By Anthony DiPaola and Chris Bourke
Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Dubai, the Persian Gulf emirate whose state-run companies are seeking to defer debt payments, may owe more than the $80 billion to $90 billion in liabilities assumed by investors, UBS AG analysts said.
“Perhaps Dubai’s debt includes sizeable off-balance sheet liabilities that imply a total debt burden well above the $80 billion to $90 billion markets have estimated so far,” Dubai- based real estate analyst Saud Masud wrote in a note. “This could imply that the debt issued by Dubai in recent weeks is insufficient to meet upcoming redemptions.”
Dubai, which has said it will raise as much as $20 billion selling bonds to repay borrowings, said on Nov. 25 that state- run Dubai World, with $59 billion of liabilities, would ask creditors for a “standstill” agreement as it negotiates to extend debt maturities.
The request to delay debt repayment “came as a major shock” to investors, Masud and fellow UBS London-based analyst Reinhard Cluse told clients on a conference call today. Dubai World property unit Nakheel PJSC has $3.52 billion of Islamic bonds due Dec. 14. Dubai World may seek to negotiate all its liabilities as it reorganizes the business, Masud said.
“The Nakheel sukuk is the largest that has ever been issued,” Cluse said on the conference call. “Markets will take some time to digest this blow.”
‘Significant Sweetener’
Dubai accumulated $80 billion of debt by expanding in banking, real estate and transportation before credit markets seized up last year. The second biggest of seven sheikhdoms that make up the United Arab Emirates formed a fund to help reorganize state firms and sold $10 billion in bonds to the national central bank in February.
It borrowed an additional $5 billion from Abu Dhabi government-controlled banks Nov. 25, half the $10 billion in bonds that Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum said he planned to raise by yearend.
Nakheel bondholders could demand a “significant sweetener” to renegotiate the debt and look to determine which of the real estate unit’s assets they may be able to claim, according to Masud.
There is growing interest from Persian Gulf investment funds in acquiring properties owned by Dubai entities, including Nakheel, which may be forced to sell assets to reduce debt, said Michael Atwell, head of Middle East operations at real estate broker Cushman & Wakefield.
‘Still Buzzing’
“We can sense it, and we’re hoping to have some transactions from several funds with buying requirements, some over $100 million,” he said. Potential buyers may be seeking stable cash flow from buildings with long leases.
“The city is still buzzing. Dubai won’t turn into a ghost town, but there’ll be some big restructuring and reorganization, without a doubt.”
Seeking a repayment delay may indicate that Abu Dhabi, the U.A.E.’s largest sheikhdom, may not want to support Dubai further financially until the smaller emirate addresses internal problems at government-run companies, Masud said.
“This could be the realization that you cannot simply buy your way out of this crisis,” Masud said.
The request could also suggest that Abu Dhabi and Dubai have decided to seek to bolster long-term confidence in the market by forcing weaker parts of government businesses to take responsibility for bad decisions and could involve defaults at some Dubai firms, Masud said.
Mortgage Defaults
Dubai property developers may be liable for an estimated $11 billion required to build 40,000 homes that they have started, said Masud in an interview yesterday. That amount represents the off-balance sheet cost, or “funding gap” required to complete and hand over the properties, on which investors are now defaulting, by the end of 2010.
Nakheel’s share of that funding gap is about $2 billion, estimated Masud. Around half of the investors in the 40,000 unfinished homes may default by the end of next year, he said.
Mortgage defaults, which stand at about 3 percent of the total in the U.A.E., may increase fivefold to “the teens,” Masud said on the call today.
Friday, November 27, 2009
U.S., Emerging Market Stocks Slide as Bonds Advance on Dubai
By Mark Gilbert and Paul Sillitoe
Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. and emerging-market stocks slumped and commodities dropped the most since July as Dubai’s attempt to delay debt repayments unnerved investors. Treasuries and the dollar rose while credit-default swaps surged.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index slid 1.3 percent at 10:57 a.m. in New York and the MSCI Emerging Markets Index slipped 2.1 percent. The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, the equity-derivatives benchmark known as the VIX, surged 18 percent to 24.07. Two-year Treasury yields fell to the lowest level since December. Oil and gold tumbled as the Dollar Index advanced. Credit-default swaps tied to debt sold by Dubai rose 134 basis points to 675, according to CMA DataVision.
“The world’s going to test now how much this means to people’s risk-taking attitude,” said Donald Ross, the Cleveland- based global strategist for Titanium Asset Management Corp., which manages $9 billion. “This is a big enough deal for people to question how far and how fast we’ve come.”
Dubai World, the government investment company burdened by $59 billion of liabilities, sought this week to delay repayment on much of its debt. The yen pared its advance after Japan’s Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii said he may contact the U.S. and Europe to act on currencies, signaling concern that the yen’s ascent will hurt the economy by crimping exports.
U.S. stock exchanges close at 1 p.m. in New York, three hours early.
Asia, Europe Stocks
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index slid 3.2 percent, the biggest drop since March, extending a rout in Europe yesterday that sent the Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index to its steepest one-day slump since April. The MSCI World Index fell 0.6 percent, bringing its two-day drop to 2 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 1.2 percent, after U.S. markets were closed yesterday for Thanksgiving.
South Korea’s Kospi index slid 4.7 percent and Taiwan’s Taiex lost 3.2 percent. Samsung Engineering Co. tumbled 9.8 percent, leading declines among construction stocks in Seoul on concern orders may slow in the United Arab Emirates, the biggest overseas market for South Korean builders.
Dubai’s attempt to delay debt payments prompted investors to buy assets deemed safe and sell riskier ones. Treasury two- year notes rallied, driving their yields down 0.05 percentage point to 0.70 percent, the lowest payout in 11 months. The VIX, which tends to rise when investors are less willing to take risks, jumped as much as 27 percent in the biggest intraday gain since Oct. 30.
‘Risk Aversion’
“We’re bound to see a rise in risk aversion,” Arnab Das, the head of market research and strategy at Roubini Global Economics, said in an interview from London “The Dubai situation signifies that although the major central banks around the world have stabilized the financial system, they can’t make all the excesses simply disappear. We still have to work out those balance sheet stresses.”
The MSCI World has rallied 68 percent since March 9, and the S&P 500 has climbed 62 percent in the steepest rally since the Great Depression. The rebound came as the Federal Reserve spent, lent or guaranteed $11.6 trillion and held interest rates near zero to unlock credit markets and end the first simultaneous recessions in the U.S., Europe and Japan since World War II.
Europe’s Stoxx 600 reversed a decline of as much as 1.8 percent and gained 1.3 percent, paring its two-day decline to 1.9 percent. Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, which was Dubai World’s biggest loan arranger since January 2007 according to JPMorgan Chase & Co., gained 5.9 percent in London after plunging 7.8 percent yesterday.
Oil, Gold Drop
Oil fell 3.3 percent to $75.36 a barrel in New York. Gold lost 0.9 percent to $1,177.80 an ounce, falling for the first time in 10 days.
Dubai, which borrowed $80 billion in a four-year construction boom to transform its economy into a regional tourism and financial hub, suffered the world’s steepest property slump in the worst global recession since World War II. Home prices fell 50 percent from their 2008 peak, according to Deutsche Bank AG.
“If Dubai has to default, that could start a wave of defaults in other areas,” Mark Mobius, the chairman of Templeton Asset Management Ltd. who oversees $25 billion in emerging-market assets, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television from Hanoi. “This may be the trigger to allow for the market to take a rest and pull back.”
Debt Swaps
Credit-default swaps on emerging-market government and corporate bonds jumped, with contracts on Qatar adding 15 basis points to 129 and Abu Dhabi rising 24 to 184, according to CMA DataVision prices. Default swaps on DP World Ltd., the Middle East’s biggest port operator, rose 201 basis points to 810, according to CMA. Sellers also are requiring a 12 percent payment in advance. Swaps on Malaysian government bonds rose 16 basis points to 120 and those on Thailand climbed 14 to 124.
Default swaps pay the buyer face value in exchange for the underlying securities or the cash equivalent should a borrower fail to adhere to its debt agreements.
The cost to protect U.S. corporate bonds from default rose to the highest in almost a month as Dubai attempts to delay debt repayments, trading in a benchmark credit derivatives index shows.
U.S. Swaps
Contracts on the Markit CDX North America Investment-Grade Index, used to speculate on the creditworthiness of 125 companies in the U.S. and Canada or to protect against losses on their debt, rose five basis points to a midprice of about 107.5 basis points as of 10:22 a.m. in New York, according to Phoenix Partners Group. The index rose to the highest since Nov. 2, according to CMA DataVision.
Dubai’s debt woes may worsen to become a “major sovereign default” that roils developing nations and cuts off capital flows to emerging markets, Bank of America Corp. said.
“One cannot rule out -- as a tail risk -- a case where this would escalate into a major sovereign default problem, which would then resonate across global emerging markets in the same way that Argentina did in the early 2000s or Russia in the late 1990s,” Bank of America strategists Benoit Anne and Daniel Tenengauzer wrote in a report.
Writedowns and losses at banks around the world have risen to more than $1.7 trillion since 2007 as the credit crisis undermined the value of assets owned by financial institutions, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Dollar Gains
The dollar rose against most major counterparts as Dubai’s attempt to delay debt spurred investors to sell higher-yielding assets funded with the currency.
The yen declined against the dollar after touching a 14- year high on speculation Japan will intervene after Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii said he will contact U.S. and European officials about exchange rates if needed. The Bank of Japan checked rates at commercial banks in Tokyo, seen as a type of verbal intervention, Kyodo News Service reported. The dollar’s gain was reduced as global equity markets pared losses.
“People are scared and concerned about possible intervention,” said Yasutoshi Nagai, chief economist at Daiwa Securities SMBC Co. in Tokyo. The Bank of Japan may sell the yen “and buy Treasuries, which will be a plus for Treasuries,” he said. Central banks intervene by buying or selling their currencies after sudden movements.
Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. and emerging-market stocks slumped and commodities dropped the most since July as Dubai’s attempt to delay debt repayments unnerved investors. Treasuries and the dollar rose while credit-default swaps surged.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index slid 1.3 percent at 10:57 a.m. in New York and the MSCI Emerging Markets Index slipped 2.1 percent. The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, the equity-derivatives benchmark known as the VIX, surged 18 percent to 24.07. Two-year Treasury yields fell to the lowest level since December. Oil and gold tumbled as the Dollar Index advanced. Credit-default swaps tied to debt sold by Dubai rose 134 basis points to 675, according to CMA DataVision.
“The world’s going to test now how much this means to people’s risk-taking attitude,” said Donald Ross, the Cleveland- based global strategist for Titanium Asset Management Corp., which manages $9 billion. “This is a big enough deal for people to question how far and how fast we’ve come.”
Dubai World, the government investment company burdened by $59 billion of liabilities, sought this week to delay repayment on much of its debt. The yen pared its advance after Japan’s Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii said he may contact the U.S. and Europe to act on currencies, signaling concern that the yen’s ascent will hurt the economy by crimping exports.
U.S. stock exchanges close at 1 p.m. in New York, three hours early.
Asia, Europe Stocks
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index slid 3.2 percent, the biggest drop since March, extending a rout in Europe yesterday that sent the Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index to its steepest one-day slump since April. The MSCI World Index fell 0.6 percent, bringing its two-day drop to 2 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 1.2 percent, after U.S. markets were closed yesterday for Thanksgiving.
South Korea’s Kospi index slid 4.7 percent and Taiwan’s Taiex lost 3.2 percent. Samsung Engineering Co. tumbled 9.8 percent, leading declines among construction stocks in Seoul on concern orders may slow in the United Arab Emirates, the biggest overseas market for South Korean builders.
Dubai’s attempt to delay debt payments prompted investors to buy assets deemed safe and sell riskier ones. Treasury two- year notes rallied, driving their yields down 0.05 percentage point to 0.70 percent, the lowest payout in 11 months. The VIX, which tends to rise when investors are less willing to take risks, jumped as much as 27 percent in the biggest intraday gain since Oct. 30.
‘Risk Aversion’
“We’re bound to see a rise in risk aversion,” Arnab Das, the head of market research and strategy at Roubini Global Economics, said in an interview from London “The Dubai situation signifies that although the major central banks around the world have stabilized the financial system, they can’t make all the excesses simply disappear. We still have to work out those balance sheet stresses.”
The MSCI World has rallied 68 percent since March 9, and the S&P 500 has climbed 62 percent in the steepest rally since the Great Depression. The rebound came as the Federal Reserve spent, lent or guaranteed $11.6 trillion and held interest rates near zero to unlock credit markets and end the first simultaneous recessions in the U.S., Europe and Japan since World War II.
Europe’s Stoxx 600 reversed a decline of as much as 1.8 percent and gained 1.3 percent, paring its two-day decline to 1.9 percent. Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, which was Dubai World’s biggest loan arranger since January 2007 according to JPMorgan Chase & Co., gained 5.9 percent in London after plunging 7.8 percent yesterday.
Oil, Gold Drop
Oil fell 3.3 percent to $75.36 a barrel in New York. Gold lost 0.9 percent to $1,177.80 an ounce, falling for the first time in 10 days.
Dubai, which borrowed $80 billion in a four-year construction boom to transform its economy into a regional tourism and financial hub, suffered the world’s steepest property slump in the worst global recession since World War II. Home prices fell 50 percent from their 2008 peak, according to Deutsche Bank AG.
“If Dubai has to default, that could start a wave of defaults in other areas,” Mark Mobius, the chairman of Templeton Asset Management Ltd. who oversees $25 billion in emerging-market assets, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television from Hanoi. “This may be the trigger to allow for the market to take a rest and pull back.”
Debt Swaps
Credit-default swaps on emerging-market government and corporate bonds jumped, with contracts on Qatar adding 15 basis points to 129 and Abu Dhabi rising 24 to 184, according to CMA DataVision prices. Default swaps on DP World Ltd., the Middle East’s biggest port operator, rose 201 basis points to 810, according to CMA. Sellers also are requiring a 12 percent payment in advance. Swaps on Malaysian government bonds rose 16 basis points to 120 and those on Thailand climbed 14 to 124.
Default swaps pay the buyer face value in exchange for the underlying securities or the cash equivalent should a borrower fail to adhere to its debt agreements.
The cost to protect U.S. corporate bonds from default rose to the highest in almost a month as Dubai attempts to delay debt repayments, trading in a benchmark credit derivatives index shows.
U.S. Swaps
Contracts on the Markit CDX North America Investment-Grade Index, used to speculate on the creditworthiness of 125 companies in the U.S. and Canada or to protect against losses on their debt, rose five basis points to a midprice of about 107.5 basis points as of 10:22 a.m. in New York, according to Phoenix Partners Group. The index rose to the highest since Nov. 2, according to CMA DataVision.
Dubai’s debt woes may worsen to become a “major sovereign default” that roils developing nations and cuts off capital flows to emerging markets, Bank of America Corp. said.
“One cannot rule out -- as a tail risk -- a case where this would escalate into a major sovereign default problem, which would then resonate across global emerging markets in the same way that Argentina did in the early 2000s or Russia in the late 1990s,” Bank of America strategists Benoit Anne and Daniel Tenengauzer wrote in a report.
Writedowns and losses at banks around the world have risen to more than $1.7 trillion since 2007 as the credit crisis undermined the value of assets owned by financial institutions, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Dollar Gains
The dollar rose against most major counterparts as Dubai’s attempt to delay debt spurred investors to sell higher-yielding assets funded with the currency.
The yen declined against the dollar after touching a 14- year high on speculation Japan will intervene after Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii said he will contact U.S. and European officials about exchange rates if needed. The Bank of Japan checked rates at commercial banks in Tokyo, seen as a type of verbal intervention, Kyodo News Service reported. The dollar’s gain was reduced as global equity markets pared losses.
“People are scared and concerned about possible intervention,” said Yasutoshi Nagai, chief economist at Daiwa Securities SMBC Co. in Tokyo. The Bank of Japan may sell the yen “and buy Treasuries, which will be a plus for Treasuries,” he said. Central banks intervene by buying or selling their currencies after sudden movements.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
The Warmers would rather change the facts than their theories.
