The Godfather USA

Godfather USA


To be an American citizen is very much like being the child of a wealthy and unscrupulous criminal ‘Godfather,’ who appears to be kind and generous to his own children at home, but is unflinchingly treacherous and murderous in conducting his family business, which is based on coercion, domination, exploitation, and violence. The average US citizen enjoys prosperity and relative freedom, but US prosperity derives in large part from the criminal exploitation of, and frequently the outright murder of, millions of innocent people in developing countries throughout the world. Most US citizens choose to remain in a perpetual state of denial regarding the criminal activities of their government, because they lack the courage and the character to learn and face the truth. An unquestioning acceptance of the values, motives, and goals of the US government by the majority of US citizens allows those citizens to be easily fooled and manipulated by the propaganda presented to them by the US government and by the US government-controlled ‘Mainstream Media.’

From early childhood, US citizens are raised on a steady diet of pro-US government propaganda that is fed to them at school and at home through the media of television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, and popular music. The propaganda presents the US government as an ethically superior exemplar of justice for the entire world, as an exceptionally generous contributor to global economic development, and as a benevolent arbiter of world affairs. Furthermore, a great deal of crucial information about US political history, particularly regarding events of the past half-century, is not taught in US schools and is never allowed to appear in the Mainstream Media outlets.

According to the US Census report of 1998, 12.7% of the US population lives in poverty, 15.7% lack health insurance, and at least 38% of the wealth in the USA is owned by just one percent of the US population. The personal wealth of Microsoft CEO Bill Gates exceeds that of the total combined wealth of the poorest 45% of US households, which amounts to at least 133 million people. The USA has the highest concentration of individual wealth in all of the industrialized nations, and about three times that of the second-placed nation for concentrated wealth, which is Germany. The USA also leads the world in the number of its citizens who are incarcerated in prisons: one out of seventy-five US males are in prison, of whom 68% belong to racial or ethnic minorities. As of 2003, 12% of the USA’s black males in their twenties were living in prison, compared to 3.7% of the USA’s Hispanic males and 1.6% of the USA’s white males.

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CNN Rick Sanchez: 'Too Cold' in Iceland 'To Have a Volcano There

On Thursday's Rick's List, CNN's Rick Sanchez again demonstrated his lack of knowledge of basic science, again related to geology. As he covered the volcanic eruption in Iceland which has disrupted thousands of airplane flights across Europe, he commented that "when you think of a volcano, you think of Hawaii and long words like that. You don't think of Iceland. You think it's too cold to have a volcano there"

GE: 7,000 tax returns, $0 U.S. tax bill

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- General Electric filed more than 7,000 income tax returns in hundreds of global jurisdictions last year, but when push came to shove, the company owed the U.S. government a whopping bill of $0.

How'd it pull off that trick? By losing lots of money.

GE had plenty of earnings last year -- just not in the United States. For tax purposes, the company's U.S. operations lost $408 million, while its international businesses netted a $10.8 billion profit.

That left GE (GE, Fortune 500) with no U.S. profit left for Uncle Sam to tax. Corporations typically face a 35% federal income tax on their earnings. Thanks to its deductions and adjustments, GE reported an actual U.S. federal income tax rate of negative 10.5%. It got to add a "tax benefit" of $1.1 billion back into its reported earnings.

"This is the first time in at least decades that GE has reported negative U.S. pretax income and it reflects the worst economy since the Great Depression," Anne Eisele, GE's director of financial communications, said via e-mail.

But what about the $10.8 billion profit overseas? GE is "indefinitely" deferring income tax payments on those profits, Eisele said.

It may seem like accounting magic, but it's completely legit.

GE isn't the only "Top 5" company on this year's Fortune 500 list that owed no income taxes. Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), which suffered major losses in 2009, included a tax benefit of $1.9 billion in its annual profit.

"That's one way of escaping taxes," said Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation. "Companies get to deduct their losses, so if there's no earnings, then they pay no income tax."

But GE isn't exactly escaping all tax-related pain: The company paid almost $23 billion in taxes to governments around the world from 2000 to 2009, Eisele said.

Plus, paying the accountants to crank out 7,000 tax returns can't be cheap.

