatong and a group going by the tag, the “Tallano clan,” each apparently vying for the title of Supreme Pinoy Fruitcake of the Internet.
Elly “Spike” Pamatong is a one-time lawyer from Cagayan de Oro who has advocated for the Philippines becoming the 51st US state. For the 2004 presidential election, “Spike” earned his nickname when he spread (what else?) steel spikes, on Manila’s roads as his “peaceful way to protest the massive corruption in the Philippine government.” Needless to say, the irate 167 owners of vehicles with blown-out tires did not cast their votes for Candidate Pamatong (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo won that year). Eventually, lawyer Spike was disbarred, but that still did not stop him from using the self-conferred title of De Jure President (“by right,” but whose right is never explained) which he continues to use to this day.
Lately, De Jure President Pamatong has appeared under a new banner, “USAFFE,” which originally stood for the “US Army Forces of the Far East.” Pamatong has hijacked it to mean the “United States Allied Freedom Fighters of the East.” There is a whole sluice of Facebook pages under that corrupted “USAFFE” heading. On May 31, 2020, to get in on the whole coronavirus act, De Jure President Pamatong resurfaced with new Facebook statements with his unique take on the global pandemic, including ordering the arrest of sitting President Roderigo Duterte
Fringe personages like the ones above, seem to appear every six years in Manila when they file their candidacies for president of our old republic.
But there is one group that stands out from the pack and is several decibels ahead on the Richter lunacy scale. It is a group of individuals, calling themselves the “Tallano clan,” who claim ownership of not only certain parcels, or even certain islands of the Philippines, but of the entire country. On a clear-headed day, one can probably see this loose-knit collection of conspiracy nut-jobs trolling Philippine pages.
(The “Tallano” name they have chosen does not come out of thin air. It’s obviously an imitation of an actual minor Muslim royal family, Tamano, but Italianized with a double “L”). The scam is one of the biggest hoaxes to appear in Philippine history. This “clan” was supposedly founded by one “Prince Julian MacLeod Tallano” and claims one “HRH Tiburcio Villamor Marcos Tallano Tagean” as its present “leader.”
This far-out, fringe group first caught my attention when I was doing research for my 2016 book, Thirty Years Later . . . Catching Up with Marcos-Era Crimes. Even today, they claim direct descendancy from Lapu-Lapu and a “Tallano sultanate.” They likewise identify with the early “Maharlika” legend, which supposedly explains the fabulous gold hoard of Ferdinand Marcos, all exaggerated to somehow align with some of the Marcoses’ own, similarly outlandish claims.
This Tallano Clan tried to insinuate itself into Bongbong Marcos’ narrative in his 2016 quest for the vice-presidency with Miriam Santiago’s People’s Reform Party. Here is a summarized excerpt (new visuals) from my book of the group’s audacious claims:“The Tallano Clan Gold Claims
The most fantastic one is the so-called “Tallano Clan Gold Claims,” which I found on a website called “thediplomat.com.” I reprint here verbatim (typos and all).
“HRH Isabella IV Tallano • 3 years ago
Marcos did not steal any gold or any money, He borrowed 18,000 metric tons of gold from his royal prince son Tiburcio Villamor Marcos who is the only prince son of Marcos from princess Enemencia Villamor the daughter of KIng Ferdinand VII of Spain a.k.a prince Julian Lcleod Tallano who is my great grand father . so why Marcos will steal as you said in fact I have the evidence that is so clear that he borrowed it . So stop destroying the reputation of the Marcos . Imelda is the 3rd wife of Marcos and she has no interefence with the gold and world assets and coomdities [sic] . She is not the owner just a politcal wife of Marcos and she dont have the ownership of these wealth. All documents are written that the only sole redeemer is the only prince son or the royal family of Princess Enemencia Villamor who is DAUGHTER OF the MARCUS AUREL;IUS ULPIUS TRAJANUS.” [Sic]
The bizarre post forced me to look further into this whole Tiburcio Villamor Marcos Tallano (clan) claims, and it was a wild ride.