There is NO global warming, just global climate changes. It changes everywhere based on time of year, sun activity and other exogenous factors. Human activity is NOT the cause of global climate change. The most ridiculous effort made so far to promote Global Warming is the notion that the sun plays no part in global warming. Such a notion is so provably false that it is criminal fraud to propose it. The sun IS the main contributor to global climate changes and the changes cycle according to sun activity which is also assisted by other natural fators like volcanic activity.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
The Warmer's hoax a global Ponzi scheme
The supporters included Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase Bank, and others who are financing this fraud. Enron in association with Al Gore in the mid 90's came up with a plan to create a whole new Ponzi scheme which includes a whole new type of derivatives that will enable them to buy and sell carbon credits.
The UN will employ a whole new arm of enforcement that will police the entire world. Your own State and County has an arm of enforcement "Carbon Cops" within their local government. The stick that made this possible is the REAL threat that if the local government did not create this enforcement arm the environazis would start legal actions against any local government that did not comply.
Our own local government has created a "Carbon Cop" agency that has the power to TAX any and all new residential and commercial/industrial development to pay into this agency. Most dangerously, this agency can make any "mistake" they want and the local government must support and encourage them, at tax payers expense.
The UN will employ a whole new arm of enforcement that will police the entire world. Your own State and County has an arm of enforcement "Carbon Cops" within their local government. The stick that made this possible is the REAL threat that if the local government did not create this enforcement arm the environazis would start legal actions against any local government that did not comply.
Our own local government has created a "Carbon Cop" agency that has the power to TAX any and all new residential and commercial/industrial development to pay into this agency. Most dangerously, this agency can make any "mistake" they want and the local government must support and encourage them, at tax payers expense.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Congressman Kevin Brady asks Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to step down
We heed to ask that of the entire government.
(Actually, I view this effort to find a scapegoat as a sign the collapse is getting near!)
(Actually, I view this effort to find a scapegoat as a sign the collapse is getting near!)
Bank of America, UBS, JPMorgan Sued Over Derivatives
Joel Rosenblatt
Bloomberg News
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Bank of America Corp., UBS AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co. were sued by a California public utility over claims they rigged sales of municipal derivatives and shared illegal profits through kickbacks.
The lawsuit, filed by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, is based on federal and state antitrust claims. It alleges Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America and more than a dozen other banks conspired to pre-select winners of municipal derivative auctions, coordinated their pricing, and accepted kickbacks disguised as fees from co-conspirators.
The allegations resemble those made by a U.S. grand jury in New York last month, according to the lawsuit filed Nov. 12 in federal court in Sacramento. CDR Financial Products Inc. founder David Rubin and two employees of the Beverly Hills, California- based company were indicted for allegedly accepting kickbacks on investments sold to local governments. CDR is also named as a defendant in the Sacramento case.
The banks engaged in “allocating customers and markets for municipal derivatives, rigging the bidding process by which municipal bond issuers acquire municipal derivatives, and conspiring to manipulate the terms that issuers received,” according to the lawsuit.
Bloomberg News
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Bank of America Corp., UBS AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co. were sued by a California public utility over claims they rigged sales of municipal derivatives and shared illegal profits through kickbacks.
The lawsuit, filed by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, is based on federal and state antitrust claims. It alleges Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America and more than a dozen other banks conspired to pre-select winners of municipal derivative auctions, coordinated their pricing, and accepted kickbacks disguised as fees from co-conspirators.
The allegations resemble those made by a U.S. grand jury in New York last month, according to the lawsuit filed Nov. 12 in federal court in Sacramento. CDR Financial Products Inc. founder David Rubin and two employees of the Beverly Hills, California- based company were indicted for allegedly accepting kickbacks on investments sold to local governments. CDR is also named as a defendant in the Sacramento case.
The banks engaged in “allocating customers and markets for municipal derivatives, rigging the bidding process by which municipal bond issuers acquire municipal derivatives, and conspiring to manipulate the terms that issuers received,” according to the lawsuit.
Hedge fund manager John Paulson bets $1.45bn on Citigroup’s eventual recovery.
By By James Quinn, US Business Editor
Published: 12:12AM GMT 14 Nov 2009
Mr Paulson – best known for making $3.7bn from bets on the collapse of the US sub-prime mortgage market – bought the shares in the three months to the end of September, according to new regulatory filings in the US. Shares in Citigroup rose 13 cents to $4.18 in extended trading, as after-hours traders took the news as a positive sign.
At the same time, he entirely sold out of his $328m stake in Goldman Sachs, and also sold down part of the $2.2bn stake he took in Bank of America earlier in the year.
Mr Paulson, also is believed to have told investors that the new gold fund, to be run by Paulson & Co, will invest not just in gold miners but also in other investments related to the precious metal.
Although not Paulson & Co's first foray into gold, given approximately 10pc of the $30bn it has under management is in gold-related investments, it would be the firm's first pure-play gold fund.
No fund-raising cap is thought to have been set at the moment, but Mr Paulson's personal commitment is considerable and is likely to be seen as a highly attractive draw by investors.
Hedge fund investors – known as limited partners in the trade – take a great deal of comfort from managers' – known as general partners – co-investments.
Investors will inevitably question the timing of the new fund, coming at a point when gold is at an all-time high of close to $1,150 an ounce.
However, Mr Paulson is one of the most successful hedge fund managers in the US, and is known for his knack of buying assets at low prices.
As well as his sub-prime bet, he has made considerable amounts of money from betting on the financial industry and also has a recently established distressed investment fund.
Paulson & Co., Inc. had assets under management (as of June 1, 2007) of $12.5 billion (95% from institutions), which leapt to $36 billion as of November 2008. Under his direction, Paulson & Co has capitalized on the problems in the foreclosure and mortgage backed securities (MBS) markets. In 2008 he decided to start a new fund that would capitalize on Wall Street's capital problems by lending money to investment banks and other hedge funds currently feeling the pressure of the more than $345 billion of write downs resulting from under-performing assets linked to the housing market. On May 15, 2008, Paulson & Co., which bought 50 million shares of Yahoo stock during the first quarter of 2008, said it is supporting Carl Icahn on a proxy fight to replace Yahoo's board. In early 2008, the firm hired former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.
In September 2008, Paulson has bet against four of the five biggest British banks. His positions included a £350m bet against shares in Barclays; £292m against Royal Bank of Scotland; and £260m against Lloyds TSB. He eventually booked a profit of as much as £280m after reducing its short position in RBS in January 2009. Paulson & Co., the hedge fund run by billionaire John Paulson, may have lost out on about 218 million pounds in profit after failing to close a short position in Barclays. On August 12, 2009, Paulson purchased 2 million shares of Goldman Sachs as well as 35 million shares in Regions Financial.
John Paulson is not related to former Goldman Sachs CEO and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. A September 26, 2008 Wall Street Journal opinion written by John Paulson suggested an alternative to the Treasury Secretary's plan for stabilizing the markets.
Paulson is #33 on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans and is worth approximately $6.8 billion as of 2009.
Published: 12:12AM GMT 14 Nov 2009
Mr Paulson – best known for making $3.7bn from bets on the collapse of the US sub-prime mortgage market – bought the shares in the three months to the end of September, according to new regulatory filings in the US. Shares in Citigroup rose 13 cents to $4.18 in extended trading, as after-hours traders took the news as a positive sign.
At the same time, he entirely sold out of his $328m stake in Goldman Sachs, and also sold down part of the $2.2bn stake he took in Bank of America earlier in the year.
Mr Paulson, also is believed to have told investors that the new gold fund, to be run by Paulson & Co, will invest not just in gold miners but also in other investments related to the precious metal.
Although not Paulson & Co's first foray into gold, given approximately 10pc of the $30bn it has under management is in gold-related investments, it would be the firm's first pure-play gold fund.
No fund-raising cap is thought to have been set at the moment, but Mr Paulson's personal commitment is considerable and is likely to be seen as a highly attractive draw by investors.
Hedge fund investors – known as limited partners in the trade – take a great deal of comfort from managers' – known as general partners – co-investments.
Investors will inevitably question the timing of the new fund, coming at a point when gold is at an all-time high of close to $1,150 an ounce.
However, Mr Paulson is one of the most successful hedge fund managers in the US, and is known for his knack of buying assets at low prices.
As well as his sub-prime bet, he has made considerable amounts of money from betting on the financial industry and also has a recently established distressed investment fund.
Paulson & Co., Inc. had assets under management (as of June 1, 2007) of $12.5 billion (95% from institutions), which leapt to $36 billion as of November 2008. Under his direction, Paulson & Co has capitalized on the problems in the foreclosure and mortgage backed securities (MBS) markets. In 2008 he decided to start a new fund that would capitalize on Wall Street's capital problems by lending money to investment banks and other hedge funds currently feeling the pressure of the more than $345 billion of write downs resulting from under-performing assets linked to the housing market. On May 15, 2008, Paulson & Co., which bought 50 million shares of Yahoo stock during the first quarter of 2008, said it is supporting Carl Icahn on a proxy fight to replace Yahoo's board. In early 2008, the firm hired former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.
In September 2008, Paulson has bet against four of the five biggest British banks. His positions included a £350m bet against shares in Barclays; £292m against Royal Bank of Scotland; and £260m against Lloyds TSB. He eventually booked a profit of as much as £280m after reducing its short position in RBS in January 2009. Paulson & Co., the hedge fund run by billionaire John Paulson, may have lost out on about 218 million pounds in profit after failing to close a short position in Barclays. On August 12, 2009, Paulson purchased 2 million shares of Goldman Sachs as well as 35 million shares in Regions Financial.
John Paulson is not related to former Goldman Sachs CEO and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. A September 26, 2008 Wall Street Journal opinion written by John Paulson suggested an alternative to the Treasury Secretary's plan for stabilizing the markets.
Paulson is #33 on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans and is worth approximately $6.8 billion as of 2009.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
US Army fighting terrorists in Salinas, CA
Paul Joseph Watson
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The U.S. military is aiding police in a California conduct “counterinsurgency” operations as part of a crack down on gang related violence in the city of Salinas, a relationship officials admit pushes the boundaries of the constitutional bar on the military operating within U.S. borders but one that should be expanded nationwide.
“Since February, combat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have been advising Salinas police on counterinsurgency strategy, bringing lessons from the battlefield to the meanest streets in an American city,” reports the Washington Post.
“This is our surge,” said (Mayor) Donohue, who solicited the assistance from the elite Naval Postgraduate School, 20 miles and a world away in Monterey. “When the public heard about this, they thought we were going to send the Navy SEALs into Salinas.”
The head of the program, former Special Forces career officer Col. Hy Rothstein, who oversaw counterinsurgency operations in Colombia and Central America, describes the program as a “laboratory”. The Washington Post article implies that the members of his team are retired veterans, yet later admits that the men are “mostly naval officers taking time between deployments,” meaning that they are active duty, not retired.
Another slick form of spin on behalf of the Post is the claim that the program doesn’t violate constitutional blocks on the military engaging in domestic law enforcement because Rothstein’s team are helping on a “voluntary” basis. This is completely contradicted in the second paragraph of the article when it is admitted that Mayor Dennis Donohue “affirmed his decision to seek help from an unlikely source: the U.S. military,” meaning that the program isn’t voluntary at all, the Mayor of the city instigated the military’s involvement. At the end of the article, a nationwide version of the program is also advocated.
Rothstein explains how his team employ methods used against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan to get the job done in Salinas, using military software that “tracks crimes and links suspects and their associates by social, geographic and family connections”.
Rothstein also admitted how part of the program utilizes military psyops tactics to thwart the public from hearing “negative messages,” suggesting control of the local media.
The Post article goes into great depth to depict the town as being under siege from dangerous Hispanic gang members in an attempt to push the justification of military involvement. At no point is it mentioned that if the police were tough enough to deal with real criminals in the first place, rather than feeding on the fat hog of the law-abiding American taxpayer, the need for army involvement would have never arisen.
How many stories do you read every week about women, people in wheelchairs, people with mental problems and other easy pray being tased by cops in comparison to gang members and drug dealers? Perhaps if the cops concentrated on going after the thugs rather than sinking their teeth into the fat, dumb and happy middle class American, then cities like Salinas wouldn’t be full of gang-banger scum.
The crucial part of the Post article is right at the end, when the trial balloon goes up for the U.S. military’s involvement in domestic law enforcement to be implemented nationwide in this context.
“The $1 trillion invested so far in Iraq and Afghanistan could pay a dividend in American streets,” states the article, before quoting Leonard A. Ferrari, provost of the Naval Postgraduate School, who states, “The idea was, not just Salinas, but is there a national model for this?”
Why is one of the biggest newspapers in America, a Bilderberg-owned publication, pushing for the nationwide use of active duty U.S. military units in domestic law enforcement, specifically to combat a “counterinsurgency” amongst U.S. citizens? Is this another progression in the preparation for martial law in response to mass civil unrest, race riots, and even a future civil war?
Or is this merely another gradual blurring of the lines between the police and the military as an ailing banana republic begins to decline into a failed state bossed by a militarized dictatorship?
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The U.S. military is aiding police in a California conduct “counterinsurgency” operations as part of a crack down on gang related violence in the city of Salinas, a relationship officials admit pushes the boundaries of the constitutional bar on the military operating within U.S. borders but one that should be expanded nationwide.
“Since February, combat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have been advising Salinas police on counterinsurgency strategy, bringing lessons from the battlefield to the meanest streets in an American city,” reports the Washington Post.
“This is our surge,” said (Mayor) Donohue, who solicited the assistance from the elite Naval Postgraduate School, 20 miles and a world away in Monterey. “When the public heard about this, they thought we were going to send the Navy SEALs into Salinas.”
The head of the program, former Special Forces career officer Col. Hy Rothstein, who oversaw counterinsurgency operations in Colombia and Central America, describes the program as a “laboratory”. The Washington Post article implies that the members of his team are retired veterans, yet later admits that the men are “mostly naval officers taking time between deployments,” meaning that they are active duty, not retired.
Another slick form of spin on behalf of the Post is the claim that the program doesn’t violate constitutional blocks on the military engaging in domestic law enforcement because Rothstein’s team are helping on a “voluntary” basis. This is completely contradicted in the second paragraph of the article when it is admitted that Mayor Dennis Donohue “affirmed his decision to seek help from an unlikely source: the U.S. military,” meaning that the program isn’t voluntary at all, the Mayor of the city instigated the military’s involvement. At the end of the article, a nationwide version of the program is also advocated.
Rothstein explains how his team employ methods used against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan to get the job done in Salinas, using military software that “tracks crimes and links suspects and their associates by social, geographic and family connections”.
Rothstein also admitted how part of the program utilizes military psyops tactics to thwart the public from hearing “negative messages,” suggesting control of the local media.
The Post article goes into great depth to depict the town as being under siege from dangerous Hispanic gang members in an attempt to push the justification of military involvement. At no point is it mentioned that if the police were tough enough to deal with real criminals in the first place, rather than feeding on the fat hog of the law-abiding American taxpayer, the need for army involvement would have never arisen.
How many stories do you read every week about women, people in wheelchairs, people with mental problems and other easy pray being tased by cops in comparison to gang members and drug dealers? Perhaps if the cops concentrated on going after the thugs rather than sinking their teeth into the fat, dumb and happy middle class American, then cities like Salinas wouldn’t be full of gang-banger scum.
The crucial part of the Post article is right at the end, when the trial balloon goes up for the U.S. military’s involvement in domestic law enforcement to be implemented nationwide in this context.
“The $1 trillion invested so far in Iraq and Afghanistan could pay a dividend in American streets,” states the article, before quoting Leonard A. Ferrari, provost of the Naval Postgraduate School, who states, “The idea was, not just Salinas, but is there a national model for this?”
Why is one of the biggest newspapers in America, a Bilderberg-owned publication, pushing for the nationwide use of active duty U.S. military units in domestic law enforcement, specifically to combat a “counterinsurgency” amongst U.S. citizens? Is this another progression in the preparation for martial law in response to mass civil unrest, race riots, and even a future civil war?