And then there's all the lawyers needed to defend those returns. GE filed tax paperwork in more than 250 jurisdictions around the world last year. "We are under examination or engaged in tax litigation in many of these jurisdictions," the company dryly notes in its annual report.

GE may not owe the IRS, but it still has to file -- and its filings are epic.

In 2006, as the IRS ramped up its corporate e-filing program, the tax agency actually issued a celebratory press release when it processed GE's tax return. On paper, the return -- the nation's largest -- would have totaled a massive 24,000 pages. But instead, the IRS was able to upload the 237 MB document in under an hour.

Reading it, though, is apparently taking a bit longer. The IRS is currently auditing GE's tax returns for 2003-2007.

100,000 Workers Will Lose their Unemployment Insurance. No Housing Recovery can be had without Employment Recovering.

California has reached another unfortunate record. The headline unemployment rate pushed up to a record breaking 12.6 percent. This translates to 2.3 million Californians completely out of work. We also have a large number that are working part-time but would like full-time employment. When we look at the California budget and economy we cannot separate out jobs from the condition of the housing market. California’s big error during the decade was that the health of real estate was the health of jobs. That is, many jobs (too many) depended on the housing bubble. As the bubble burst so has the economy. Yet the current strategy seems to rely on real estate recovering again instead of building up jobs in other industries. If we look at the underemployment rate we are quickly approaching 24 percent. We also have many toxic mortgages that are still sitting in the balance sheets of banks but more are making their way to market.

Let us first examine the employment situation in the state:

Source: BLS; Yellow modified U6

I’ve been putting together this chart for a few years now. The red line is the official BLS headline unemployment rate for California. But with such a large number of Americans working part-time but looking for full-time work, I’ve also added a line that reflects the underemployment rate. This data was created from averaging out the difference over the years between U3 and U6 for the state. The ratio is fairly accurate. In fact, let us look at the official 2009 average for California:

The average U6 rate for the state in 2009 was 21.1 percent. But keep in mind and look at the above chart. The headline rate (U3) has been going up all through 2009 and now in 2010 we’ve had a rate of 12.5, 12.5, and 12.6 percent. In other words, the average is now much higher. And we actually see this in the current part-time rate:

Source: OC Register

In the last year we’ve increased the part-time for economic reasons number by 456,000. It is difficult to envision any housing stability without the employment situation improving. How are people going to afford any sort of mortgage payment if they have no job or are working part-time with lower wages? At the moment, we have seen a movement in home sale activity but much of this seems to come from a couple of unsustainable groups:

-a. Investors

-b. First time buyers using the tax credits (federal currently, state next month)

-c. Low mortgage rate push

-d. Pent up demand

All four groups are currently dominating the market. In most healthy markets sales come from people selling homes to move up/out and first time buyers. We are missing a large healthy group of home sales that come from the move up market. After all, what are you going to move up from when one-third of California mortgage holders are underwater?

What is even more challenging for the current economy is we are reaching the end of the line for many. In the next few weeks we are going to see roughly 100,000 people lose their unemployment insurance:

“(LA Times) Despite hints of an economic turnaround, some of the 2.3 million unemployed in the state found March the toughest month yet. That’s because tens of thousands have been out of work so long that their unemployment checks will be cut off within the next few weeks. They’re not helped by the $18-billion measure signed Thursday by President Obama that extends jobless benefits for many Americans through June 2.”

Many of these people are part of the 2.3 million unemployed:

Source: EDD

The recession has been so long and deep, that even 99 weeks of unemployment insurance with combined extensions is not enough for thousands of California residents. A current extension signed by the President will not help this group. And with budget battles looming for cities and the state, it will be a struggle of priorities. Why choose to give a $200 million home buyer tax credit when our employment situation resembles the above is beyond me. It is a purely political move because economically it makes absolutely no sense.

And Southern California is in really tough shape. Many of those investors have been buying out in the Inland Empire:

Source: OC Register

The Inland Empire is made up of Riverside and San Bernardino Counties with headline unemployment rates of approximately 15 percent which means their underemployment rate is 25 percent or higher. I’ve been following this market closely and have seen an explosion of rentals hitting the market. Yet the economy is so tough here, that many rentals seem to languish or if they do get rented, investors are finding a hard time collecting rent. This might be because the underemployment rate is 25 percent! It should be obvious to most that we can have no housing recovery without fixing the current employment situation in the state.