The basis of the so-called Tallano treasure hoard with which the family supposedly owns the Philippines Islands lock, stock and barrel, thus making the Philippines ‘. . . one of the richest countries in the world,” is found in one of the stipulations of the 1898 Treaty of Paris, wherein the USA paid US$20 million in gold bullion to Spain for Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. This was the only time in history in which the victor paid the losing side a sum of money. Usually, it’s the other way around; but the Marcos spinmeisters seized upon this unusual situation in history as the springboard for explaining away the source of the Marcoses’ immense wealth.
But why did the USA end up paying Spain US$20 million for those spread-out lands and territories? The best answer is that after the Battle of Manila Bay, Spain wanted to give Luzon (or Mindanao) to the Americans and retain Visayas and Mindanao. If that had happened, then Spain could’ve ended up giving the lower two-thirds of the Philippines to another European power in the future and complicate matters for the U.S. So, the Americans offered $20M for the whole nation and the other colonies. American economic interests in those countries far outweighed the $20M, a sum cheaper than continuing the war and incurring the loss of more U.S. soldiers’ lives in a bigger showdown.
Marcus Aurelius → Queen Victoria → Highlander → Jose Rizal → Yamashita → Hitler → Marcos!!
However, just to make things juicier and more “convincing,” the Marcos and Tallano spinmeisters reached farther back in time, starting with the fabricated story that Queen Victoria of England was one half of mixed twins. When the royal twins were born, the male was autistic; therefore, it was the normal twin, Victoria, who was chosen to become the legitimate heir to the English throne.
The autistic brother, christened Julian, was reared in secret (taken from the real-life story of Prince John, the youngest, sickly son of George IV and Queen Mary of England, who was raised by a nursemaid in some secret castle, away from the public eye). Somehow autistic Julian ended up halfway around the world—as far away from the court of Queen Victoria as far can be—in North Borneo, of all places. The boy would soon be known as Julian MacLeod. (MacLeod is, of course, the surname of the fictional Scottish Highlander super-hero, MacLeod, who comes from a line of “Immortals.") You must know where this story is going.
The original, FICTIONAL “Highlander” Immortal hero, Connor MacLeod (played by actor Christopher Lambert) and to which this absurd “Tallano” clan assigns its origins to – as one “Julian MacLeod.”
(Belatedly another psychic connection has appeared: while the concoction of this tale pre-dates the Trump years, the “Tallano” storytellers would probably be thrilled that the unintended fruit of their claimed “MacLeod” connection may include Donald Trump since his mother was one Mary MacLeod, an immigrant from Scotland.)
In North Borneo, Julian meets a Muslim princess named Tahata (obviously lifted from the better-known and real-life Princess Tarhata), converts to Islam and becomes a prince of the Tallano family in one fell swoop.
Although Prince Julian MacLeod Tallano had his seven Muslim wives, he still supposedly had other dalliances, including with a Catholic Filipina. The result of that interfaith liaison was a boy who was taken to Calamba, Laguna, and then adopted by the Mercado family there. Not content with having a legitimate surname at all, the young Jose Protacio Mercado concocted a new surname—Rex-all (meaning King of all; not the defunct US drugstore chain), which in the Hispanic-era Philippines somehow became “Rizal”— voila! the untold origins of the country’s national hero now revealed.
This young “Rizal” was so brilliant and talented that he was sent to Germany to study ophthalmology, and at the same time master German, in addition to Spanish, English, Latin, and Tagalog back then. As a pioneer eye surgeon setting up his practice in Deutschland, one of herr-doktor Rizal’s patients was a young Josephine von Bracken, niece to Kaiser Wilhelm I. (Never mind that the real Josephine Bracken was born of British-Irish parents, then adopted and raised by an American engineer in Hong Kong. But throwing in the German nobility particle von, immediately elevated Josephine to German aristocracy, ignoring the fact that the real Mrs. Josephine Bracken-Rizal never even set foot in Europe.)
Some of the so-called “illustrious forebears” who populate the “distinguished lineage” of said Tallano clan.
Back to their version of events. Following the successful eye operation on Wilhelm I, the Prussian king then recommended Rizal to his cousin, the Austrian emperor, Francis Joseph I. Moving to Vienna, Rizal met Ferdinand Blumentritt who had morphed into an Austrian Jesuit just returned from assignment in Cebu in the Philippines. (Note, Blumentritt never set foot on Philippine soil either, even though as a scholar he focused on the Spanish colony). But let’s not muddle the story with annoying factual details. The tale goes on. Blumentritt apparently put up Rizal to wait for Francis Joseph to make up his mind about the eye surgery.
In the meantime, Rizal met one Klara Poelzl, who was part of the Emperor’s staff but, in reality, was one Mrs. Alois Schikelberger. The brilliant young Filipino eye surgeon seduces Frau Schikelberger and the result was a young lad named . . . Adolf Schikelberger. Of course, Herr Schikelberger suspects the boy is not his, what with the child’s Asian features and complexion, and mistreats young Adolf. [Note: “Schikelberger” is based on the original surname of Adolf Hitler’s real father, Alois, Sr., which was “Schikelgruber” but was changed to “Hitler” since he (Alois, Sr.) was an illegitimate child]. So, the Tallano crowd put considerable research and tweaking into the characters’ names in this epochal yarn.
Back to the fairy tale. Blumentritt comes to the rescue by taking young Adolf Hitler away to the Jesuit school he founded and was returning to in Cebu. Coincidentally, young Adolf’s real father, Dr. Rizal was returning too! Meanwhile, Rizal’s reputation as an eye surgeon of the highest caliber, who restored the eyesight of the crowned heads of Europe, grew to such heights that he was then summoned to the Japanese Imperial court to also perform cataract surgery on the Japanese emperor. So, Rizal went to Japan. Of course, he engages in another dalliance with a Japanese princess, Keiko, which liaison produced another son out of wedlock, one Tomoyuki Yamashita.
Before the Battle of Manila Bay of 1898, world-famous ophthalmologist, Jose Protacio Rizal, friend and surgeon to kings and emperors, spoke 12 languages (as in the 12 tribes of Israel!), was arrested by the Spaniards on charges of sedition. He was tried and executed in December 1896. But per the Tallano version, this is all a charade. It was all staged so that Rizal could re-emerge, post-execution, with a new identity, that of a Spanish friar, one Father “Jose Antonio Diaz.” (Never mind that the Rizal was, in real life, an ardent anti-Spaniard and no friend of the Catholic clergy, whom he satirized in his two great novels. Oh, details.)
Other lesser personages cast in the fabulous Tallano saga.
Meanwhile, the young Yamashita lad was sent to a private boarding school in England. (Notice that this family, in the late 19th century, sent its boys all over the globe to study, the young Rizal to Germany; but young “Adolf Hitler” reversed the trend and went to school in Cebu!). The young Yamashita was sent to boarding school in the UK, and not necessarily to the same institution that Bongbong Marcos was actually sent to, Worth School. Never mind that the actual Yamashita served as an assistant military attaché in Berne, Switzerland and in Germany, 1919-22. But you get the drift.
In his apocryphal days in England, Yamashita met one married Lady Elizabeth Bowles and impregnated her (Lady Bowles was already married to the Duke of York at the time, and later became the Queen Mum). The result was a daughter, although this Tallano version doesn’t specify if it was the older Elizabeth or the younger Margaret. But to make things more strategic, let’s go with the first-born Elizabeth.