Or is this merely another gradual blurring of the lines between the police and the military as an ailing banana republic begins to decline into a failed state bossed by a militarized dictatorship?
"We're Opening Doors for Wall Street and Nothing More"
Obama's China Junket:
By Mike Whitney
November 17, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- Barack Obama took Hu Jintao to task this morning, scolding the dejected-looking Chinese leader at a press conference held in Beijing. Obama delivered one ferocious jab after another, claiming that China's dollar-peg has cost the US millions of high-paying manufacturing jobs while creating gigantic trade imbalances which have destabilized the global economy and thrust the world into severe economic contraction. Obama demanded that the Chinese government convert to market-oriented exchange rates immediately to preserve jobs in America and to end the de facto tariff that China applies to US goods through its persistent currency manipulation. Obama's sharply-worded prepared statement left the Chinese President gasping for air while the assembled members of the western media snapped to their feet in raucous applause.
Hard to believe, isn't it? Hard to believe that an American president would stand up for his own people and act in the national interest.
The aforementioned press conference never took place. It's a fairy tale. Barack Obama made a few innocuous comments about repricing the renimbi, but it was all just meaningless blather concocted for the American audience. US policymakers have no intention of rocking-the-boat and upsetting their Chinese benefactors. The system works just fine as it is...for the Big money guys, that is.
Do you know the real reason that Obama is in China?
Obama is carrying on the work of George W. Bush and Henry Paulson. He's trying to pry open Chinese markets to US financial services. That's right, the lavish executive junket doesn't have anything to do with human rights, climate change, or dollar/yuan rebalancing. That's all just public relations mumbo-jumbo. 100% bunkum.
True, China's dollar-peg creates an unfair advantage for China's manufactured goods, but so what? The Congress could change that in a minute by applying trade sanctions. But they won't. Because Congress is owned by Wall Street, and Wall Street thrives on the current system. Here's how it works: China sells the US cheap lead-based widgets, and then recycles the dollars into US Treasurys and "complex and utterly worthless" financial products. This provides the gargantuan investment banks with an endless flow of cheap capital to goose stocks and fatten the bottom line. Of course, the process does have it's shortcomings, like the fact that it crushes the domestic work-force, but that's how it was designed to work anyway. What economists call "unsustainable imbalances" are praised at the big brokerage houses as "windfall profits". The total destruction of the US labor movement is just an added perk for these well-heeled, flag-waving, uber-patriots.
And here's another item that might be of interest curious readers. This is an excerpt from an interview with Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach:
Question: How big are China-based multinational corporations now and how do they factor into this issue of global imbalances?
Stephen Roach: "They're a big deal. Over 60 percent of export growth over the past twelve years has come from growth by Chinese subsidiaries of Western multinationals, but again the problem I have is that too many in the United States, especially the Congress but also Washington, focus on the bilateral trade imbalance between the United States and China. That's just a fundamental economic mistake that's being made." http://www.cfr.org/publication/20486/avoiding_a_uschina_trade_showdown.html
peter Roach
Hmmm. So, a large portion of China's industrial capacity is actually "China-based multinational corporations". Now that's interesting. So US workers are actually competing with US industries that are using sweatshop labor to enrich themselves while savaging the American middle class. Great. I wonder how many of these "industry leaders" affix the stars-n-stripes to their lapel each morning before they trundle off to work?
This just proves that the outsourcing of jobs, the off-shoring of businesses, and the "free trade" laws are mainly the work of cutthroat American corporatists not the "rascally Chinese" as the media would like everyone to believe. China is not destroying America; blue-blooded, brandy-guzzling, Harvard-educated Americans are. It's just good-old-fashioned class warfare....and our class is losing.
For those who want to know what Obama's trip is really all about; ignore Obama altogether and read Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's article in the Wall Street Journal, "The Road Ahead for Asia's Economies." It tells the whole story. Geithner candidly admits that US markets will remain stagnant for years to come and that other emerging nations (ie China) will have to develop their own domestic markets so that Wall Street speculators can attach themselves parasitically to a more succulent host.
Timothy Geithner: "As U.S. households save more and the U.S. reduces its fiscal deficit, others must spur greater growth of private demand in their own economies......We also must keep our sights on maximizing the potential of global markets. Both exports and imports remain critical stimulate the flow of knowledge and innovation that is enabling emerging economies to catch up with developed-world living standards....To achieve durable growth, all of our economies must have flexible labor markets."
In other words, more lowering of trade barriers, more lost jobs at home, more unemployment.
Geithner again: "Each of us has recognized the importance of strong financial regulation and fiscal balance, and is pursuing these goals in ways that reflect our own circumstances but complement each others' efforts."
Check.
The article concludes with a spirited appeal from Geithner to China to open its markets to the gaggle of financial pirates and bank-vermin who just blew up the global system and are looking for new prey.
Geithner again: "Among other things, emerging economies must strengthen their social safety nets through sustainable health and retirement-benefit schemes,(re: Wall Street) thus reducing the need for high precautionary saving that contributes to global imbalances. Regulatory frameworks conducive to competitive markets will support private enterprise, investment and innovation. (re: MBS, CDOs, CDS and other debt-backed exotica) In the emerging economies, deeper and more efficient financial markets will enable better intermediation of savings and enhance investment productivity.(re: "Please, let G-Sax and JPM hang their shingles in Tienanmen Square. We promise we won't blow up your financial system like we did ours.")
Reforms are also necessary to promote cross-border private investments, while ensuring an institutional capacity and prudent regulatory framework to enable markets to absorb capital flows ... finance ministers of our respective countries, we are keenly aware that our future prosperity will be founded on a continued commitment to globalization." (Timothy Geithner, Wall Street Journal, "The Road Ahead for Asia's Economies")
Blah, blah, blah.
Summary: Geithner and Co. see the US economy languishing in a low-grade Depression for the foreseeable future, therefore, Wall Street must progressively move its base-of-operations eastward.
This is the real reason behind Obama's trip to China. There's no truth to the rumor that US policymakers care about "currency manipulation" or the ongoing looting of the American middle class. That's rubbish. China's "dollar-peg" essentially serves the interests of the giant multinational corporations and Wall Street speculators who own the media, the courts, the congress, the White House and most of the country.
By Mike Whitney
November 17, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- Barack Obama took Hu Jintao to task this morning, scolding the dejected-looking Chinese leader at a press conference held in Beijing. Obama delivered one ferocious jab after another, claiming that China's dollar-peg has cost the US millions of high-paying manufacturing jobs while creating gigantic trade imbalances which have destabilized the global economy and thrust the world into severe economic contraction. Obama demanded that the Chinese government convert to market-oriented exchange rates immediately to preserve jobs in America and to end the de facto tariff that China applies to US goods through its persistent currency manipulation. Obama's sharply-worded prepared statement left the Chinese President gasping for air while the assembled members of the western media snapped to their feet in raucous applause.
Hard to believe, isn't it? Hard to believe that an American president would stand up for his own people and act in the national interest.
The aforementioned press conference never took place. It's a fairy tale. Barack Obama made a few innocuous comments about repricing the renimbi, but it was all just meaningless blather concocted for the American audience. US policymakers have no intention of rocking-the-boat and upsetting their Chinese benefactors. The system works just fine as it is...for the Big money guys, that is.
Do you know the real reason that Obama is in China?
Obama is carrying on the work of George W. Bush and Henry Paulson. He's trying to pry open Chinese markets to US financial services. That's right, the lavish executive junket doesn't have anything to do with human rights, climate change, or dollar/yuan rebalancing. That's all just public relations mumbo-jumbo. 100% bunkum.
True, China's dollar-peg creates an unfair advantage for China's manufactured goods, but so what? The Congress could change that in a minute by applying trade sanctions. But they won't. Because Congress is owned by Wall Street, and Wall Street thrives on the current system. Here's how it works: China sells the US cheap lead-based widgets, and then recycles the dollars into US Treasurys and "complex and utterly worthless" financial products. This provides the gargantuan investment banks with an endless flow of cheap capital to goose stocks and fatten the bottom line. Of course, the process does have it's shortcomings, like the fact that it crushes the domestic work-force, but that's how it was designed to work anyway. What economists call "unsustainable imbalances" are praised at the big brokerage houses as "windfall profits". The total destruction of the US labor movement is just an added perk for these well-heeled, flag-waving, uber-patriots.
And here's another item that might be of interest curious readers. This is an excerpt from an interview with Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach:
Question: How big are China-based multinational corporations now and how do they factor into this issue of global imbalances?
Stephen Roach: "They're a big deal. Over 60 percent of export growth over the past twelve years has come from growth by Chinese subsidiaries of Western multinationals, but again the problem I have is that too many in the United States, especially the Congress but also Washington, focus on the bilateral trade imbalance between the United States and China. That's just a fundamental economic mistake that's being made." http://www.cfr.org/publication/20486/avoiding_a_uschina_trade_showdown.html
peter Roach
Hmmm. So, a large portion of China's industrial capacity is actually "China-based multinational corporations". Now that's interesting. So US workers are actually competing with US industries that are using sweatshop labor to enrich themselves while savaging the American middle class. Great. I wonder how many of these "industry leaders" affix the stars-n-stripes to their lapel each morning before they trundle off to work?
This just proves that the outsourcing of jobs, the off-shoring of businesses, and the "free trade" laws are mainly the work of cutthroat American corporatists not the "rascally Chinese" as the media would like everyone to believe. China is not destroying America; blue-blooded, brandy-guzzling, Harvard-educated Americans are. It's just good-old-fashioned class warfare....and our class is losing.
For those who want to know what Obama's trip is really all about; ignore Obama altogether and read Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's article in the Wall Street Journal, "The Road Ahead for Asia's Economies." It tells the whole story. Geithner candidly admits that US markets will remain stagnant for years to come and that other emerging nations (ie China) will have to develop their own domestic markets so that Wall Street speculators can attach themselves parasitically to a more succulent host.
Timothy Geithner: "As U.S. households save more and the U.S. reduces its fiscal deficit, others must spur greater growth of private demand in their own economies......We also must keep our sights on maximizing the potential of global markets. Both exports and imports remain critical stimulate the flow of knowledge and innovation that is enabling emerging economies to catch up with developed-world living standards....To achieve durable growth, all of our economies must have flexible labor markets."
In other words, more lowering of trade barriers, more lost jobs at home, more unemployment.
Geithner again: "Each of us has recognized the importance of strong financial regulation and fiscal balance, and is pursuing these goals in ways that reflect our own circumstances but complement each others' efforts."
Check.
The article concludes with a spirited appeal from Geithner to China to open its markets to the gaggle of financial pirates and bank-vermin who just blew up the global system and are looking for new prey.
Geithner again: "Among other things, emerging economies must strengthen their social safety nets through sustainable health and retirement-benefit schemes,(re: Wall Street) thus reducing the need for high precautionary saving that contributes to global imbalances. Regulatory frameworks conducive to competitive markets will support private enterprise, investment and innovation. (re: MBS, CDOs, CDS and other debt-backed exotica) In the emerging economies, deeper and more efficient financial markets will enable better intermediation of savings and enhance investment productivity.(re: "Please, let G-Sax and JPM hang their shingles in Tienanmen Square. We promise we won't blow up your financial system like we did ours.")
Reforms are also necessary to promote cross-border private investments, while ensuring an institutional capacity and prudent regulatory framework to enable markets to absorb capital flows ... finance ministers of our respective countries, we are keenly aware that our future prosperity will be founded on a continued commitment to globalization." (Timothy Geithner, Wall Street Journal, "The Road Ahead for Asia's Economies")
Blah, blah, blah.
Summary: Geithner and Co. see the US economy languishing in a low-grade Depression for the foreseeable future, therefore, Wall Street must progressively move its base-of-operations eastward.
This is the real reason behind Obama's trip to China. There's no truth to the rumor that US policymakers care about "currency manipulation" or the ongoing looting of the American middle class. That's rubbish. China's "dollar-peg" essentially serves the interests of the giant multinational corporations and Wall Street speculators who own the media, the courts, the congress, the White House and most of the country.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
A very smll elite rule everything!!
Wolf Blitzer questions why any one would defend Maj. Hasan.
Inside Britains's Israel Lobby
Is your physical Gold actually Gold plated Tungsten?
On Doing God’s Work
By: Rob Kirby
“Gold Finger - A New Take On Operation Grand Slam With A Tungsten Twist”
I’ve already reported on irregular physical gold settlements which occurred in London, England back in the first week of October, 2009. Specifically, these settlements involved the intermediation of at least one Central Bank [The Bank of England] to resolve allocated settlements on behalf of J.P. Morgan and Deutsche Bank – who DID NOT have the gold bullion that they had sold short and were contracted to deliver. At the same time I reported on two other unusual occurrences:
1] - irregularities in the publication of the gold ETF - GLD’s bar list from Sept. 25 – Oct.14 where the length of the bar list went from 1,381 pages to under 200 pages and then back up to 800 or so pages.
2] - reports of 400 oz. “good delivery” bricks of gold found gutted and filled with tungsten within the confines of LBMA approved vaults in Hong Kong.
Why Tungsten?
If anyone were contemplating creating “fake” gold bars, tungsten [at roughly $10 per pound] would be the metal of choice since it has the exact same density as gold making a fake bar salted with tungsten indistinguishable from a solid gold bar by simply weighing it.
Unfortunately, there are now more sordid details to report.
When the news of tungsten “salted” gold bars in Hong Kong first surfaced, many people who I am acquainted with automatically assumed that these bars were manufactured in China – because China is generally viewed as “the knock-off capital of the world”.
Here’s what I now understand really happened:
The amount of “salted tungsten” gold bars in question was allegedly between 5,600 and 5,700 – 400 oz – good delivery bars [roughly 60 metric tonnes].
This was apparently all highly orchestrated by an extremely well financed criminal operation. Within mere hours of this scam being identified – Chinese officials had many of the perpetrators in custody. And here’s what the Chinese allegedly uncovered:
Roughly 15 years ago – during the Clinton Administration [think Robert Rubin, Sir Alan Greenspan and Lawrence Summers] – between 1.3 and 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten blanks were allegedly manufactured by a very high-end, sophisticated refiner in the USA [more than 16 Thousand metric tonnes]. Subsequently, 640,000 of these tungsten blanks received their gold plating and WERE shipped to Ft. Knox and remain there to this day. I know folks who have copies of the original shipping docs with dates and exact weights of “tungsten” bars shipped to Ft. Knox.
The balance of this 1.3 million – 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten cache was also plated and then allegedly “sold” into the international market. Apparently, the global market is literally “stuffed full of 400 oz salted bars”.
Makes one wonder if the Indians were smart enough to assay their 200 tonne haul from the IMF?
A Slow Motion Train Wreck, Years in the Making
An obscure news item originally published in the N.Y. Post [written by Jennifer Anderson] in late Jan. 04 has always ‘stuck in my craw’:
DA investigating NYMEX executive - Manhattan, New York, district attorney's office, Stuart Smith - Melting Pot - Brief Article – Feb. 2, 2004
A top executive at the New York Mercantile Exchange is being investigated by the Manhattan district attorney. Sources close to the exchange said that Stuart Smith, senior vice president of operations at the exchange, was served with a search warrant by the district attorney's office last week. Details of the investigation have not been disclosed, but a NYMEX spokeswoman said it was unrelated to any of the exchange's markets. She declined to comment further other than to say that charges had not been brought. A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney's office also declined comment.
The offices of the Senior Vice President of Operations - NYMEX – is exactly where you would go to find the records [serial number and smelter of origin] for EVERY GOLD BAR ever PHYSICALLY settled on the exchange. They are required to keep these records. These precise records would show the lineage of all the physical gold settled on the exchange and hence "prove" that the amount of gold in question could not have possibly come from the U.S. mining operations – because the amounts in question coming from U.S. smelters would undoubtedly be vastly bigger than domestic mine production.
We never have found out what happened to poor ole Stuart Smith – after his offices were "raided" – he took administrative leave from the NYMEX and he has never been heard from since. Amazingly [or perhaps not], there never was any follow up on in the media on the original story as well as ZERO developments ever stemming from D.A. Morgenthau’s office who executed the search warrant.
