Month: April 2016

Below, we'll show that 9/11 could NOT have been an inside job …

I. The 9/11 Commission and Congressional Investigation Into 9/11 All Disproved Any Conspiracy

9/11 was thoroughly and exhaustively investigated by the 9/11 Commission, Congress and U.S. scientific agencies.

This horse has already been beat to death, and anyone who raises questions is a nutjob.

True, the 9/11 Commission didn't believe that the government told the truth about 9/11,  and said the government obstructed their investigation.

For example:

• 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, and that the 9/11 debate should continue

• The 9/11 Commission chair said the Commission was “set up to fail”

• The Commission’s co-chairs said that the CIA (and likely the White House) “obstructed our investigation”

• 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that “There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn’t have access . . . .”

• 9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said “We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting”

• 9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: “It is a national scandal”; “This investigation is now compromised”; and “One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up”.  When asked in 2009 if he thought there should be another 9/11 commission, Cleland responded: “There should be about fifteen 9/11 commissions”

• The Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) – who led the 9/11 staff’s inquiry – said “At some level of the government, at some point in time…there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened“. He also said “I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years…. This is not spin. This is not true.”

Some examples of obstruction of justice into the 9/11 investigation include:

• An FBI informant hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000. Specifically, investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House. As the New York Times notes:

Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the White House on Tuesday of covering up evidence ….The accusation stems from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s refusal to allow investigators for a Congressional inquiry and the independent Sept. 11 commission to interview an informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who had been the landlord in San Diego of two Sept. 11 hijackers.

• The chairs of both the 9/11 Commission and the Official Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 said that Soviet-style government “minders” obstructed the investigation into 9/11 by intimidating witnesses (and see this)

• The 9/11 Commissioners concluded that officials from the Pentagon lied to the Commission, and considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements

• The tape of interviews of air traffic controllers on-duty on 9/11 was intentionally destroyed by crushing the cassette by hand, cutting the tape into little pieces, and then dropping the pieces in different trash cans around the building as shown by this NY Times article (summary version is free; full version is pay-per-view) and by this article from the Chicago Sun-Times

• As reported by ACLU, FireDogLake, RawStory and many others, declassified documents shows that Senior Bush administration officials sternly cautioned the 9/11 Commission against probing too deeply into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001

The CIA also videotaped the interrogation of 9/11 suspects, falsely told the 9/11 Commission that there were no videotapes or other records of the interrogations, and then illegally destroyed all of the tapes and transcripts of the interrogations.

9/11 Commission co-chairs Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton wrote:

Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.

The chief lawyer for Guantanamo litigation – Vijay Padmanabhan – said that torture of 9/11 suspects was widespread.

And Susan J. Crawford – the senior Pentagon official overseeing the military commissions at Guantánamo told Bob Woodward:

We tortured Qahtani. His treatment met the legal definition of torture.

Indeed, some of the main sources of information were tortured right up to the point of death.

Moreover, the type of torture used by the U.S. on the Guantanamo suspects is of a special type. Senator Levin revealed that the the U.S. used Communist torture techniques specifically aimed at creating false confessions. (and see this, this, this and this).

And according to NBC News:

• Much of the 9/11 Commission Report was based upon the testimony of people who were tortured

• At least four of the people whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators information as a way to stop being “tortured”

• One of the Commission’s main sources of information was tortured until he agreed to sign a confession that he was NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO READ

• The 9/11 Commission itself doubted the accuracy of the torture confessions, and yet kept their doubts to themselves

Indeed, the Co-Chair of the congressional investigation into 9/11 (Bob Graham)  and 9/11 Commissioner and former Senator Bob Kerrey are calling for either a “PERMANENT 9/11 commission” or a NEW 9/11 investigation to get to the bottom of it.

But hey … nothing's perfect.  We should just let bygones be bygones.

II. No One Could Have Foreseen 9/11

No one could have foreseen the diabolical 9/11 plan.    After all, America has not been directly attacked for centuries.

And crashing planes into buildings?  No one could have imagined such an out-of-the-blue attack.

True, overwhelming evidence shows that 9/11 was foreseeable.  And Al Qaeda crashing planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was itself foreseeable. (even the chair of the 9/11 Commission said that the attack was preventable).

And a top NSA whistleblower says that the NSA had all of the information it needed prior to 9/11 to stop the attacks. The only reason NSA didn’t share that information with other agencies is because of corruption … in an effort to consolidate power. And widespread spying by the U.S. government on Americans began before 9/11 (confirmed here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here). And the government tapped the 9/11 hijackers’ phones, and heard the 9/11 hijackers’ plans from their own mouths.

But our government officials were busy at the time … and maybe they just took their eyes of the ball.

Anyway, knowing it could happen doesn't mean that they let it happen on purpose.

III. They Didn't Have Time to Stop It

Even when government officials realized what was happening, they didn't have time to react and stop it.

After all, the hijacked planes were being flown hundreds of miles an hour.  And by the time our government and military men knew what was happening, it was all over.

True, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) – responsible for intercepting errant aircraft over the U.S. – has a standard operating procedure for scrambling planes for interception which takes only a few minutes.

NORAD regularly and successfully scrambled fighter jets in response to suspicious or unidentified aircraft flying in US airspace in the years preceding 9/11.  See this report from the General Accounting Office and this article from AP.  To do this, NORAD keeps a pair of fighters on “alert” at sites around the U.S. These fighters are fueled, armed, and ready to take off within minutes of receiving a scramble order. See these reports from American Defender, Air Force Magazine, Bergen Record, 12/5/2003 and The First 600 Days of Combat (page 14).

For example, NORAD scrambled:

• Between 1990 and 1994, NORAD scrambled 1,518 fighter jets (page 4)

• Between 1996 and 1998, NORAD’s Western Air Defense Sector scrambled fighters 129 times to identify unknown aircraft that might be a threat, and 42 times against potential and actual drug smugglers

• In 1997, NORAD's Southeast Air Defense Sector tracked 427 unidentified aircraft, and fighters intercepted these “unknowns” 36 times. The same year, NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector handled 65 unidentified tracks and the Western Air Defense Sector handles 104 unidentified tracks

• In 1998, the Southeast Air Defense Sector logged more than 400 fighter scrambles

• In 1999, NORAD’s fighters at a single base – Homestead Air Reserve Base in Florida – scrambled 75 times per year, on average

• In 2000, NORAD’s fighters fly 147 intercept missions

• And between September 2000 and June 2001, NORAD flew 67 intercepts

Yet, on September 11th, they failed to do their job 4 times in a single day:

• NORAD, once notified of the off-course aircraft, failed to scramble jets from the nearest bases

• Once airborne, interceptors failed to reach their targets because they flew at small fractions of their top speeds

• Fighters that were airborne and within interception range of the deviating aircraft were not redeployed to pursue them

You might think that the military couldn't find the hijacked planes because the hijackers turned off the transponders. However, a former air traffic controller, who knows the flight corridor which the two planes which hit the Twin Towers flew "like the back of my hand" and who handled two actual hijackings says that planes can be tracked on radar even when their transponders are turned off (also, listen to this interview).

The Director of the American U.S. "Star Wars" space defense program in both Republican and Democratic administrations, who was a senior air force colonel who flew 101 combat missions (Col. Robert Bowman) said:

If our government had merely [done] nothing, and I say that as an old interceptor pilot—I know the drill, I know what it takes, I know how long it takes, I know what the procedures are, I know what they were, and I know what they’ve changed them to—if our government had merely done nothing, and allowed normal procedures to happen on that morning of 9/11, the Twin Towers would still be standing and thousands of dead Americans would still be alive. [T]hat is treason!

U.S. Army Air Defense Officer and NORAD Tac Director, decorated with the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star and the Soldiers Medal (Capt. Daniel Davis) stated:

There is no way that an aircraft . . . would not be intercepted when they deviate from their flight plan, turn off their transponders, or stop communication with Air Traffic Control … Attempts to obscure facts by calling them a 'conspiracy Theory' does not change the truth. It seems, 'Something is rotten in the State.'

NORAD's actions on 9/11 were so odd that it was forced to give 3 entirely different versions of what happened that day, as each previous version has been exposed as false. When someone repeatedly changes his testimony after being caught in lies, how believable is he?  The falsity of NORAD's explanations were so severe that even the 9/11 Commission considered recommending criminal charges for the making of false statements.

But hey, they probably just had an off day.

IV. No One Could Keep Such a Big Conspiracy Secret … Someone Would Have Spilled the Beans

If Americans were somehow involved in letting 9/11 occur, someone would have talked.

Some jerk would have had too much to drink, and bragged about his dastardly deed at a bar.

True, military analyst and Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said: “Secrets … can be kept reliably … for decades … even though they are known to THOUSANDS of insiders.”

And many other huge projects involving many thousands of people were kept secret for many years.

But that can't be true for 9/11  (even though government officials say that 9/11 was state -sponsored terrorism).

V. Our Government Wouldn't DO Something Like That

Third, there's no way government officials, military or intelligence personnel – who are sworn to protect and defend America – would do something like that!

True, the U.S. government officials have admitted that they've repeatedly carried out false flag attacks.

But 9/11 was obviously different.

VI. But the Whole Controlled Demolition Thing Is Bullshit

Whatever you else you may think, the whole "bombs took down the Twin Towers" thing is bullshit.

True, the collapse of the third World Trade Center skyscraper on 9/11 – one that was never hit with a plane – makes no sense. But that building, World Trade Center 7, is not one of the Twin Towers.

And admittedly, thousands of  engineers and architects and scientists (and see this) think that the Twin Towers themselves may well have been brought down with high-tech explosives.

But they're obviously all high on drugs.

VIII. You Don't Want to Be Labeled As Crazy (Or Worse) … Do You?

If – after reading the 6 facts above – you still question 9/11, then you might need a friendly warning …

If you don't knock it off, you might be labeled crazy … or a terrorist.

After all, we've got to censor those darn conspiracy theories.

We hope that the above-described essay disproves – once and for all – all of the crazy theories going around the Intertubes, and that everyone will shut up once and for all about 9/11.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1UP0CqU George Washington

By Keturah Hetrick of Defense One

How Bad Would A Radiological Terror Attack Be?

When it comes to human health, all nuclear scenarios are not created equal. The Chernobyl disaster caused an estimated 16,000 cases of thyroid cancer, while the Fukushima power plant accident barely produced any. A dizzying number of variables go into understanding the damage that a particular nuclear or radiological device might have. But modeling the effects of such devices has become also become easier, and more public, thanks to the Internet.

It’s “no secret” that organizations like Al-Qaeda and ISIS “are interested in securing nuclear materials so they can use them for terrorist attacks,” Dr. Timothy Jorgensen, a professor of radiation medicine at Georgetown University and the author of Strange Glow: The Story of Radiation, told an audience at the Center for Strategic International Studies on Monday.

How might we be able to predict the effect of a particular attack? The type and size of bomb, materials used, detonation from the air versus ground, population density, and even wind can help us to predict increases in cancer risk, deaths from a bomb’s blast, and the timing of deaths from radiation sickness.

“The distribution of doses within the population determine the survivors,” says Jorgensen. “You can predict the type and severity of health consequences by just knowing the doses among individuals.”

Our bodies absorb radiation through the course of normal life experiences. For example, we absorb 3.0 millisieverts (a common measurement of the body’s radiation absorption, abbreviated as mSv) from a single mammogram. Eating 1,000 bananas adds another 0.1 mSv to our bodies. (Bananas, like all potassium-rich foods, contain very small amounts of radioactive material.)

Of course, our bodies absorb far more radiation if we’re near a more-potent source, like an atomic bomb explosion or power plant accident.

At 1,000 mSv, radiation sickness sets in as cells begin to die. Symptoms include spontaneous bleeding, ulcerated organs, and skin that sloughs off. But, you will likely recover, with only a somewhat higher chance of developing cancer later in life.

About half of a population that receives a 5,000-mSv dose will die. This point is known as the Lethal Dose 50 (LD50).

Doses above 10,000 mSv cause gastrointestinal (GI) syndrome, leaving the afflicted with less than two weeks to live. Above 50,000 mSv, brain swelling causes Central Nervous System (CNS) syndrome. Death will come in hours.

Currently, there’s no treatment for CNS syndromes. According to Jorgensen, treatment for CNS “wouldn’t make much sense” because of GI syndrome’s imminence.

In a normal distribution of radiation doses, that leaves a small number of treatable victims.

Unfortunately, our abilities to treat victims within that range haven’t improved much. Most deaths from the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima were caused by fires or the detonation’s blast, and less than 10 percent of total deaths fell within the treatable range. If the Hiroshima bombing occurred today, we would be able to reduce the number of deaths by only 5 percent, Jorgensen says.

Dirty Bombs

Reports show that last week’s Brussels attackers are among many ISIS affiliates pursuing dirty bombs, renewing fears about the group’s nuclear ambitions.

Dirty bombs, also known as radiological dispersal devices (RDDs), aren’t actually nuclear weapons. Though they distribute a small amount of radioactive material upon detonation, their blast is far deadlier, and most people exposed to the radioactive blast wouldn’t receive a lethal dose.

According to a recent report from the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a dirty bomb “would not cause catastrophic levels of death and injury” but “could leave billions of dollars of damage due to the costs of evacuation, relocation, and cleanup,” contributing to the weapons’ reputation as “weapons of mass disruption.”

“Recent reports out of Iraq warn that Islamic State extremists may have already stolen enough material to build a [dirty] bomb that could contaminate major portions of a city and cost billions of dollars in damage,” the report states.

Experts agree that terrorists are more likely to use a dirty bomb than other radioactive devices because dirty bombs are less technically complicated to build and require materials that are relatively easy to obtain.

INDs

While experts believe that terrorist groups are more likely to use dirty bombs, uranium-based improvised nuclear devices (INDs) aren’t out of the question. But all INDs, which Jorgensen describes as “homemade atomic bomb[s],” are not alike.

Ground detonations and air blasts result in different casualties. Terrorists are more likely to detonate an IND from the ground, rather than dropping it from a plane. This kind of blast would cause a greater amount of fallout, which increases radiation exposure and thus, health risk.

If a terrorist group were to detonate a 15-kiloton nuclear bomb (the size of the Hiroshima bomb, considered a plausible size for a terrorist group to build or obtain), the radius for radiation sickness deaths and the radius for deaths from the blast would be about the same size.

Interestingly, the more energy that an explosion releases, the percentage of people who die from percussive blasts increases, while the percentage who die from radiation sickness decreases. That information helps us to predict deaths from the percussive blast versus deaths from radiation—and to better predict the proportion of the population who might be treatable.

If a 50-kiloton bomb were detonated over a civilian population, radiation sickness wouldn’t kill anyone – because anyone close enough for a lethal dose would already have been killed by the blast.

But energy output and altitude are far from the only variables that help us to forecast a nuclear bomb’s health impact.

Enter the Nuke Map, a project from nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein. The interactive map lets you plug in variables to see the outcome of various nuclear bomb scenarios.

For example, a 15-kiloton nuclear bomb (the size of the Hiroshima bomb, considered a plausible size for a terrorist group to obtain) dropped from a plane on downtown Washington, D.C. would leave hundreds of thousands of casualties within city limits. That same bomb set off at ground level would result in fewer immediate casualties—but fallout that extended for miles, due to the region’s northeast winds, Jorgensen explained.

And, even at non-lethal doses, radiation exposure introduces myriad concerns: How far away from the detonation site does cancer risk increase? Is it worth the risk to evacuate hospital and nursing home residents? When is it safe for displaced residents to return home?

According to Jorgensen, the best way to answer these questions later is public education now. “People… can’t even discuss the topic because they don’t know the difference between radiation and radioactivity dose. They need to have at least that much information to be engaged in the process,” he says. “We, as public health officials, should do a much better job at bringing this message to the public.”

The interactive Nukemap can be accessed below:

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1S0jrAo Tyler Durden

Key economic releases for the coming week include the ISM non-manufacturing report on Wednesday. There are several scheduled speeches from Fed officials this week. Fed Chair Yellen will take part in a discussion with former Fed Chairs on Thursday.

Monday, April 4

10:00 AM Factory orders, February (GS -2.1%, consensus -1.8%, last +1.6%)

• Factory orders likely declined in February following a 1.6% gain in January. Falling factory orders would reflect the weaker-than-expected durable goods report for February.

09:30 AM Boston Fed President Rosengren (FOMC voter) speaks

• Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Eric Rosengren will speak about economic and cybersecurity risks at the Boston Fed’s cybersecurity conference. In February, Rosengren noted that “if inflation is slower to return to target, monetary policy normalization should be unhurried. A more gradual approach is an appropriate response to headwinds from abroad that slow exports, and financial volatility that raises the cost of funds to many firms.”

07:00 PM Minneapolis Fed President Kashkari (FOMC non-voter) speaks

• Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari will hold a town hall meeting on ‘too big to fail’. There will be Q&A beforehand at 5:15 PM. The newly appointed President Kashkari has said little in public regarding his views on monetary policy.

Tuesday, April 5

01:00 AM Chicago Fed President Evans (FOMC non-voter) speaks

• Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans speaks on the economy and monetary policy at the Credit Suisse Asian Investment Conference in Hong Kong. Audience and media Q&A is expected. Last week, President Evans discussed the “asymmetric” risks facing the US economy, noting that “we should buy some insurance against unexpected weakness by accepting a somewhat higher likelihood of stronger outcomes. Translated into monetary policy, this means being more accommodative than usual to provide an extra boost to aggregate demand as a buffer against possible future downside shocks that might otherwise drive us back to the effective lower bound.”

08:30 AM Trade balance, February (GS -$46.0bn, consensus -$46.2bn, last -$45.7bn)

• The new advanced goods trade report showed a slightly wider goods deficit in February (-$62.9bn from -$62.4bn), reflecting a widening trade balance across foods & beverages, capital goods, and consumer goods. We expect the services balance to be little changed in February. Overall, we expect the total trade deficit to be -$46.0bn.

10:00 AM ISM non-manufacturing, March (GS 54.6, consensus 54.1, last 53.4)

• Service sector surveys improved in March. The Philly Fed (+10.3pt to +13.9), Richmond Fed (+11pt to +9), and New York Fed (+23.7pt to +12.6) indices all rose (the New York survey is a relatively new and not seasonally adjusted series). The Markit Services PMI also rose (+1.3pt to 51.0), escaping contractionary levels. The ISM non-manufacturing index fell by 0.1pt last month.

Wednesday, April 6

12:20 PM Cleveland Fed President Mester (FOMC voter) speaks

• Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Loretta Mester speaks on the U.S. economic outlook and monetary policy at an event hosted by the Cleveland Association for Business Economics, CFA Society Cleveland, and Risk Management Association of Northern Ohio. Last week, President Mester stated, “Given actual and expected economic performance, the risks around the outlook, and the progress toward our policy goals, my assessment at this time is that it will be appropriate to continue to gradually reduce the degree of accommodation this year. Gradual normalization means that monetary policy will remain accommodative for some time to come, providing support to the economy and insurance against downside risks.”

02:00 PM Minutes from the March 15-16 FOMC meeting

• Fed officials indicated a more cautious approach to the near-term policy outlook at the March FOMC meeting, a message that was reinforced during last week’s speech by Chair Yellen. In the minutes, we will be watching for (1) any additional signs that the committee is embracing a “risk management” approach for monetary policy, (2) further details around the committee’s view on growth headwinds stemming from abroad, (3) the committee’s assessment of the balance of risks to the economic outlook, and (4) any views regarding the recent acceleration in core inflation.

08:00 PM Dallas Fed President Kaplan (FOMC non-voter) speaks

• Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Kaplan speaks on a moderated panel at the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth. Last month, President Kaplan said that “the Fed needs to show patience in decisions to remove accommodation”.

Thursday, April 7

08:30 AM Initial jobless claims, week ended April 2 (consensus 270k, last 276k)

Continuing jobless claims, week ended March 26 (consensus 2,170k, last 2,173k)

• Consensus expects initial jobless claims to edge down to 270k. Initial claims moved up last week, although we suspect some of the rise may be due to seasonal effects stemming from the Good Friday holiday.

05:30 PM Fed Chair Yellen speaks

• Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen will take part in a discussion with former Fed Chairs Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, and Paul Volcker at an event hosted by International House. Last week, Chair Yellen acknowledged that core inflation had risen “somewhat more than my expectation in December,” but said “it is too early to tell if this recent faster pace will prove durable”.

08:00 PM Kansas City Fed President George (FOMC voter) speaks

• Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Esther George will speak about the U.S. economy. Q&A is expected. At the March FOMC, President George dissented, citing her preference to raise the target range for the federal funds rate.

Friday, April 8

10:00 AM Wholesale inventories, February (consensus -0.2%, last +0.2%)

• Consensus expects wholesale inventories to decrease slightly in January.

Source: GS

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1UOqN0L Tyler Durden

Even though, as we said in our previous post, the starting role in today’s record document leak should be that of Mossack Fonseca (and its heir apparent, Rothschild, operating out of Reno, NV) the general population is far more curious to learn which names will emerge as a result of this historic crackdown involving 11 million documents and 2,600 gigabytes of data.

And while the full disclosure effort will take months, if not years, here courtesy of Fusion, is a data map of the intersection between clients, shareholders, companies and agents who have used Mossack Fonseca’s services.

From Fusion: “the map represents just over a third of all the data we have access to through the leak. We’ve chosen to show you 115,373 of the most connected entities so you can see how, in many case, individuals are actually related in some way.

What does that say? It tells us that the people who create shell companies through Mossack Fonseca move in similar circles.

 

You will notice the option to select, “Leticia Montoya”, who is a Mossack Fonseca employee. Through the documents we have connected her with at least 10,000 companies as a stand-in director or shareholder. Ms Montoya earns around $900 a month in the HR department of the company.

 

The other option is to see companies that are in some way connected with the United States.

The Mossack Fonseca Universe:

 

Meanwhile, for those who enjoy primary data, the full universe of currently available source documents is available at the following link. Based on a recent Wikileaks tweet, more may be becoming available soon.

Should we release all 11 million #PanamaPapers so everyone can search through them like our other publications?

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 3, 2016

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1pYbrt9 Tyler Durden

For all the media excitement about the disclosed names in the “Panama Papers” leak, in this case represented by the extensive list of Mossack Fonseca clients, this is not a story about which super wealthy individuals did everything in their power, both legal and illegal, to avoid taxes, preserve their financial anonymity, and generally preserve their wealth. After all, that’s what they do, and it should not come as a surprise that they will always do that, especially following last year’s disclosure by the same ICIJ which revealed a list of 100,000 HSBC clients who had been dutifully avoiding the payment of taxes.

What the story is about is the nebulous world of offshore tax evasion and tax havens, which based on data from the World Bank, IMF, UN, and central banks, hide between $21 and $32 trillion, where registered incorporation agents and law firms in small Caribbean countries (and not so small US states) make the laundering of money and the “disappearance” of the super wealthy, into untracable numbers hidden behind shell companies, possible.

So, in order to learn some more about the real star of this story, the Panamanian lawfirm of Mossack Fonseca, we went to Fusion which has compiled a fascinating story of the company’s history, founders, and key milestone events in its life. 

 

These include the Nazis, the CIA, Mexican drug lords, and of course, the U.S.

First, here is the Nazi and CIA connection:

Jurgen Mossack’s family landed here in the 1960s. During World War II, his father had served in the Nazi Party’s Waffen-SS, according to U.S. Army intelligence files obtained by the ICIJ. Once in Panama, the elder Mossack offered to spy on communists in Cuba for the CIA. (Mossack Fonseca said the firm “will not answer any questions related to private information regarding our company founding partners.”)

Here is the connection to Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, and perhaps to the DEA:

Many times Mossack Fonseca has had no clue which nefarious characters were doing what with the companies the firm created – as when Jurgen discovered in 2005, according to internal emails, that he was the registered agent and listed as the director for a company controlled by the Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero. The co-founder of the Guadalajara Cartel was convicted in Mexico in 1985 for the brutal murder of U.S. DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. (Today, Quintero is again considered a fugitive by the US after walking out of prison in 2013 on a technicality).

 

Mossack Fonseca’s senior partners instructed an employee to carry out their resignation from the company upon the discovery. “Pablo Escobar was like a newborn compared to R. Caro Quintero!” Jurgen wrote in reaction to the news. “I wouldn’t want to be among those he visits after he leaves prison!”

And then there is the state of Nevada:

In 2013, an Argentine prosecutor’s report linked Nevada-incorporated shell companies involved in a major corruption scandal to Mossack Fonseca. When those shell companies became the subject of a federal court battle in Nevada, the leaked files show, Mossack Fonseca employees took steps to remove paper records and to wipe computer files and phone logs at its Las Vegas office. One employee even traveled from Central America to Nevada to bring back files. “When Andrés came to Nevada he cleaned up everything and brought all documents to Panama,” according to an email dated Sept. 24, 2014.

 

Mossack Fonseca said it “categorically” denies hiding or destroying documents in its statement to the ICIJ: “Let us be clear that it is not our policy to hide or destroy documentation that may be of use in any ongoing investigation or proceeding.”

 

The leaked records also contradict sworn testimony by Jurgen Mossack, who told the federal district court that his firm was separate from “MF Nevada,” its office in Las Vegas, and had no control over it. Mossack Fonseca “has never maintained an office, establishment or principal place of business in Nevada,” Mossack testified in July 2015. But, according to the ICIJ investigation, internal documents show the opposite, indicating that the firm’s Panama City headquarters controlled MF Nevada’s bank account, and that the firm’s co-founders and one other official with the company owned 100 percent of MF Nevada.

Why is Nevada important? Because recall that according to a recent investigation by Bloomberg, “The World’s Favorite New Tax Haven Is the United States” and specifically several US states such as Nevada, Wyoming and South Dakota.

After years of lambasting other countries for helping rich Americans hide their money offshore, the U.S. is emerging as a leading tax and secrecy haven for rich foreigners. By resisting new global disclosure standards, the U.S. is creating a hot new market, becoming the go-to place to stash foreign wealth. Everyone from London lawyers to Swiss trust companies is getting in on the act, helping the world’s rich move accounts from places like the Bahamas and the British Virgin Islands to Nevada, Wyoming, and South Dakota.

 

“How ironic—no, how perverse—that the USA, which has been so sanctimonious in its condemnation of Swiss banks, has become the banking secrecy jurisdiction du jour,” wrote Peter A. Cotorceanu, a lawyer at Anaford AG, a Zurich law firm, in a recent legal journal. “That ‘giant sucking sound’ you hear? It is the sound of money rushing to the USA.”

That money is rushing for one simple reason: dirty foreign – and local – money is welcome in the U.S., no questions asked, to be shielded by the most impenetrable tax secrecy available anywhere on the planet.

One may even say that nowadays, US-based tax havens are the new Switzerland, or Bahamas or, for that matter, Panama. Indeed, for most Americans, offshore tax haven are now meaningless with the passage of the FATCA law, which makes the parking of dirty US money abroad practically impossible. So where does that money go instead – it stays in the US:

Others are also jumping in: Geneva-based Cisa Trust Co. SA, which advises wealthy Latin Americans, is applying to open in Pierre, S.D., to “serve the needs of our foreign clients,” said John J. Ryan Jr., Cisa’s president.

 

Trident Trust Co., one of the world’s biggest providers of offshore trusts, moved dozens of accounts out of Switzerland, Grand Cayman, and other locales and into Sioux Falls, S.D., in December, ahead of a Jan. 1 disclosure deadline.

 

“Cayman was slammed in December, closing things that people were withdrawing,” said Alice Rokahr, the president of Trident in South Dakota, one of several states promoting low taxes and confidentiality in their trust laws. “I was surprised at how many were coming across that were formerly Swiss bank accounts, but they want out of Switzerland.”

And, to top it off, there is one specific firm which is spearheading the conversion of the U.S. into Panama: Rothschild.

Rothschild, the centuries-old European financial institution, has opened a trust company in Reno, Nev., a few blocks from the Harrah’s and Eldorado casinos. It is now moving the fortunes of wealthy foreign clients out of offshore havens such as Bermuda, subject to the new international disclosure requirements, and into Rothschild-run trusts in Nevada, which are exempt.

 

* * *

 

For financial advisers, the current state of play is simply a good business opportunity. In a draft of his San Francisco presentation, Rothschild’s Penney wrote that the U.S. “is effectively the biggest tax haven in the world.” The U.S., he added in language later excised from his prepared remarks, lacks “the resources to enforce foreign tax laws and has little appetite to do so.”

Yes, Mossack Fonseca may now be history, and its countless uberwealthy clients exposed, but none other than Rothschild is now delighted to be able to fill its rather large shoes.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1qhRqhQ Tyler Durden

In the aftermath of such “paradigm” flops as 3D TV, 4K TV, the “wearables” revolution, the tech world is now obsessed with Virtual Reality. Here, courtesy of The Onion, are some potential ways that Oculus Rift and other virtual reality technologies will affect our lives.

• Pornography: New 360-degree pornographic films will allow viewers to pan all around the bed and across the room to where cameramen and boom mic operators are standing
• Education: Students will have access to wealth of new interactive visual aids that won’t be updated for the next 50 years
• Business: Provides another medium that CEO won’t understand but will demand be wedged into the new marketing campaign by June
• VR Industry: Potential to see moderate growth in this sector
• Tourism: Could very well grind to screeching halt once travelers realize they can experience Liberty Bell from comfort of own living room
• Neck Pain: Cases of neck pain projected to triple in both volume and severity over the next five years
• Music: Immersion in 360-degree drum kits will allow amateurs to thrash with increased sickness
• Clamming: Virtual reality to have no discernible impact on clamming
• Mental Health: Putting on a VR headset to discuss feelings of dissociation and detachment with a computer-generated avatar will be extremely quick and affordable

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1V37joC Tyler Durden

By Chris at http://ift.tt/12YmHT5

I was abruptly awoken yesterday by a “PMS day.” A Richter-like force, brimming under the surface, evidenced by the stomping, grumbling, and frustration that accompanies this phenomenon. As a husband, I’m grateful for the warning signs; I can hide (I mean prepare) accordingly.

It’s not hard to see change when it’s upon us. Identifying it ahead of time is a little bit trickier, but not much. The signs, like a grouchy wife, are often there if we care to look.

I have often wondered if the average Joe in the midst of the Industrial Revolution ever looked around and noticed the change that was coming?

The amazing changes witnessed since the late 1700’s are easily understood in hindsight. What is not commonly understood (in large part because we’re in the midst of it) is that today we stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live work and play.

But first, to understand the future we need to look to the past.

Let’s take the aforementioned Industrial Revolution, which can be broken down into 3 key areas of innovation and disruption:

The First Stage

The first stage of the Industrial Revolution, around 1780, entailed harnessing steam power. Remember those old steam trains and water mills seen now only in children’s books and third world hell holes? Well, what they did was mechanize production, resulting in huge advances in manufacturing.

The Second Stage

Around 1870 electricity, which provided mechanization and production at a greatly increased level, in large part replaced steam.

The Third Stage

Around 1970 the use of information and electronics to amplify, enhance, and automate production came into the fold.

Fast forward to 2016 and what is upon us, and taking place at an exponential rate, is a revolution driven by a coalescing and a convergence of multiple technologies, each providing a magnifying effect on one another.

Just as an amazing chocolate cake requires a number of ingredients, today we have multiple ingredients (technologies) coming together and forming entirely new systems. In doing so, these technologies are  completely replacing and disrupting existing industries, products and power structures.

It’s easily one of the most exciting and potentially frightening times to be an entrepreneur, investor and consumer. Frightening because expecting things to be the way they’ve always been is the most dangerous thing one can do; exciting because the tsunami-like shift of power and capital taking place at ever increasing speed affords incredible opportunity.

If you’ve read the media over the past couple years you may be familiar with peer-to-peer lending, crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, Bitcoin (both the currency and the blockchain) or the sharing economy, which includes services such as Uber, Airbnb, Wikileaks and even Tesla.

A common theme with all of these is that they disrupt an existing industry which often enjoys a stranglehold.

Peer-to-peer lending, for instance, usurps investment banks and lending institutions. Bitcoin and crypto currencies usurp the need for central banks, financial institutions, stock exchanges, custodians, notaries, and credit cards to name but a few. Then we have 3D printing, which disrupts manufacturing by allowing individuals to design, create, and produce customized goods in their own home for less than the mass-produced alternatives.

Fighting is Futile

Fighting technology is a losing battle. You may as well fight oxygen.

Take for example the case against Kim Dotcom. The US Government have spent millions of dollars doing all that they can to shut down file sharing, and they chose little Kim and his company Megaupload as the poster child designed to teach “all who may dare to follow” a lesson.

Here’s how successful they’ve been…

Why are these exponential technologies so successful? That answer is the same one that explains why the US military has been wildly unsuccessful in fighting Al Qaeda. It’s a lesson they should have learnt from the Soviets 20 years earlier.

The answer is decentralization.

Attacking a bunch of goat herders in Jesus sandals, who are scattered across inhospitable terrain, with factions on every continent, is like trying to defeat soil.

Technological advancements were the game changer for the terrorists. Not only are terrorists decentralised, but the cost of military hardware and advancements in technology have altered the global power structure.

Not only do these exponential technologies disrupt industries, they will also bring about disruptive changes in political regimes and even borders at an increasing speed.

The Soviet Example

1986 was the year that the Mujaheddin first shot down a Soviet Mi-24 Hind helicopter. The Ruskies had been in Afghanistan for 7 years enforcing their will. A military superpower to be reckoned with. 3 years later they were gone, tail between their legs.

Why?

The US-made Stinger missile. Costing less than $75,000 it was a steal, easily operated by a single man. And sporting a kill ratio of 70%, the Stinger in the hands of a bunch of goat herders changed the economics and success of large scale, centralised warfare.

Who would have guessed that a shoulder held missile, manned by a poverty-stricken group of villagers, would stave off a military superpower?

While the Stinger missile and cyber warfare today massively disrupt the existing balance of power, seemingly innocuous technologies we’re all now used to, and consume regularly, do much the same thing.

Authorities tried to stop Airbnb as well as Uber. City officials have banned their use, lobby groups have fought and continue to fight them, and yet both have continued to grow.

They grow not because of the companies themselves marketing heavily, but because their users share it. When something is fundamentally useful and valuable to the consumer, human nature is to share it.

If a particular product is centralised and found in a large factory, shutting its operations would be a cinch. This is why labour unions dominated society during the industrial era.

Today that’s not the case. In order to stop product use each and every consumer would need to be stopped.

The world we’re living in includes billions of people connected digitally, holding unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge that only a decade ago was un-achievable to even the most powerful of the world’s leaders.

If centralized powers are to fight this trend they will be fighting a decentralized network of billions of individuals scattered across the globe. Borders matter less and less in our connected world.

Networks which are viral, decentralised and useful, are incredibly difficult to stop, and with every passing day they grow in strength. Once a tipping point is reached they become part of the very fabric of society and things are never the same again.

The Disrupted

Napster was one of the early movers in sharing music online. In 2001 it was shut down by the authorities. Much like file sharing mentioned above, today music sharing is multiples of what Sean Parker ever had in mind.

The disrupted?

Here we have traditional music sales. Anyone who was making a living from selling CDs has had to find something else to do.

At our upcoming Seraph Summit in Del Mar, California, attendees will get to meet Andres Barreto, the founder of Grooveshark, another music sharing service that post-dated Napster. Disruptive technologies are top of the list of subject matter.

 

The disruptive technologies reshaping how we live, work and play have a number of characteristics:

1. They defy the status quo. Whenever you disrupt the status quo you are smashing head long into people’s livelihoods. It’s never pretty. This explains why Julian Assange is still holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. It explains the list of lawsuits against Tesla by the automotive industry. It explains the banking industries fear of, and rejection of, Bitcoin.
2. They disrupt the balance of power. To point number 1 above, it’s not possible to disrupt existing power structures without defying the status quo and it’s not possible to defy the status quo, succeed and simultaneously not disrupt the balance of power.
3. They are decentralised. There are only two ways to change incredibly powerful institutions and power structures. One is the industrial age method of head-to head-combat. War! The other is with exponential decentralised technology, which is almost impossible to stop.
4. They are transparent. Bitcoin is open source. Tesla’s technology is open source. Crowd funding and peer-to-peer lending all function with transparency embedded.
5. Distribution. They can be distributed rapidly, efficiently and at scale.

These facts are aiding to compound and multiply the rate of growth in emerging technologies such as 3D printing, robotics, artificial intelligence, biotech, nanotechnology, virtual reality, and a host of others, including blockchain.

Perhaps the most important point to consider is point number 5. The thing to understand is how exponential technologies permanently reshape the demand curve.

The Impacted

There are few industries that are not being (or will not be) impacted by this tidal wave of disruption. The shift from centralized industries to decentralized is unmistakable and accelerating every day.

When an entire host of accelerating technologies come together, working off each other, the results are spectacular. New systems are formed with increasing speed and old systems fragment and fall apart as their inherent weaknesses become increasingly evident.

I recently had an excellent conversation with a friend on this very topic. I recorded it and if you’re a subscriber you’ll get it early next week. He’s also joining us in Del Mar, California in a few week’s time, and if you’re a forward-thinking investor you should consider joining us too.

Seriously, if you wish to get a deep understanding of the most powerful trends in motion today and how they are shaping the world then you need to book your space now before we’re full.

The timing could not be better. The changes afoot today are causing a shift of wealth the magnitude of which promises to be one of the largest in human history.

The Elephant in the Room

I’ll leave you with a question.

What entity or entities can you think of that are exhibiting the following traits?

• Dishonest, shielding information from the public who are their “clients”
• Centralized
• Lacking in transparency
• Hold, via coercion, the balance of power

Have a good weekend!

– Chris

“This kid came up with Napster, and before that, none of us thought of content protection.” – Morgan Freeman

 

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via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1ZXtr3n Capitalist Exploits

By EconMatters

We discuss some of the current fallacies in the Oil Market in this video. From Russia Oil Production, Inventory Builds, Saudi Arabia`s Strategy, and Market Sentiment regarding the rally off the bottom.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1V36OLg EconMatters

Dy Dana Lyons of My401kPro.com

Stocks Should Double In 3 Years (…Or Drop By A Third)

In our April 1st Chart Of The Day, we showed that the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) did something that it has only done 3 other times since 1900. After dropping over 10% during the quarter, it recovered to close the quarter positive.

The 3 prior quarters that saw the DJIA accomplish this feat were the 4th quarter of 1933, the 4th quarter of 1971 and the 4th quarter of 2000. Following these reversals, the index had some interesting returns over the subsequent 3 years: it was up a lot…or it was down a lot. After the 1933 occurrence, the DJIA rallied as much as 98% over the next 3 years. Following the 1971 and 2000 events, the index dropped by as much as 35% and 33% in 3 years, respectively.

So which will it be this time? The size of the deficit that stocks overcame in the 1st quarter may give us a clue. At its low, the DJIA was down -11.3% for the quarter. Looking at the prior reversals, we see that the DJIA’s max intra-quarter loss in 4Q, 1971 was -10.9% and in 4Q, 2000 it was -10.1%. The max drawdown in 4Q, 1933 was…-11.3%, exactly the same as this past quarter.

Therefore, bulls can take heart in the fact that our prior circumstances are more similar to the 1933 event. And if history is to repeat, we should expect the DJIA to nearly double over the next 3 years to around 35,000. Of course, we can never be too sure, so we would recommend adjusting one’s portfolio to take advantage of both potential scenarios.

In all seriousness, one thing that may be instructive about such reversals is the overall investment climate in which they occur. The three prior events took place within secular bear markets. Additionally, there were 26 other quarters since 1900 which saw the DJIA recover at least 8% off its quarterly low after being down at least 10%. All but 2 of those quarters (4Q, 1987 and 4Q, 1997) occurred within a secular bear market.

Therefore, if there is anything that is to be gleaned from such large positive reversals, perhaps it is that they tend to occur within negative secular environments.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1V36Qmn Tyler Durden