$13 trillion offshore wealth hidden from taxman

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The Observer reports

A global super-rich elite has exploited gaps in cross-border tax rules to hide an extraordinary £13 trillion ($21tn) of wealth offshore – as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together – according to research commissioned by the campaign group Tax Justice Network.

James Henry, former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has compiled the most detailed estimates yet of the size of the offshore economy in a new report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, released exclusively to the Observer.

He shows that at least £13tn – perhaps up to £20tn – has leaked out of scores of countries into secretive jurisdictions such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands with the help of private banks, which vie to attract the assets of so-called high net-worth individuals. Their wealth is, as Henry puts it, "protected by a highly paid, industrious bevy of professional enablers in the private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries taking advantage of the increasingly borderless, frictionless global economy". According to Henry's research, the top 10 private banks, which include UBS and Credit Suisse in Switzerland, as well as the US investment bank Goldman Sachs, managed more than £4tn in 2010, a sharp rise from £1.5tn five years earlier.

According to Henry's calculations, £6.3tn of assets is owned by only 92,000 people, or 0.001% of the world's population – a tiny class of the mega-rich who have more in common with each other than those at the bottom of the income scale in their own societies.

That's it, the missing liquidity that is bringing everything to a grinding halt. It's like a game of Monopoly with most of the money missing.

This country is not in debt. Our deficit is a taxation deficit, it is money that governments fail to collect and that the rich hide, not money that governments owe.

Dick Cheney and the war games on September 11

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© Copyright 2004, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.

by Michael Kane

January 18, 2005 (FTW) - In an argument of over 600 pages and 1,000 footnotes, Crossing the Rubicon makes the case for official complicity within the U.S. government and names Dick Cheney as the prime suspect in the crimes of 9/11. Since the publication of this book (to which I had the privilege of contributing a chapter), many people have asked to hear the case against Cheney argued "short & sweet."

I will make it as short as possible, but it can never be sweet.

There are 3 major points made within this book that are crucial to proving Cheney's guilt. I shall first list them and then go on to prove each point as laid out in Crossing the Rubicon.

1. Means - Dick Cheney and the Secret Service: Dick Cheney was running a completely separate chain of Command & Control via the Secret Service, assuring the paralysis of Air Force response on 9/11. The Secret Service has the technology to see the same radar screens the FAA sees in real time. They also have the legal authority and technological capability to take supreme command in cases of national emergency. Dick Cheney was the acting Commander in Chief on 9/11. (Click here for a summary of these points)
2. Motive - Peak Oil: At some point between 2000 and 2007, world oil production reaches its peak; from that point on, every barrel of oil is going to be harder to find, more expensive to recover, and more valuable to those who recover and control it. Dick Cheney was well aware of the coming Peak Oil crisis at least as early as 1999, and 9/11 provided the pretext for the series of energy wars that Cheney stated, "will not end in our lifetime." (Clickhere for a summary of these points)
3. Opportunity - 9/11 War Games: The Air Force was running multiple war games on the morning of 9/11 simulating hijackings over the continental United States that included (at least) one "live-fly" exercise as well as simulations that placed "false blips" on FAA radar screens. These war games eerily mirrored the real events of 9/11 to the point of the Air Force running drills involving hijacked aircraft as the 9/11 plot actually unfolded. The war games & terror drills played a critical role in ensuring no Air Force fighter jocks - who had trained their entire lives for this moment - would be able to prevent the attacks from succeeding. These exercises were under Dick Cheney's management. (Click here for a summary of these points)

Here is the supporting documentation as laid out in Crossing the Rubicon, making a legal case against Dick Cheney for the crimes of 9/11.

• MEANS: Dick Cheney and the Secret Service 
As the 9/11 plot unfolded, it has been reported that Secret Service whisked Dick Cheney into an underground presidential bunker at 9:03. 1 This establishes that the Secret Service was in the loop giving orders by at least 9:03, and almost certainly much earlier, as we will show.

Former counter-terrorism advisor Richard Clarke writes in Against All Enemies: "Secret Service had a system that allowed them to see what FAA's radar was seeing." The Kean Commission (also known as the 9/11 Commission) would have us believe that the chain of command on 9/11 was a complex web, but in reality the Secret Service had the authority to communicate presidential and vice presidential orders directly to fighter pilots in the air. 2

In Air War Over America, a book commissioned by the Air Force documenting the morning of 9/11, it is stated that the FAA contacted Otis Air Force base informing them Flight 11 was headed to Manhattan and had lost its identification signal by 8:30. 3 This indicates Secret Service was in the loop by the same time, or shortly thereafter, since they are able to see FAA radar screens in real time and FAA is reaching out to the military. There is no question that by 8:45 at the absolute latest, likely much earlier, Secret Service is in the decision-making loop. They were most likely in the loop after 8:15 when flight 11 turned its transponder off.

National Special Security Event
It is the Secret Service who has the legal mandate to take supreme command in case of a scheduled major event - or an unplanned major emergency - on American soil; these are designated "National Special Security Events." The Atlanta Olympic Games and the Republican & Democratic National Conventions are notable examples of NSSE's. In preparation, the Secret Service runs training initiatives of simulated attacks and field exercises for such events. 4

The Secret Service works with state and local authorities as well as the military to coordinate security efforts; it has the best communication system of any agency in the country; and its personnel are always present with both the President and Vice President - making it the perfect agency to take supreme command in case of a major emergency on American soil. 5

When 9/11 occurred, the legal framework was in place to allow the Secret Service to take supreme command over any and all American agencies, including the Air Force. 6

Richard Clarke writes in Against All Enemies: "I was amazed at the speed of the decisions coming from Cheney and, through him, from Bush." 7 This is to be expected. Everything was in place for the Commander in Chief to be calling all the shots as the 9/11 plot unfolded, but Bush was in an elementary school reading about goats with Secret Service agents right beside him.