Are we to believe that NYMEX offices were raided, the Sr. V.P. of operations then takes leave - all for nothing?
These revelations should provide a “new filter” through which Rothschild exiting the gold market back in 2004 begins to make a little more sense:
“LONDON, April 14, 2004 (Reuters) - NM Rothschild & Sons Ltd., the London-based unit of investment bank Rothschild [ROT.UL], will withdraw from trading commodities, including gold, in London as it reviews its operations, it said on Wednesday.”
Interestingly, GATA’s Bill Murphy speculated about this back in 2004;
“Why is Rothschild leaving the gold business at this time my colleagues and I conjectured today? Just a guess on my part, but suspect:”
*SOMETHING IS AMISS. THEY KNOW A BIG GOLD SCANDAL IS COMING AND THEY WANT NO PART OF IT. …”
“ROTHSCHILD WANTS OUT BEFORE THE PROVERBIAL "S" HITS THE FAN.” BILL MURPHY, LEMETROPOLE, 4-18-2004
Coincidentally [or perhaps, not?], GLD Began Trading 11/12/2004
In light of what has occurred – regarding the Gold ETF, GLD – after reviewing their prospectus yet again, it becomes pretty clear that GLD was established to purposefully deflect investment dollars away from legitimate gold pursuits and to create a stealth, cesspool / catch-all, slush-fund and a likely destination for many of these “salted tungsten bars” where they would never see the light of day – hidden behind the following legalese “shield” from the law:
Excerpt from the GLD prospectus on page 11:
http://www.spdrgoldshares.com/media/GLD/file/SPDRGoldTrustProspectus.pdf
Gold bars allocated to the Trust in connection with the creation of a Basket may not meet the London Good Delivery Standards and, if a Basket is issued against such gold, the Trust may suffer a loss. Neither the Trustee nor the Custodian independently confirms the fineness of the gold bars allocated to the Trust in connection with the creation of a Basket. The gold bars allocated to the Trust by the Custodian may be different from the reported fineness or weight required by the LBMA’s standards for gold bars delivered in settlement of a gold trade, or the London Good Delivery Standards, the standards required by the Trust. If the Trustee nevertheless issues a Basket against such gold, and if the Custodian fails to satisfy its obligation to credit the Trust the amount of any deficiency, the Trust may suffer a loss.
The Fed Has Already Been Caught Lying Liberty Coin’s Patrick Heller recently wrote,
Earlier this year, the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA), filed a second Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Federal Reserve System for documents from 1990 to date having to do with gold swaps, gold swapped, or proposed gold swaps.
On Aug. 5, The Federal Reserve responded to this FOIA request by adding two more documents to those disclosed to GATA in April 2008 from the earlier FOIA request. These documents totaled 173 pages, many parts of which were redacted (covered up to omit sections of text). The Fed's response also noted that there were 137 pages of documents not disclosed that were alleged to be exempt from disclosure.
GATA appealed this determination on Aug. 20. The appeal asked for more information to substantiate the legitimacy of the claimed exemptions from disclosure and an explanation on why some documents, such as one posted on the Federal Reserve Web site that discusses gold swaps, were not included in the Aug. 5 document release.
In a Sept. 17, 2009, letter on Federal Reserve System letterhead, Federal Reserve governor Kevin M. Warsh completely denied GATA's appeal. The entire text of this letter can be examined at http://www.gata.org/files/GATAFedResponse-09-17-2009.pdf.
The first paragraph on the third page is the most revealing. Warsh wrote, "In connection with your appeal, I have confirmed that the information withheld under exemption 4 consists of confidential commercial or financial information relating to the operations of the Federal Reserve Banks that was obtained within the meaning of exemption 4. This includes information relating to swap arrangements with foreign banks on behalf of the Federal Reserve System and is not the type of information that is customarily disclosed to the public. This information was properly withheld from you."
This paragraph will likely be one of the most important news stories of the year.
Though not stated in plain English, this paragraph is an admission that the Fed has in the past and may now be engaged in trading gold swaps. Warsh's letter contradicts previous Fed statements to GATA denying that it ever engaged in gold swaps during the time period between Jan. 1, 1990 and the present.
[Perhaps most importantly], this was GATA's second FOIA request to the Federal Reserve on the issue of gold swaps. The 173 pages of documents received for the 2009 FOIA request all pre-dated the 2007 FOIA request, which means they should have been released in the response to the earlier FOIA request. This establishes a likelihood that the Federal Reserve has failed to adequately search or disclose relevant documents. Further, the Fed response admitted that it had copies of relevant records that originally appeared on the Treasury Department Web site, but failed to include them in its response.
Now that Federal Reserve governor Warsh has admitted that the Fed has lied in the past about the Fed’s involvement with gold. It should now be very clear to everyone why the Fed is lying and the true nature of what they are hiding / withholding.
On Doing God’s Work
An important footnote to consider is the inter-twined-ness of the U.S. Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury [can anyone really tell them apart?] as well as this duopoly’s two principal agents – J.P. Morgan-Chase and Goldman Sachs. When one truly grasps the nature of these highly conflicted relationships it gives a fuller meaning to words recently uttered by Goldman head, Lloyd Blankfein, who claimed,
“I’m doing god’s work”
Does this really mean that Mr. Blankfein believes that the Federal Reserve is god? You can judge for yourself. While the Fed prints money like no one else could - except god almighty himself [or Gideon Gono, perhaps?] – I really doubt that was the intent back in 1864, when the U.S. adopted “In God We Trust” as their official motto.
And that’s my two cents worth for today.
Got [real] physical gold yet?
Rob Kirby
By: Rob Kirby
“Gold Finger - A New Take On Operation Grand Slam With A Tungsten Twist”
I’ve already reported on irregular physical gold settlements which occurred in London, England back in the first week of October, 2009. Specifically, these settlements involved the intermediation of at least one Central Bank [The Bank of England] to resolve allocated settlements on behalf of J.P. Morgan and Deutsche Bank – who DID NOT have the gold bullion that they had sold short and were contracted to deliver. At the same time I reported on two other unusual occurrences:
1] - irregularities in the publication of the gold ETF - GLD’s bar list from Sept. 25 – Oct.14 where the length of the bar list went from 1,381 pages to under 200 pages and then back up to 800 or so pages.
2] - reports of 400 oz. “good delivery” bricks of gold found gutted and filled with tungsten within the confines of LBMA approved vaults in Hong Kong.
Why Tungsten?
If anyone were contemplating creating “fake” gold bars, tungsten [at roughly $10 per pound] would be the metal of choice since it has the exact same density as gold making a fake bar salted with tungsten indistinguishable from a solid gold bar by simply weighing it.
Unfortunately, there are now more sordid details to report.
When the news of tungsten “salted” gold bars in Hong Kong first surfaced, many people who I am acquainted with automatically assumed that these bars were manufactured in China – because China is generally viewed as “the knock-off capital of the world”.
Here’s what I now understand really happened:
The amount of “salted tungsten” gold bars in question was allegedly between 5,600 and 5,700 – 400 oz – good delivery bars [roughly 60 metric tonnes].
This was apparently all highly orchestrated by an extremely well financed criminal operation. Within mere hours of this scam being identified – Chinese officials had many of the perpetrators in custody. And here’s what the Chinese allegedly uncovered:
Roughly 15 years ago – during the Clinton Administration [think Robert Rubin, Sir Alan Greenspan and Lawrence Summers] – between 1.3 and 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten blanks were allegedly manufactured by a very high-end, sophisticated refiner in the USA [more than 16 Thousand metric tonnes]. Subsequently, 640,000 of these tungsten blanks received their gold plating and WERE shipped to Ft. Knox and remain there to this day. I know folks who have copies of the original shipping docs with dates and exact weights of “tungsten” bars shipped to Ft. Knox.
The balance of this 1.3 million – 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten cache was also plated and then allegedly “sold” into the international market. Apparently, the global market is literally “stuffed full of 400 oz salted bars”.
Makes one wonder if the Indians were smart enough to assay their 200 tonne haul from the IMF?
A Slow Motion Train Wreck, Years in the Making
An obscure news item originally published in the N.Y. Post [written by Jennifer Anderson] in late Jan. 04 has always ‘stuck in my craw’:
DA investigating NYMEX executive - Manhattan, New York, district attorney's office, Stuart Smith - Melting Pot - Brief Article – Feb. 2, 2004
A top executive at the New York Mercantile Exchange is being investigated by the Manhattan district attorney. Sources close to the exchange said that Stuart Smith, senior vice president of operations at the exchange, was served with a search warrant by the district attorney's office last week. Details of the investigation have not been disclosed, but a NYMEX spokeswoman said it was unrelated to any of the exchange's markets. She declined to comment further other than to say that charges had not been brought. A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney's office also declined comment.
The offices of the Senior Vice President of Operations - NYMEX – is exactly where you would go to find the records [serial number and smelter of origin] for EVERY GOLD BAR ever PHYSICALLY settled on the exchange. They are required to keep these records. These precise records would show the lineage of all the physical gold settled on the exchange and hence "prove" that the amount of gold in question could not have possibly come from the U.S. mining operations – because the amounts in question coming from U.S. smelters would undoubtedly be vastly bigger than domestic mine production.
We never have found out what happened to poor ole Stuart Smith – after his offices were "raided" – he took administrative leave from the NYMEX and he has never been heard from since. Amazingly [or perhaps not], there never was any follow up on in the media on the original story as well as ZERO developments ever stemming from D.A. Morgenthau’s office who executed the search warrant.
Are we to believe that NYMEX offices were raided, the Sr. V.P. of operations then takes leave - all for nothing?
These revelations should provide a “new filter” through which Rothschild exiting the gold market back in 2004 begins to make a little more sense:
“LONDON, April 14, 2004 (Reuters) - NM Rothschild & Sons Ltd., the London-based unit of investment bank Rothschild [ROT.UL], will withdraw from trading commodities, including gold, in London as it reviews its operations, it said on Wednesday.”
Interestingly, GATA’s Bill Murphy speculated about this back in 2004;
“Why is Rothschild leaving the gold business at this time my colleagues and I conjectured today? Just a guess on my part, but suspect:”
*SOMETHING IS AMISS. THEY KNOW A BIG GOLD SCANDAL IS COMING AND THEY WANT NO PART OF IT. …”
“ROTHSCHILD WANTS OUT BEFORE THE PROVERBIAL "S" HITS THE FAN.” BILL MURPHY, LEMETROPOLE, 4-18-2004
Coincidentally [or perhaps, not?], GLD Began Trading 11/12/2004
In light of what has occurred – regarding the Gold ETF, GLD – after reviewing their prospectus yet again, it becomes pretty clear that GLD was established to purposefully deflect investment dollars away from legitimate gold pursuits and to create a stealth, cesspool / catch-all, slush-fund and a likely destination for many of these “salted tungsten bars” where they would never see the light of day – hidden behind the following legalese “shield” from the law:
Excerpt from the GLD prospectus on page 11:
http://www.spdrgoldshares.com/media/GLD/file/SPDRGoldTrustProspectus.pdf
Gold bars allocated to the Trust in connection with the creation of a Basket may not meet the London Good Delivery Standards and, if a Basket is issued against such gold, the Trust may suffer a loss. Neither the Trustee nor the Custodian independently confirms the fineness of the gold bars allocated to the Trust in connection with the creation of a Basket. The gold bars allocated to the Trust by the Custodian may be different from the reported fineness or weight required by the LBMA’s standards for gold bars delivered in settlement of a gold trade, or the London Good Delivery Standards, the standards required by the Trust. If the Trustee nevertheless issues a Basket against such gold, and if the Custodian fails to satisfy its obligation to credit the Trust the amount of any deficiency, the Trust may suffer a loss.
The Fed Has Already Been Caught Lying Liberty Coin’s Patrick Heller recently wrote,
Earlier this year, the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA), filed a second Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Federal Reserve System for documents from 1990 to date having to do with gold swaps, gold swapped, or proposed gold swaps.
On Aug. 5, The Federal Reserve responded to this FOIA request by adding two more documents to those disclosed to GATA in April 2008 from the earlier FOIA request. These documents totaled 173 pages, many parts of which were redacted (covered up to omit sections of text). The Fed's response also noted that there were 137 pages of documents not disclosed that were alleged to be exempt from disclosure.
GATA appealed this determination on Aug. 20. The appeal asked for more information to substantiate the legitimacy of the claimed exemptions from disclosure and an explanation on why some documents, such as one posted on the Federal Reserve Web site that discusses gold swaps, were not included in the Aug. 5 document release.
In a Sept. 17, 2009, letter on Federal Reserve System letterhead, Federal Reserve governor Kevin M. Warsh completely denied GATA's appeal. The entire text of this letter can be examined at http://www.gata.org/files/GATAFedResponse-09-17-2009.pdf.
The first paragraph on the third page is the most revealing. Warsh wrote, "In connection with your appeal, I have confirmed that the information withheld under exemption 4 consists of confidential commercial or financial information relating to the operations of the Federal Reserve Banks that was obtained within the meaning of exemption 4. This includes information relating to swap arrangements with foreign banks on behalf of the Federal Reserve System and is not the type of information that is customarily disclosed to the public. This information was properly withheld from you."
This paragraph will likely be one of the most important news stories of the year.
Though not stated in plain English, this paragraph is an admission that the Fed has in the past and may now be engaged in trading gold swaps. Warsh's letter contradicts previous Fed statements to GATA denying that it ever engaged in gold swaps during the time period between Jan. 1, 1990 and the present.
[Perhaps most importantly], this was GATA's second FOIA request to the Federal Reserve on the issue of gold swaps. The 173 pages of documents received for the 2009 FOIA request all pre-dated the 2007 FOIA request, which means they should have been released in the response to the earlier FOIA request. This establishes a likelihood that the Federal Reserve has failed to adequately search or disclose relevant documents. Further, the Fed response admitted that it had copies of relevant records that originally appeared on the Treasury Department Web site, but failed to include them in its response.
Now that Federal Reserve governor Warsh has admitted that the Fed has lied in the past about the Fed’s involvement with gold. It should now be very clear to everyone why the Fed is lying and the true nature of what they are hiding / withholding.
On Doing God’s Work
An important footnote to consider is the inter-twined-ness of the U.S. Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury [can anyone really tell them apart?] as well as this duopoly’s two principal agents – J.P. Morgan-Chase and Goldman Sachs. When one truly grasps the nature of these highly conflicted relationships it gives a fuller meaning to words recently uttered by Goldman head, Lloyd Blankfein, who claimed,
“I’m doing god’s work”
Does this really mean that Mr. Blankfein believes that the Federal Reserve is god? You can judge for yourself. While the Fed prints money like no one else could - except god almighty himself [or Gideon Gono, perhaps?] – I really doubt that was the intent back in 1864, when the U.S. adopted “In God We Trust” as their official motto.
And that’s my two cents worth for today.
Got [real] physical gold yet?
Rob Kirby
Friday, November 13, 2009
Hoodwinked?
The latest a stunning refashioning of the events at Fort Hood may put another person in the spotlight. It has emerged that a previously unknown person may have fired shots that brought down Maj. Hasan. Kimberly Munley was the heroine America desperately sought in the hours after the massacre at the Fort Hood army base in Texas. Both shooters were armed, while on base, contrary to base policy. 2 or 3 shooters is now the re-versioned report being floated by the Army.
In this latest version a previously unknown person may in fact have fired the bullets that brought down Maj. Hasan, not Munley. A witness said it was unclear whether Munley fired off a shot before another person arrived, shooting Hasan until he fell to the ground. It is still unclear who actually shot him as both person claim to be the hero. In TV appearances, Munley and the other person have thus far failed to clear up exactly who shot him. Munley insisted that she fired at Hasan. The tale of Munley's apparent heroism roughly parallels the case of Jessica Lynch. It is becoming more plausible that Maj. Hasan was setup to be a patsy rather than an innocent hit by "friendly" fire. Until the forensic evidence is released to the special intelligence investigation no one will know the actual truth.
