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Submitted by MintPress via TheAntiMedia.org,

Dr. Ron Paul says the American electoral system is rigged to keep “independent thinkers” from succeeding.

“I see elections as so much of a charade,” the former Texas congressman said during an April 11 appearance on RT America’s “The Fishtank.” “So much deceit goes on.”

Paul is no stranger to the twisted rules of the American presidential horse race. He ran for the highest office as a Libertarian in 1988, and in 2008 and 2012 as a Republican.

He arguably came closest to the nomination in 2012, when the GOP amended its party regulations to prevent the former Texas representative from stealing Mitt Romney’s thunder.

Rule 40(b) of “The Rules of the Republican Party” was changed so the Republican National Committee could “limit the visibility and power of libertarian-minded Texas Rep. Ron Paul at the convention and thus present a unified front behind Mitt Romney, the presumptive nominee,” according to David Byler, an elections analyst at RealClearPolitics. The rule requires that, in order to win the nomination, a candidate must have the support of a majority of delegates from eight states.

Although recent wins have tipped Sen. Ted Cruz past the cut off, the rule as written came close to helping Trump take the nomination. Paul warned that the GOP’s machinations to block Donald Trump are a sign of a corrupt, undemocratic system.

“I’ve worked on the assumption … for many, many decades, that whether there’s a Republican or a Democrat president, the people who want to keep the status quo seems to have their finger in the pot and can control things,” he said in the interview.

“They just get so nervous, though, if they have an independent thinker out there — whether it’s Sanders, or Trump or Ron Paul, they’re going to be very desperate to try to change things.”

Paul had nothing but scorn for Trump’s policies: “He’s offering us nothing new, and he’s going backward in many ways.”

He suggested that the 2016 election is “a lot more entertainment than anything else” because none of the candidates “have answers” to modern political problems.

Even so, Paul interprets the success of these outsider candidates as a sign that “more people are discovering that the system is all rigged and voting is just pacification for the voters and it really doesn’t count.”

“I don’t think there’s an easy way out for the establishment or the parties,” he noted, explaining that Democrats and Republicans would both rather risk “further alienation of the people” than allow a candidate to succeed who could shake up the system.

Paul recalled his own 2012 encounter with Rule 40(b) as an important political lesson for both himself and the American people.

“I was upset about it but didn’t want to waste too much energy being angry because this is the way the system works,” he said. “It’s a rotten system.”

Watch the entire interview below:

via http://ift.tt/1XBkFXv Tyler Durden

The “Doha oil freeze deal” was a farce from the beginning.

It all started with a February 11 Hail Mary attempt by Venezuela to boost oil prices by launching a rumor that oil production would be frozen (ignoring that both Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iraq are already pumping out a record output).

VENEZUELA OIL MIN PROPOSED OPEC, NON-OPEC ‘FREEZE’ PRODUCTION AT CURRENT LEVELS: RTRS. And Saudi Arabia laughed?

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 11, 2016

Shockingly, it worked.

First Venezuela, then the U.A.E, then Russia, then the Saudis all piled in with their own “headlines” that an oil production freeze was imminent, in the process unleashing an epic, algo-driven oil short squeeze which pushed prices higher by 60% over the past two months.

We say mostly “algo-driven” because few humans actually believed that any of the “freeze” jawboning out of OPEC nations (and Russia) had any chance of passing. After all, at its very core, Saudi Arabia’s reason to break up the OPEC cartel in its historic November 2014 meeting, when it refused to cut production, was to put as much marginal US shale producers out of business as possible (incidentally, a strategy flawed from the start as even bankrupt, shale companies continue to pump as much if not more, as they did before filing).

The only way it could do that was by keeping the market indefinitely oversupplied (according to the Saudis it is currently oversupplied by about 3 million barrels), which would ultimately crush prices and lead to the liquidation of numerous US producers.

It also also algo-driven, because the Saudi deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman made it clear two weeks ago that there would be no production freeze unless everyone joined in, expicitly pointing out Iran, even though Iran has repeatedly said it would not “self impose a production embargo” on itself.

No matter: the algos continued buying after forgetting this critical nuance, because, well, the “OPEC production freeze” headlines kept pouring in.

And then it all came crashing down first last night when, just two days before the Doha meeting, the same Saudi prince said the Saudi kingdom won’t restrain its oil production unless other producers, including Iran, agree to freeze output at a meeting this weekend in Doha.