At this point, the seed of Queen Victoria’s so-called twin brother, Julian MacLeod Tallano, has begotten bastard Number One, Jose Rizal, the Philippine national hero, who, in turn, begat two bastard sons: the one in Austria who would eventually become Adolf Hitler, and the Japanese boy who would later become General Yamashita, who sired Elizabeth Windsor. Thus, from the mid-1930s to the cataclysmic end of World War II, Hitler, Yamashita, and then-crown princess Elizabeth all carried the bloodlines of Jose Rizal, who, in turn, had become a friar, but who was also acting as the international intermediary for the so-called Tallano clan’s gold hoard.
The “gold hoard,” supposedly hidden in the Philippines, was so solid and legendary that Pope Pius XI of the Vatican, in anticipation of the impending calamity of World War II, borrowed the gold as collateral in order to shore up the Holy See’s own holdings.
The Tallano hoax “outted” for having appropriated a formal portrait of Prince Charles as their own—all with a semi-straight face. “HRH Tiburcio . . . Tallano” obviously has this thing for princely regalia.
As the flaxen tale continues, the Vatican borrowed the gold of a pseudo-Christian-Muslim clan claiming ownership of some fantasy Neverland called Maharlika, half a world away. When there was a legitimate American Commonwealth government? Why would Pope Pius XI deal with some unrecognized entity 11,000 miles away when the safest, most secretive banking haven of Switzerland was only 350 miles up the road from Rome?
Embellishing the tale even further, the original $20 million in gold the USA paid to Spain, had somehow “fallen into the Tallano clan’s hands.” Throw in some more “back stories of Nazi plunder,” i.e., a stash had been secreted in South America (read “Argentina”); and then when Israeli intelligence supposedly got wind of its existence in South America, the hoard was shipped across the Pacific ocean to the Philippines. The Mossad, shipping Nazi gold (which would probably have been of Jewish origins), to Manila? Why?
Fast-forward to post-World War II. A brilliant young lawyer named Ferdinand Marcos appears on the Manila scene. Long story short, the brilliant, young Marcos somehow was assigned power of attorney and control over the “fabulous” gold hoard, hence, the backstory to the so-called billions in gold holdings Marcos supposedly had even before he became Philippine president. It is a preposterous tale stitched together, perhaps, in preparation for a Bongbong Marcos run for the presidency.
Thus, ends the tale of how the Tallanos, a family nobody ever heard of, became the richest gold-owning family of the Islands, or does it?
Filipino Illuminati?
From another of their “whimsical” videos, HRH Tiburcio enumerates the various titles he goes by today:
If you have the time or inclination to savor more lunacy from this group, here are a few other choice videos to show the length and breadth of their trollery:
• The pranksters lay out their case for claiming the Philippine archipelago under the “kingdom of Maharlika” in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whEbg3cH27s,
• This one unspools like a PowerPoint presentation on how they are descended from the oldest European royal houses—snicker, snicker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uWczBZxcPw
• On a more contemporary note, “Mr. Tigiano Tallano,” the present and living heir, takes a tour of Manhattan (yes, that Manhattan, NYC), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qup3161Sfss&t=1220s, bold-facedly pointing out major buildings (to a lackey who’s playing along with the charade) which supposedly the “Tallano riches actually owned and Marcos only served as a front man. . . “ The tour includes 40 Wall Street, NYC (now “The Trump Building” in lower Manhattan. Does the Donald know about these rival claims? Hmmm . . . )
40 Wall Street, New York City. A building to which Ferdinand & Imelda Marcos once held the lease ownership rights to for about two years and then lost it all in 1986. Donald Trump acquired those same lease rights in 1995 and is one of three commercial buildings in Manhattan to still carry his name.
• And a two-hour telling of more bunkum under the so-called “Alpha-Omega World Development Marshall” Program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sxP4Gswd8s Caution: this is time you will never get back.
Just who is this group? They appear to be a fraudulent, conspiracy-theory coalition of tricksters and schemers who think they are far too clever for anyone, even the established judicial infrastructure of the Philippine republic, to debunk.