Contrary to all other previous claims by the Army, Hasan was born in the USA not Palestine. Maj. Hasan was born in the USA to Jordanian parents not Palestinian parents. On numerous occasions the Army has attempted to link him to Palestinian unrest, al-qaeda or other extremist groups. The links have here-to-for been floated by the Army's propaganda arm, USASOCOM have been proven to be unproductive.
In another more startling reversal for the Army. Contrary to their preposterous reports, Hasan's military personnel record indicates that he did not apply for an early discharge from the army, as a conscientious objector or for any reason as previously stated by the Army. He had never been written up for poor performance. Nearly every news item from the Army and has issued through USASOCOM has turned out to be false or misleading.
The investigation into the real circumstances surrounding the stories offered by the Army and USASOCOM are being investigated by John Brennan, an advisor on homeland security. The Intelligence investigation is being met with fierce resistance by the Army, because they claim it will interfere with the Army's criminal investigation. If it interferes with their criminal investigation, why were they constantly grandstanding in the "News Media"? Thus the intelligence investigation is being denied critical forensic evidence necessary to sort through the many versions of the Army's stories. According to "The Patriot Act" John Brennan has full authority to investigate any investigation being made by the Army. He will not be hoodwinked and he has the full faith of the Department of Homeland Security and the President and will receive all the support that he needs to ferret out the truth, irrespective of Army stonewalling.
In this latest version a previously unknown person may in fact have fired the bullets that brought down Maj. Hasan, not Munley. A witness said it was unclear whether Munley fired off a shot before another person arrived, shooting Hasan until he fell to the ground. It is still unclear who actually shot him as both person claim to be the hero. In TV appearances, Munley and the other person have thus far failed to clear up exactly who shot him. Munley insisted that she fired at Hasan. The tale of Munley's apparent heroism roughly parallels the case of Jessica Lynch. It is becoming more plausible that Maj. Hasan was setup to be a patsy rather than an innocent hit by "friendly" fire. Until the forensic evidence is released to the special intelligence investigation no one will know the actual truth.
Contrary to all other previous claims by the Army, Hasan was born in the USA not Palestine. Maj. Hasan was born in the USA to Jordanian parents not Palestinian parents. On numerous occasions the Army has attempted to link him to Palestinian unrest, al-qaeda or other extremist groups. The links have here-to-for been floated by the Army's propaganda arm, USASOCOM have been proven to be unproductive.
In another more startling reversal for the Army. Contrary to their preposterous reports, Hasan's military personnel record indicates that he did not apply for an early discharge from the army, as a conscientious objector or for any reason as previously stated by the Army. He had never been written up for poor performance. Nearly every news item from the Army and has issued through USASOCOM has turned out to be false or misleading.
The investigation into the real circumstances surrounding the stories offered by the Army and USASOCOM are being investigated by John Brennan, an advisor on homeland security. The Intelligence investigation is being met with fierce resistance by the Army, because they claim it will interfere with the Army's criminal investigation. If it interferes with their criminal investigation, why were they constantly grandstanding in the "News Media"? Thus the intelligence investigation is being denied critical forensic evidence necessary to sort through the many versions of the Army's stories. According to "The Patriot Act" John Brennan has full authority to investigate any investigation being made by the Army. He will not be hoodwinked and he has the full faith of the Department of Homeland Security and the President and will receive all the support that he needs to ferret out the truth, irrespective of Army stonewalling.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Petraeus Says Afghan Logistics Make Buildup Difficult
C-J
General Petraeus is a master of the understatement, when compared to the master of grandstanding McCrystal. McCrystal disembled infront of Congress when he talked about his part in the Pat Tillman Fraud. He should be fired and dishonorably discharged. In any profession there are 2 parts to your responsibilities: (Ethics) and (Competence) General McCrystal showed he was incompetent nd unethical when he signed the Pat Tillman Fraudulent report. General McCrystal has a 12 to 1 numerical advantage over the Taliban and Al Quaeda plus an overwhelming technological advantage. What he doesn't have is a reliable supply line and the ability to efficiently use the troops he already has.
REAL MEN LOVE LOGISTICS
If the Afghan War was ever winnable the Cheney-Bushistas (bullshistas) would have done so, because they wanted and craved the glory. They soon discovered, after a few staged and super-hyped "successes", that they couldn't win their war and were mired down. To distance themselves from the looming catastrophe, they made a name change from American Forces to NATO Forces. To escape even more embarrassment, for their reckless adventure in Afghanistan, they "ginned up" and super-hyped another war to find those "WMD's" that were here or there and maybe even everywhere. In quick succession they began appointing a series of new NATO and American Commanders in 2 "theaters" of war. (They were all American Generals) Unfortunately all these Generals in Command have adopted historically failed military strategies. They should have read "The Art of War" or the military strategies of Alexander The Great. The Cheney-Bushistas last desperate act before the 2008 elections was to download their unfinished business onto another Presidency and blame it for the loss.
Because the Cheney-Bush Presidency didn't negotiate long term leases with Kyrgyzstan, (A logistical blunder with imminent consequences) the Government of Kyrgyzstan will close the US military base in Manas to Americans. They have virtually ordered the Americans (NATO) out of their Country, shutting an indispensable supply line for America(NATO). The only remaining land supply lines are through the steep gorges and nearly indefensible high mountain passes like the Khyber Pass between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The steep and narrow valley gorges between Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan are already under siege and effectively closed. The Taliban have demonstrated they can close any high mountain pass between Afghanistan and Tajikistan or Pakistan, almost at will. America (NATO) may have to fight it's way out of Afghanistan through Pakistan. This is a Military Planer's nightmare and it could come true. Lets hope not, but the logistical odds are against us, about 10 to 1.
If the passes were cut off, then the only exit would be by expensive, cumbersome and limited airlift, leaving most of the heavy weapons and materials behind. Only a moron would deploy forces into areas without reliable logistical support. But that's exactly what the Cheney-Bush Presidency did. The 103,000 troops under McChrystal's command in Afghanistan, include 63,000 Americans, more than half of whom arrived this year as part of an escalation strategy begun under the previous Cheney-Bush Presidency. Under the Obama Presidency the force is set to rise to 110,000 including 68,000 Americans by December 2009.
If you have Google Earth I encourage you to familiarize yourself with the countries on all sides of Afghanistan and ask yourself the following question; How can I give adequate logistical support to the present forces or more forces in the future? Then take a ground eye view of the Khyber Pass and ask yourself; How could I move thousands or even 10 troops through this natural killing field? You can't and you shouldn't because these passes can close at any time for any reason. Currently all passes between Afghanistan and Pakistan are closed because of an "agriculture inspection" quarrel. These switchback passes are narrow and enclosed within steep gorges and high canyon walls. Vulnerable bridges can be closed by landslides, earthquakes, snow, rain, mud slides, flash floods, Taliban attacks or simple quarrels between neighboring tribes. Any of which can disable or wipe out infrastructure for weeks at a time. Imagine the predicament of a battalion including heavy vehicles and tanks caught between two non-existent bridges and a steep cliff on one side and a deep gorge on the other. Do you begin to see their vulnerabilities, now just add rain or snow. Would the Taliban allow them to pass without a single casualty? Even if 1 tank were simply disabled could the others continue unhindered?
All domestic costs including Congressional allocations of about a hundred or so billion dollars a year, will be between $3 to $6 trillion dollars. This is equal to 1/4 to 1/2 our Gross Domestic Production. Most if not all of our domestic programs, including Medi-Care and Social Security will become impossible. Afghanistan will be politically fatal for this and future Presidencies. All choices will end in tears. Now the logical question arises; "Should we bet the farm and go for it"? Unfortunately the Cheney-Bush Presidency already did and the farm is in jeopardy
In the background we can still hear the apoplectic Pentagon shill, Dick Cheney, shouting out his constant and reckless drivel, desperately continuing to shift the blame onto the following Presidency. He is obviously and irresponsibly defending his fabricated justifications for invading Afghanistan and Iraq. There was no meaningful reason to invade Afghanistan. I agree with George F. Will, "Only Pakistan really mattered".
In a recent article by James Cordesman he lays out his reasons for the apparent failures up to today. The main point I would make about his article is; He is fully vested in failed policies and was a prominent talking head during the cheer leading portion of the run-up to the Afghan and Iraqi wars. He also lays out the same tired and discredited view that it's ”Not our fault”. (When will they ever take responsibility for their job?) It is my recollection that during every funding request, they were given more money than they asked for and they spent it. I remember seeing pallets of money being unloaded in Baghdad and it simply disappeared without any accounting, whatsoever. Maybe Afghanistan became the stepsister of Iraq, but they had a job to do and they are now whining about not having sufficient support. Well here is the best advice that the Military/Industrial Complex can get; “Get out now and take responsibility for your failure”.
One correction is necessary. The Cheney-Bushistas knew that the recent history of Afghanistan proved a war was unwinnable and they betray their fore-knowledge by trying to make it Obama's war. President Obama was barely 100 days into his Presidency when the Military-Industrial-GOP complex named it "Obama's War". If it were winnable they would have taken the credit, instead they download their sack of manure on America and call it their patriotic duty.
C-J
By Tony Capaccio
Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Afghanistan’s infrastructure makes any buildup of troops there difficult, General David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, said today.
“The reality of Afghanistan is that it’s all hard, all the time,” Petraeus said at a Bloomberg conference in Washington. He said that U.S. forces had “learned a great deal about irregular warfare” from the surge of U.S. troops in Iraq.
Former President George W. Bush’s surge aided social stability in Iraq and reduced the level of violence in the country, Petraeus said.
“The surge was really a surge of ideas as much as it was a surge of forces,” he said. War violence in Iraq is down 90 percent from the spring of 2007, he said.
Petraeus was speaking at a conference held by Bloomberg Ventures, a unit of Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News.
He said counterinsurgency steps like those used in Iraq can be applied to the conflict in Afghanistan.
“The concepts, the importance of securing and serving the population, helping Afghans with a government that can be seen as legitimate” can be applied while “implemented with a really nuanced understanding of Afghanistan,” Petraeus said.
Petraeus declined to address specifics of the Obama administration’s debate on how many troops to add in Afghanistan over the 68,000 now in place.
In Afghanistan, it would be more difficult than it was in Iraq to quickly build up U.S. forces if Obama decides to send more troops.
“It is really hard to get additional forces in, compared with what we were able to do in Iraq,” Petraeus said. Logistics in Iraq were aided by U.S. infrastructure in Kuwait, he said.
In contrast, he said “there are enormous challenges in that respect in Afghanistan, but the enemy has enormous challenges as well.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Anthony Capaccio in Washington at acapaccio@bloomberg.net
General Petraeus is a master of the understatement, when compared to the master of grandstanding McCrystal. McCrystal disembled infront of Congress when he talked about his part in the Pat Tillman Fraud. He should be fired and dishonorably discharged. In any profession there are 2 parts to your responsibilities: (Ethics) and (Competence) General McCrystal showed he was incompetent nd unethical when he signed the Pat Tillman Fraudulent report. General McCrystal has a 12 to 1 numerical advantage over the Taliban and Al Quaeda plus an overwhelming technological advantage. What he doesn't have is a reliable supply line and the ability to efficiently use the troops he already has.
REAL MEN LOVE LOGISTICS
If the Afghan War was ever winnable the Cheney-Bushistas (bullshistas) would have done so, because they wanted and craved the glory. They soon discovered, after a few staged and super-hyped "successes", that they couldn't win their war and were mired down. To distance themselves from the looming catastrophe, they made a name change from American Forces to NATO Forces. To escape even more embarrassment, for their reckless adventure in Afghanistan, they "ginned up" and super-hyped another war to find those "WMD's" that were here or there and maybe even everywhere. In quick succession they began appointing a series of new NATO and American Commanders in 2 "theaters" of war. (They were all American Generals) Unfortunately all these Generals in Command have adopted historically failed military strategies. They should have read "The Art of War" or the military strategies of Alexander The Great. The Cheney-Bushistas last desperate act before the 2008 elections was to download their unfinished business onto another Presidency and blame it for the loss.
Because the Cheney-Bush Presidency didn't negotiate long term leases with Kyrgyzstan, (A logistical blunder with imminent consequences) the Government of Kyrgyzstan will close the US military base in Manas to Americans. They have virtually ordered the Americans (NATO) out of their Country, shutting an indispensable supply line for America(NATO). The only remaining land supply lines are through the steep gorges and nearly indefensible high mountain passes like the Khyber Pass between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The steep and narrow valley gorges between Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan are already under siege and effectively closed. The Taliban have demonstrated they can close any high mountain pass between Afghanistan and Tajikistan or Pakistan, almost at will. America (NATO) may have to fight it's way out of Afghanistan through Pakistan. This is a Military Planer's nightmare and it could come true. Lets hope not, but the logistical odds are against us, about 10 to 1.
If the passes were cut off, then the only exit would be by expensive, cumbersome and limited airlift, leaving most of the heavy weapons and materials behind. Only a moron would deploy forces into areas without reliable logistical support. But that's exactly what the Cheney-Bush Presidency did. The 103,000 troops under McChrystal's command in Afghanistan, include 63,000 Americans, more than half of whom arrived this year as part of an escalation strategy begun under the previous Cheney-Bush Presidency. Under the Obama Presidency the force is set to rise to 110,000 including 68,000 Americans by December 2009.
If you have Google Earth I encourage you to familiarize yourself with the countries on all sides of Afghanistan and ask yourself the following question; How can I give adequate logistical support to the present forces or more forces in the future? Then take a ground eye view of the Khyber Pass and ask yourself; How could I move thousands or even 10 troops through this natural killing field? You can't and you shouldn't because these passes can close at any time for any reason. Currently all passes between Afghanistan and Pakistan are closed because of an "agriculture inspection" quarrel. These switchback passes are narrow and enclosed within steep gorges and high canyon walls. Vulnerable bridges can be closed by landslides, earthquakes, snow, rain, mud slides, flash floods, Taliban attacks or simple quarrels between neighboring tribes. Any of which can disable or wipe out infrastructure for weeks at a time. Imagine the predicament of a battalion including heavy vehicles and tanks caught between two non-existent bridges and a steep cliff on one side and a deep gorge on the other. Do you begin to see their vulnerabilities, now just add rain or snow. Would the Taliban allow them to pass without a single casualty? Even if 1 tank were simply disabled could the others continue unhindered?
All domestic costs including Congressional allocations of about a hundred or so billion dollars a year, will be between $3 to $6 trillion dollars. This is equal to 1/4 to 1/2 our Gross Domestic Production. Most if not all of our domestic programs, including Medi-Care and Social Security will become impossible. Afghanistan will be politically fatal for this and future Presidencies. All choices will end in tears. Now the logical question arises; "Should we bet the farm and go for it"? Unfortunately the Cheney-Bush Presidency already did and the farm is in jeopardy
In the background we can still hear the apoplectic Pentagon shill, Dick Cheney, shouting out his constant and reckless drivel, desperately continuing to shift the blame onto the following Presidency. He is obviously and irresponsibly defending his fabricated justifications for invading Afghanistan and Iraq. There was no meaningful reason to invade Afghanistan. I agree with George F. Will, "Only Pakistan really mattered".
In a recent article by James Cordesman he lays out his reasons for the apparent failures up to today. The main point I would make about his article is; He is fully vested in failed policies and was a prominent talking head during the cheer leading portion of the run-up to the Afghan and Iraqi wars. He also lays out the same tired and discredited view that it's ”Not our fault”. (When will they ever take responsibility for their job?) It is my recollection that during every funding request, they were given more money than they asked for and they spent it. I remember seeing pallets of money being unloaded in Baghdad and it simply disappeared without any accounting, whatsoever. Maybe Afghanistan became the stepsister of Iraq, but they had a job to do and they are now whining about not having sufficient support. Well here is the best advice that the Military/Industrial Complex can get; “Get out now and take responsibility for your failure”.
One correction is necessary. The Cheney-Bushistas knew that the recent history of Afghanistan proved a war was unwinnable and they betray their fore-knowledge by trying to make it Obama's war. President Obama was barely 100 days into his Presidency when the Military-Industrial-GOP complex named it "Obama's War". If it were winnable they would have taken the credit, instead they download their sack of manure on America and call it their patriotic duty.
C-J
By Tony Capaccio
Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Afghanistan’s infrastructure makes any buildup of troops there difficult, General David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, said today.
“The reality of Afghanistan is that it’s all hard, all the time,” Petraeus said at a Bloomberg conference in Washington. He said that U.S. forces had “learned a great deal about irregular warfare” from the surge of U.S. troops in Iraq.
Former President George W. Bush’s surge aided social stability in Iraq and reduced the level of violence in the country, Petraeus said.
“The surge was really a surge of ideas as much as it was a surge of forces,” he said. War violence in Iraq is down 90 percent from the spring of 2007, he said.
Petraeus was speaking at a conference held by Bloomberg Ventures, a unit of Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News.
He said counterinsurgency steps like those used in Iraq can be applied to the conflict in Afghanistan.
“The concepts, the importance of securing and serving the population, helping Afghans with a government that can be seen as legitimate” can be applied while “implemented with a really nuanced understanding of Afghanistan,” Petraeus said.
Petraeus declined to address specifics of the Obama administration’s debate on how many troops to add in Afghanistan over the 68,000 now in place.
In Afghanistan, it would be more difficult than it was in Iraq to quickly build up U.S. forces if Obama decides to send more troops.
“It is really hard to get additional forces in, compared with what we were able to do in Iraq,” Petraeus said. Logistics in Iraq were aided by U.S. infrastructure in Kuwait, he said.
In contrast, he said “there are enormous challenges in that respect in Afghanistan, but the enemy has enormous challenges as well.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Anthony Capaccio in Washington at acapaccio@bloomberg.net
Losing Capitalism
We lost capitalism a long time ago. We have become fascist, as Lenin predicted would happen as capitalism failed.
The hallmarks of a fascist economy are the privatization of profit but the socialization of losses. That's what the bailouts are doing.
Then there is the corporatism which is the political foundation of fascism (as Mussolini points out), in which corporations and government align together against the general population. That is what we are seeing with the mandatory health insurance.
The hallmarks of a fascist economy are the privatization of profit but the socialization of losses. That's what the bailouts are doing.
Then there is the corporatism which is the political foundation of fascism (as Mussolini points out), in which corporations and government align together against the general population. That is what we are seeing with the mandatory health insurance.
Trial of Fort Hood shooting suspect could be lengthy affair
C-J
In other words, the Army's case is already starting to fall apart. I would like to see the forensics, especially the firing pin, land and groove and extractor marks on all of the "recovered" shell casings that probably would prove that there was more than 1 shooter. I would also like to see the bullet entry and paths in Maj. Hasan's body to see if they came from the exact same angle as those of a 105lb armed? private security guard and Jessica Lynch standin.
But just like the jet engine serial numbers from 9/11 they will never see the light of day. They are now a "State Secret". The Army's case is becoming more laughable everyday and they can't back down. They also allege that this trial could drag on for years depending on the "defendants" health. If he had died or if he dies they will wrap it up in a few minutes. The most likely scenario is 2 or more years of unattributed leaks from "informed" sources that will continue the slanders of Maj. Hasan.
If there is a change of venue the most probable place it will go is Fort Bragg N.C. and the home of American Military Special Operations and Psyops. (USASOCOM). Since USASOCOM is probably behind this Psyops in the first place they will have more opportunities to slander Maj. Hasan. Would the Army ever lie for political reasons? DUHH!! Two individual cases come to my mind, Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman.
C-J
By Anthony Spangler | The Fort Worth Star-Telegram
FORT WORTH — Complicated by a federal investigation into possible terrorist ties and the prospect of mental issues, the prosecution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan will likely be a lengthy and intricate process, military legal experts say.
Hasan has been identified by military officials as the lone suspect in the Fort Hood shootings last week that left 13 dead and more than 30 wounded — the deadliest mass shooting at a U.S. military installation.
A former Army staff judge advocate and military law expert at Texas Tech University suggests that it could take about two years to go to the military equivalent of a trial, depending on the defendant's health. And the outcome of the case would likely end up mired in complex appeals.
"We never had a case quite like this before . . . because of pretrial publicity, it will create a lot of complications," said Richard Rosen, vice chairman of the university’s law school and former military justice attorney at Fort Hood.
Many factors will make the legal process challenging for prosecutors and defense attorneys: the number of witnesses, whether the actions were related to terrorism, mental capacity and the prospect of the death penalty. What may be the most difficult decision, military legal experts say, is whether the case will be tried at Fort Hood.
The convening authority in the case, which will be one of Hasan's commanders, could request a change of venue.
Still, Rosen said, Hasan could get a fair trial.
"There could be a lot of prejudice there and, because of the tremendous pretrial publicity, there could be pressure to move the case elsewhere," he said. "But experience has been that military jurors are an independent bunch. The military jurists are smart people. The officers will all be college-educated and people with advanced degrees."
In other words, the Army's case is already starting to fall apart. I would like to see the forensics, especially the firing pin, land and groove and extractor marks on all of the "recovered" shell casings that probably would prove that there was more than 1 shooter. I would also like to see the bullet entry and paths in Maj. Hasan's body to see if they came from the exact same angle as those of a 105lb armed? private security guard and Jessica Lynch standin.
But just like the jet engine serial numbers from 9/11 they will never see the light of day. They are now a "State Secret". The Army's case is becoming more laughable everyday and they can't back down. They also allege that this trial could drag on for years depending on the "defendants" health. If he had died or if he dies they will wrap it up in a few minutes. The most likely scenario is 2 or more years of unattributed leaks from "informed" sources that will continue the slanders of Maj. Hasan.
If there is a change of venue the most probable place it will go is Fort Bragg N.C. and the home of American Military Special Operations and Psyops. (USASOCOM). Since USASOCOM is probably behind this Psyops in the first place they will have more opportunities to slander Maj. Hasan. Would the Army ever lie for political reasons? DUHH!! Two individual cases come to my mind, Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman.
C-J
By Anthony Spangler | The Fort Worth Star-Telegram
FORT WORTH — Complicated by a federal investigation into possible terrorist ties and the prospect of mental issues, the prosecution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan will likely be a lengthy and intricate process, military legal experts say.
Hasan has been identified by military officials as the lone suspect in the Fort Hood shootings last week that left 13 dead and more than 30 wounded — the deadliest mass shooting at a U.S. military installation.
A former Army staff judge advocate and military law expert at Texas Tech University suggests that it could take about two years to go to the military equivalent of a trial, depending on the defendant's health. And the outcome of the case would likely end up mired in complex appeals.
"We never had a case quite like this before . . . because of pretrial publicity, it will create a lot of complications," said Richard Rosen, vice chairman of the university’s law school and former military justice attorney at Fort Hood.
Many factors will make the legal process challenging for prosecutors and defense attorneys: the number of witnesses, whether the actions were related to terrorism, mental capacity and the prospect of the death penalty. What may be the most difficult decision, military legal experts say, is whether the case will be tried at Fort Hood.
The convening authority in the case, which will be one of Hasan's commanders, could request a change of venue.
Still, Rosen said, Hasan could get a fair trial.
"There could be a lot of prejudice there and, because of the tremendous pretrial publicity, there could be pressure to move the case elsewhere," he said. "But experience has been that military jurors are an independent bunch. The military jurists are smart people. The officers will all be college-educated and people with advanced degrees."
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
The war between facts and beliefs
An Ancient Warfare: Facts vs. Beliefs
By Jeff Gates Staff Writer fot Veterans Today
Military Veterans & Foreign Affairs Journal
In unconventional warfare, manipulated beliefs are used to displace inconvenient facts. When waging war by way of deception, false beliefs are an oft-deployed weapon. Recall Iraqi weapons of mass destruction? Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda? Iraqi mobile biological weapons laboratories?
Iraqi meetings in Prague with Al Qaeda? Iraqi purchases of yellowcake uranium from Niger? All these claims were reported as true. All were later proven false or, worse, fabricated. Yet all were widely believed. Only the yellowcake uranium was conceded as bogus before the invasion of Iraq. As the U.S. crafted its response to the provocation of a mass murder on U.S. soil, those widely shared beliefs shaped a consensus to wage war on a nation that had no hand in it.
A similar deception-traceable to the same source-is now working to expand this war to Iran. Based on fast-emerging events, the next conflict could include Pakistan.
The modern battlefield has shifted. Ground warfare is now secondary. Likewise air strikes, combat troops, naval support and even covert operations. Those physical operations are all downstream of information operations. Manipulated beliefs come first. Psyops precede bombs and bullets. Hardware ranks a distant third.
First and foremost are the consensus shapers and thought manipulators who target perceptions and opinions until a critical mass of agreement is reached. Then comes war. Those skilled at such duplicity induced coalition troops to war in Iraq. Knowledge was their target. Manipulate thought and all else was downstream.
Unconventional warfare is waged "upstream" with the assistance of those with the means, motive and opportunity to massage consensus opinion. Where are modern-day battles fought? Not on the ground nor in the air nor on the seas.
The mindset is the primary theater of operations. The first battlefield is the public's shared field of consciousness. The death and destruction come later.
Deceit is not new to warfare. What's new is the reach of the technologies-including modern media technologies-that now enable deception on a global scale
Military action remains subordinate to politics. Politics, in turn, are subordinate to those skilled at inducing consensus beliefs. Regardless whether command is civilian or military, decision-making is no better than the information on which decisions depend. That's why the Israel lobby has long targeted U.S. lawmakers as a strategic force-multiplier by the Israel lobby. [See: "How Israel Controls U.S." http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=124829&d=24&m=7&y=2009]
With lawmaking dependent on information, those skilled at the manipulation of knowledge can operate atop the chain of command. As a system of law reliant on informed choice, democracy can be dislodged in plain sight by those skilled at inducing a shared mindset-a consensus-by manipulating thought, belief and emotion.
Thus the strategic motivation for media dominance by the Masters of Deceit in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K., Germany, India and other key nations that comprise the "coalition of the willing" induced to invade Iraq. Overlay media ownership with member states of this coalition and a common undisclosed bias becomes apparent.
When coordinated across four key areas, such "Information Operations" can displace informed decision-making with an undisclosed agenda. In retrospect, that systemic duplicity explains how the U.S. was deceived to lead this coalition to war in the Middle East. Here's a brief look at each area: geopolitical, strategic, operational and tactical.
Duplicity in Plain Sight
The geopolitical realm is where the "framing" of future conflicts often first emerges. The Clash of Civilizations appeared in 1993 as an article in Foreign Affairs. When this premise was published as a book in 1996, more than 100 non-governmental organizations were prepared to promote its thematic conflict-of-opposites.
That agreed-to consensus facilitated the seamless transition from the Cold War to a perpetual Global War on Terrorism. Thus the fate of the post-Cold War "peace dividend."
This widely shared mindset emerged just as A Clean Break appeared in print with its proposal for removing Saddam Hussein as part of a Colonial Zionist strategy for "securing the realm"-an expanded Greater Israel. Richard Perle, then a member of the U.S. Defense Policy Board, led the All-Ashkenazi team who prepared that 1996 report for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In 2001, Perle became chairman of the Pentagon's policy board. Strategically, that's a good example of working "upstream" to frame U.S national security issues around a preset agenda-for a foreign nation. Perle left the Board in February 2004 after 17 years of wielding insider influence. When your numbers are small but your ambitions large, what choice do you have but to wage war by way of deception?
Strategically, to evoke a new global war required a plausible Evil Doer linked to a credible provocation. The branding of the Taliban did not emerge in the "field" until March 2001 with their destruction of the ancient Buddhas at Bamiyan. Widely portrayed in mainstream media as a "cultural Holocaust," that high-profile deed put Afghanistan's previously obscure Taliban on a global Top-Ten list as certifiably evil.
The missing piece in marketing The Clash premise: the mass murder of September 11, 2001. Strongly provoked emotions, as with 9-11, facilitate the displacement of facts with what a targeted mindset can be induced to believe. That process was enhanced by the presence of a pre-staged Evil Doer and pre-staged intelligence that was flawed, false or outright fixed-but nevertheless widely reported as fact by mainstream media.
The capacity to succeed with such an operation is enhanced by the combined presence of: (a) evocation (images of religious extremism), (b) provocation (a mass murder), (c) association (a Doer of Evil), and (d) manipulation-as mainstream media parroted phony intelligence with virtually no investigative journalism.
This psyops campaign was facilitated by plausibly credible political leaders who dutifully read their lines from fear-evoking scripts written by this same insider network of agenda-shapers. That emotional manipulation included not only the "Axis of Evil" framing but also a widely broadcast WMD sound bite: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
Mainstream media even reported as credible false accounts of "high-level links" between the secular Iraqi government and the religious fundamentalists of Al Qaeda. Yet anyone familiar with the region knew they despised each other. Truth was not the point. Nor facts. Informed consent was only an obstacle to overcome.
Deception on such a scale required a capacity to sustain a veneer of plausibility and credibility - i.e., believability. Thus the critical role played by mainstream media.
The Power of Association
When waging war on the public's shared mindset, the power of association is one of the most effective weapons. Thus the potent imagery of the peaceful Buddhas at Bamiyan when associated with destruction, violence and religious extremism.
Thus the ease with which evil doing Al Qaeda extremists were associated in the American mindset with the Taliban - and the evil of 9-11 with known Evil Doer Saddam Hussein even though the intelligence was proven false.
Thus too the associative impact of Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 2003 testimony before the U.N. Security Council. His credibility as a globally recognizable military leader (the Powell "brand") was deployed-as a weapon-to lend the appearance of truth to lies about Iraq's possession of mobile biological weapons.
Akin to showcasing the celebrity endorsement of a consumer product, this testimonial by a trusted military leader was broadcast worldwide in the lead-up to war. Powell was not the only "mark" in this operation. So were the U.N., the U.S. military and a global public. Both aggressor and aggrieved became casualties of this duplicitous "field-based" warfare. Meanwhile the source of this deception once again faded into the background.
Operationally, by the time the U.S. was induced to invade Iraq, 100-plus Israeli Mossad agents had been operating in Mosul for more than a decade. Soon after the invasion, several moderate clerics were murdered. Their elimination enhanced the capacity to provoke a conflict-of-opposites between long-warring Shias and Sunnis.
That conflict-within-a-conflict helped catalyze an insurgency that converted a clash into a quagmire. That result was mathematically model-able by an Israeli cadre of game theory war-planners. [See: "How Israel Wages Game Theory Warfare." http://intifada-palestine.com/2009/08/20/how-israel-wages-game-theory-warfare/ ]
As Information Operations proceed at the geopolitical, strategic and operational level, tactical deceit and misdirection provide essential support akin to reserve forces deployed on an as-needed basis. Serial provocations are required to sustain the serial conflicts essential to maintain the faux plausibility of the mega-theme: The Clash.
The recurring use of crises to catalyze and maintain instability should be of immediate concern to Islamabad. A long-standing Indo-Israel alliance may well be coordinating the frequency of violent incidents that continue to strain relationships between nuclear-armed Pakistan and its neighbor Iran.
Reflecting similar tactics, the most recent Israeli assault on Gaza was scheduled between Christmas 2008 and the January 2009 inauguration of a new U.S. commander-in-chief elected on a platform of hope and a promise of change. The timing of that murderous incursion minimized the capacity to criticize. President-elect Obama said nothing.
Meanwhile this serial agent provocateur set the stage with that assault for another delayed reaction from those brutalized by six decades of occupation. And from those in the broader Muslim community outraged at the U.S. for enabling this behavior.
When that reaction emerges-as it will-Tel Aviv will again assert the moral high ground as a perennial victim living in a hostile anti-Semitic neighborhood. By deploying U.S. weaponry, Israeli aggression will again make Americans appear guilty by association-endangering the U.S. while enhancing the plausibility of the narrative: The Clash of Civilizations.
The uncomfortable truth is that the U.S. is guilty-for continuing to condone this treachery-to its own detriment. Meanwhile the only change is in the presidency with no substantive change in U.S.-Israeli policies. And no hope for those most affected by this duplicity-including both the U.S. military and those it was induced to target.