“If all major producers don’t freeze production, we will not freeze production,” said Prince Mohammed, 30, who has emerged as Saudi Arabia’s leading economic force.

Worse, he also added that “If we don’t freeze, then we will sell at any opportunity we get” and made it quite clear that the next major leg in oil prices is lower: “If prices went up to $60 or $70, that would be a strong factor to push forward the wheel of development,” Prince Mohammed said. “But this battle is not my battle. It’s the battle of others who are suffering from low oil prices.”

It is indeed, and Saudi Arabia will make sure their suffering surges in the coming days.

* * *

And then, the “OPEC production freeze” farce was fully exposed this morning when after pretending whether or not to participate in the Qatar meeting, Iran finally decided it will not attend the Doha meeting, two sources familiar with the situation told Reuters.

Iran’s oil minister had not been scheduled to attend, but Tehran was due to send Iran OPEC Governor Hossein ‎Kazempour Ardebilli, oil ministry news agency Shana reported on Friday.

However, according to Reuters, Iran had been informed that only those countries willing to agree to freeze their output level should attend.

As a result, nobody from Iran will be present, which also means that the Saudi condition that an oil freeze will only work with Iran participating, won’t be met.

Iran has said it supports the freeze but would not join it until it raises its output and market share to their pre-sanctions levels.

Its production has already surpassed 3.5 million barrels per day (bpd) and exports are set to reach 2 million bpd next month, Iran’s deputy oil minister was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA on Saturday. As a reminder, last week we reported that “Iran’s Massive Oil Fleet Begins To Move: 29 Million Barrels Depart Iran In Past 2 Weeks” and as a result of the 600,000 bpd jump in Iran oil exports, virtually the entire US shale production decline to date has been offset by just one nation.

* * *

And then, just to crush any hope, earlier this morning the Saudi deputy crown prince made a repeat appearance when cited by Bloomberg, he said that “Saudi Arabia could raise crude production by more than a million barrels a day immediately as he reiterated the nation would only agree to freeze production if all major producers including Iran do the same.”

The world’s largest oil exporter could increase output to 11.5 million barrels a day immediately and go to 12.5 million in six to nine months “if we wanted to,” Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is also Chairman of the Supreme Council of Saudi Arabian Oil Co., said in an interview Thursday. The country pumped 10.2 million barrels a day last month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“I don’t suggest that we should produce more, but we can produce more,” said the prince, who is the king’s son, second in line to the throne and a leading force in the country’s economic policy. “We can produce 20 million barrels of oil per day if we invested in production capacity, but we can’t produce beyond 20 million.”

Which, of course, is just a hint that even all U.S shale production goes offline, Saudi Arabia is more than ready to plug the production gap.

* * *

Finally, for those still hoping that some deal will emerge out of tomorrow’s Doha meeting, you can exhale now.

via http://ift.tt/1S0PNze Tyler Durden

Back in January, when the market was watching in shocked silence as oil prices were crashing to decade lows and as concerns emerged that Saudi Arabia may need to commence selling its vast, if unquantified, USD reserves, we wrote a post titled “Attention Finally Turns To Saudi Arabia’s “Secret” US Treasury Holdings” where we noted something very surprising: whereas we do know that Saudi Arabia is the owner of the world’s third largest USD reserves…

… their actual composition remains as a secret, because while the US discloses the explicit Treasury holdings of all other nations, Saudi Arabia’s holdings, for some unknown reason, are not officially disclosed.

“It’s a secret of the vast U.S. Treasury market, a holdover from an age of oil shortages and mighty petrodollars,” Bloomberg wrote of Saudi Arabia’s US Treasury holdings.

“As a matter of policy, the Treasury has never disclosed the holdings of Saudi Arabia, long a key ally in the volatile Middle East, and instead groups it with 14 other mostly OPEC nations including Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Nigeria,” Bloomberg goes on to note, adding that the rules are different for almost everyone else. Although Saudi Arabia’s “secret” is protected by “an unusual blackout by the U.S. Treasury Department,” for more than a hundred other countries, from China to the Vatican, the Treasury provides a detailed breakdown of how much U.S. debt each holds.”

So who does know how much US paper the Saudis are sitting on? Well, the Saudis of course,”“a handful of Treasury officials,” and some bureaucrats at the Fed, Bloomberg says, noting that “for everyone else, it’s a guessing game.” Yes, a “guessing game,” and one that may have profound consequences for markets and for geopolitics.

We closed with a simple, if suddenly very prophetic question: “who would be the new patron saint of the US Treasury Department in the event the Saudis drawdown all of their reserves and decide to diversify away from USD assets… Put differently, who will monetize the US deficit if relations between Washington and Riyadh hit the skids over Iran?”

It is this question that has suddenly reemerged with a bang, and may soon become the biggest political scandal to rock the U.S. in years.

* * *

First, a quick tangent: we have been greatly surprised by the reemergence of the topic of September 11 in recent weeks, and specifically the taboo – in official circles – issue whether there was a “Saudi connection” in the biggest terrorist attack on US soil. Just last weekend, out of the blue, 60 Minutes held  segment on the “28 pages” that were classified in the Congressional investigative report into 9/11 – pages that allegedly confirm the Saudi connection.

To be sure, Saudi officials have long denied that the kingdom had any role in the Sept. 11 plot, and the 9/11 Commission found “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization.” But critics have noted that the commission’s narrow wording left open the possibility that less senior officials or parts of the Saudi government could have played a role. Suspicions have lingered, partly because of the conclusions of a 2002 congressional inquiry into the attacks that cited some evidence that Saudi officials living in the United States at the time had a hand in the plot.

Those conclusions, contained in 28 pages of the report, still have not been released publicly. It was the surprising rekindled focus on these 28 pages in recent days that suggested that something may have been afoot.

Something was.

* * *

In a stunning report by the NYT,  Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Or mostly Congress, because Obama has remained steadfast in his support of his Wahhabi petrodollar overlords, and has been busy lobbying Congress to block the bill’s passage, according to administration officials and congressional aides from both parties, and the Saudi threats have been the subject of intense discussions in recent weeks between lawmakers and officials from the State Department and the Pentagon. The officials have warned senators of diplomatic and economic fallout from the legislation.

Deceased Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud presents
Barack Obama with the King Abdul Aziz Order of Merit

By way of background, the Senate bill is intended to make clear that the immunity given to foreign nations under the law should not apply in cases where nations are found culpable for terrorist attacks that kill Americans on United States soil. If the bill were to pass both houses of Congress and be signed by the president, it could clear a path for the role of the Saudi government to be examined in the Sept. 11 lawsuits.

Suddenly Saudi Arabia is panicking: its response – if the US does pass this bill it would liquidate hundreds of billion in U.S. denominated assets, and perhaps as much as $750 billion in US Treasurys (the NYT’s estimate of Saudi Treasury holdings).

The NYT rports that none other than Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the kingdom’s message personally last month during a trip to Washington, “telling lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they could be in danger of being frozen by American courts.”

* * *

This stunning threat has caught America off guard, because until now it had largely been speculated that not the Saudis but China would use the “liquidation of Treasurys” as a bargaining chip. As it turns out, Saudi Arabia was the first.

To be sure, the Saudis whose budget deficit has soared in the past year as a result of collapsing oil prices, would stand to benefit from monetizing their US reserves. According to many, it is only a matter of time anyway. However, a dramatic, immediate liquidation would likely spark a market panic. Outside economists are skeptical that the Saudis will follow through, saying that such a sell-off would be difficult to execute and would end up crippling the kingdom’s economy. But the threat is another sign of the escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United States.

The Obama administration, meanwhile, is far less concerned about the market impact of a Saudi liquidation, and far more worried what a real inquiry into the Saudi role of Sept.11 would reveal (and who it would implicate) and as a result is building strawman arguments that the legislation would put Americans at legal risk overseas. In fact, as the NYT reports, “Obama has been lobbying so intently against the bill that some lawmakers and families of Sept. 11 victims are infuriated. In their view, the Obama administration has consistently sided with the kingdom and has thwarted their efforts to learn what they believe to be the truth about the role some Saudi officials played in the terrorist plot.”

“It’s stunning to think that our government would back the Saudis over its own citizens,” said Mindy Kleinberg, whose husband died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and who is part of a group of victims’ family members pushing for the legislation.

Stunning indeed, and yet that’s precisely who the “U.S.” president sides with when attempting to get to the bottom of the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Incidentally, Obama will arrive in Riyadh on Wednesday for meetings with King Salman and other Saudi officials. It is unclear whether the dispute over the Sept. 11 legislation will be on the agenda for the talks.

President Obama at a Sept. 11 ceremony in 2015. The Obama administration
argues that the bill would put Americans at legal risk overseas.

* * *

The Saudi threat comes as the dispute comes as bipartisan criticism is growing in Congress about Washington’s alliance with Saudi Arabia, for decades a crucial American ally in the Middle East and half of a partnership that once received little scrutiny from lawmakers. Last week, two senators introduced a resolution that would put restrictions on American arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which have expanded during the Obama administration.

Meanwhile, families of the Sept. 11 victims have used the U.S. court system to try to hold members of the Saudi royal family, Saudi banks and charities liable because of what the plaintiffs charged was Saudi financial support for terrorism. These efforts have largely been stymied, in part because of a 1976 law that gives foreign nations some immunity from lawsuits in American courts.

It is this law that the proposed Senate Bill intends to overturn; it is this Bill that Saudi Arabia is suddenly in arms over.

And it is the Saudis that Obama is siding over instead of his own people.

But of course, Obama can’t openly come out and say he would rather keep the truth of Saudi involvement buried than push for a probe, so Obama administration officials counter that “weakening the sovereign immunity provisions would put the American government, along with its citizens and corporations, in legal risk abroad because other nations might retaliate with their own legislation. Secretary of State John Kerry told a Senate panel in February that the bill, in its current form, would “expose the United States of America to lawsuits and take away our sovereign immunity and create a terrible precedent.”

In a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill on March 4, Anne W. Patterson, an assistant secretary of state, and Andrew Exum, a top Pentagon official on Middle East policy, told staff members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that American troops and civilians could be in legal jeopardy if other nations decide to retaliate and strip Americans of immunity abroad. They also discussed the Saudi threats specifically, laying out the impacts if Saudi Arabia made good on its economic threats.

In other words, the logic is that if the US pursues a full-blown inquiry into the Saudi role behind 9/11, the US itself would be subject to a comparable stripping of immunity – with respect to alleged U.S. terrorist attacks – and “create a terrible precedent.” In effect, the US government is defending its position by saying that if one can get to the bottom of Saudi terrorism in the U.S., the world may next learn about U.S. terrorism across the globe.

And that just can’t be allowed to happen.

Meanwhile, even as Obama fights tooth and nail to protect the Saudi’s dirty laundry, the administration pretends to side with US citizens: “John Kirby, a State Department spokesman, said in a statement that the administration stands by the victims of terrorism, “especially those who suffered and sacrificed so much on 9/11.” It just refuses to reveal those who are truly responsible for their death.

* * *

But back to the Saudi (mostly hollow) threat of dumping US Treasuries should the proposed Bill be passed, which indeed is nothing more than just that, especially since the Fed or BOJ would be delighted to have found a willing seller who has as much as three quarter of a trillion in US paper lying around.

Edwin M. Truman, a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said he thought the Saudis were most likely making an “empty threat.” Selling hundreds of billions of dollars in American assets would not only be technically difficult to pull off, he said, but would also very likely cause global market turmoil for which the Saudis would be blamed.

Moreover, he said, it could destabilize the American dollar — the currency to which the Saudi riyal is pegged.

“The only way they could punish us is by punishing themselves,” Mr. Truman said.

Well, they would also punish the Fed, because suddenly the Petrodollar would re-emerge as the main driving force behind the value of the greenback.

* * *

And yet, perhaps the Saudis have reason to panic: the Senate bill is an anomaly in a Congress fractured by bitter partisanship, especially during an election year. It is sponsored by Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York. It has the support of an unlikely coalition of liberal and conservative senators, including Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, and Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. It passed through the Judiciary Committee in January without dissent.

“As our nation confronts new and expanding terror networks that are targeting our citizens, stopping the funding source for terrorists becomes even more important,” Mr. Cornyn said last month.

It is almost as if Congress has decided to end the long-running alliance the U.S. has had with Saudi Arabia, despite the bitter protests of the administration; it has decided to use the Sept.11 disclosure as its own bargaining chip.

To be sure, as the NYT notes, the alliance with Saudi Arabia has frayed in recent years as the White House has tried to thaw ties with Iran — Saudi Arabia’s bitter enemy— in the midst of recriminations between American and Saudi officials about the role that both countries should play in the stability of the Middle East. But the administration has supported Saudi Arabia on other fronts, including providing the country with targeting intelligence and logistical support for its war in Yemen. The Saudi military is flying jets and dropping bombs it bought from the United States — part of the billions of dollars in arms deals that have been negotiated with Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations during the Obama administration.

The war has been a humanitarian disaster and fueled a resurgence of Al Qaeda in Yemen, leading to the resolution in Congress to put new restrictions on arms deals to the kingdom. Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, one of the resolution’s sponsors and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that Congress has been “feckless” in conducting oversight of arms sales, especially those destined for Saudi Arabia.

“My first desire is for our relationship with Saudi Arabia to come with a greater degree of conditionality than it currently does,” he said.

That also appears to be Obama’s last desire; while the only desire Saudi Arabia has is to maintain the status quo, one where nobody looks at who pulled the strings behind Sept. 11 and in exchange for which the Saudis would continue dutifully recycling petrodollars, or if they don’t get their way, they will simply proceed to launch the biggest liquidation of US Treasurys in history. Or such is their stunning threat..

Which brings us to the original question: why the Saudi panic, and why immediately threaten with the “nuclear option”, namely liquidating US Treasurys, if the Saudis have nothing to hide?

The question is, of course, rhetorical.

via http://ift.tt/1r2puPl Tyler Durden

Authored by Shepard Ambellas via Intellihub.com,

Although it’s now public knowledge that former Florida Sen. Bob Graham told the Tampa Bay Times that the secret 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission report are poised to be released within the next few months, one can only question what the White House’s new and urgent motive for their release is.

One thing comes to mind, right off the bat, and that is the fact that strong evidence exists suggesting that up to three thermonuclear devices were detonated at the World Trade Center site on 9/11, hence the nickname “Ground Zero.”

I mean, what better way than to dupe the people yet once again by slowly conditioning them, over an extended period of time, to accept the fact that criminal factions of their very own government orchestrated the Pearl Harbor-like attack onto skyscrapers, buildings, in an American city.

That’s right, when the not so secret 28 pages are actually released, in a few months, they will likely show Saudi involvement and government foreknowledge, like we already knew.

So tell us something we didn’t know; like the fact that a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Department of Energy, study found high trace levels of tritium inside the WTC complex after the attack. Not only were abnormal levels of tritium found inside the WTC complex, in the basement of “WTC 6” and the “storm sewer,” but they were also found in the water.

Study of Traces of Tritium
at the World Trade Center (Oct. 2002)/U.S. Department of Energy

“Tritium is an important component in nuclear weapons. It is used to enhance the efficiency and yield of fission bombs and the fission stages of hydrogen bombs in a process known as “boosting” as well as in external neutron initiators for such weapons,” according Wikipedia; meaning that the only way it would be present in high trace levels is if a nuclear device (or three) detonated within proximity. Additionally it’s important to note that tritium is “extremely rare on Earth” and again — should not be found in at levels reported to be ’55 times higher than normal.’

And just to be clear, I am not saying that micro nukes were solely responsible for bringing down the towers — and IMO were likely only used at the base of Towers 1 and 2 and possible the base of building 7 and were strategically placed 50 feet below street level, somewhere in the basements of the buildings or subway access tunnels. This would also explain numerous eyewitness reports of “large” explosions in the basement or “lobby” of the towers.

It has also been proven that Nano-thermite was used and was present in dust samples, less than 2 microns in diameter, that were taken from the WTC site after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks as pointed out early on by Richard Gage of the grassroots organization Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

Moreover there are also signs that advanced barometric bomb technology, which uses triggering devices derived from the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Program, was also deployed in the attack — technology which incorporates gaseous elements in a “yellowish, brownish combustible mixture” and uses Aluminum Silicate Red Oxide and other ingredients” that would have surrounded and permeated the air around key structural columns on all floors before being triggered by a “specific high-voltage pattern” which the element combination is responsive to.

One bomb specialist, who wanted to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, can be seen in the proceeding video, testifying to the existence of such technology and said:

“[The high-voltage pattern] produces sort of a stairway pattern in the molecular structure of the cloud. Part of that pattern is a hydro-dynamic power generator, energy source, permeating the cloud which is then energized with another energy source and then is detonated. This causes the cloud itself to explode in such a fashion that if the cloud is circulating around the pillar — then it crushes the pillar from all sides and turns that pillar literally to dust and leaves only the rebar behind. So if you’ve got this cloud permeating all the way around the first floor, wherever it is, anything within its path gets crushed, imploded, to dust instantaneously. And when that happens of course there is nothing left to hold up the upper floors above, so bang, they come down like a pancake.”

This also explains why an eyewitness by the name of Kenneth Summers, who was in the lobby of tower 2 at the time, actually saw such a gas-like substance mixing with the air just a “tenth of a second” before the witness was blown back out the lobby doors. Kenneth Summers told NBC what he saw just before being eject from the lobby by a massive explosion and stated:

“All of a sudden it seems like the whole lobby, the door I was in, filled up with a yellowish, brownish, combustible mixture. It didn’t really smell any different, but was so quick to happen, it was like a tenth of a second.”

Summers testimony starts at 5:08 into the following video:

Look, all I know is the actual impact from the alleged passenger planes did not cause the collapse of the WTC’s towers 1 and 2 that stood proud above the New York skyline, nor did the jet fuel fires or random fires burning throughout the buildings. In fact we can clearly see that this was not the case, because the tops of the buildings actually started to collapse first, dustifying themselves in mid-air as reported by Dr. Judy Wood who conducted an independent investigation.

Micro-nukes exist and have for a long time

According to Wikipedia:

The Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM) was a family of man-portable nuclear weapons fielded by the US military in the 1960s, but never used in actual combat. The US Army planned to use the weapons in Europe in the event of a Soviet invasion. US Army Engineers would use the weapon to irradiate, destroy, and deny key routes of communication through limited terrain such as the Fulda Gap. Troops were trained to parachute into Soviet occupied western Europe with the SADM and destroy power plants, bridges, and dams.

 

The project, which involved a small nuclear weapon, was designed to allow one person to parachute from any type of aircraft carrying the weapon package and place it in a harbor or other strategic location that could be accessed from the sea. Another parachutist without a weapon package would follow the first to provide support as needed.

 

The two-person team would place the weapon package in the target location, set the timer, and swim out into the ocean where they would be retrieved by a submarine or a high-speed surface water craft.

 

In the 1950s and 1960s, the United States developed several different types of lightweight nuclear devices. The main one was the W54, a cylinder 40 by 60 cm (about 16 by 24 inches) that weighed 68 kg (150 lbs). It was fired by a mechanical timer and had a variable yield equivalent to between 10 tons and 1 kiloton of TNT. The W54 nuclear device was used in the Davy Crockett Weapon System.

Now do I have your undivided attention?

On 9/11 there is no doubt that multiple bombs were detonated inside the WTC complex — this fact can not be disputed and is clearly documented in hundreds of videos and backed up by many eyewitness testimonies, including highly credible first responders and firefighters. In fact, seismic readings from that day indicate that at least 3 large man-made explosions, possibly nuclear by signature, took place underground inside the WTC complex. Could these be the actual blasts that took out the cores of buildings 1, 2 and 7? Is this what the U.S. government has been hiding all along?

Interestingly, previous tests have been conducted by factions of the U.S. government in which they used micro-nukes to demolish rather large buildings and the results were astonishing to say the least, almost a perfect mirror of the collapse of buildings 1, 2, and 7 that took place in Sept. of 2001.

The use of micro-nukes in the WTC complex on 9/11 – the smoking gun

It’s safe to say that high energy releases have a distinct look.

Dr. Ed Ward has documented what he believes is the use of micro-nukes on the World Trade Center complex attack that took place in September of 2001.

One of the smoking guns in this case is that over 5.3 billion pounds of steel was instantly turned into 2 billion pounds of dust, but that’s not all — massive steel beams were bent like pretzels as the towers collapsed.

One video shows the penthouse on building 7 being demolished on the roof just before the building comes down. This proves that a top-down demolition process was being utilized, otherwise the buildings might have just twisted and naturally would have just fell over themselves. But perhaps the most startling revelation that nuclear devices were used is the fact that vehicles that were found up to a half mile away from the WTC looked incinerated — not to mention the tens of thousands of tiny body parts that were found on the rooftops of neighboring buildings which is not indicative at all of a gravitational collapse.

The fact that many of the first responders are now dead, if not very sick, does not sound like the byproduct of a falling building, but rather sounds more like they got a massive dose of deadly radiation. Most of the responders have died of blood cancer and Thyroid cancer, consistent with heavy radiation exposure.

Other red flags include:

• Cars not hit by falling debris yet totally destroyed far away from the towers
• Molten metal was seen in and around the debris of the WTC for months, indicative of nuclear fission.
• There is also the fact that the debris field was substantially low for the magnitude of buildings that were destroyed, thus signifying that most of the debris was incinerated upon the demo blast.
• Massive craters under the WTC complex were formed, likely from the detonation of micro-nukes, as the rock was even melted smooth. Later after the site was fairly cleaned up and the craters were excavated, the city of New York Port Authority continued to wash down the cavities with hoses daily for years as traces of Tritium were found, signifying that radiation was present.

Additionally the fact that the WTC buildings were pulverized into a fine dust cannot be ignored. This is a tell-tale sign of a high energy release typical of a nuclear explosion. Eyewitness accounts and personal testimony indicate that people were thrown an entire city block from what was described as a warm wind just as the towers begin to collapse.

There were also multiple reports of “hanging skin” or “melted skin” on victims around ground zero. This was a common occurrence in the Hiroshima blast. Major hot spots were also reported in and around the debris at the World Trade Center complex and were prevalent for up to six months after the attacks. This type of activity, seen with the hot spots, is commonly referred to as “China Syndrome”, where nuclear material will continue to undergo fission for a period of time, generating massive heat plumes.

To no surprise, videos obtained via Freedom of Information ACT (FOIA) requests, captured on and after Sept. 11, 2001 near the WTC site, have had sections, clips, of the video and audio removed, especially during the beginning of the collapse of the towers. However, the explosions can be heard on many independent videos, now floating around the web and can all be accounted for.

Not to mention the hijackers, some of which have still been proven to be alive, were recruited by the CIA, as can be seen in the following video:

 

The truth is out there.

via http://ift.tt/1SR8v8M Tyler Durden

From the Slope of Hope: When I was a boy growing up in Louisiana, our youth group at church had us do an enlightening exercise: we all fasted for a day.

Now, not eating anything for 24 hours isn’t a huge deal. No one is going to die from hunger. But for suburban kids accustomed to eating three meals a day, plus snacks, it’s a big change, and having access to only water quickly gave us a small sliver of empathy about what it would be like to actually not have a choice about being hungry.

When we met at the church the following night, we had all been fasting 24 hours. At that point, the minister picked about six kids at random, had them walk up to the stage, and he gave each of them a McDonald’s bag with a meal inside of it. They joyfully ate their meal, while all the rest of us watched on with true envy. It was the first time I knew what it was like to be jealous of someone who had something to eat when I was hungry. That is a memory that has stuck with me my entire life.

I will now tell you another story from the past to lead in to my general point.

Although I will not go into details, the family I married into was once one of the wealthiest in China. In the first part of the 20th century, the old man made a staggering fortune, and he enjoyed one of the privileges of wealth at the time, which was multiple wives. He had many, many children, and he had vast financial holdings.

Once the Communists seized power, all of that wealth disappeared. The descendants scattered to various parts of the world. China, of course, had varying degrees of passion about its communist ethos, and during the late 1960s anyone who wasn’t basically an uneducated peasant was subjected to terrible abuse.

China today, of course, has a somewhat similar situation as Russia: that is, a formerly Communist state whose deeply corrupt culture now masquerades as a quasi-capitalist society, having sold off former state assets to businesspeople who were required to line the pockets of those in a position of power to hand over those assets in the first place. In my opinion, anyone rich from Russia or China has almost certainly garnered their fortune through corrupt means, and one glance at the air or water of Beijing will tell you just how much the businessmen care about the environment or the people who have to wallow around in it.

The offspring of these crooks strike me as especially vile, not only because their wealth is ill-gotten, but they didn’t even have the industrious character to steal it in the first place. They simply have access to it as an accident of birth. And, of course, given the voyeuristic society we inhabit, they’ve run off and made a television show:

Because of my deep love for Slope, I held my stomach and actually watched the above. I was reminded of a term that I heard on occasion in the deep south where I grew up. Forgive me as I type the term out bluntly, but we’re all adults here: “nigger rich.” Now, to my ears, this actually has nothing to do with race. It has to do with a person who happens to have access to money, but they have absolutely no class. The aforementioned term suggests a person who needs to be flashy, garish, and flaunty, but lacks substance. It’s an offensive term, I admit, but it really has nothing to do with skin color. It has to do with attitude.

Watching the girls in the video, who seem to be pretty much in their early 20s, the politically incorrect term I’ve mentioned fits them to a “T”. This garrulous group of tittering twats strikes me as vain, insipid, and supremely dull. Very early on in the program, they order an expensive red wine, which these nitwits drink with straws. A biblical phrase leaps to mind: pearls before swine.

I’ve written about money many times before, and I have no problem with someone having millions or billions of dollars. However, if they didn’t either (a) earn it through their own honest efforts or (b) inherit it and apply themselves to use the assets in a creative, positive way, then they have none of my respect. As a youngster, I couldn’t understand why the Communists would want to kill the rich. Now, I am beginning to understand.

If, in years to come, the majority of Chinese people begin to genuinely suffer, you can be assured they’re going to want to chop girls like this into the “Wagyu Beef” which one of them describes herself as being.

As for my own reaction, it obviously doesn’t matter to me one way or another if these girls live or die. I have pondered, however, what it is I find unsettling about their very existence. As is so often the case, Mr. Spock provides the answer I need. Here I quote him from Squire of Gothos, in which he responds to Trelane, who is wondering why Spock doesn’t like him:

I object to you. I object to intellect without discipline; I object to power without constructive purpose.

Right as always, Spock. These tasteless, witless leeches will have a life of existential despair if, in their later years, they actually take a good, hard look at themselves. In the meantime, there are plenty of vendors and service providers who will be perfectly happy to distract them with Lamborghinis, Gucci handbags, and countless other knickknacks from the Western world, just to keep their collective minds off of how utterly pointless their lives are.

via http://ift.tt/1TX5Krq Tim Knight from Slope of Hope

A year ago today, European equities hit their highest levels ever. But, as Bloomberg reports, the euphoria about Mario Draghi’s stimulus program didn’t last, and trader skepticism is now rampant. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index has lost 17% since its record, and investors who piled in last year are now unwinding bets at the fastest rate since 2013 as analysts predict an earnings contraction. The trading pattern looks familiar: a fast run to just over 400 on the gauge, then disaster…

 

 

To Benedict Goette of Crossbow Partners, the odds of another crisis are higher than a rally to fresh records.

“The 2009-2015 rally originated from two main drivers: a massive stimulus, and credit expansion in China,” said Goette, who’s a partner at his firm in Zug, Switzerland and helps oversee 1 billion Swiss francs ($1 billion).

 

“European earnings have not followed suit so far. Skepticism regarding central-bank operations has started to emerge.”

Bloomberg notes that investors have withdrawn money from funds tracking the region’s equities for nine straight weeks, the longest streak since May 2013, according to a Bank of America Corp. note dated April 7 that cited EPFR Global data.

via http://ift.tt/1RZUZU6 Tyler Durden

Submitted by Mike “Mish” Shedlock

Deutsche Bank Admits Rigging, Will Expose Other Riggers

Deutsche Bank has admitted it rigged both the Gold market and the Silver market. ZeroHedge has the details in his report Deutsche Bank Agrees To Expose Other Manipulators.

Many asked me to comment. I am shocked?

No. In the wake of admissions of rigged LIBOR and rigged Euribor (bank to bank interest rates in dollars and euros respectively), one would really have to wonder “What isn’t rigged?”

To the Moon, Alice?

While some think gold would have “gone to the moon” without this rigging, I wonder if it got as high as $1900 an ounce because of rigging.

The same applies to silver when it topped over $40.

It’s logical to believe riggers don’t much care about the direction as long as they make money. Hopefully we get more details from Deutsche Bank soon.

This could get interesting.

What Isn’t Rigged?

While pondering the above question, let’s dive into Deutsche Bank’s 2015 Annual Report to investigate other bid-rigging opportunities.

Consolidated Balance Sheet

Deutsche Bank has over €515 billion in “positive derivative values” in comparison to €496 billion in “negative derivative values”.

Hooray! Deutsche Bank is about €20 billion to the good. But how much was bet?

Deutsche Bank’s Derivatives Casino

The total size of Deutsche Bank’s derivatives casino is €21.39 trillion, notional.

Casino Breakdown

• Interest Rate: €15.41 trillion
• Currency Related: €4.78 trillion
• Equity Index: €0.90 trillion
• Credit Related: €0.27 trillion
• Commodity Related: €0.08 trillion

How Much Risk on €21.39 Trillion?

Inquiring minds may be asking: How much risk is there on €21.39 trillion?

Perhaps surprising little. After all, interest rate risk could easily be controlled with a few timely phone calls from the Fed and ECB.

What risk isn’t controlled that way can always be controlled other ways (as we have seen).

I am pleased to note Deutsche Bank uses “central counterparty clearing services for OTC clearing” and the bank “benefits from the credit risk mitigation achieved through the central counterparty’s settlement system.”

“Margin requirements for uncleared OTC derivative transactions are expected to be phased in from September 2016.”

Whew!

And we can all count on the obvious fact that Dodd-Frank reform has fixed everything.

So, nothing can possibly go wrong with €21.39 trillion in casino bets, just as €20 billion in profits (.0935%) shows.

 

via http://ift.tt/1TalHIB Tyler Durden