To be kind, they could be just a bunch of mischievous goblins and true trolls in a JRR Tolkien-fantasy of worl, out to have another naughty, schadenfreude kind of day, regardless of whose toadstools they kick. They could also be an early version of the “troll factory” that presaged Breitbart News and Putin-Duterte-Dark State disinformation operations.
Naturally, the group’s absurd claims have been solidly debunked and totally rejected by Philippine courts. In 2002, the Philippine Court of Appeals already put a stop to their malicious claims and fictitious nonsense, having issued a TRO for the harassment perpetuated by the Tallano group on “property owners in covered areas.” They even targeted the Hospicio de San Jose orphanage, which they probably calculated to be legally helpless, in a crude move to dislodge the century-old institution from its valuable island compound on the Pasig River in Manila.
The Isla de Convalenscia (previously the Hospicio de San Jose orphanage) on Manila’s Pasig River whose island location the Tallano group coveted with false claims of ownership.
In the years hence, like malevolent shapeshifters of the Harry Potter kind, they have persisted in spinning their blarney in various forms and guises for anyone who will listen.
In some of the videos, Comments are turned off, the biggest hint of the legitimacy and state of mind of sane, legitimate responders. For those who cannot comment or object, like the extant administrations in both Manila and Washington, DC, too bad. In other videos where the “Comments” sections have not been turned off, one can observe a whole symphonic army of aliases and ‘bot identities all confirming, affirming and mutually supporting each other and the various crackpot platforms of the pack. It brings to mind the instance when Donald Trump, as a rising NYC real estate developer—posing as his own PR agent and using a different alias—called Forbes magazine to boost his “client’s,” (i.e., Donald’s) net worth and to push his ranking higher up on Forbes’ various “Richest” listings.
Nowhere does Tiburcio Tallano spin his deep-end fantasies more fervently and entertainingly than in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-Ci9Z3m69E wherein the schizophrenia-trollery is in full display, heraldic crests, and all:
A truly colorful Humanitarian Certificate Tiburcio awards himself. The proclamation reads in part:
“The Royal Dynastic House of Morris
Parent House and Bloodline
Of
*The Royal House of Gwynedd, the Sovereign House of Mathrafal,
The Royal House of Abberffraw, Emperor of the Welsh, Prince of Gwynedd,
Royal Prince of Powys, Prince of Abberffraw, Lord of Snowdon of Yous Mon,
Prince of Ceredigion, Prince of Debeubarth , etc., etc.
A free and open society is always a two-edged sword, allowing every citizen legitimate freedom of expression while permitting crackpot hoaxes to flourish as well. But I must stop now before my sanity slips away, although I had a good time revisiting this bizarre, very Filipino tale. One can hardly wait for the next class of presidential wannabes come the Philippine elections in 2022.
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWqvSaOw-FE
https://8list.ph/8-of-the-most-bizarre-pinoy-nuisance-candidates-in-recent-memory/#read-more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PtsVuBlwUQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9l1Nut9xvQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19BILgcxvRI
https://www.philstar.com/nation/2002/04/22/158135/ca-puts-end-land-claim-lapu-lapu-145descendant146
Myles Garcia
Myles A. Garcia is a Correspondent and regular contributor to www.positivelyfilipino.com. He has written three books: Secrets of the Olympic Ceremonies (latest edition, 2016); Thirty Years Later . . . Catching Up with the Marcos-Era Crimes (© 2016); and his latest, Of Adobe, Apple Pie, and Schnitzel With Noodles—all available in paperback from amazon.com (Australia, USA, Canada, UK and Europe).
Myles is also a member of the International Society of Olympic Historians (ISOH), contributing to their Journal, and pursuing dramatic writing lately. For any enquiries: razor323@gmail.com
More articles from Myles A. Garcia