Bush's Secret Service detail was in real-time communication not only with the FAA, but also the PEOC (Presidential Emergency Operations Center), into which Dick Cheney had reportedly been whisked by the Secret Service. While Bush continued his elementary school photo-op after being told, "America is under attack," Ari Fleischer - according to the Washington Times, 10/7/02 - caught the president's eye and held up a handwritten sign that said "DON'T SAY ANYTHING YET." 8 Bush was intentionally being kept out of the decision-making loop during the critical moments of 9/11. The Vice President has no place in the official military chain of command.9

Thus far we have established that:

1. Secret Service was the supreme command on 9/11.
2. Bush was not in the role of Commander in Chief at critical times on 9/11.
3. The acting Commander in Chief as the 9/11 plot unfolded was Dick Cheney.

• MOTIVE: Peak Oil
By definition, world hydrocarbon (oil and gas) production peaks when half the planet's reserves have been used up. After that point, every barrel of oil will be harder to find, more expensive to obtain, and more valuable to whoever controls it. Many of the world's foremost experts place that peak between 2000 and 2007.

We live in a global economic system based on endless growth, and that growth is only possible with endless hydrocarbons to burn. Demand for oil and gas is increasing at staggering rates; after peak, there will be demand that simply cannot be met, and energy prices will rise inexorably.

The resulting economic catastrophe may see oil hit $100 per barrel before the end of this decade. (Editor's note - this happened). Oil not only keeps us warm and moves our cars, it is used to make all plastics and is, together with natural gas, the most important ingredient keeping modern agriculture afloat. It is a little known fact that for every 1 calorie of food energy produced, 10 calories of hydrocarbons are consumed. 10

We eat oil.

Without cheap oil, billions of people will freeze or starve and unfortunately, there is no combination of renewable energy sources that can replace oil and gas consumption without massive conservation efforts that are nowhere in sight.

Cheney knew about this.

There are no national plans for conservation in America. As Dick Cheney has stated, "The American way of life is not negotiable." Over-consumption is as American as apple pie. Many industry experts have been speaking to the reality of Peak Oil for some time. One of those experts - perhaps the most prominent in the world - was in Dick Cheney's National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG).

Just four days after Dick Cheney became Vice President he convened the NEPDG. 11Among the experts whose opinion Cheney paid for (with taxpayer dollars) was Matthew Simmons, one of the most respected energy investment bankers in the world. Simmons has been speaking out about Peak Oil for years, and there is no question that the urgent story of Peak Oil is what he told Cheney's NEPDG.

The content of the NEPDG documentation has been illegally withheld from the American public with a rubber stamp of approval from the Supreme Court. FTW has always contended that the deepest, darkest secrets of 9/11 are in those documents. That's why they've been guarded so tightly.

Cheney knew about Peak Oil in 1999 as CEO of Halliburton, long before was Vice President. A speech he gave at the London Institute of Petroleum demonstrates this clearly. 12

As stated in Crossing the Rubicon, "By way of confirmation, people in and close to the oil industry are reporting that increased drilling is not resulting as yet in significantly increased supply." 13

A crisis of this magnitude required a crisis plan, something the Neo-Liberals didn't have. The Neo-Conservatives, including Dick Cheney, had such a plan: manufacture a crisis - one that had long been imagined as necessary by elite planners inside the national security state 14- and use it to maintain permanent war to steal the world's last remaining hydrocarbons and temporarily stave off the Peak Oil crisis.

• OPPORTUNITY: 9/11 War Games - a perfect "match"

On May 8, 2001 - four months prior to 9/11 - the president placed Dick Cheney in charge of "[A]ll federal programs dealing with weapons of mass destruction consequence management within the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Justice, and Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other federal agencies…" This included all "training and planning" which needed to be "seamlessly integrated, harmonious and comprehensive" in order to "maximize effectiveness." This mandate created the Office of National Preparedness in FEMA, overseen by Dick Cheney. 15

Dick Cheney was placed directly in charge of managing the seamless integration of all training exercises throughout the entire federal government and all military agencies. On 9/11 Cheney oversaw multiple war games and terror drills, including several exercises of NORAD, the Air Force agency whose mandate is to "watch the sky."

The evening before September 11th, 2001, the National Security Agency intercepted a communication between Khalid Shaikh Muhammad and the alleged ringleader of the 9/11 attacks, Mohammed Atta. The communication stated, "The match is about to begin."

Were they "matching" their activities to the war games? Was the attack a rigged "match" between the defenders on one side, and the attackers with their accomplices on the other?

The Whitehouse was so infuriated when this communication leaked from the Senate Intelligence Committee that they threatened Senators with polygraphs and office searches for disclosing classified information. This leak struck a nerve within the Whitehouse.

We know multiple Air Force war games were running on the morning of 9/11, as documented extensively in the mainstream press. 16 What Crossing the Rubicon has documented conclusively is that there was a live-fly drill taking place on 9/11 titled Vigilant Warrior. Richard Clarke disclosed the name of this drill on page 4 of his book, but it was Major Don Arias of NORAD who confirmed the definition of the title "Warrior" to Mike Ruppert via email.

Warrior = JCS/HQ NORAD sponsored FTX, or field training exercise (live-fly). 17

That means that the Vigilant Warrior drill conducted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff involved at least one real commercial aircraft in the skies, intended to simulate exactly the kind of airliner hijack emergency presented on 9/11. Coincidence?

This was further supported by an April 18 2004 USA Today article titled, "NORAD had drills of jets as weapons." The report cited NORAD officials who confirmed live-fly drills were conducted using hijacked airliners originating from the continental United States used as weapons crashing into targets including the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The specific drill USA Today referred to was "planned in July [2001] and conducted later" - likely on 9/11 itself. 18

Remember, on 9/11 the Bush administration claimed it had "no idea" aircraft would be used as weapons. Then why were they drilling such scenarios before and during 9/11? The Whitehouse dodged this by saying it wasn't aware of these drills but that is a transparent lie. The drills took place in the Whitehouse! 19

Secret Service runs simulated attack field exercises - exactly what Vigilant Warrior was. This Joint Chiefs of Staff drill was likely being run through Secret Service lines of communication by a central command under Cheney's control.20

Additional war games on 9/11 included Northern Vigilance, an exercise that pulled Air Force fighters from the east coast of the United States up into Canada and Alaska simulating an attack out of Russia. All of those fighters were rendered useless as the 9/11 plot unfolded - too far away to respond.

One of the components of this drill included "false blips" (radar injects simulating aircraft in flight) placed on FAA radar screens. 21 At one point FAA head Jane Garvey said they suspected up to 11 hijackings on 9/11. Was she saying they couldn't determine which were real, which were simulated, and which were live-flymilitary exercises?

Regardless, all of this rendered Air Force response on 9/11 useless.

In Air War Over America it is documented that General Arnold of NORAD didn't pull out of the war game titled Vigilant Guardian until reports of flight 93 being hijacked were coming in. That was at 9:16, a total of 54 minutes after it was known that flight 11 was a hijacking. 22 What took so long? Were there still "false blips" on FAA radar screens at this time?

There were likely false blips on screen even after 9:16. The Kean Commission's report introduced "phantom flight-11" as being reported by the FAA at 9:25 on 9/11. The FAA reported flight 11 was heading to Washington D.C. at that time when in fact it had already struck the World Trade Center. The Kean Commission's report stated they were "unable to locate the source of the mistaken FAA information." 23

"Phantom flight-11" was a false blip, but since the war games are classified, specific information on "false blips" and other details can't be reported.

Now imagine being an air traffic controller with both real planes and "false blips" simulating hijackings on your screens when suddenly there are real, multiple, hijackings. Where do you send the few Air Force fighters that you have? You can't guess wrong, you don't have enough assets for that. The FAA doesn't even make that decision, the military does. The Kean Commission managed to scapegoat the FAA in their report, but the Air Force itself confirmed the FAA did its job properly on 9/11 in Air War Over America. 24

There were more 9/11 war games including Northern Guardian, Northern Denial (recently confirmed by an Assistant Editor at Harper's magazine) and an unnamed National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) drill for a plane crashing into NRO headquarters at precisely the time of an actual crash in New York.

Another coincidence?

War games, terror drills and exercises are run by the military quite frequently. In this case, they mirrored the real attacks of 9/11 with such shocking congruence as to be beyond the realm of coincidence.

This is made clear when we consider the warnings that had flooded U.S. Intelligence prior to 9/11, indicating that terrorists were planning to hijack aircraft and crash them into American targets on the ground during the week of September 9th, 2001.25 With that type of information, who in their right mind would then schedule war games that would leave New York and Washington D.C. completely undefended?

We've already shown that the man in charge of managing all such programs was Dick Cheney. Among the central decision-makers for the scheduling of so many simultaneous exercises would be Dick Cheney and Ralph Eberhart, head of NORAD.

It certainly was a perfect "match."

The Maestro
The most important revelation made about the 9/11 war games comes again from Major Don Arias of NORAD. With multiple war games running, there had to be someone coordinating them.

"Yes, there is an exercise maestro," said Don Arias in a phone interview. 26

So who was the maestro?

Mike Ruppert called every relevant military and government office looking for an answer to this question and received no response. At the final 9/11 Commission hearing on June 17, 2004, I asked General Ralph Eberhart - the man in charge of NORAD on 9/11 - who was in charge of coordinating the war games that day. His only response was, "No comment." None of the commissioners, including Chairman Kean, could answer this question. 27

FTW's research has concluded the maestro was either Dick Cheney, Ralph "Ed" Eberhart, or both. Whoever the maestro was, he was certainly under Cheney's management as per the May 2001 presidential mandate.

Additionally, Tripod II was a bio-terror exercise being set-up on the west side of lower Manhattan, reportedly scheduled to begin the next day. This exercise was being coordinated with FEMA and the Department of Justice - two of the agencies placed directly under Cheney's control in May of 2001 by presidential mandate.

Another coincidence?

There is no question that Cheney would be responsible for managing this exercise. The Tripod II drill became the command & control emergency response center on 9/11. The command center in WTC 7 was reportedly evacuated by 9:30 on 9/11, butTripod II provided a new command center organized just as the original was. 28 How convenient.

The Air Force war games ensured the air attack would be successful, and Tripod II assured Cheney would have control of the response to the crisis of his making. Matching the war games with hijackings - or hijacking the war games - was the opportunity for Cheney to help ensure the 9/11 attacks would be successful, justifying what he calls, "The war that will not end in our lifetimes." The "war on terror" is actually a war for the world's last remaining hydrocarbon reserves. This energy war is a response to a coming energy crisis that Cheney was well aware of at least as early as 1999.

Conclusion
Crossing the Rubicon demonstrates much more than is presented here. The book goes into the failures of the 9/11 Commission, 9/11 insider trading, the curtailing of civil liberties, coming economic crisis, biological warfare, the real history of the Osama bin Laden, and many other issues critical to an understanding of today's historical reality.

Crossing the Rubicon also looks into the evolution of PROMIS software, a well-documented artificial intelligence and datamining program whose current descendants played an integral role in the crimes of 9/11. As Dick Cheney was running a separate chain of command via the Secret Service, he also had the capability to intervene in the functions of the FAA through an evolution of PROMIS software developed and sold by Ptech, Inc. - a company funded by Saudi terrorist financier Yassin Al Qadi. Al Qadi claims he met Dick Cheney in Jeddah before he was Vice President, a claim Cheney hasn't publicly refuted. FTW will soon be releasing an in-depth report on Ptech and its role in the crimes of 9/11.

What we have placed in front of you here is the legal case against Dick Cheney and other persons of interest within the U.S. government. Such evidence should constitute the foundation for articles of impeachment and criminal prosecution against George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their accomplices.

Review the documentation for yourself - purchase Crossing the Rubicon

Dark Knight - the capitalist crusader

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The underlying message of Batman has always been conservative - a billionaire protecting property owners from criminals. In the Dark Knight Rises, the message becomes clearer as Bruce Wayne takes on an anarchist psychopath Bain and his Occupy army trying to take over Gotham. Director Chris Nolan creates a blockbuster about the nightmares of the 0.1% to be enjoyed by the 99.9%. Hollywood as ever turning capitalist ideology into mass entertainment. I have not yet seen the movie but I'm familiar enough with the genre and the series to know where it will take us. However Howard Stern has now come out and said the fact that the villain is called Bain is no coincidence - it's the same name as Mitt Romney's asset stripping outfit Bain Capital. He claims Nolan deliberately did this. The thought crossed my mind too - it's a very neat coincidence. Perhaps I am being unfair to the franchise....

The last Dark Knight movie was a fantastic entertainment, with the Joker as a kind of demented Osama Bin Laden. There is enough soul searching in the franchise to satisfy intelligent fans without in anyway breaking with the central mythology of the uber-rich, like New York Mayor Bloomberg, offering their services to the public. It's a great American tradition - even including asset strippers like Romney. Unlike the crime-tamed New York of recent years, Gotham is always on the edge of entropy at the hands of madmen. It just needs a solid dose of zero tolerance.

As the Guardian writes:

Batman's butler-crush and bells and whistles feudalism is swallowable – it's a cartoon, right! Likewise the free pass that Wayne's Rowntree-ish gestures, disapproval of criminals and general tortured grizzling seems to allow him. But The Dark Knight Rises is a quite audaciously capitalist vision, radically conservative, radically vigilante, that advances a serious, stirring proposal that the wish-fulfilment of the wealthy is to be championed if they say they want to do good. Mitt Romney will be thrilled. What's strange is that quite so many of the rest of us seem to want to buy into it.

Condemning electoral fraud - unless it's Mexican

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Pic by Rafael Stedie

If the news of election shenanigans had been from Russia or Iran, our media headlines would be screaming fraud. As Counterpunch's Paul Imison reports,Washington has quickly recognised Mexico's election result unlike its condemnation of recent elections in Russia. Although there is no immediate prospect of a return to the mass protests of 2006 following that disputed election, it's not just defeated left candidate Lopez Obrador condemning massive fraud.

The PRI’s Enrique Peña Nieto is officially the president-elect. Despite evidence gathered by both defeated leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) and the #YoSoy132 pro-democracy movement to show that vote-buying, threats and ballot-tampering were widespread on July 1, he will likely remain so – in large part thanks to the Federal Electoral Institute's (IFE) refusal to condemn what AMLO’s Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) has called “the dirtiest election in Mexico’s history.”

For the record, the official count (after the partial recount) by IFE goes like this: Enrique Peña Nieto with 38.21% (19.2 million votes), AMLO with 31.59% (15.9 million votes) and Josefina Vazquez Mota of the incumbent PAN with 25.41% (12.3 million votes).

Yesterday AMLO gave his final word (for now) on the election result, presenting 500 pages’ worth of evidence including 300 videos and 400 citizen testimonies to the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary (TEPJF), along with a claim that the PRI spent some US$297 million on Peña Nieto’s campaign, vastly exceeding IFE’s official cap of $25 million.

El Pais has told Mexico's left to dump Lopez Obrador for his refusal to accept the election result, tainted by mass bribery, paid-or news coverage favouring 'winner' Pena Nieto and fixed pre-election polls.As Mexico and Gulf reporter writes:

Spain's El País, the most influential newspaper in the country and one of the most respected in Europe, today called defeated PRD candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador a poor loser and a "dead weight" on his leftist Democratic Revolution Party.

The lead editorial was published in Madrid under the title "Obrador es un lastre." Lastre means a burden or weight.

El País wrote that there is "no evidence of widespread irregularities" in the July 1 election. Mexico's federal electoral authority says PRI candidate Enrique Peña Nieto won by more than 3.3 million votes, or 6.62% of the total cast.

AMLO hits back

Referring to the severe economic woes which the once great imperial power is now facing (including 25% unemployment), López Obrador told the prestigious paper, "It would be better to focus on your own responsibility in the disaster which is now Spain." 

Faith in free market strongest in Brazil, China, lowest in Mexico

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A new Pew global survey shows a contrast in social attitudes toward the merits of hard work and the free market economy, with three out of four BRIC countries showing big majorities in favour of capitalism, and the US still strongly inclined to support the free market. Germans, French, Japanese and most of all Lebanese were not convinced of the merits of hard work. In fact, Europeans in general were sceptical about the work ethic - suggesting that work does not pay (compared to welfare or asset wealth?).

The gap between those who favour the free market compared to those who don't is biggest in China and Brazil - yes, Communist-ruled China has a majority favouring the free market of 74% with 19% against - a positive difference of 53%. The positive difference in the US was 43%, 36% in India and 34% in Turkey. By contrast a negative bias against the free market was 26% in Mexico, 22% in Japan, and 5% in Spain.

The British also remained more than 60% in favour, although a third felt negatively. As a Briton, I think the questions of free market and hard work are misleading inasmuch as there is no free market except on eBay - there are markets in which the big few tend to dominate.

Meanwhile people's perception of their own situation often varies markedly from what they perceive as the general economic outlook, suggesting a tendency to view things negatively in countries such as the UK and France where the media, and perhaps the national psyche, is strongly focused on doom and gloom. By contrast in China, where the state controls the media message, the national economy is seen as doing better than the average person. Shockingly, only 2% of Greeks see their economy as doing well with Italy and Spain at 6%, and Japan at 7%.

My talk on cognitive dissonance and 9/11

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I spoke on Cognitive Dissonance and 9/11 to an audience of 100 on Thursday at the Catalyst Club in Brighton. It seemed to go well, even with the inevitable sceptical questions that followed. When I asked the audience, less than one in four had heard of World Trade Centre 7 and its collapse on 9/11. And this is an intelligent, curious audience. I will post the notes later. One questioner raised the structural damage to WTC7 caused by falling chunks of the World Trade Centre - I pointed out that NIST in its final report on the collapse in 2008 said the cause was fire, not structural damage. None of this addresses the explosions heard by janitor Barry Jennings and others before the collapse.

Because of the time limit, the focus was more on 9/11 than the broader theme of how certain events and issues cause cognitive dissonance, selective blindness or confirmation bias. The more that the issue touches on something essential to one's world view, the more we all tend to experience the tension or discomfort that cognitive dissonance describes. I wish I could have explored the issue as does this excellent video interviewing psychologists about CD and 9/11. It was suggested to me afterward that perhaps I needed more examples of where CD comes into play. 9/11 in such a hot button issue that you end up debating its many obscure facts.

Two questions came up that I want to explore without the spotlight on me. One was that I had cherry picked facts that suited my preferred narrative of 9/11. We all at times suffer selective blindness and confirmation bias in the way we see events. To defend myself, my background in journalism instills in me the practice of both fact checking and also to test a controversial claim with the best, most effective counterclaim. This is what I have always tried to do in relation to the claims of 9/11 'truth'. Thanks to the wonders of the internet and Google, one can always find the 'truth debunkers' case against 'truthers' in the first page of Google searches. I have also contacted primary sources in journalism, the law and intelligence services. Yes, they were mostly those who did not accept the official line, but I was interested in what mainstream journalism had failed to pick up. Mainstream journalism has done such a poor job on 9/11 that rather than cherry picking it's a case of picking up a huge number of cherries left to rot.

9/11 is not so clear cut that you can easily find out 'who did it' - as in the way that WMDs in Iraq were proven to be a false claim by the US and Britain. With 9/11 we have an official account and literally thousands of pieces of journalism and amateur inquiries into the myriad facts surrounding the event. However, the really good sources such as History Commons are works of peer-reviewed citizen journalism with a high standard of sources, overwhelmingly mainstream media and primary sources.

The difficulty with 9/11 is also that because of the massive propaganda of 'us and them' that began on 9/11 itself, any questioning of the official narrative became tantamount to heresy.  The conspiracy theory label shuts down rational examination. What this results in is not blanket refusal to publish any facts that fall outside the official narrative - but rather a failure to put these together into a coherent explanation of what happened. New leads just tail off to nowhere. This is where citizen journalism and amateur sleuthing come in. This is an honourable practice, now seen, and causing much controversy, in the Syria conflict.

In truth a lot of journalism is moving in this direction. Investigative journalism has been in decline for years, as shown by Nick Davies' work in Flat Earth News. Davies is living proof of what dogged investigation can achieve - his work on phone hacking eventually broke the scandal in 2011 with the Millie Dowler story. For years before that, going back at least to Operation Motorman in 2006, evidence of hacking and police bribery was put down to a couple of rogue individuals. Now phone hacking is accepted as going to the top of news organisations. If there had been dogged investigative journalism on 9/11 we could see the exposure of official foreknowledge or complicity in the attacks. But of course the stakes on 9/11 are much bigger than those of phone hacking and police corruption. Journalists and editors have careers to think of.

The second question that I did not answer as fully as I wanted was 'how many people do you think were involved in this conspiracy?' which is a variation on the claim that for the CIA or any other government agency to be involved in 9/11 would inevitably be exposed. The answer to this is twofold. First, government complicity HAS been exposed! There are any number of whistleblowers from Richard Clarke downwards, unexplained contradictions in official accounts, clear signposts to government complicity from Dick Cheney down. It's just that mainstream media never chose to put a spotlight on this. The plot is hiding in plain sight. The 'coverup' failed!

The slip ups and inadvertent revelations by the likes of GW Bush and Binyamin Netanyahu suggest hubris and a sense of inevitability about what was happening, and confidence that they would not be pursued by the fourth estate. And yes, there was a cell of terrorists in Germany planning attacks on America. The question is, who knew what they were doing and had they been infiltrated by one or more intelligence services.

Further, compartmentalism of tasks and roles across any agent or official involved in the events of 9/11 means that only those at the centre of a plot need know what is actually going on. A criminal network working within government agencies is not the same as a civil servant with a pension and desk job. We also have subcontracting to shady black ops specialists with a need to know professionalism. Perhaps even those at the top took it on assurance that others would do what needed to be done, without knowing exactly how they would do it. If the goal was 'catastrophic terrorism' that would change America forever, as outlined by Philip Zelikow in 1997, the specialists who were responsible for making this happen would know what to do. America's black budget is called that for a reason - it is opaque and beyond scrutiny. Billions get spent, and who knows on what exactly.

'New World Orderism', The Guardian and Syria

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Below is a comment - not by me - on a piece by Julian Borger attacking Charlie Shelton's investigation into the Syrian opposition. It is deliberately provocative and full of straw men as well as tin hats.

Borgers is a good piece every word of which I agree with, but I must insist that there is nothing anti-US or anti-imperialist about the tinfoil-hatters who will attack it. They are, when you peel away the first layer of the onion, white supremacist, elitist and anti-semitic devotees of American Exceptionalism. How often have you heard a troofer affect to mock the idea that "a gang or Arabs" could work the controls of a modern aeroplane?
Their world view is that everything on the face of the planet is either at rest or else in uniform straight-line motion unless one of the Jews who run America acts upon it. They believe that not only the "Islamist" and secular/liberal parties in middle-eastern countries but also the socialist and communist parties are all being run by the CIA. There is nothing either anti-US or anti-imperialist about mourning the fall of Hosni Mubarak. It's just a twisted determination to see every event as proof of the omnipotence of the Jewish-Masonic conspiracy which has occupied America.

I do feel there is something to the accusation that New World Order - Bilderberg - Jewish conspiracy - David Ickistss see the world through a distorted prism. They believe the UN is trying to take over America, rather than America taking over the UN. The commentator reduces the 9/11 inside job claims to 'a bunch of Arabs couldn't have done it' racism, and is grossly unfair, although it is true that that line has been used and it does smack a bit of racism. However, you don't have to be a New World Orderist to recognise the evidence that Mossad and the CIA had a pretty good handle on the 9/11 plot long before 9/11. If you choose not to look at those facts* or to denigrate them, that is your choice.

But I am not a New World Orderist inasmuch as I don't believe that the world is run according to a single overarching conspiracy. I also don't accept the official account of 9/11, because the evidence against it being the whole story is overwhelming.

The NWO line is trotted out in the propaganda doc Thrive, a kind of NWO utopian techno bourgeois save-American-freedom-with-the-aliens manifesto. If only we can harness alien technology, we can overthrow the bankers and big business, reduce taxes to zero and solve climate change with free energy for all. Some of these goals are very worthy, but Thrive dodges the tough political questions with utopia. One problem with NWO is it is very American-centric. It fails to see that we live in an increasingly multipolar world with new powers and regions challenging traditional western dominance. China is the foremost of these. It also denies agency to all the other actors in the world. They are all patsies of NWO. That cannot be true unless you are a fantasist. It is also Manichean in that it sees a banker-controlled US government puppeteering events in all countries. It is fundamentally mistaken to believe that an imperialist power, however mighty, can actually control events. The history of empire is strewn with disasters and unanticipated outcomes of attempts to maintain dominance. Otherwise empires would never fall - or lose a battle or a war. Some NWOists want to purify the American Project by removing internationalist / Jewish banking elements from the US elite and return to Jeffersonian (white AngloSaxon) democracy.

It seems facile to see all evil as emanating from America, even though a lot does. Tyrants are ten a penny, thankfully less common than they were. For me, governments who use slaughter and terror to control their populations are not worthy of defending, even if one does not want tyranny replaced by neoliberal oligarchy. We have to have faith that people fighting for freedom will not passively fall in line with the US State Department's vision of limited pro-western democracy. One might not agree with the ideology of all Bashar al-Assad's opponents, but that should not translate into supporting Assad against 'western imperialism' while his forces crush the resistance of the people. This is my enemy's enemy thinking and it is both two-dimensional and callous toward those who are suffering. The right to resist oppression and tyranny is inviolable, and is not conditional on whether you share the views of the oppressed. Otherwise your thinking is no different from the 'imperialists'. Sometimes, when fighting your oppressor, you may take offers of support from those whose motives are not honourable or good. That's politics - and it is what revolutionaries have done down the centuries. Syrians have as much right to fight tyranny and state violence as the next man or woman. Who are comfortable westerners to tell them not to truck with US imperialists? If they do that, it is at their own risk.

* the most obvious being the Susan Lindauer story, the dancing Israelis recording the Twin Towers attacks and the Gomel Chesed Cemetary incident, as reported by Muckraker in 2006:

In October 2000, approximately 11 months before 9/11, a retired Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) officer, and veteran of the Yom Kippur War, was collecting English Ivy cuttings at the Gomel Chesed Cemetery located at McClellan and 245 Mount Olive Avenue, which is near the city lines of Elizabeth and Newark, New Jersey. The Gomel Chesed Cemetery is a Jewish cemetery.

The man overheard a conversation spoken in Hebrew, which drew his attention. He hid behind an 8-foot tall retaining wall and listened in to their conversation as they stood below. Shortly after a Lincoln town car approached the two people and the man in the backseat got out to greet them. After normal niceties were exchanged the third man said:

“The Americans will learn what it is to live with terrorists after the planes hit the twins in September.”

One of the men that had been leaning against the retaining wall expressed concerns that the upcoming presidential election (November 2000) might impact the plans. The man that arrived in the Town Car quelled the doubts by saying:

“Don’t worry, we have people in high places and no matter who gets elected, they will take care of everything.”

The observer who overheard this conversation related it to the FBI on numerous occasions only to be ignored each time. Nothing was done about it, and no investigation into the incident has ever taken place.

Liverpool is another country - flat leaf parsley and ice cream cones

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I sat in the sauna of the Adelphi hotel in Liverpool with some local lads. "A'right Terry." "A'right John." Some of them were older, with gold chains and a gold Catholic cross lying thick on their tanned chests. All of them had tattoos, some also of the beloved cross. Their faces, like melted stones, could write the story of the city. Everyone knew each other here. Not like the swimming pools of London, where the changing rooms tend to be busy and quiet. Here friends stop to chat and joke in that famous Liverpudlian drawl. 'It gets harder every day,' says an old fella, although he looks cheerful enough. Like Dubliners over the water, the Liverpudlians are never shy to say hello and have a laugh with a stranger. It doesn't cost to be friendly, but go elsewhere in England and it sometimes feels like people would rathe stub their big toe than actually talk to anyone, even the spouse sitting opposite them. We were here with the crew for a theatrical performance, my wife directing Rest Upon the Wind, the story of Khalil Gibran. My 'job' was to drive the van, move the props, and shop for such articles as flat leaf parsley and ice cream cones. The parsley is essential to a Middle Eastern dish featured in the show. I found it on Bold Street.
I was born in Liverpool but don't remember it. I only recently returned for the first time since I was a kid. I love the old town, the big Victorian houses and grand public buildings, like the Adelphi itself. The new Heseltine post-riots developments since the 1980s are bland, corporate and out of keeping the Art Deco grandeur of the Liverbirds, the magnificent Lime Street station and the iconic Cunard shipping building. The show was put on at the Unity Theatre on Hope Street. Another sellout!

Beyond Barclays: How to make the banking system work for us

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Every single politician in the West should watch this film by Positive Money. Infact, every person who has any interest in what has gone wrong for the last 30+ years, and especially in the last 10 - needs to see 97% Owned. This is not about corruption in the Libor rate. This is about a monopoly of money creation that has created an unsustainable debt bubble. Democratisation of the monetary system - a wild thought - is the solution.

Essentially it shows how since the 1970s, the banking system has been expanding the money supply through the creation of debt. The end result is the 2008 financial crisis and the stagnation of living standards of the majority in the West. By reforming the system so that banks can no longer monopolise the issuing of money, we can create an economy that works for the majority. At the moment 97% of the money supply is created by the banks through the issuing of debt to households and companies. The state underwrites the banks so subsidising them. They lend out this free money and make vast profits out of it. If their speculation goes wrong - as it did in 2008 - the politicians will bail them out for fear of collapsing the economy. This model, if the film is right, has no way of self-correcting. The deficit reducers are completely wrong about the way the economy works. Debt creation is unavoidable for growth in a bank-run economy. More 'saving' will just cause a depression. Even if the politicians and bankers can engineer another recovery, a further more extreme crash is around the corner. The financialised capitalist system of the West is doomed. The question is, can we do something about it, or are we helpless in the face of the endgame. Right now, I just don't know. It's clear that the politicians are not doing anything to take away the money creating powers of the banks.Bank liabilities rose from 40% of GDP for most of the 20th century until the1970s, to more than 200% today. In the 1970s and 80s there was a lot of consumer inflation and some wage inflation. Workers were blamed for causing inflation by demanding wage rises, but they were playing catch up with an inflationary cycle caused by the US war in Vietnam and the decision of Nixon in 1971 to come off the gold standard so the US could print money and fund its war. The oil price hikes of 1973 and 1979 - caused by war and revolution in the Middle East - added to the inflationary spiral. But by the 1990s, goods and wage price inflation had been largely tamed. Unions were restricted and mass unemployment prevented labour militancy while globalisation of production brought down the price of manufacturing goods. But the process of credit-money creation continued, feeding asset price bubbles in housing and equities. The equity bubble burst in 2000, but with low interest rates the housing bubble just kept on growing.

In the 1960s and early 1970s a single male wage could support a family. By 2000, two wages were needed to do this and pay housing costs including mortgage interest payments, or rent. Living standards in the US and Europe have stagnated while banking executive pay has spiralled by a staggering 5000% since 1980. Insiders in banking and big companies have gamed the system. By taking the monopoly of money creation away from banks we could begin a new age of prosperity where the gains of technological advance would be enjoyed by the majority rather than just the 1%. Bubbles could deflate and investment be diverted from speculation into real economic activity - goods and services.

Netanyahu predicted WTC attacks in 1995

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Binyamin Netanyahu has been raising the temperature by pushing for the US to attack Iran over its nuclear programme in recent weeks. Not so well known is that the prime minister of Israel, predicted the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre in 1995 - and that Iran would likely have a role in such an attack.

For those who believe Israel had a role in 9/11, a widespread view in the Middle East, it is strange that Netanyahu would boast of his prediction, but who can really know what was behind the claim, other than the widespread knowledge in the intelligence community that the WTC was a target for terrorists from before the first attack in 1993. The first prediction of an attack on the World Trade Centre from Israel dates back to 1979.

Two examples:

• 
On CNN in November 2006: "I wrote a book in 1995, and I said that if the West doesn't wake up to the suicidal nature of militant Islam, the next thing you will see is militant Islam bringing down the World Trade Center."

• To the Jerusalem Conference in January 2009 (at 12:57 into his speech): "Look, I wrote ... in 1995 … that radical Islam will topple the Twin Towers."

In his 1995 book, Fighting Terrorism (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), that came out two years after a truck bomb exploded in the World Trade Center basement, Netanyahu wrote two passages which appear to predict some kind of terror attack on the US. First, on p. 52:

What road should the United States and other democracies pursue if they are to overcome not only the domestic terror of Oklahoma City but the potentially much more insidious international terror which produced the [1993] World Trade Center bombing, and which may very well produce other such tragedies before it has been defeated?

On p. 125, Netanyahu speculates on various forms of Islamist terror:

Iran might be tempted to actually use nuclear weapons against Israel or a neighboring Arab state, and then avoid the consequences of Western reaction by threatening to activate its pre-armed militants in the West. … In the worst of such scenarios, the consequences could be not a car bomb but a nuclear bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center.

In an interview with Glen Beck in 2006 he repeated the claim:

BECK: Now, let me play devil’s advocate with you. We’ve heard nut jobs, especially in Iran, for a very long time. What makes you say we should take this nut job at his word? Why is this guy different than what we have seen with religious fanatics that are really only interested in power and not interested in the Apocalypse?

NETANYAHU: Well, I was getting this question in the 1990s, and I said that the West really doesn’t understand militant Islam. So I wrote a book in 1995, and I said that, if the West doesn’t wake up to the suicidal nature of militant Islam, the next thing you will see is militant Islam is bringing down the World Trade Center.


What did Netanyahu know that we didn't?

Massive vote buying by 'winners' of Mexican elections

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The Mexican elections of 2012, like those of 2006, have been marred by violations including the buying of media coverage by the alleged victors the PRI, and the mass buying of voters with pre-paid gift cards. The leftist PRD opponent Andres Manuael Lopez Obrador (AMLO) has demanded a full recount. For months polls in the mainstream media, which has been revealed to have received millions in funding from the PRI, gave new president elect Enrique Pena Nieto 20 point leads over his main opponent. Yet on the night the victory was much narrower, at 7%. The initial vote count gave Pena Nieto 38.15% and Lopez Obrador 31.64% of the vote. This is highly suspicious. Mexicans have been had - yet again. But, we can see, that the US and other western governments have rushed to congratulate Pena Nieto. This result was written before the election took place - it is the result that the US and Mexican elite wanted. In 2006 AMLO was much criticised for protesting electoral fraud for months after the result, bringing hundreds of thousands onto the street. The view seems to be that acquiescing in fraud is preferable to 'instability'. I wonder how that scenario would run if it was implemented in Europe or the US - of course, it was carried out in the US in 2000. I feel sad and angry for Mexicans, as yet again their 'democracy' has been bought.

For more on the story from the Associated Press

  

'Give us 20 years and we'll take over your media and destroy your country'

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A quote from an ex-employee of Urban Moving Systems, the Mossad front company that employed the 'dancing Israelis' who were seen by witnesses on a rooftop filming the impact of the first plane on the World Trade Centre. They were seen celebrating and filming the event within minutes of the impact, between 8.50 and 9.00am, according to the FBI reports, with one witness identifying the van being present on the rooftop by 8am. The Israelis were standing on the roof of their van, which was positioned to point at the World Trade Centre with a view of both towers.

Quote from FBI: "Male #3 appeared to be taking still photographs and video of Males #1 and #2 with the WTC in the background. All of the males appeared to be jovial. They smiled, they hugged one another, and they appeared to "high five" one another."

Why were they celebrating this event - and documenting it - before the second plane had hit, when everyone justifiably believed that it was just a terrible accident? Only when the second plane hit the South Tower at 9.03 did it become clear that something else was going on.

Quote from FBI: 'A former Urban Moving Systems employee later contacted the Newark Division with information indicating that he had quit his employment with Urban Moving Systems due to high amount of anti-American sentiment present among Urban's employees. The former employee stated that an Israeli employee of Urban had even once remarked, "Give us twenty (20) years and we'll take over your media and destroy your country."

The Israelis claimed they heard about the attacks on the radio, checked it on the internet then immediately got equipment, left work and jumped into the van four-five minutes away and headed for the Doric Hotel parking lot roof. Somehow they were in position to film the attack within minutes of the impact at 8.46am even though it was not reported on local radio until some minutes after 8.50am. Witness T1 had seen them through binoculars after her friend called her, immediately after hearing the first impact and looking out the window to see smoke rising from the North Tower.

The video camera was never found.

One of the Israelis said when arrested: "We are not your problem, the Palestinians are your problem."

According to FBI Newark, one of the hijackers had used Urban Moving Systems in Miami just prior to the attack to move equipment. UMS vans were seen and stopped in numerous locations in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania on 9/11 and the days following.

Here is the full redacted FBI report of the interviews relating to this investigation. Where links to anti-semitic sites are included in this report, I absolutely reject this malignant tendency to blame 'Jews' in general for what a group of Israeli hardline zionists and their co-conspirators in the US did on 9/11.

Mexico elections - civil and media misconduct

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La Jornada editorial, Tuesday 3 July 2012

The electoral process should have complete and reliable results yesterday with an indisputable winner of the presidential race is instead a time of waiting and worrying has been contaminated by institutional misconduct, civil and media.

To begin, the election was preceded by a less pronounced bias of the media, especially electronic ones, which led to the making of a presidential candidate based on the inordinate power of the television screen on public opinion. This process is not limited to the application, for political purposes, of marketing and traditional commercial advertising, but included campaigns of disqualification and possible distortion of those opposing the PRI candidate, and a manifest inequity of information much like a lock. Another aspect of this construction of the candidacy of Enrique Peña Nieto was the development of hundreds or thousands of surveys clearly divorced from reality.

Already in the phase of the campaign proper, the Institutional Revolutionary Party used its arsenal of traditional maneuvers electoral manipulation and distortion: the vote buying and coercion, intimidation and assault the supporters of other institutes and policy prescriptions and crushing a waste of money on advertising, logistics and distribution of goods or cash for citizen wills. Under such undesirable practices and criminal activity, both the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) and the Electoral Tribunal of Judicial Power of the Federation (TEPJF) behaved with a tolerance close to the omission of its powers and obligations.

As Sunday's allegations of irregularities proliferated, most repeatedly referred to the purchase of votes, but the robbery was by ballot box, as well as attacks against citizens of different parties which lead Peña Nieto and alleged tampering of electoral stationery by PRI-operators, however, both the electoral and judicial officials as spokespersons for the media insisted on portraying a clean and peaceful elections.

Not being one thing or the other, the choice was, however, a notable virtue: the high participation and the emergence of a civic interest which restored the link to the polls, and with politics in general, large sectors of the population . The most notable expression of this positive phenomenon is the rise-in the heat of campaigns, student and youth movement # YoSoy132, which was to upset a vast linchpin to the miseries of a political regime which involves no legal powers , powers such as electronic media and, by now, the polling agencies that seem more concerned about electoral trends induced by portraying.

At the end of the day, when the Preliminary Electoral Results Program (PREP) was computed for less than 10 percent of the polling, the president of the IFE, Leonardo Valdés Zurita, went on national television to announce the results of a quick poll that differ significantly from the numbers of PREP, but converge with those of the contested polls of public opinion. Immediately after the incumbent head of the Federal Executive, Felipe Calderon, made use of the national media to proclaim the triumph of Peña Nieto. All with the backdrop of media who did not hesitate to proclaim the winning candidate PRI, which then gave a speech as president-elect.

These institutional and informational distortions are regrettable in so far as to vitiate the electoral process and introduce it to uncertainty and suspicion. In a competitive scenario, in effect, declare winners when there are no results is foolhardy and may irreparably damage the election as a whole.

Meanwhile, presidential candidate of the left (AMLO) announced that he will await the total count of the votes to take a stand and called for calm and civility to his followers. It can not be certain, therefore, the outcome of electoral uncertainty that developed, however, the systematic manipulation of television, in the continued interference of the Calderon administration, the pusillanimity of the electoral authorities and the application of the traditional bad epileptic arts of the PRI.

The truth is that it has again put the country in a context of lack of credibility that could lead to uncontrollable circumstances or six years of a diminished government legitimacy. Hopefully none of these perspectives is realized and that, conversely, the total count of the votes and the rapid resolution of challenges to give certainty about the meaning of popular verdict delivered yesterday at the polls.