As critics of Israeli policy in Gaza emerged in academia, the Anti-Defamation League and its international network mounted an intimidation campaign to silence a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. By advertising that campaign widely, the ADL silenced thoughtful academics worldwide. [See: "Treason in Plain Sight?" http://criminalstate.com/2009/07/treason-in-plain-sight/ and "Education: The Ultimate Battlefield" http://criminalstate.com/2009/08/education---the-ultimate-battlefield/]
By Way of Deception
To succeed, Information Operations require both deceit and denial of access to the facts required for informed consent. How else can anyone explain the enduring perception that Israel is a democracy? Even now, a majority of Americans believe that Israel is an ally despite more than six decades of nonstop deceit, spying, treachery and ongoing treason.
Any observer of recent events in Pakistan should be concerned at the duplicitous history of those who have an "existential" stake in sustaining The Clash storyline. With any semblance of stability, an investigation will confirm that the intelligence fixed to induce the U.S. to war originated with a transnational network of pro-Israeli operatives.
Democracy assumes that all of us collectively are smarter than any of us individually. Thus the need for an educated electorate informed by an unbiased media providing the facts required to reason together.
Thus too the strategic need to dominate mainstream media by those with an undisclosed bias who are skilled at waging war by way of deception. We now see portrayed in that opinion-shaping domain a world turned inside out where the victim is cast as aggressor and the predator as prey.
The facts in the recent Goldstone Report confirm a need to investigate dozens of Israeli war crimes in Gaza as well as crimes against humanity. Instead of following the facts wherever they lead-consistent with the rule of law-on November 3rd, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 334-36 in favor of a resolution describing the report as "irredeemably biased" and opposing any further consideration.
That resolution was proposed by Howard Berman, Ashkenazim chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, senior Republican on the panel and also Ashkenazim. Meanwhile Nita Lowey, the Ashkenazim chairwoman of the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee warned, by implication, that her colleagues in the Congress would jeopardize funding for their projects if "further consideration" was given to the Goldstone Report.
The House vote came one day before the U.N. General Assembly discussed the report. A day later, on November 5th, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, a Muslim, killed 13 and wounded 29 preparing for deployment to Afghanistan. Within 24 hours, more than 250 media personnel appeared at Fort Hood, the nation's largest military base, to report on the event.
Many of them framed the event as confirming The Clash premise and even the on-base presence of "Islamo-fascism." Suggesting the act of a "home-grown terrorist," Jewish-Zionist Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, called for Congressional hearings into whether the U.S. military could have prevented it.
Interviewed in Palestine, the grandfather of U.S.-born and educated psychiatrist Nidal Hasan spoke of his grandson's love of the U.S. and said simply, "America made him what he is." While that comment hardly excuses this conduct, that poignant statement includes a point that Americans find difficult to contemplate. Yet we also found it uncomfortable to consider that the U.S.-Israeli relationship was a key motivation behind 9-11 and other attacks on Americans and American facilities.
The Goldstone Report called for an investigation of facts suggesting criminal conduct both by Israelis and Palestinians. Written by an eminent South African Jewish jurist, Richard Goldstone's daughter conceded that her father's findings would have been far harsher had he not been a Zionist.
Yet even the possibility that unfavorable facts could seep into the "field" required that the Israel lobby unleash its compliant Congressional forces in a litmus test of legislative loyalty-regardless of the facts. Or, indeed, because of the facts. It's difficult to imagine a vote more clearly indicative of how a pro-Israeli bias has corrupted the rule of law.
Other disturbing facts also posed a danger of gaining traction, including a November 5th report that the International Atomic Energy Agency found "nothing to be worried about" in Iran's recently revealed uranium enrichment site. That fact was preemptively displaced from the "field" the day before with reports of a well-timed Israeli boarding of a ship in international waters where weapons were found that were allegedly bound for Iran-supported Hezbollah.
When waging field-based warfare, timing is everything. That's particularly the case when, as here, a belief-manipulating adversary is faced with the greatest danger of its six decade life: facts that conflict with the narrative required to sustain The Clash storyline.
Best Story Wins
With consensus beliefs the upstream target, democracy becomes the downstream casualty. When manipulated beliefs displace facts, the rule of law degenerates into a faith-based parody of self-governance. To protect the informed consent essential to freedom requires that those waging war on the public's shared mindset become transparent so that those complicit can be made apparent.
How old is this form or warfare? Answer: How long has behavior been manipulated with beliefs? How long has faith been deployed to displace facts? The form of warfare is ancient; only the means are modern.
Upstream warfare and strategic deceit are only "unconventional" for the target. For Jewish extremists, such duplicity is business-as-usual.
This analysis describes how warfare is waged in plain sight in the Information Age. Without the complicity of mainstream media, this deceit could not have succeeded on such a scale.
In the Information Age, duplicity is how treason can be taken to scale-in plain view and, to date, with legal impunity-both in the U.S. and in the coalition member nations whose citizens were also targeted by those chronicled in this account.
The common source of this deceit remains little known either to the American public or the people in those nations the U.S. led to war. Here in the U.S., the tattered remnants of our system of informed consent are held hostage by this media-induced duplicity-and by legislators more inclined to protect their personal interests than the national interest.
There lies the strategic role for online media free of conspiracy theories that obscure the analytical clarity required to wage this battle with confidence. What's described here is warfare being waged on knowledge by an enemy within. Liberty faces no greater danger than those targeting its foundation of informed consent.
What has been made of the U.S. due to our "special relationship" with this extremist enclave is not the form of governance to which our civilian and military leaders swore their allegiance. With our civilian leadership compromised by the Israel lobby, to whom do U.S. military leaders owe their allegiance-to this latest in a series of corrupted presidencies or to the people whose freedom they took an oath to protect from all enemies, both foreign and domestic?
Despite appearances, it is not America that is at war in the Middle East but Americans loyal to this nation who were sent to war by a foreign government imbedded inside what remains of "our" government.
With trans-generational premeditation, Ashkenazim elites and extremists lured the U.S. into an entangled alliance in order to manipulate Americans to wage their expansionist wars and to secure their "realm." Only as the common source of this treason became transparent could those complicit now be held accountable.
For Americans to restore the fact-based rule of law requires sustained pressure from abroad. Our true allies will hold us accountable for what we allowed these extremists to do in our name. As the how of this treason becomes transparent, we Americans will see as our true enemies those who enabled this duplicity-to our long-term detriment. The best way to befriend us is to hold us true to the values we espouse.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Gates is a Vietnam veteran, widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide; an adviser to policy-makers worldwide; former counsel to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee.
He is also the author of numerous articles and books including his latest book Guilt by Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War.
His previous books include Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street From Wall Street and The Ownership Solution: Toward a Shared Capitalism for the 21st Century.
By Jeff Gates Staff Writer fot Veterans Today
Military Veterans & Foreign Affairs Journal
In unconventional warfare, manipulated beliefs are used to displace inconvenient facts. When waging war by way of deception, false beliefs are an oft-deployed weapon. Recall Iraqi weapons of mass destruction? Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda? Iraqi mobile biological weapons laboratories?
Iraqi meetings in Prague with Al Qaeda? Iraqi purchases of yellowcake uranium from Niger? All these claims were reported as true. All were later proven false or, worse, fabricated. Yet all were widely believed. Only the yellowcake uranium was conceded as bogus before the invasion of Iraq. As the U.S. crafted its response to the provocation of a mass murder on U.S. soil, those widely shared beliefs shaped a consensus to wage war on a nation that had no hand in it.
A similar deception-traceable to the same source-is now working to expand this war to Iran. Based on fast-emerging events, the next conflict could include Pakistan.
The modern battlefield has shifted. Ground warfare is now secondary. Likewise air strikes, combat troops, naval support and even covert operations. Those physical operations are all downstream of information operations. Manipulated beliefs come first. Psyops precede bombs and bullets. Hardware ranks a distant third.
First and foremost are the consensus shapers and thought manipulators who target perceptions and opinions until a critical mass of agreement is reached. Then comes war. Those skilled at such duplicity induced coalition troops to war in Iraq. Knowledge was their target. Manipulate thought and all else was downstream.
Unconventional warfare is waged "upstream" with the assistance of those with the means, motive and opportunity to massage consensus opinion. Where are modern-day battles fought? Not on the ground nor in the air nor on the seas.
The mindset is the primary theater of operations. The first battlefield is the public's shared field of consciousness. The death and destruction come later.
Deceit is not new to warfare. What's new is the reach of the technologies-including modern media technologies-that now enable deception on a global scale
Military action remains subordinate to politics. Politics, in turn, are subordinate to those skilled at inducing consensus beliefs. Regardless whether command is civilian or military, decision-making is no better than the information on which decisions depend. That's why the Israel lobby has long targeted U.S. lawmakers as a strategic force-multiplier by the Israel lobby. [See: "How Israel Controls U.S." http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=124829&d=24&m=7&y=2009]
With lawmaking dependent on information, those skilled at the manipulation of knowledge can operate atop the chain of command. As a system of law reliant on informed choice, democracy can be dislodged in plain sight by those skilled at inducing a shared mindset-a consensus-by manipulating thought, belief and emotion.
Thus the strategic motivation for media dominance by the Masters of Deceit in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K., Germany, India and other key nations that comprise the "coalition of the willing" induced to invade Iraq. Overlay media ownership with member states of this coalition and a common undisclosed bias becomes apparent.
When coordinated across four key areas, such "Information Operations" can displace informed decision-making with an undisclosed agenda. In retrospect, that systemic duplicity explains how the U.S. was deceived to lead this coalition to war in the Middle East. Here's a brief look at each area: geopolitical, strategic, operational and tactical.
Duplicity in Plain Sight
The geopolitical realm is where the "framing" of future conflicts often first emerges. The Clash of Civilizations appeared in 1993 as an article in Foreign Affairs. When this premise was published as a book in 1996, more than 100 non-governmental organizations were prepared to promote its thematic conflict-of-opposites.
That agreed-to consensus facilitated the seamless transition from the Cold War to a perpetual Global War on Terrorism. Thus the fate of the post-Cold War "peace dividend."
This widely shared mindset emerged just as A Clean Break appeared in print with its proposal for removing Saddam Hussein as part of a Colonial Zionist strategy for "securing the realm"-an expanded Greater Israel. Richard Perle, then a member of the U.S. Defense Policy Board, led the All-Ashkenazi team who prepared that 1996 report for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In 2001, Perle became chairman of the Pentagon's policy board. Strategically, that's a good example of working "upstream" to frame U.S national security issues around a preset agenda-for a foreign nation. Perle left the Board in February 2004 after 17 years of wielding insider influence. When your numbers are small but your ambitions large, what choice do you have but to wage war by way of deception?
Strategically, to evoke a new global war required a plausible Evil Doer linked to a credible provocation. The branding of the Taliban did not emerge in the "field" until March 2001 with their destruction of the ancient Buddhas at Bamiyan. Widely portrayed in mainstream media as a "cultural Holocaust," that high-profile deed put Afghanistan's previously obscure Taliban on a global Top-Ten list as certifiably evil.
The missing piece in marketing The Clash premise: the mass murder of September 11, 2001. Strongly provoked emotions, as with 9-11, facilitate the displacement of facts with what a targeted mindset can be induced to believe. That process was enhanced by the presence of a pre-staged Evil Doer and pre-staged intelligence that was flawed, false or outright fixed-but nevertheless widely reported as fact by mainstream media.
The capacity to succeed with such an operation is enhanced by the combined presence of: (a) evocation (images of religious extremism), (b) provocation (a mass murder), (c) association (a Doer of Evil), and (d) manipulation-as mainstream media parroted phony intelligence with virtually no investigative journalism.
This psyops campaign was facilitated by plausibly credible political leaders who dutifully read their lines from fear-evoking scripts written by this same insider network of agenda-shapers. That emotional manipulation included not only the "Axis of Evil" framing but also a widely broadcast WMD sound bite: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
Mainstream media even reported as credible false accounts of "high-level links" between the secular Iraqi government and the religious fundamentalists of Al Qaeda. Yet anyone familiar with the region knew they despised each other. Truth was not the point. Nor facts. Informed consent was only an obstacle to overcome.
Deception on such a scale required a capacity to sustain a veneer of plausibility and credibility - i.e., believability. Thus the critical role played by mainstream media.
The Power of Association
When waging war on the public's shared mindset, the power of association is one of the most effective weapons. Thus the potent imagery of the peaceful Buddhas at Bamiyan when associated with destruction, violence and religious extremism.
Thus the ease with which evil doing Al Qaeda extremists were associated in the American mindset with the Taliban - and the evil of 9-11 with known Evil Doer Saddam Hussein even though the intelligence was proven false.
Thus too the associative impact of Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 2003 testimony before the U.N. Security Council. His credibility as a globally recognizable military leader (the Powell "brand") was deployed-as a weapon-to lend the appearance of truth to lies about Iraq's possession of mobile biological weapons.
Akin to showcasing the celebrity endorsement of a consumer product, this testimonial by a trusted military leader was broadcast worldwide in the lead-up to war. Powell was not the only "mark" in this operation. So were the U.N., the U.S. military and a global public. Both aggressor and aggrieved became casualties of this duplicitous "field-based" warfare. Meanwhile the source of this deception once again faded into the background.
Operationally, by the time the U.S. was induced to invade Iraq, 100-plus Israeli Mossad agents had been operating in Mosul for more than a decade. Soon after the invasion, several moderate clerics were murdered. Their elimination enhanced the capacity to provoke a conflict-of-opposites between long-warring Shias and Sunnis.
That conflict-within-a-conflict helped catalyze an insurgency that converted a clash into a quagmire. That result was mathematically model-able by an Israeli cadre of game theory war-planners. [See: "How Israel Wages Game Theory Warfare." http://intifada-palestine.com/2009/08/20/how-israel-wages-game-theory-warfare/ ]
As Information Operations proceed at the geopolitical, strategic and operational level, tactical deceit and misdirection provide essential support akin to reserve forces deployed on an as-needed basis. Serial provocations are required to sustain the serial conflicts essential to maintain the faux plausibility of the mega-theme: The Clash.
The recurring use of crises to catalyze and maintain instability should be of immediate concern to Islamabad. A long-standing Indo-Israel alliance may well be coordinating the frequency of violent incidents that continue to strain relationships between nuclear-armed Pakistan and its neighbor Iran.
Reflecting similar tactics, the most recent Israeli assault on Gaza was scheduled between Christmas 2008 and the January 2009 inauguration of a new U.S. commander-in-chief elected on a platform of hope and a promise of change. The timing of that murderous incursion minimized the capacity to criticize. President-elect Obama said nothing.
Meanwhile this serial agent provocateur set the stage with that assault for another delayed reaction from those brutalized by six decades of occupation. And from those in the broader Muslim community outraged at the U.S. for enabling this behavior.
When that reaction emerges-as it will-Tel Aviv will again assert the moral high ground as a perennial victim living in a hostile anti-Semitic neighborhood. By deploying U.S. weaponry, Israeli aggression will again make Americans appear guilty by association-endangering the U.S. while enhancing the plausibility of the narrative: The Clash of Civilizations.
The uncomfortable truth is that the U.S. is guilty-for continuing to condone this treachery-to its own detriment. Meanwhile the only change is in the presidency with no substantive change in U.S.-Israeli policies. And no hope for those most affected by this duplicity-including both the U.S. military and those it was induced to target.
As critics of Israeli policy in Gaza emerged in academia, the Anti-Defamation League and its international network mounted an intimidation campaign to silence a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. By advertising that campaign widely, the ADL silenced thoughtful academics worldwide. [See: "Treason in Plain Sight?" http://criminalstate.com/2009/07/treason-in-plain-sight/ and "Education: The Ultimate Battlefield" http://criminalstate.com/2009/08/education---the-ultimate-battlefield/]
By Way of Deception
To succeed, Information Operations require both deceit and denial of access to the facts required for informed consent. How else can anyone explain the enduring perception that Israel is a democracy? Even now, a majority of Americans believe that Israel is an ally despite more than six decades of nonstop deceit, spying, treachery and ongoing treason.
Any observer of recent events in Pakistan should be concerned at the duplicitous history of those who have an "existential" stake in sustaining The Clash storyline. With any semblance of stability, an investigation will confirm that the intelligence fixed to induce the U.S. to war originated with a transnational network of pro-Israeli operatives.
Democracy assumes that all of us collectively are smarter than any of us individually. Thus the need for an educated electorate informed by an unbiased media providing the facts required to reason together.
Thus too the strategic need to dominate mainstream media by those with an undisclosed bias who are skilled at waging war by way of deception. We now see portrayed in that opinion-shaping domain a world turned inside out where the victim is cast as aggressor and the predator as prey.
The facts in the recent Goldstone Report confirm a need to investigate dozens of Israeli war crimes in Gaza as well as crimes against humanity. Instead of following the facts wherever they lead-consistent with the rule of law-on November 3rd, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 334-36 in favor of a resolution describing the report as "irredeemably biased" and opposing any further consideration.
That resolution was proposed by Howard Berman, Ashkenazim chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, senior Republican on the panel and also Ashkenazim. Meanwhile Nita Lowey, the Ashkenazim chairwoman of the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee warned, by implication, that her colleagues in the Congress would jeopardize funding for their projects if "further consideration" was given to the Goldstone Report.
The House vote came one day before the U.N. General Assembly discussed the report. A day later, on November 5th, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, a Muslim, killed 13 and wounded 29 preparing for deployment to Afghanistan. Within 24 hours, more than 250 media personnel appeared at Fort Hood, the nation's largest military base, to report on the event.
Many of them framed the event as confirming The Clash premise and even the on-base presence of "Islamo-fascism." Suggesting the act of a "home-grown terrorist," Jewish-Zionist Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, called for Congressional hearings into whether the U.S. military could have prevented it.
Interviewed in Palestine, the grandfather of U.S.-born and educated psychiatrist Nidal Hasan spoke of his grandson's love of the U.S. and said simply, "America made him what he is." While that comment hardly excuses this conduct, that poignant statement includes a point that Americans find difficult to contemplate. Yet we also found it uncomfortable to consider that the U.S.-Israeli relationship was a key motivation behind 9-11 and other attacks on Americans and American facilities.
The Goldstone Report called for an investigation of facts suggesting criminal conduct both by Israelis and Palestinians. Written by an eminent South African Jewish jurist, Richard Goldstone's daughter conceded that her father's findings would have been far harsher had he not been a Zionist.
Yet even the possibility that unfavorable facts could seep into the "field" required that the Israel lobby unleash its compliant Congressional forces in a litmus test of legislative loyalty-regardless of the facts. Or, indeed, because of the facts. It's difficult to imagine a vote more clearly indicative of how a pro-Israeli bias has corrupted the rule of law.
Other disturbing facts also posed a danger of gaining traction, including a November 5th report that the International Atomic Energy Agency found "nothing to be worried about" in Iran's recently revealed uranium enrichment site. That fact was preemptively displaced from the "field" the day before with reports of a well-timed Israeli boarding of a ship in international waters where weapons were found that were allegedly bound for Iran-supported Hezbollah.
When waging field-based warfare, timing is everything. That's particularly the case when, as here, a belief-manipulating adversary is faced with the greatest danger of its six decade life: facts that conflict with the narrative required to sustain The Clash storyline.
Best Story Wins
With consensus beliefs the upstream target, democracy becomes the downstream casualty. When manipulated beliefs displace facts, the rule of law degenerates into a faith-based parody of self-governance. To protect the informed consent essential to freedom requires that those waging war on the public's shared mindset become transparent so that those complicit can be made apparent.
How old is this form or warfare? Answer: How long has behavior been manipulated with beliefs? How long has faith been deployed to displace facts? The form of warfare is ancient; only the means are modern.
Upstream warfare and strategic deceit are only "unconventional" for the target. For Jewish extremists, such duplicity is business-as-usual.
This analysis describes how warfare is waged in plain sight in the Information Age. Without the complicity of mainstream media, this deceit could not have succeeded on such a scale.
In the Information Age, duplicity is how treason can be taken to scale-in plain view and, to date, with legal impunity-both in the U.S. and in the coalition member nations whose citizens were also targeted by those chronicled in this account.
The common source of this deceit remains little known either to the American public or the people in those nations the U.S. led to war. Here in the U.S., the tattered remnants of our system of informed consent are held hostage by this media-induced duplicity-and by legislators more inclined to protect their personal interests than the national interest.
There lies the strategic role for online media free of conspiracy theories that obscure the analytical clarity required to wage this battle with confidence. What's described here is warfare being waged on knowledge by an enemy within. Liberty faces no greater danger than those targeting its foundation of informed consent.
What has been made of the U.S. due to our "special relationship" with this extremist enclave is not the form of governance to which our civilian and military leaders swore their allegiance. With our civilian leadership compromised by the Israel lobby, to whom do U.S. military leaders owe their allegiance-to this latest in a series of corrupted presidencies or to the people whose freedom they took an oath to protect from all enemies, both foreign and domestic?
Despite appearances, it is not America that is at war in the Middle East but Americans loyal to this nation who were sent to war by a foreign government imbedded inside what remains of "our" government.
With trans-generational premeditation, Ashkenazim elites and extremists lured the U.S. into an entangled alliance in order to manipulate Americans to wage their expansionist wars and to secure their "realm." Only as the common source of this treason became transparent could those complicit now be held accountable.
For Americans to restore the fact-based rule of law requires sustained pressure from abroad. Our true allies will hold us accountable for what we allowed these extremists to do in our name. As the how of this treason becomes transparent, we Americans will see as our true enemies those who enabled this duplicity-to our long-term detriment. The best way to befriend us is to hold us true to the values we espouse.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Gates is a Vietnam veteran, widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide; an adviser to policy-makers worldwide; former counsel to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee.
He is also the author of numerous articles and books including his latest book Guilt by Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War.
His previous books include Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street From Wall Street and The Ownership Solution: Toward a Shared Capitalism for the 21st Century.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Psyops depends on a lack of critical thinking.
C-J
Michael Gaddy doesn't mention Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman, but both of these were American Military Psyops used against America for the political purposes of Cheney/Bush. They aren't the only ones but for now these two examples are a few of the glaring examples of Military Psyops in America used against Americans.
As for 9/11 Bin Laden explicitly denied responsibility for 9/11, but right-wing war mongers and Constitution shreding pundits routinely say that Bin-Laden took responsibility for 9/11. They are liars and traitors and almost all of them work for the American Military Psyops at Fort Bragg NC. USASOCOM. Do you actually believe that a right wing pundit and idiot like Rush Linbaugh gets $27,000,000 a year from selling trinkets and viagra on his show?
100+ shots, 55 dead or wounded. 1 shooter? I think not!!
C-J
Fort Hood Mystery
By Michael Gaddy
LewRockwell.com
11-10--9
The facts as presented by the Army and the media reference the shooting at Fort Hood just don't compute. While I routinely dismiss any "facts" disseminated by the Army and the state's propaganda wing, sometimes referred to as the mainstream media, (MSM) there are some glaring inconsistencies in what has been reported about this tragedy.
First is the report the perpetrator was dead and then hours later the revelation that he was still alive. Exactly how long does it take to determine if a person is dead or alive? Could it be no one knew whom the shooter or shooters were and a story had to be concocted for public consumption? What happened to the two other "suspects" that were detained? What did they do to qualify as suspects and more importantly, what information surfaced that led to their release? One of the suspects reportedly stated he "was with the shooter."
Second is the number of victims from a single shooter. Let us not forget this shooting did not occur at the mall, it occurred on a military installation where the victims had been trained in military tactics and some were combat veterans. We are to believe they did nothing to stop a single shooter and he was allowed to reload several times and continue shooting and the only thing that stopped him was the arrival of a police officer after the gunman had gunned down over 40 people?
And how so very convenient for the state, a perpetrator who was both anti-war and a Muslim; just doesn't get any better than that. Could this be an example of following the philosophy of Rahm Emanuel on dealing with a crisis?
Third was the shutting down of communications in and around Ft. Hood for hours. While the Army and the media will explain this in various scenarios, it also provided the Army with a chance to create whatever story it was they wanted to provide the public on the terrible tragedy. Of course we all know the Army would never distort or lie about the facts involving the deaths of innocents. Well, there is that My Lai thing. People on the ground have told me cell phone towers were jammed to prevent unauthorized dissemination of information after the shooting. Again, the Army would not want any information contrary to the company line emerging from this disaster.
All too convenient for the Army was the rapid release of negative information related to the alleged shooter. It was said he received a negative evaluation report and that he had caused "red flags" to be raised some months ago concerning emails. Do we know anything this detailed about the "suspects" who were released? The caveat was added that it was unclear as to whether the suspect was the author of those emails. So, months ago, alarms were raised about emails the suspect might have sent, yet, in all those months the Army has been unable to determine who wrote them. Yeah, right. If red flags were in fact raised months ago, why did the Army do nothing? Going back to the 9/11 paradigm, we see the same evidence exhibited: the state had prior warnings but did not act on them. This proves unequivocally the government is either incompetent or complicit in both events. Yet, the state would have us all unarmed and depending on them for protection.
President Obama pledged, "to get answers to every single question about this event" but he also promised an end to signing statements, a transparent government, no more torture of detainees, and many more lies.
There has been speculation on the Internet that the shooting could have been a revolt against the Army from soldiers faced with stop-loss and multiple combat tours to Iraq and Afghanistan. While there is no evidence to support this theory, there is also no evidence to support the official Army version of events. Suicides among military personnel and veterans are at alarming levels, yet the Department of Defense does more to hide these facts than it does to deal with them.
The last thing the state can let happen is an awakening by its enforcement arm (military and LE) that they are nothing but tools of oppression and in fact, slaves to the monster they serve. While the military is trained and encouraged to kill and bomb in the name of the state, they are forbidden the means of protection for themselves and their loved ones once they are outside the killing zones designated by the state.
All is not normal inside the military community. This is not just seen in our military, instruments of oppression in other countries are revolting as well.
While it is doubtful we will ever learn the truth of exactly what happened at Fort Hood, we know with a degree of certainty the truth will never be revealed by the Army or the media. Could this have been a false flag event to divert the attention of the American public from the debates and planned demonstrations against the health care fiasco? Could it have simply been another MK Ultra event to further demonize the anti-war element in this country and to lay another crime at the current villain du jour: Muslims? Could there be a connection between this alleged shooter and his fellow Virginia Tech shooter Seung Hui Cho, other than an oblique reference to Cho having a Muslim influence?
One must always ask this question when faced with a story that is issued and controlled by the State: Cui Bono? Wonderful is it not the state is empowered with the unique ability to investigate its own lies and the power of the media and academia to demonize any who would question its veracity, and the support of Boobus, whose livelihood depends on the state's power to redistribute the wealth of the nation from producers to parasites.
November 9, 2009
Michael Gaddy an Army veteran of Vietnam, Grenada, and Beirut, lives in the Four Corners area of the American Southwest.
Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.
The Best of Michael Gaddy
Michael Gaddy doesn't mention Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman, but both of these were American Military Psyops used against America for the political purposes of Cheney/Bush. They aren't the only ones but for now these two examples are a few of the glaring examples of Military Psyops in America used against Americans.
As for 9/11 Bin Laden explicitly denied responsibility for 9/11, but right-wing war mongers and Constitution shreding pundits routinely say that Bin-Laden took responsibility for 9/11. They are liars and traitors and almost all of them work for the American Military Psyops at Fort Bragg NC. USASOCOM. Do you actually believe that a right wing pundit and idiot like Rush Linbaugh gets $27,000,000 a year from selling trinkets and viagra on his show?
100+ shots, 55 dead or wounded. 1 shooter? I think not!!
C-J
Fort Hood Mystery
By Michael Gaddy
LewRockwell.com
11-10--9
The facts as presented by the Army and the media reference the shooting at Fort Hood just don't compute. While I routinely dismiss any "facts" disseminated by the Army and the state's propaganda wing, sometimes referred to as the mainstream media, (MSM) there are some glaring inconsistencies in what has been reported about this tragedy.
First is the report the perpetrator was dead and then hours later the revelation that he was still alive. Exactly how long does it take to determine if a person is dead or alive? Could it be no one knew whom the shooter or shooters were and a story had to be concocted for public consumption? What happened to the two other "suspects" that were detained? What did they do to qualify as suspects and more importantly, what information surfaced that led to their release? One of the suspects reportedly stated he "was with the shooter."
Second is the number of victims from a single shooter. Let us not forget this shooting did not occur at the mall, it occurred on a military installation where the victims had been trained in military tactics and some were combat veterans. We are to believe they did nothing to stop a single shooter and he was allowed to reload several times and continue shooting and the only thing that stopped him was the arrival of a police officer after the gunman had gunned down over 40 people?
And how so very convenient for the state, a perpetrator who was both anti-war and a Muslim; just doesn't get any better than that. Could this be an example of following the philosophy of Rahm Emanuel on dealing with a crisis?
Third was the shutting down of communications in and around Ft. Hood for hours. While the Army and the media will explain this in various scenarios, it also provided the Army with a chance to create whatever story it was they wanted to provide the public on the terrible tragedy. Of course we all know the Army would never distort or lie about the facts involving the deaths of innocents. Well, there is that My Lai thing. People on the ground have told me cell phone towers were jammed to prevent unauthorized dissemination of information after the shooting. Again, the Army would not want any information contrary to the company line emerging from this disaster.
All too convenient for the Army was the rapid release of negative information related to the alleged shooter. It was said he received a negative evaluation report and that he had caused "red flags" to be raised some months ago concerning emails. Do we know anything this detailed about the "suspects" who were released? The caveat was added that it was unclear as to whether the suspect was the author of those emails. So, months ago, alarms were raised about emails the suspect might have sent, yet, in all those months the Army has been unable to determine who wrote them. Yeah, right. If red flags were in fact raised months ago, why did the Army do nothing? Going back to the 9/11 paradigm, we see the same evidence exhibited: the state had prior warnings but did not act on them. This proves unequivocally the government is either incompetent or complicit in both events. Yet, the state would have us all unarmed and depending on them for protection.
President Obama pledged, "to get answers to every single question about this event" but he also promised an end to signing statements, a transparent government, no more torture of detainees, and many more lies.
There has been speculation on the Internet that the shooting could have been a revolt against the Army from soldiers faced with stop-loss and multiple combat tours to Iraq and Afghanistan. While there is no evidence to support this theory, there is also no evidence to support the official Army version of events. Suicides among military personnel and veterans are at alarming levels, yet the Department of Defense does more to hide these facts than it does to deal with them.
The last thing the state can let happen is an awakening by its enforcement arm (military and LE) that they are nothing but tools of oppression and in fact, slaves to the monster they serve. While the military is trained and encouraged to kill and bomb in the name of the state, they are forbidden the means of protection for themselves and their loved ones once they are outside the killing zones designated by the state.
All is not normal inside the military community. This is not just seen in our military, instruments of oppression in other countries are revolting as well.
While it is doubtful we will ever learn the truth of exactly what happened at Fort Hood, we know with a degree of certainty the truth will never be revealed by the Army or the media. Could this have been a false flag event to divert the attention of the American public from the debates and planned demonstrations against the health care fiasco? Could it have simply been another MK Ultra event to further demonize the anti-war element in this country and to lay another crime at the current villain du jour: Muslims? Could there be a connection between this alleged shooter and his fellow Virginia Tech shooter Seung Hui Cho, other than an oblique reference to Cho having a Muslim influence?
One must always ask this question when faced with a story that is issued and controlled by the State: Cui Bono? Wonderful is it not the state is empowered with the unique ability to investigate its own lies and the power of the media and academia to demonize any who would question its veracity, and the support of Boobus, whose livelihood depends on the state's power to redistribute the wealth of the nation from producers to parasites.
November 9, 2009
Michael Gaddy an Army veteran of Vietnam, Grenada, and Beirut, lives in the Four Corners area of the American Southwest.
Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.
The Best of Michael Gaddy
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