By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on October 12, 2022
In 2017, a failed pizza restaurant operator in Birmingham, Alabama named Lloyd Peeples became a local federal prosecutor. He immediately tried to destroy an international waste-to-fuel technology company I had managed since 2005. The company's name is Masada Resource Group, LLC.
I owned Watkins-Pencor, LLC. It is the designated “Manager” of the Masada family of companies, which established 19 international partnerships to facilitate waste-to-fuel market opportunities in over 40 locations around the world. Watkins-Pencor also holds an ownership interest in various Masada affiliates.
Between 2017 and 2019, Peeples teamed up with compromised U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission officials in Atlanta and ultra right-wing officials in the Trump administration's Department of Justice in Washington in a coordinated Blitzkrieg to (a) undermine my personal credibility and (b) cripple the clean fuels technology companies I managed and grew into industry leaders.
Lloyd Peeples and his cohorts were not successful in these goals.
Global Market Forces Drive the Demand for Fuels
After my release from a federal prison camp on August 25, 2022, I learned that many of the international partnerships I established between 2007 and 2017 were still ready, willing, and able to continue with market development activities.
With soaring fuel costs, Masada offers common sense solutions to the production of clean-burning fuels at affordable prices per gallon or liter. Additionally, Masada’s 2007 “Sponsored Research Agreement” with Auburn University broadened the company’s portfolio of energy creating solutions and gave us a sustained competitive advantage, worldwide.
My international partners kept abreast of my legal entanglement with Peeples and his cohorts. In 2020, Peeples, who served as the First Assistant U.S. Attorney in Birmingham, burrowed himself in the U.S. Attorney’s office in a demoted role in order to ride out the in-coming Joe Biden administration.
My partners also read the articles I published during the lead up to my 2019 criminal trial, as well as those that were published after I was "railroaded" in Birmingham federal court. They understand what had happened to me, and why.
What is more, COVID-19 froze my dozen or so international waste-to-energy competitors in-place for most of the 3 years I was wrongfully imprisoned. .
My international partners understand the rise of Trumpism in the United States and the open hostility that African-Americans are facing from MAGA Republican politicians and their bureaucratic minions, particularly in the state of Alabama. Whether it was Birmingham church bombings in the 1960s, or former governor George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, or U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) spewing racial hatred at a MAGA rally last weekend in Nevada, my partners are well-aware of the hostile business environment for blacks that exists in many parts of the country. As such, they held our waste-to-fuel projects in abeyance until I was freed.
Many of Masada’s waste-to-fuel market development activities are located in countries that were once colonized by European powers. The indigenous peoples in these countries know and understand the propensity of modern-day bigots to denigrate people of color, particularly in a state like Alabama that still promotes itself as the “Heart of Dixie” and “Cradle of the Confederacy.”
Unlike many Americans, my international partners know how colonial powers often trump up phony criminal charges against civil rights activists to slow down or stop political and economic independence for people of color. They watched this apartheid-era tool used against Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Maggie Bozeman, Julia Wilder, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Robert Mugabe, and thousands of other freedom fighters around the world.
All of my partners viewed me as an American “political prisoner,” which I was. Even though my body was imprisoned, my mind never was.
Moving Forward With My Partners in Progress
All of my international business partners conducted extensive due diligence on Masada, Watkins-Pencor, Masada’s patented waste-to-fuel technologies, and our worldwide corporate reputation prior to executing their strategic business alliance agreements with Masada. They know who we are and what we do in the international business world.
They also know that, in 2015 and 2016, unbiased federal prosecutors in New Jersey reviewed the same allegations of wrongdoing that formed the basis of Lloyd Peeples' federal prosecution in Birmingham in 2018 and 2019. The New Jersey prosecutors determined in that my personal and business conduct complied with all federal laws. They declined to bring any charges against me and congratulated me on my achievements in business.
Today’s demand for affordable, clean-burning fuel outweighs any concerns or questions my international partners have about whatever Peeples and his cohorts may say about me. Furthermore, as president, Donald J. Trump called some of the nations in which I have strategic business partnerships, “shit-hole countries.”
Prior to Peeples' attempts to sabotage Masada and Watkins-Pencor, these companies enjoyed a worldwide reputation for excellence in the field of international business. In 2015, Masada was the recipient of the Alabama Governor’s Trade Excellence Award. Its achievements in business and accomplishments in the clean-energy sector, as recognized by global industry organizations and trade publications, are featured in the articles hyperlinked below:
Epilogue
We are moving forward with our positive contribution to the production of clean-burning fuels. The people who tried to stop our business growth cannot produce a drop of clean-burning fuel. All they can do is weld the power of the federal bureaucracy to advance a white supremacy agenda. Nobody in the international community is listening to these obstructionists.
It seems that racism in American political institutions is fashionable, again. The old White Citizens Councils that dominated the landscape in southern states during the 1960s appear to have morphed into today’s MAGA-dominated Republican Party.
Donald J. Trump has emerged as a national version of Gov. George Wallace on steroids.
Despite these regressive developments in America, I am moving forward with our opportunities to deploy commercial-scale clean fuel production technologies in a host of international markets. The timing is right for the production of clean-burning fuels in the Paris Agreement signatory countries, and our international partnerships are in place to positively impact this sector as a market leader.
All articles are shared on Facebook and Twitter. If you enjoyed this article, please click on these links to follow Donald Watkins: