A television interview of a top Qatari official confessing the truth behind the origins of the war in Syria is going viral across Arabic social media during the same week a leaked top secret NSA document was published which confirms that the armed opposition in Syria was under the direct command of foreign governments from the early years of the conflict.
And according to a well-known Syria analyst and economic adviser with close contacts in the Syrian government, the explosive interview constitutes a high level "public admission to collusion and coordination between four countries to destabilize an independent state, [including] possible support for Nusra/al-Qaeda." Importantly, "this admission will help build case for what Damascus sees as an attack on its security & sovereignty. It will form basis for compensation claims."
A 2013 London press conference: Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al Thani with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. A 2014 Hillary Clinton email confirmed Qatar as a state-sponsor of ISIS during that same time period.
As the war in Syria continues slowly winding down, it seems new source material comes out on an almost a weekly basis in the form of testimonials of top officials involved in destabilizing Syria, and even occasional leaked emails and documents which further detail covert regime change operations against the Assad government. Though much of this content serves to confirm what has already long been known by those who have never accepted the simplistic propaganda which has dominated mainstream media, details continue to fall in place, providing future historians with a clearer picture of the true nature of the war.
This process of clarity has been aided – as predicted – by the continued infighting among Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) former allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with each side accusing the other of funding Islamic State and al-Qaeda terrorists (ironically, both true). Increasingly, the world watches as more dirty laundry is aired and the GCC implodes after years of nearly all the gulf monarchies funding jihadist movements in places like Syria, Iraq, and Libya.
Since 2013 The Intercept (+WaPo?) hid NSA docs showing Saudi ordering 'rebel' attacks on Damascus. Now released. https://t.co/0PZrBKpJCw
The top Qatari official is no less than former Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, who oversaw Syria operations on behalf of Qatar until 2013 (also as foreign minister), and is seen below with then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in this Jan. 2010 photo with Hillary Clinton (as a reminder, Qatar's 2022 World Cup Committee donated $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation in 2014).
In an interview with Qatari TV Wednesday, bin Jaber al-Thani revealed that his country, alongside Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United States, began shipping weapons to jihadists from the very moment events "first started" (in 2011).
Al-Thani even likened the covert operation to "hunting prey" – the prey being President Assad and his supporters – "prey" which he admits got away (as Assad is still in power; he used a Gulf Arabic dialect word, "al-sayda", which implies hunting animals or prey for sport). Though Thani denied credible allegations of support for ISIS, the former prime minister's words implied direct Gulf and US support for al-Qaeda in Syria (al-Nusra Front) from the earliest years of the war, and even said Qatar has "full documents" and recordsproving that the war was planned to effect regime change.
"We argued over the prey and that prey run away".Ladies and Gentleman: To these people #Syria#Assad was nothing but a f….ing hunting game https://t.co/w4oKO5TTK6
According to Zero Hedge's translation, al-Thani said while acknowledging Gulf nations were arming jihadists in Syria with the approval and support of US and Turkey: "I don't want to go into details but we have full documents about us taking charge [in Syria]." He claimed that both Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah (who reigned until his death in 2015) and the United States placed Qatar in a lead role concerning covert operations to execute the proxy war.
The former prime minister's comments, while very revealing, were intended as a defense and excuse of Qatar's support for terrorism, and as a critique of the US and Saudi Arabia for essentially leaving Qatar "holding the bag" in terms of the war against Assad. Al-Thani explained that Qatar continued its financing of armed insurgents in Syria while other countries eventually wound down large-scale support, which is why he lashed out at the US and the Saudis, who initially "were with us in the same trench."
In a previous US television interview which was vastly underreported, al-Thani told Charlie Rose when asked about allegations of Qatar's support for terrorism that, "in Syria, everybody did mistakes, including your country." And said that when the war began in Syria, "all of use worked through two operation rooms: one in Jordan and one in Turkey."
Below is the key section of Wednesday's interview, translated and subtitled by @Walid970721. Zero Hedge has reviewed and confirmed the translation, however, as the original rush translator has acknowledged, al-Thani doesn't say "lady" but "prey" ["al-sayda"]- as in both Assad and Syrians were being hunted by the outside countries.
"When the events first started in Syria I went to Saudi Arabia and met with King Abdullah. I did that on the instructions of his highness the prince, my father. He [Abdullah] said we are behind you. You go ahead with this plan and we will coordinate but you should be in charge. I won’t get into details but we have full documents and anything that was sent [to Syria] would go to Turkey and was in coordination with the US forces and everything was distributed via the Turks and the US forces. And us and everyone else was involved, the military people. There may have been mistakes and support was given to the wrong faction… Maybe there was a relationship with Nusra, its possible but I myself don’t know about this… we were fighting over the prey ["al-sayda"] and now the prey is gone and we are still fighting… and now Bashar is still there. You [US and Saudi Arabia] were with us in the same trench… I have no objection to one changing if he finds that he was wrong, but at least inform your partner… for example leave Bashar [al-Assad] or do this or that, but the situation that has been created now will never allow any progress in the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council], or any progress on anything if we continue to openly fight."
As is now well-known, the CIA was directly involved in leading regime change efforts in Syria with allied gulf partners, as leaked and declassified US intelligence memos confirm. The US government understood in real time that Gulf and West-supplied advanced weaponry was going to al-Qaeda and ISIS, despite official claims of arming so-called "moderate" rebels. For example, a leaked 2014 intelligence memo sent to Hillary Clinton acknowledged Qatari and Saudi support for ISIS.
The email stated in direct and unambiguous language that:
"the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region."
Furthermore, one day before Prime Minister Thani's interview, The Intercept released a new top-secret NSA document unearthed from leaked intelligence files provided by Edward Snowden which show in stunning clarity that the armed opposition in Syria was under the direct command of foreign governments from the early years of the war which has now claimed half a million lives.
The newly released NSA document confirms that a 2013 insurgent attack with advanced surface-to-surface rockets upon civilian areas of Damascus, including Damascus International Airport, was directly supplied and commanded by Saudi Arabia with full prior awareness of US intelligence. As the former Qatari prime minister now also confirms, both the Saudis and US government staffed "operations rooms" overseeing such heinous attacks during the time period of the 2013 Damascus airport attack.
No doubt there remains a massive trove of damning documentary evidence which will continue to trickle out in the coming months and years. At the very least, the continuing Qatari-Saudi diplomatic war will bear more fruit as each side builds a case against the other with charges of supporting terrorism. And as we can see from this latest Qatari TV interview, the United States itself will not be spared in this new open season of airing dirty laundry as old allies turn on each other.
As US GDP growth rises at 3% or more for the second quarter in a row, French investment bank Natixis urges investors to prepare for the U.S. economy to "slow down substantially" as early as 2018.
Patrick Artus, chief economist at Natixis, warned that the current level of corporate investment is "abnormally high" and suggested a downward correction.
"The US economy will in all likelihood slow down substantially: there is a limit to the rise in the participation rate and the employment rate; real wages are slowing down,"
Artus concluded:
"investors should therefore prepare for the consequences… If US growth slows down markedly … equity valuation and share prices will start falling."
For now he is almost alone in the wilderness as Wall Street analysts are falling over themselves to extrapolate trends, call the death of the bond bull market, and declare escape velocity is finally here (but carefully noting that this has nothing to do with Trump at all…)
Inside the advance third quarter GDP report, the details in most of the important categories suggested slowing after two quarters consistent with “reflation” at least in its third try. If the economy swings between shallow downturns and often shallower upturns, these subcategories give us some insight as to why. Overall, growth remains at a level that is not growth, whether consumers or business investment.
Real Final Sales to Domestic Purchasers, a measure of US demand regardless of where the goods/services originated, increased by just 1.80% (Q/Q SAAR) in Q3. That was the lowest rate of expansion since Q1 2016 and the near-recession trough. It doesn’t bode well for future growth both as a reflection of incomes and the labor market but also the slight uptick in inventory detected by GDP also in the third quarter. That’s a potential problem for domestic producers as well as those overseas (China).
In terms of consumers alone, Real PCE growth remains stuck around and less than 2.5%. That’s substantially less than consumer spending growth that propelled actual economic advancement in the latter 20th century (with the eurodollar-fueled debt of the 2000’s serving as the initial transition to what we have now). In the media this is classified as “strong” and “resilient” when in fact it shows just how much trouble American workers have as compared to prior periods.
Most concerning of all is business investment. Real Private Non-residential Fixed Investment (PNFI) is a measure of capex, perhaps the broadest for the overall US economy. Quarter-over-quarter, PNFI rose by just 3.9% (SAAR) in Q3, a notable slowing from Q1 and Q2. Neither of those prior two quarters was all that solid to being with.
It is here where the so-called supply side or economic potential originates, and it is here where these upturn/downturn cycles are most evident – and therefore disquieting.
After massive cuts to capex due to liquidity constraints first during the worst of the Great “Recession” and its immediate aftermath, capital project spending didn’t really recover by a rate or level commensurate with that contraction. That was in all likelihood due to liquidity concerns especially at the corporate level.
Worse, after both subsequent monetary events (2011-12, 2014-16) aggregate capex becomes weaker for each one. Given what we know of corporate usage in the bond market (heavy), it seems out of character to tie it to liquidity preferences except in view of how those proceeds are actually being used (more and more financial “investment” rather than productive expansion).
From the perspective inside the boardroom, an economy that isn’t actually growing (confirmed by these downturns) is a greater risk than stock prices that appear invulnerable. Risk perceptions matter a great deal where economic opportunity is so limited. In other words, the worse the economy performs the more shares corporates will repurchase considering that to be the least risky use of scarce funds (in light of revenue and profit growth, or the related lack thereof).
If the supply side isn’t rebounding all that much in this third reflation upturn, it would explain in part the following (setting aside for now the oversized Establishment Survey jump in 2014):
What saved the day, so to speak, for the GDP headline was nothing more than inventory. Without it, Real GDP grew by 2.21% in Q3, down from 2.89% in Q2 and more like the deceleration we find internally.
Unless something happens during the current quarter to turn this around, businesses may find that inventory more of a hindrance and therefore an economic drag rather than a boost. Perhaps the effects of Harvey and Irma will provide some reprieve, but that shouldn’t last long with insurance premiums (among other things) already being re-evaluated for billing early next year.
It’s another really clear demonstration of this ratchet effect, where the intermittent monetary or liquidity (“dollars”) interruptions leave the US economy worse off for every one. We still haven’t recovered from 2008, let alone 2015-16, but each time it gets harder to overcome the downturn immediately before while still at the same time trying to grow our way out of what is now a complete lost decade. Unless something radically changes, Q4 2017 kicks off a second one no matter how many times over the next three months you see 3% celebrated (and it will be) as if it means something.
In the “golden era” of Chinese crypto trading, mainland operators built up considerable expertise before they were forced out of business. Some of those operators of Chinese exchanges are setting up again in “friendlier” jurisdictions around Asia, as Bloomberg reports, and their aspirations are global.
From OKCoin to Binance.com, Chinese exchanges and wallet services are seeking a second life in friendlier Asian jurisdictions as the mainland clamps down on trading and coin offerings. They’re applying for licenses in Japan – solo or via partners – setting up over-the-counter shops in Hong Kong, or laying the groundwork to operate from Singapore and South Korea. Forced out of their own home turf, the players that once dominated the world’s largest digital currency market are betting that investors harboring an insatiable demand for alternative investments will follow. Going abroad may help operators hedge risks, attract new customers and stake out other corners of the $170 billion industry.
“China used to account for a significant share of the cryptocurrency market, so we think the demand is there," said Hong Kong-based Lennix Lai, the financial market director for OKEx, which is backed by OKCoin.
“As formerly one of the biggest operators in China, we think we have a good chance of competing globally.”
The favourable treatment of cryptocurrencies by the Japanese authorities is a draw for some operators, according to Bloomberg. Exchange start-ups live or die by their ability to execute transactions, which is why it matters where their operations and servers are located…
Japan has emerged as a safe haven for many operators because of favorable policies: the domestic financial regulator approved 11 exchanges in September alone, with some like BTCBox already servicing a wide base of Chinese customers. The agency’s close involvement reflects a desire to root out money laundering and also prevent another fiasco like the collapse of Mt. Gox. That helped Japan regain its title as the world’s largest cryptocurrency market in past weeks. There’re at least 19 companies applying for a Japanese license. Zhao Changpeng, CEO of exchange operator Binance.com, says he too is looking for local partners and even considering acquiring an operational exchange. Others including Beijing-based Bixin have also expressed interest. Its overseas app is known as Pocket IM, a messaging service that doubles as a bitcoin wallet. The initial reception has been warm.
Quoine, a Japanese fintech company attempting to build a global liquidity platform in cryptos, is negotiating with a number of potential Chinese partners, From Bloomberg.
“We’re talking to almost all of those guys. They’re all desperate now,” said Mike Kayamori, head of Quoine, which last month won a license to operate a bitcoin exchange in the country. Kayamori expects to sign a deal with a Chinese partner by the end of the year.
“There’s a lot of Chinese retail people reaching out to us, but we can’t handle it. So if a Chinese partner can handle all of those and they connect to us, that will be much easier.”
Singapore is another option.
Others are exploring Singapore as a backup option, though the island nation has yet to enact specific regulations. Bitmain, which operates the world’s largest mining collective, said it’s opening a regional headquarters there. Co-founder Wu Jihan said he wants to recruit talent from Southeast Asia, and tap a hub of commerce that serves as research bases for the likes of Nvidia Corp. and Alphabet Inc.
Some Chinese firms are not only going it alone, but are looking to attract business from mainland China…indirectly.
OKEx is one of those going it alone, and in Hong Kong. It wants to corral Chinese investors who’ve resorted to peer-to-peer trading over messaging apps like Telegram since the clampdown: basically Chinese investors can still buy from individuals who’ve access to overseas markets. OKEx wants to scale that by rolling out its own over-the-counter trading platform in Hong Kong. They’re now trying to recruit people to act as third-party market makers, who’ll chaperone deals, make money off a spread and then split the revenue with OKEx. Lai expects to attract customers mostly from China, Russia and the U.K.
The Bloomberg report finishes on a cautionary note…
Wherever Chinese operators end up, one thing is clear: as regulatory winds continue to shift, exchanges and other cryptocurrency players need to be nimble enough to swiftly operate and move across various jurisdictions.
…because unlike other markets these days, the problem with cryptocurrencies is volatility, both in terms of regulation and price.
Facebook said my post's image of a violent FBI raid 'incorrectly triggered our automation tools'… But it wasn't the first time an iconic image vanished…
Responding to Russian-funded political advertisements, Facebook chairman Mark Zuckerberg declared last month that “we will do our part to defend against nation states attempting to spread misinformation.” But Facebook is effectively sowing disinformation by kowtowing to foreign regimes and censoring atrocities such as ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. In the name of repressing fake news and hate speech, Facebook is probably suppressing far more information than Americans realize.
Facebook blocked a post of mine last month for the first time since I joined it nine years ago. I was seeking to repost a blog article I had written on Janet Reno, the controversial former attorney general who died last year. I initially thought that Facebook was having technical glitches (no novelty). But I checked the page and saw the official verdict: “Could not scrape URL because it has been blocked.”
“Pshaw!” I said, or some other one-syllable epithet.
I copied the full text of the article into a new blog post. Instead of using “Janet Reno, Tyrant or Saint?” as the core headline, I titled it: “Janet Reno, American Saint.” Instead of a 1993 photo of the burning Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, I substituted an irreproachable official portrait of Reno. Bingo – Facebook instantly accepted that crosspost. I then added a preface detailing the previous blockage and explaining why I sainted Reno. The ironic headline attracted far more attention and spurred a torrent of reposts by think tanks and other websites.
I contacted Facebook’s press office to learn why the initial post was blocked. Facebook spokeswoman Ruchika Budhraja checked into the matter and notified me that I would be permitted to post that link. "But why was it blocked?" I replied. She responded: “There was an image in the post that incorrectly triggered our automation tools. That issue has been corrected.”
So when did showing the home of more than 70 people engulfed in flames after a FBI assault become beyond the pale? Facebook presumably blocked everyone who sought to share that image from the most vivid law enforcement debacle of the 1990s.
This was not the first time Facebook erased an iconic image that the U.S. government would be happy to see vanish. Facebook likely deleted thousands of postings of the 1972 photo of a young Vietnamese girl running naked after a U.S. plane dropped napalm on her village. After coming under severe criticism last year, Facebook announced that it would no longer suppress that image. Unfortunately, Facebook is unlikely to disclose a list of the images it bans. Because most Americans are clueless about current events and recent history, they will have little idea of what vanishes into the Memory Hole.
Zuckerberg also promised last month to continue working “to ensure our community is a platform for all ideas and force for good in democracy.” But the Facebook vision of democracy does not include freedom of information. Facebook instructs its employees that “we will not censor content unless a nation has demonstrated the political will to enforce its censorship laws.” But in such cases, Facebook happily teams up with heavy-handed politicians to crush dissent and suppress heretical notions.
In June, German police raided dozens of homes across the nation suspected of offensive social media postings and “conducted home searches and interrogations,” according to the New York Times. Facebook is deleting 15,000 posts a month in Germany but the government is threatening a $50-million-plus fine unless Facebook suppresses far more comments. Judith Bergman of the Gatestone Institute commented on the German mandate: "When employees of social media companies are appointed as the state's private thought police … free speech becomes nothing more than a fairy tale. Or is that perhaps the point?" Other European nations are jumping on the suppression bandwagon. British Prime Minister Theresa May last month called on Facebook to remove purportedly extremist content within two hours of a government demand.
Facebook is massively deleting posts from the victims of the ongoing slaughter of ethnic minority Muslims (known as Rohingya) by Myanmar's military. Facebook spokeswoman Budhraja explained to The Daily Beast: “We work hard to strike the right balance between enabling expression while providing a safe and respectful experience.” What is the “right balance” regarding a brutal campaign that is creating hundreds of thousands of refugees and spurring denunciations all over the world?
Facebook last May announced plans to hire an additional 3,000 content reviewers to scrutinize and delete offensive or improper postings or false information. But catch-all notions of "fake news" can abet government coverups. Condemnations of Congress’ 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution were often considered “fake news” (or communist propaganda) until Americans learned how the Johnson administration deceived them into the Vietnam War. Allegations that the feds had any role in that Waco fire were labeled conspiratorial nonsense until 1999, when the Justice Department admitted that the FBI fired pyrotechnic devices into the ramshackle building before the conflagration. Assertions that foreign governments had any role in the 9/11 attacks were summarily condemned until recent disclosures about Saudi financing of the hijackers.
Unlike its role in many foreign nations, Facebook is not functioning as an official censor in the U.S. But the company’s nonchalance about engaging in the electronic equivalent of book burning abroad should spur wariness about its conduct here.
There are far too many American politicians who would be happy to browbeat Facebook into silencing their critics.
With Brexit negotiations still at a delicate stage, here’s the first bit of good news for the City of London in some time…
As The Telegraph reports,the boss of Swiss bank UBS has said plans to move 1,000 jobs from London as a result of Brexit are now looking "more and more unlikely".
Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti said the banking giant's fear of losing a fifth of its 5,000-strong UK workforce in the wake of the vote to leave was now unlikely to materialise following some "regulatory and political clarification about what we need to do". The bank joined some of its rivals in predicting a mass exodus from the City earlier this year over concerns that a so-called hard Brexit in March 2019 would mean thousands of UK-based firms reliant on 'passports' to service clients in the EU would lose that right overnight.
The bank is planning for some job relocations, however, and is asking staff to rank their preferences.
While UBS has softened its stance on the number of jobs that are likely to move, it is still hashing out plans to protect itself. Mr Ermotti looked to soothe concerns for London staff on Friday by saying that it was his "target" to "keep as many people as we can in London". UBS is one of the last big banks to decide on where it might relocate people post-Brexit, with London staff last week asked to rank whether they would prefer to relocate to Amsterdam, Madrid or Frankfurt, sources told Reuters. "We are finalising our plan on where to move people that need to be moved over the next one to three years depending on the outcome of this political discussion and negotiation," Mr Ermotti said.
Paris is not an option, or Dublin, which would have been our top picks.
According to The Telegraph, UBS is not divulging what’s behind its change of heart.
It is unclear what reassurances the bank has received in the last few months that has made its earlier estimate for job moves seem unrealistic, with a spokesman for the bank declining to comment further. It is likely other banks have been sent the same message, with the finance industry making repeated demands for the Government to come up with a post-Brexit transition deal quickly so that firms have certainty over whether they need to move jobs and capital.
And, the paper tells us, the big winner from Brexit is…
However the head of lobby group TheCityUK said some of the damage was now irreversible, with institutions already pushing ahead with their plans to leave the City. Frankfurt, where UBS already has a licence, is emerging as a clear winner from Brexit. Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs recently signed a lease there that could house up to 1,000 staff, while Germany's financial watchdog has said it could see up to 20 more firms move over.
The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) has won a years-long legal battle against the Internal Revenue Service in which the agency admitted that it wrongfully targeted Tea Party conservatives, during the Obama Administration, specifically because of their political viewpoints.
In issuing an “apology” to the clients represented by the ACLJ, the IRS admitted that it was wrong to use the United States tax code simply because of an entity’s name.
They also admitted the bombshell fact that this discrimination happened specifically because of the applicants political viewpoints. Keep in mind the fact that the mainstream media has spent years telling the American people that this didn’t happen.
In other words, outlets such as The Washington Post, CNN, and The New York Times directly lied to their readers and viewers to protect a Democratic president whose administration was openly breaking the law.
A declaration by the Court that it is wrong to apply the United States tax code to any tax-exempt applicant or entity based solely on such entity’s name, any lawful positions it espouses on any issues, or its associations or perceived associations with a particular political movement, position or viewpoint;
A declaration by the Court that any action or inaction taken by the IRS must be applied evenhandedly and not based solely on a tax-exempt applicant or entity’s name, political viewpoint, or associations or perceived associations with a particular political movement, position or viewpoint; and
A declaration by the Court that discrimination on the basis of political viewpoint in administering the United States tax code violates fundamental First Amendment rights. Disparate treatment of taxpayers based solely on the taxpayers’ names, any lawful positions the taxpayers espouse on any issues, or the taxpayers’ associations or perceived associations with a particular political movement, position or viewpoint is unlawful.
[…]
Finally, and of crucial significance, the IRS admits it targeted conservative and Tea Party groups based on their viewpoints (i.e., “policy positions”) and that such viewpoint discrimination violates fundamental First Amendment rights. This is the first time the IRS has admitted that its targeting scheme was not just “inappropriate” – as TIGTA found – but, as our clients alleged and we have vigorously and persistently argued for years, blatantly unconstitutional.
ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow noted the historic victory as well as the terrifying fact that the Obama Administration used the IRS to go after their political enemies, knowing full well that most of their allies in the media would ignore or discredit any reporting that exposed this disgusting and illegal practice.
“Throughout litigation of this case, we have remained committed to protecting the rights of our clients who faced unlawful and discriminatory action by the IRS. Our objective from the very beginning has been to hold the IRS accountable for its corrupt practices. This Consent Order represents a historic victory for our clients and sends the unequivocal message that a government agency’s targeting of conservative organizations, or any organization, on the basis of political viewpoints, will never be tolerated, Sekulow said in a statement.
“This Order will put an end, once and for all, to the abhorrent practices utilized against our clients, as the agreement includes the IRS’s express acknowledgment of – and apology for – its wrongful treatment of our clients. While this agreement is designed to prevent any such practices from occurring again, rest assured that we will remain vigilant to ensure that the IRS does not resort to such tactics in the future.”
So there you have. Former president Barack Obama used a corrupt IRS to go after Tea Party groups that he disagreed with in what should be one of the largest political scandals in decades. This is high-level, “we will take out our enemies, screw the law,” type corruption.
One can imagine that the same liberal journalists that downplayed the initial IRS revelations will either ignore this or laughably try to somehow pretend something that the IRS admitted themselves wasn’t true because… Fox News.
Back in July, Deutsche Bank’s derivative strategist Aleksandar Kocic believed he had found the moment the market broke, which he defined as a terminal dislocation between market and economic policy uncertainty: as he wrote 4 months ago, it was some time in 2012 that markets “lost their capacity to deal with uncertainty.”
It was also some time in 2012 that traders and market participants realized central banks have not only taken over the market, but have no intention of ever leaving as the alternative is a crash that wipes out 8 years of artificial “wealth effect” creation and puts the very concept of fractional reserve and central banking in jeopardy.
This intention was confirmed last week when as Kocic again wrote overnight, it became clear – once again – that Central Banks’ main agenda “is management of the risk of policy unwind” which has two different aspects, especially for those who still believe there is such as a thing as a “market.” Kocic explains:
On one hand, it is reassuring that Central Banks are cognizant of severity of the risk and are showing appropriate flexibility in adjusting their reaction functions to incorporate these realities.
On the other hand, this is less good because it does not allow the market to reposition and, thus, normalize. By soliciting feedback from the markets, Central Banks are further encouraging bad behavior making things potentially worse by postponing the resolution further into the future.
Yet while the Fed is mystified by the lack of “real economic” inflation – just because it is unwilling to admit it has blown yet another bubble – investors are mystified by something else entirely. As Kocic explains, the common theme constraint in this world in which central banks are focused on “risk policy unwind”, the same risk they created, is that investors, and people in general, are facing fixed long-term liabilities. In such a world, “with continued political pressure to reduce taxes and avoid more deficit spending, welfare programs and safety nets are being further dismantled and, through continued privatization, those costs are being passed onto consumers. This means that long-term liabilities are not going down any time soon; if anything, they are most likely to continue to grow”
In this environment, in which demographics + debt + disruption = deflation, “investors are looking for higher returns and money managers are pressured to deliver in an increasingly challenging environment as risk premia continue to compress across the board. The dilemma money managers are facing is either to engage in short term risky strategies or face redemptions.“
This is another way of saying “you will either become part of the crowd or your career is over.” And since most financial professionals have conceded, and are indeed part of the crowd, “anything that would disturb this mechanism is likely to make markets unhappy and cause “tantrums” which could escalate and potentially trigger unwind of the existing positions creating a situation that would be difficult, if not impossible, to manage.”
Since this forces current flawed monetary policy to persist and remain “transparent, predictable and overly accommodative”, it further reinforces “bad behavior and focus on short term strategies with disregard to their long-term consequences.” Which is Kocic’s traditionally verbose way of saying all traders care about is the year end bonus; as for what happens after, to paraphrase Louis VX, “Apres moi, le deluge.”
In practical terms, this means that while markets appear to be locally stable, they “are effectively dancing on the edge of metastablity whereby practically any non-trivial shock can be destabilizing” as “people had abandoned any long-term agenda and have concentrated all the efforts on extracting as much as possible in the near term.” This goes back to what Kocic said back in June when he first defined the market’s “metastable” (dys)equilibrium, and predicted that eventually it would lead to “cataclysmic events.”
Picking up where he left off, Kocic explains that investor confusion, or rather schizophrenia, is the result of an “overhang of almost a decade of unprecedented stimulus and one-sided positioning” which has made “the market is vulnerable to violent selloffs.”
This is a consequence of Central Banks’ complicity and shrinking of the horizons – the future is degrading into an optimized present. At this point, there is an implicit symbolic pact between Central Banks and the markets.
This brings the old trope created by Kocic when he looks at the interplay between the Fed and markets as manifestations of second, third and higher level intentionality, or as the DB analyst puts it, “the Fed knows that the market knows and the market knows that the Fed
knows that the market knows, so everyone knows, but pretends that nobody
knows and the game goes on.”
Which, of course, is the $64 trillion question, “what happens if there is an exogenous
circuit breaker and we can no longer pretend?” Or, what happens when the Fed can no longer fake that things are normal…
But what?
Which brings us to the question of crisis catalysts – what is the “non-trivial” shock that will break the current cycle of metastability and unleash the next “cataclysm.”
To answer, Kocic looks at the interplay of volatility and leverage in history, one “which defines the dynamics of the economy. Generally, reduced uncertainty engenders higher levels of leverage which in turn leads to additional compression of risk premia and a buildup of risks. Ultimately the system becomes unstable and results in a crisis, which in turn forces the system to deleverage in a highly volatile manner. In a way, continued prosperity and stability in itself is destabilizing leading to riskier lending as the asset prices of collateral decline. This is the essence of Minsky’s take on financial markets.“
And since it has become the Fed’s sole purpose to prevent this mean reversion from taking place, perhaps ever, ultimately the tension in markets boils down to this simple question: how long can the Fed prevent the “Minsky moment” from asserting itself, sending volatility soaring and ending the current unstable state, ironically by injecting ever more of the one catalyst that unleash the next crisis: debt.
Below is Kocic’ explanation of what the Minsky dynamics for the “new, centrally-planned, normal” market look like, how the interplay of vol and leverage could spark the next crisis, and what catalysts could send the world spiraling into a state of currency, and unconstrained, crisis.
The forgotten horizon: Where the wild things are
Excess liquidity can cause asset bubbles and market crises. However, excess liquidity cannot do it alone; it must be helped by deregulation and an asset that can convert liquidity into inflation. So far, both of these factors have been under control post 2008 – the financial sectors have been regulated and an asset class capable of forming a bubble is not on the horizon. However, and this is where the risk lies, as there is political pressure to deregulate the markets and inject additional fiscal stimulus, the door is being open for unprecedented liquidity injection to backfire in the long run.
What should we do if we really have to worry beyond the short-term horizon? In our view, the experience of the past eight years could hold a key to understanding the response of the markets to potential normalization in rates and volatility. Since the early days of the crisis, we have had four episodes of violent selloff with repricing of similar intensity: QE1, QE2, Taper tantrum, and 2016 US Presidential elections. However, each time, that the market was addressing different kind of risk with a distinct pattern of repricing of the volatility surface.
In order to establish cognitive coordinates of the problem which allow us to generalize the past experience, we discuss the general framework of volatility evolution in the context of leverage. There is a relationship between leverage and vol which defines the dynamics of the economy. Generally, reduced uncertainty engenders higher levels of leverage which in turn leads to additional compression of risk premia and a buildup of risks. Ultimately the system becomes unstable and results in a crisis, which in turn forces the system to deleverage in a highly volatile manner. In a way, continued prosperity and stability in itself is destabilizing leading to riskier lending as the asset prices of collateral decline. This is the essence of Minsky’s take on financial markets.
During the conundrum years of the mid-zero-zero decade, there were several factors that led to subsequent instabilities and the 2008 crisis. In addition to low rates catalyzing the growth of the housing market, we had an increasingly predictable monetary policy on the back of further reduction of economic uncertainty and transfer of convexity risk to the banks’ balance sheets without a clear transmission mechanism to the capital markets. This led to continued decline in volatility and compression of risk premia as investors sought higher levels of risk in order to insure stable returns. This is the period of lowest volatility and highest leverage. In order to capture these dynamics, we describe the market behavior in terms of leverage and volatility (or risk premia), see the figure below. In this space, there are four quadrants corresponding to different regimes and the market trends with quasi-cyclical trajectories capturing the evolution of financial markets as they transition through different operating modes.
The low-vol/high-leverage state is intuitively easy to understand — we have already seen its full realization during the conundrum years, about a decade ago, and are currently getting a taste of its modified version. High-vol/high-leverage would correspond to the period of unsustainable public or private debt, such as the ones observed in certain emerging market economies, with typically high inflation and currency problems. High-volatility/low -everage would correspond to forced and disorderly deleveraging. Low-volatility/low-leverage is a regime we are trying to avoid.
The figure captures generalized trajectories of volatility and leverage as seen in the last 10-15 years. This approach is a conceptual relative to the Minsky’s idea of endogeneity of financial crises. To illustrate the market evolution in this context, we start our journey somewhere in the lower left quadrant and follow the trajectory along the ellipse in the clockwise direction. We can think of this starting point as being some time around the middle of the last decade. As the risk premia compress, leverage increases leading to higher levels of risk taking, which results in a crisis. The volatility spikes up while the system begins to deleverage. At some point the government steps in and for awhile there is an uncertainty about whether it would be able to contain the crisis without causing serious long-term side effects.
Volatility continues to grow despite the decline in leverage until there are first signs of relaxation and market stabilization. As vol goes through a turnaround the system continues to deleverage, we are leaving the upper half of the plane. The success of policy response up to that point brings in some optimism about future economic growth and risk premia begin to compress.
We are currently in the lower half plane. As we transition from the lower right to the lower left quadrants, the policy unwind begins. During taper tantrum, the system faces a dilemma between forced deleveraging (e.g. unwind of the Fed balance sheet and disorderly bear steepener) or gradual deleveraging with uneventful exit and transition deeper into the lower left quadrant (this is denoted as the “Base case”). This path requires some fine tuning as efforts are made not to overregulate the system and slip into a deflationary trap.
At around the same vol levels, during the 2016 presidential elections, new risk is resurfacing. With protectionist rhetoric and promises of additional fiscal spending, the risks of opening corridor to high inflation and currency crisis is back on the table, but this time, due to massive growth of retail balance sheet this becomes entangled with uncertainty about the long-term monetary policy response in this context.
Since all the people involved in the JFK murder and investigation are dead, one might wonder why all the fuss about documents from 50 years ago really matter. FX traders are mostly conspiracy theorists, either they are part of the FX rigging scandal making billions off the backs of unsuspecting clients that don’t understand FX, or they are traders trying to guess why markets move the way they do in order to protect their positions. In any case, FX traders see how FX moves ahead of terrorist events, and how the US Dollar tracks several hours ahead of key global military events. Also, the world really hasn’t changed much, especially the architecture of modern political power, so a look into the past can be also a look into the present. The parallels of JFK and Trump are interesting, both being from rich families and both in some way ‘turned’ against the mainstream establishment. Although the world is too different now for a fair comparison, and JFK and Trump are nearly polar opposites when it comes to them individually. While the recent data dump of documents presents more circumstantial evidence than ever before – all from the ultimate source (the US Government) any ‘smoking gun’ document has long been destroyed. Perhaps the only smoking gun is the ‘burned memo’ which could be a cryptic assassination directive.
While the world wonders about President Trump, 54 years ago, a US President was murdered in broad daylight in Dallas, Texas; John Fitzgerald Kennedy – the only Irish Catholic President, and possibly one of the only US Presidents that was not a Freemason. To this day, the facts surrounding this event remain clouded. The ‘official’ Warren Commission report presents fanciful theories about a “Magic Bullet” that was able to go in and out of JFK’s body multiple times, and other wild fantasies. But this official report is ‘official’ and any other explanation of the events of that day are ‘conspiracy theories.’ As time has passed, and secondary information surfaces, there are indications of the true power of the information that was kept secret for so long.
The murder of JFK is perhaps one of the most significant events of the 20th century. In the past 10 years, new information has surfaced that portends to a major re-investigation into the issue. As well, a generation has passed since the event which took place 1963. This article presents two unique viewpoints, previously unpublished, as well as looking at some recently released evidence:
New evidence that has surfaced since the making of Oliver Stone’s “JFK” in 1991
Groundbreaking documentary created BEFORE release of documents “JFK to 911 is a Rich Man’s Trick”
The Warren Commission came up with nonsensical conclusions he said, such as the “Magic Bullet” and the lone assassin theory, that Oswald did it by himself. No one took it seriously, at the time, but what could anyone do? It was obviously much bigger than one agency, even bigger than the office of the President, so whatever power lurking in the shadows – was not one to mess with!
Part 1: The Book that all JFK researchers should read
Kennedy’s Last Stand: Eisenhower, UFOs, MJ-12 & JFK’s Assassination – This is a must read, for those interested in the topic of ‘information’ and ‘informatics’ even if you’re not interested in the subject of UFOs. The point here is that documentary evidence regarding the UFO conspiracy is real and comes from the top. A group so powerful (MJ-12) they shut out the President (Eisenhower) who overcame them only by threatening to invade Area 51 with the Army. In the past 20 years, new evidence has surfaced, some of which is presented in the book. Most significantly, the book points a paper trail right to the top of the CIA and beyond.
Small background on UFO phenomenon as it pertains to this story; UFOs were first discovered by the military over Los Angeles during World War 2. It was alarming because the Army believed that it was the enemy Japanese attacking, all they saw were ‘airships’ shooting down from the sky; the idea of Aliens or UFOs wasn’t common knowledge at the time. See a brief summary of the “Battle of Los Angeles”:
The Battle of Los Angeles, also known as The Great Los Angeles Air Raid, is the name given by contemporary sources to the rumored enemy attack and subsequent anti-aircraft artillery barrage which took place from late 24 February to early 25 February 1942 over Los Angeles, California.The incident occurred less than three months after the United States entered World War II as a result of the Japanese Imperial Navy‘s attack on Pearl Harbor, and one day after the bombardment of Ellwood on 23 February. Initially, the target of the aerial barrage was thought to be an attacking force from Japan, but speaking at a press conference shortly afterward, Secretary of the NavyFrank Knox called the incident a “false alarm.” Newspapers of the time published a number of reports and speculations of a cover-up.
Some contemporary ufologists and conspiracy theorists have suggested the targets were extraterrestrial spacecraft.When documenting the incident in 1949, The United States Coast Artillery Association identified a meteorological balloon sent up at 1:00 am that “started all the shooting” and concluded that “once the firing started, imagination created all kinds of targets in the sky and everyone joined in”. In 1983, the U.S. Office of Air Force History attributed the event to a case of “war nerves” triggered by a lost weather balloon and exacerbated by stray flares and shell bursts from adjoining batteries.
After this ‘battle’ UFOs were on the radar of the military – literally. Military planners, practically, incorporate every kind of potential attack into their strategy planning. UFOs were not looked at scientifically by the military – simply as a potential threat, whether from Hitler or another planet they didn’t care.
The second event that marked this age was the Roswell crash, still a big mystery to this day. Apparently, there were 2 crashes, one with actual biological bodies, and the press release was designed to take the focus away from the more sensitive site. According to the book, everything was taken to Area 51 for review, where the facility was placed under the security of the CIA and managed by a group formed by Truman known as MJ-12. A lot of this is not science fiction when considering Nazi scientists developed rockets that NASA still uses to this day via Project Paperclip. Remember that all of this happened around a time when USA was becoming a superpower, the CIA was just formed, along with the military industrial complex – including its corporate technology arm, still in use today (Silicon Valley).
This all shortly after the Roswell incident. Looking at all this from a technology standpoint is not so sensational. The fact that the Roswell crash was in fact a UFO possibly operated by a ‘robot’ or ‘drone’ from another planet or another timeline is not so far fetched. If the reader could be transported back to the middle ages of Europe equipped with a laser pointer, iPhone 7, automatic handgun, and other wizard’s tools, certainly the people would think that the user is a “God” who practices “Magic”.
The most dramatic directive, likely drafted by Dulles (MJ-1), Director of CIA under JFK and apparently approved by six other MJ-12 members was a cryptic assassination directive. In full, this states: see last memo in series in link below.
Draft – Directive Regarding Project Environment – When conditions become non-conducive for growth in our environment and Washington cannot be influenced any further, the weather is lacking any precipitation … it should be wet.
The term “it should be wet” is a coded command to kill someone.
Detractors of this book will say that the author is reaching to connect the dots, and this cryptic message is not ‘clearly’ the smoking gun evidence that everyone is looking for. But is it? Have a deeper look through these documents here:
To the less educated researcher, documents such as the letter from respected scientists Oppenheimer and Einstein regarding the UFO issue, and the letter from the anonymous CIA leaker re: James Angleton; may be of more significance, as the authenticity of these documents is more verifiable, and anecdotally more believable. Einstein for example published thousands of public essays and letters on various important topics of the day; this was a time when the power Elite relied on high IQ scientists.
There is no alternative paper trail, with a more powerful suggestion – solving the JFK murder. Most of the files have been released in a searchable archive, which you can find here: http://ift.tt/2jkCGha
It is not likely that in the next 20 years another ‘smoking gun’ document will be discovered, although it’s possible (it could be in some relatives attic, next to baseball cards and grandpas pipe saved from last century). So it’s reasonable to conclude that 95% of relevant information regarding the JFK scenario is out there, somewhere – in the ether. With the speed and velocity of the internet sleuth community, if there was such a relevant document such as photo (right) – it would have been distributed and redistributed, analyzed and discussed, ad nauseum.
What is the significance of this event, you ask? It’s a singularity, as they describe in physics (a point at which a function takes an infinite value, especially in space-time when matter is infinitely dense, as at the center of a black hole). From one perspective, it was simply a power grab by ‘faction 2’ from ‘faction 1’ as some describe big power politics. The Kennedy clan were outsiders, they were social climbers, they went against the power structure of the haves – case closed. But Kennedy or someone else – something more meaningful happened here. A group called the “Shadow Government” stopped Kennedy from exercising the powers granted to him by the Constitution and by the voters. It puts the entire system into question, proving basically that the United States operates by Mob Rule not so much different than a banana republic. A group of rich families and companies with deep pockets control the country through their trained surrogates. The continuation of this can be seen with political families such as Bush and Clinton who have a statistically unusual amount of deaths of associates, friends, and workers surrounding them. Some were even afraid to work for the Clinton camp due to the high number of workers who ‘suicided’, disappeared, had heart failure, or stabbed themselves in the back 10 times.
Let’s thread through the irony of the power structure for the last 30 years with this interesting photo, and comparison, of a figure outside the Texas School Book Depository:
The photo on right, comparing the posture of a figure standing in a suit and tie is striking. George H.W. Bush Sr. later went on to be the director of the CIA, only for 2 years, under Gerald Ford. But Bush’s impact on the establishment would be large, as he would later be Reagan’s Vice President (and rumored that was more of a ‘President’ during this time than Reagan ever was) and eventually President of the United States, and father of a future president, George W. Bush (his son).
(NOTE: It is interesting that the shadowy figure would 30 years later popularize the phrase “One World Order”)
What kind of ‘organization’ is out of the public view, has the means to organize such an assassination, and the motive? All points to one organization, really the only capable organization of organizing such a project. Look at some evidence, such as this list compiled by Wikispooks, of attempted or successful assassination attempts on foreign leaders organized by the CIA since World War 2: http://ift.tt/1rhgDcd And here’s “Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders” as compiled by the US Senate in 1975: CIA_Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders
With such overwhelming evidence of the CIA’s involvement in foreign assassinations, if only one of these ‘plots’ is true it’s reasonable to assume they all are true because after all, the CIA is a spy agency, not an overt military operation, so most of this is done with the clandestine service. And, if the CIA really does have a ‘hit squad’ trained to topple and kill foreign dictators, then it is reasonable to assume this same operative group inside the CIA could potentially use this same group domestically. In fact, it is the only group in the world capable of assassinating a US President so successfully, including the use of insiders to change the course of the motorcade, for example.
Or to use another analogy as a means of deductive logic, 95% of hackers are inside jobs – in other words, hackers very rarely breach security from the ‘outside’ – they rely on a rogue employee, security expert, or insider to provide key information such as passwords or other details needed to complete the job. This must have been the case with the murder of JFK because without those on the inside, such an epic target would not have been possible to hit. It was for this reason the ‘higher ups’ at the FBI wanted this case closed and not discussed, because there clearly were insiders working against JFK who provided key info and modifying security protocols leading to the assassination.
The peak of outrage against government-sponsored assassination was the mid-1970s, when the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations — better known as the Church committee — spent more than 60 days questioning 75 witnesses about C.I.A. plots of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Back in the darkest days of the cold war, the agency had devoted significant resources and creativity to devising unhappy ends for unsavory or inconvenient foreign leaders. Among those listed for assassination were Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic and, most famously, Fidel Castro of Cuba, who survived no fewer than eight C.I.A. assassination plots. The senators on the committee were intent on divining the full extent of the government’s role in these plots. How much direct authority, for example, did Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy exert over them? The committee’s conclusions were vague at best. The truth was that neither president would have allowed his hand to show in such affairs. Times have changed. Our president now interrupts regularly scheduled broadcasting to announce the news of an assassination himself.
Perhaps the details of the JFK murder, public coverage, and FBI investigation would have been different had it happened in 2010. Certainly it was a different time, before the internet, and at a time of much happiness and prosperity. Since “JFK” we’ve had “911” which is another game changer event that put the US on a different path as it was during the 90s. Perhaps every generation needs such an event to ‘remind’ them of who is in charge? (Dr. Tony Blanton from Pine Crest Prep School is ringing in my ears ‘history is a struggle between the haves and the have nots and you are the movers and the shakers who are going to change society’)
What secrets are the ‘shadow government’ protecting or are they simply exercising their power to show the have nots that their ownership of the planet is above any government, any nation state, religion, or other entity? The UFO issue is concerning, particularly due to security concerns; because the information we do know is only bits and pieces from whistle-blowers and a few encounters that are not well documented. There are rumors that Eisenhower himself made a deal with the Aliens to keep them a secret in exchange for technology transfer through the military and corporate America. Maybe it was a good deal, maybe it never happened – who knows? The point is that, until real discovery and disclosure is achieved, we will be in the dark regarding important issues that can impact daily life on planet earth. Some important questions we need to ask beyond the shock value of understanding we are not alone in the universe:
Who are these aliens, what do they want? What has been ‘agreed’ with them, if anything, and what current involvement do they have with US Military operations?
What of the stories that some of these creatures are multi-dimensional, or from another ‘timeline’ (that they aren’t aliens from other planets but beings that live in many dimensions)?
How can we address issues of exo-politics if the CIA was dethroned as the sole security to Area 51 and ultimately, controlling the diplomacy between such aliens, if any?
Is there any truth to the stories they are abducting humans for purposes of experimentation, whether it be biological or genetic? What about the ‘hybrid’ projects? If there is truth to it, how to stop it?
Do aliens have any current business arrangements with US corporations, US politicians, or are involved in major conflicts in any way? If so, this urgently needs to be addressed, and contracts re-evaluated. For example there are many accounts that UFOs were seen when nuclear warheads went dead (if even for a test).
Are there any secret government ‘libraries’ or ‘archives’ where files about aliens are kept, if so – where are they and in what format?
What’s interesting about this issue that it seems to be a wealth of information right here under our own desert. It’s like the metaphor about exploring space when we know less about our deep oceans. There again, rumors of alien bases under the deep seas. The amount of information regarding the veracity of such stories is immense, and it has gone parabolic in the last years as many who were alive and working during these times before modern security protocols and training were in place, are retired, dying, or have passed information onto children.
Part 2: The New Evidence
1963 was a long time ago. New facts and evidence have surfaced, most interestingly – we are on the precipice of a major data dump by the US Government still to be determined, scheduled for ‘sometime’ in 2o17. See explanation from http://2017jfk.org :
In 1992, the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act mandated that in 2017 all remaining JFK records and redactions be released. However, the National Archives has recently informed federal agencies that if they intend on maintaining secrecy over these records they should begin preparing appeals to the next president of the United States. We are working to ensure that the law is upheld. We are calling on you, fellow Americans, to come together and ensure that our government upholds the law.
The parallel of the information secrecy both for the JFK murder and the UFO issue, and their purported interconnection, is interesting. If state secrets or a modern political organization were not at stake, why the hold up to release information about JFK? Everyone mostly already believes it was the CIA, a group we have shown capable of organizing assassinations of many foreign leaders, and recently (2016) was caught meddling in a US domestic election. The UFO issue can be the motive to cover up the JFK murder for so long, so deeply. And the less obvious, more subtle ‘can of worms’ argument, that if the US Government lied and hid the facts about JFK, of course – everything else including the 9/11 investigation would be open for re-investigation. This is another reason for waiting for so long because there’d be no one to ‘blame’ as those who orchestrated the conspiracy / cover-up would all be dead by now (or so the thinking of this strategy goes).
A recording of radio communications to and from Air Force One on November 22,1963, discovered in 2011, is among the most important new pieces of JFK evidence to emerge in recent years,
The tape, an edited excerpt from a longer recording, captures some of the communications of the leaders of U.S. national security agencies as they learned about the assassination of a sitting president.
I wrote about the importance of the Air Force One tape in the fall of 2013:
This old-fashioned reel of analog tape surfaced at Philadelphia auction house in 2011. The recording was found in the estate of the family of Gen. Chester Clifton, a military aide to JFK. Clifton died in 1991. His children put the estate up for auction.
Bill Kelly, a JFK researcher, enlisted Primeau Forensics, a Michigan audio engineering firm, to produce a cleaned-up version of the tape.
What is significant in this piece of information, as far as data analysis is concerned, is the source. It was an unclassified transcript of a non-essential to the JFK operation (Project Environment). It only ‘suggests’ through information via what was said and not said, and as such, is not a ‘smoking gun’. But much like the UFO phenomenon, in a similar thread – it seems that it’s simply IMPOSSIBLE to keep such a high profile operation secret for so long. The analogy to the UFO issue is Dr. Steven Greer’s “Disclosure Project” available at http://ift.tt/WRigvL; in summary:
Beginning in 1993, I started an effort that was designed to identify firsthand military and government witnesses to UFO events and projects, as well as other evidence to be used in a public disclosure. From 1993, we spent considerable time and resources briefing the Clinton Administration, including CIA Director James Woolsey, senior military officials at the Pentagon, and select members of Congress, among others. In April of 1997, more than a dozen such government and military witnesses were assembled in Washington DC for briefings with Congressmen, Pentagon officials and others. There, we specifically requested open Congressional Hearings on the subject. None were forthcoming.
These materials are, as you can now discern, only the tip of the iceberg of what we have recorded on digital videotape. That is, from over 120 hours of testimony by over 100 witnesses we transcribed only 33 hours and then further edited materials down to a fraction of that amount. Moreover, the full archive represents the testimony of only 100 witnesses of the more than 400 identified to date. The edited testimony will be appearing in book form. A portion of it appears in The Disclosure Project Briefing Document and only small excerpts and summary bios of testimony appear in this Executive summary. We hope in the future to secure funding for a 5-6 part broadcast quality video documentary series to be made from the videotaped testimony we have as the impact of hearing and seeing these witnesses speak is very moving.
This then brings me to my last point: The witnesses who have given testimony to date are extraordinarily brave men and women – heroes in my eyes – who have taken great personal risks in coming forward. Some have been threatened and intimidated. All are risking the ever-present ridicule that attends this subject. Not a single one of them has been paid for his or her testimony: It has been given freely and without reservation for the good of humanity. I wish to personally thank them here and extend to them my personal, highest respect and gratitude.
This summary is focusing on the testimony of important first-hand witnesses. We have thousands of government documents, hundreds of photographs, trace landing cases and more, but it is impossible to include them in a summary of this length. These materials will be made available for any serious scientific or Congressional inquiry.
These 2 issues are interrelated on so many levels, it’s only fitting that both have strong nonclassified, civilian groups dedicated to identifying, collecting, archiving, sorting, and classification of all relevant information on the topics. They are after all, significant issues, with implications on all sciences. These 2 topics may even be more important than recent scientific discoveries. For example, as hundreds of high level government witnesses have testified in the disclosure project, one of the technologies kept under lock and key by the CIA (as reverse engineered from ET) are several energy technologies including but not limited to ‘zero point’ energy which would literally, instantly end our dependence on oil, coal, and nuclear. This is just the tip of the iceberg, as hundreds of ground breaking tech has been leaked from ET such as thorium ‘clean’ nuclear technology, Kevlar, nanotechnology, advanced long distance energy communication, the ability to manipulate space time (or at least, to pass through a ‘wrinkle’ in time), and hundreds of others. The business element of this provides a solid motive alone, without religious, social, or political implications. There would be no need for 90% of the Fortune 500, the stock market would crash and the entire economic system as we know it would be immediately restructured (who would pay for gas when free energy is available?).
The public stated reason, for locking away the JFK files for 75 years, which plausibly is also the reason of keeping UFO information secret; is that the public ‘cannot handle the truth’ – that it would be ‘too much to handle’ – the first implication being some embarrasing political facts, such as the fact that the CIA with the help of insiders like LBJ were critical to the murder or completely organized it themselves. But that’s not hard to swallow, generations of hardened Americans watching real-time cameras on missiles bombing and maiming brown people (mostly) have become desensitized to such emotional dribble. But the elephant was in the room all along – this ‘shocking’ fact really is shocking, because it would change every aspect of life on our planet – quite literally (not figuratively). For example, having free energy would change manufacturing, transportation, computing – just about everything. It would change war, it would have implications into governance, we can skip religious implications and take the lead from the Catholic Church who is ahead of the information curve on this issue (for obvious reasons).
There is a lot of new evidence, much of which has been referenced in the below documentary – we chose this as an example because it was likely overlooked during the sweep of evidence hiding.
So there we have it, the JFK murder has been solved.
WHO – It was a sub-set of the Intelligence aparatus, MJ12/CIA under the direction of Allen Dulles operated by Jesus James Angleton, involving multiple CIA agents including but not limited to George H.W. Bush Sr.
WHAT – The murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) US President, Elite leader, representative of the powerful Kennedy clan, Irish Catholic, father, patriot, and civil servant
WHERE & WHEN – Dallas, Texas November 22, 1963
HOW – A fine tuned machine prepared the ultimate kill scene, which involved extensive research and planning, significant funding, resources, highly skilled and trained soldiers, and a ‘cover-up’ scenario which had to involve LBJ and others around JFK.
WHY – To maintain the big Illuminati secret – that the US Government has obtained technology from other worlds, given to us directly and reverse engineered, and this transfer of tech continues to this day – and that the revelation of what happened to JFK regarding the UFO issue would start a chain of events that would finally lead to the complete disclosure of this technology, and thus – change the entire global political and economic system forever.
Part 3: JFK to 911 Everything is a Rich Man’s Trick
This is a well documented detailed documentary that simply connects the dots between JFK and 911, and basically exposing the ‘pattern’ of such events, we can include the recent shootings in Las Vegas to the long string of such events. Some call them ‘false flag’ operations or “PsyOps” but really they are no more significant than your local pest control guy planting nests of ants and roaches near your home when business is slow. Since World War 2 there has not been a serious threat to the United States – and at the same time the US Military ‘over prepared’ for the possibility of going to war with ten planets, so all that needs to be justified. The Military Industrial Complex needs an enemy, it doesn’t matter if the enemy is Russia, or terrorists.. or aliens..
Unbeknownst to many, the Sackler Family, with assets of $13 billion, the nation’s 19th wealthiest family is one the top players in philanthropy. You can find the Sackler Gallery in the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C. or visit the Sackler wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The Sackler’s even have a museum at Harvard, Guggenheim, and dozen of universities around the country. If it’s art— the Sackler family has it.
Participating in the art game takes money and a lot of it. So, where does the Sackler money come from?
According to Forbes, the “Sacklers continue to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from the businesses in 2016– some $700 million last year, by Forbes’ calculations – from an estimated $3 billion in Purdue Pharma revenues plus at least $1.5 billion in sales from their foreign companies”.
Forbes outlines a brief history lesson of how the Sackler family got started in the world of medicine-
The family fortune began in 1952 when three doctors — Arthur (d. 1987), Mortimer (d. 2010) and Raymond Sackler — purchased Purdue, then a small and struggling New York drug manufacturer. The company spent decades selling products like earwax remover and laxatives before moving into pain medications by the late 1980s. To create OxyContin, Purdue married oxycodone, a generic painkiller, with a time-release mechanism to combat abuse by spreading the drug’s effects over a half-day.
The FDA approved the medication in 1995 and it soon took off. By 2003 OxyContin sales hit $1.6 billion as the drug helped drive a huge nationwide spike in opioid prescribing. At its peak in 2012, doctors wrote more than 282 million prescriptions for opioid painkillers, including OxyContin, Vicodin and Percocet — nearly enough for every American to have a bottle.
Now opioid prescriptions are declining amid increased scrutiny over drug addiction, down 12% since 2012 according to data from healthcare information firm IMS Health. OxyContin (which is also beginning to face competition from authorized generics while fighting to protect its patents over tamper-proof, extended-release oxycodone) saw prescriptions fall 17%.
It wasn’t until the 1980’s, as explained by Forbes, the Sackler family through their family-owned drug company called Purdue Pharma created OxyContin. Then in 1995, the FDA approved the medication and sales exploded. Sales hit $1.6 billion in 2003, as a nationwide spike in opioids was seen. By the peak in 2012, doctors wrote more than 282 million prescription for opioid painkillers, such as OxyContin, Vicodin and Percocet. Good times for the Sacklers from 1996- 2012, as the family drug business exploded.
According to The New Yorker, Oxycontin ” has reportedly generated some thirty-five billion dollars in revenue for Purdue” since 1995. OxyContin’s sole active ingredient is oxycodone, a chemical cousin of heroin, which makes it highly addictive.
The New Yorker further says Purdue used marketing techniques to deceive the American public of the drug’s true addictive characteristics.
Purdue launched OxyContin with a marketing campaign that attempted to counter this attitude and change the prescribing habits of doctors. The company funded research and paid doctors to make the case that concerns about opioid addiction were overblown, and that OxyContin could safely treat an ever-wider range of maladies. Sales representatives marketed OxyContin as a product “to start with and to stay with.” Millions of patients found the drug to be a vital salve for excruciating pain. But many others grew so hooked on it that, between doses, they experienced debilitating withdrawal.
Oddly enough, around the time OxyContin was approved, prescription opioid deaths across the United States surged. Fast forward to more relevant times, where heroin and fentanyl deaths are exploding.
Diving into the opioid crisis onto the streets of Baltimore. It’s very common to see local citizens shooting up heroin on city streets. In this video, I asked a man how did this addiction start? Guess what he said?… It all started with legal painkillers, such as OxyContin.
As a few parasitical elites make billions flooding America’s streets with opioids. We the every day American citizen have to deal with the consequences, as President Trump outlined in yesterday’s opioid crisis speech:
In 2016, more than two million Americans had an addiction to prescription or illicit opioids.
Since 2000, over 300,000 Americans have died from overdoses involving opioids.
Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of injury death in the United States, outnumbering both traffic crashes and gun-related deaths.
In 2015, there were 52,404 drug overdose deaths — 33,091 of those deaths, almost two-thirds, involved the use of opioids.
The situation has only gotten worse, with drug overdose deaths in 2016 expected to exceed 64,000.
This represents a rate of 175 deaths a day.
Bottomline: It’s time for the American people to learn the truth about the opioid crisis and the very few elites who have profited. The question You should ask: why did our government allow this to happen?
Nearly a month after the worst mass shooting in US history, many questions remain unanswered.
After an exhaustive investigation, the FBI and Las Vegas Police Department have confirmed that Paddock meticulously planned the assault, and even booked hotel rooms overlooking music festivals in other cities – suggesting that he had planned previous attacks, but backed out for whatever reason. However, his motive is seemingly lost to the wind.
But perhaps even more troubling than the absence of a motive (from a legal perspective, at least) is the fact that, four weeks later, the timeline of events remains murky. Specifically, two things are still unclear: The first is whether security guard Jesus Campos, who first alerted the hotel to the attack, was shot before, during or after the assault began. The second is how long it took the hotel’s dispatcher to inform the police.
This information is, of course, crucial because victims of the attack have already begun filing lawsuits against MGM Resorts, the owner of Mandalay Bay, for negligence related to the attack.
So far, the company appears to be doing everything it can to suppress any new information from leaking to the press. The mystery surrounding Campos’s activities following the attack has only further alarmed victims. Following Stephen Paddock's Oct. 1st massacre, Campos flaked on a press conference that he reportedly scheduled then went missing for days before suddenly resurfacing on the 'Ellen' show – a decision that was made for him by MGM management, who apparently believed Ellen wouldn't ask too many probing questions.
On Saturday, audio of Campos’s dispatch call reporting “shots fired” has been released. But curiously, the audio was not released with a time stamp, making it impossible for the public to discern when, exactly, the call was placed.
During the 24-second audio released Friday, Campos can be heard reporting “shots fired” at Mandalay Bay from the 32nd floor.
“Hey, there are shots fired in 32-135,” Campos says, according to the audio, which was released by MGM.
According to the most recent official version of events (which has of course been revised several times) Las Vegas Sheriff Joseph Lombardo has said Campos first reported that he had come across a blocked off doorway on the 32nd floor at 9:59 pm. The official timeline shows him being shot six minutes later, just before Paddock began firing on the crowd of 20,000 country music fans across the street. The shooting ended around 10:15, and the first police to arrive on the floor encountered Campos minutes later before forcing their way into Paddock’s room.
Last week, the New York Times postulated an alternative timeline that places the shooting of Campos about a minute after the shooting began. While it’s been reported that Paddock fired 200 rounds into the hallway, the gunshots in the record sound distant enough to suggest that he may have been firing on the crowd during the Campos call.
Of course, the audio clip was not released with a timestamp, and no explanation from MGM was given as to why the clip is just being released now.
But as lawsuits move forward, perhaps more details about what exactly happened that night will emerge.