And here in Southern California, we are seeing some shadow inventory move from the dark hidden corners of a bank balance sheet to the MLS:

So what we see is a decrease in shadow inventory and a bump in actual MLS data. This trend has been going on for a few months now. Yet the properties making their way look to be hand selected. For example, banks seem to want to move shadow inventory in the Inland Empire fast and at lower prices. In other areas, not so much (i.e., Beverly Hills, Culver City, etc). It would appear that banks are already giving up on certain areas and crossing their fingers that in other markets, things will recover quick enough and then they can unload properties at face value.

The California budget battle is going to give us two choices. One includes raising taxes to generate more revenues. The other will include cuts which means additional job losses. These are not good choices but this is what we have ahead of us in 2010.

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Obama to Launch Public Campaign for Wall Street Crackdown

Officials said Sunday that the president plans to embark on a series of outside-the-Beltway rallies and town hall events where he will press for financial regulatory reform and turn up the heat on Senate Republicans -- reprising the administration's game plan from the health care debate.

Déjà vu, anyone?

With the Obama administration kicking its push for a Wall Street crackdown into high gear, both sides of the debate are turning to familiar strategy. Just like with health care reform, Republicans are ripping the package and telling Democrats to start over. And just like with health care reform, President Obama is tearing into Republican leaders and pushing ahead with a high-profile public campaign to promote the package.

But while another contentious debate might seem like the last thing Democrats want in an election year, senior administration officials tell Fox News that Obama is feeling the wind at his back after the health care battle and believes the push for tougher Wall Street regulation will boost his popularity. So once again, he's taking the show on the road.

Officials said Sunday that the president plans to embark on a series of outside-the-Beltway rallies and town hall events where he will press for financial regulatory reform and turn up the heat on Senate Republicans. Some events will be built almost entirely around this topic, and, as with the health care push, Obama's campaign arm Organizing for America will coordinate all moves with the White House.

"We cannot delay action any longer," Obama said in a message sent around by Organizing for America over the weekend.

The president is treating the overhaul with the same kind of urgent and barbed rhetoric he used during the health care debate. Senior advisers have prioritized the financial bill as the most important political fight of the next two months -- despite Obama's pledge during his State of the Union address to make jobs legislation the top issue.

But there's a big difference between the Wall Street and health care debates. This time, Democrats are entering the height of the debate one vote short of a filibuster-proof majority and have a strong incentive to negotiate.

The Obama administration offered a concession Friday, when it told Senate Democrats to drop a proposed $50 billion fund designed to finance

the liquidation of a big financial institution facing collapse.

But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell held to his opposition Sunday, saying there are "other problems" with the bill and that Democrats need to do more to get Republicans on board.

"I think there is a pretty good ... reason to believe that there is bipartisan opposition to this bill. We ought to go back to the drawing board and fix it," McConnell said on CNN's "State of the Union."

McConnell, though, denied that Republicans are set on blocking the bill no matter what.

"I think we should get a bill. I think it needs to be done on a bipartisan basis," he said. "The only thing bipartisan about the health care bill was the opposition to it. That is not how I view this bill. But I do think we need to get it right."

The Senate Republican leader said there could be "broad bipartisan support" in the area of regulating the derivatives market -- something Obama on Friday set as a requirement for his signature on any Wall Street bill.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner also said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that "we are very close" on coming to an agreement on the financial regulatory bill in the Senate. He said both parties agree on "the vast bulk of things," but acknowledged, "We're not together on everything."

The House of Representatives passed a financial regulatory bill in December.

Emerging as a key player in the debate on the Senate side may be Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., who nearly derailed the health care bill after he was elected in January and broke the Democrats' supermajority.

Brown said Sunday that he's ready to join Republicans in a filibuster to prevent the current financial bill from hitting the floor.

"The present bill is not a good bill, period. I have reviewed it. We've analyzed it," he told CBS' "Face the Nation."

But Brown dangled his potential support out to Democrats, saying he's made "very clear" that he would work with Democrats on another version.

"We absolutely need to fix certain areas in financial reform," Brown said. "The next step is to bring people -- put them in a room and start solving problems. And as evidenced by what I've tried to do, which is to vote with the Democrats and be the 60th vote ... or be the 41st vote."

Fox News' Major Garrett contributed to this report.

Banks Ruin Economy for Quick (Large) Profits Part 1

Click this link ...... http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=11468

Jim Rogers : "The Fed Will Print Money Till We Run Out of Trees!"

Click this link ...... http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=11454

Freedom Watch - David Buckner on class warfare through taxes

Click this link ....... http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=11465

Foreclosures up 33% in new jersey, OUTPACING national rate

What’s new: Foreclosure filings in New Jersey rose 33 percent in the first quarter of 2010, compared with the same period in 2009, according to RealtyTrac, a California company that follows the foreclosure market.

Nationally, foreclosure filings were up 16 percent in the same time span.

What it means: The housing market’s distress is not over, despite government efforts to encourage lenders to make loans more affordable for struggling homeowners.

How lenders are responding: In New Jersey, 33,612 mortgages are being modified through the federal Making Home Affordable Program; most of these modifications are trial runs. Nationally, more than 1 million loans are in the modification program.

Where foreclosures are most severe: Nevada, Arizona, Florida and California.

What they’re saying:

"Lenders are starting to make a dent in the backlog of distressed inventory that has built up over the last year as foreclosure prevention programs and processing delays slowed down the normal foreclosure timeline." — James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer, RealtyTrac

"A lot of people who had adjustable mortgages, some of those [higher interest rates] are now starting to kick in … We have clients who have been through three three-month trial modifications, and probably at the end of the day, they will end up losing their homes." — Phyllis Salowe-Kaye, head of N.J. Citizen Action, which offers housing counseling

housing units

U.S. 1/138

N.J. 1/226

California 1/62

Nevada 1/33

Florida 1/57

— Kathleen Lynn

The Oklahoma City Bombing

Were there additional explosive charges and additional bombers?

A brief overview of the official story of the Oklahoma City bombing: On April 17, 1995 Timothy McVeigh reportedly picked up a 20-foot Ryder truck from Elliott's Body Shop in Junction City. The truck was filled with roughly 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg) of ammonium nitrate, an agricultural fertilizer, and nitromethane, a highly volatile motor-racing fuel-a mixture also known as Kinepak or ANFO (ammonium nitrate/fuel oil). At 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, the truck exploded in the street in front of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building. About 90 minutes later, McVeigh was stopped by an Oklahoma state trooper for driving a vehicle without a license plate, who then arrested him on a firearms charge. Two days later he was charged in the bombing. His friend Terry Nichols was arrested in Kansas, and formally charged with the bombing on May 10. Click for full size - note the crater There are many problems with the official story of the bombing. Let's start with McVeigh's whereabouts on April 17.

McVeigh had been filmed by a security camera at a nearby McDonald's 24 minutes before the time stamped on the truck rental agreement, wearing clothes that did not match either of the men seen at Elliott's. There is no plausible explanation of how he traveled the mile and a quarter from McDonald's to the rental agency, carless and alone as he claims, without getting soaked in the rain.

The three people interviewed agreed John Does 1 and 2 were dry. According to Stephen Jones, who has seen the interview transcripts, it took 44 days for the FBI to convince the car rental agency owner that John Doe 1 was Timothy McVeigh. And in the end they did not dare put him on the witness stand, for fear of what might happen under cross-examination. There is also an unanswered question with regard to the truck, namely what was the Army doing with a Ryder Truck just before the Murrah blast? RYDER TRUCK IN A SECRET ARMY COMPOUND - CLICK FOR DETAILS The biggest problem with the official story of the bombing are early news reports of the incident: A collection of live news broadcasts documenting the Oklahoma City bombing. 2.6 MB wmv download "...here's now what we are starting to learn about the succession, or what someone obviously hoped would be a succession of explosions. The first bomb that was in the federal building did go off ... the second explosive was found and defused. The third explosive that was found and they are working on it right now ... both the second and third explosives, if you can imagine this, were larger than the first. ... It is just incredible to think that there was that much heavy artillery that was somehow moved into the downtown Oklahoma City federal building." "...this is the work of a sophisticated group, this is a very sophisticated device, and it has to have been done by an explosives expert." Other live news broadcasts reporting additional bombs can be heard in this 862kB mp3 file. Additional bombs are also reported in this CNN transcript and public records. The Murrah building was not destroyed by a single truck bomb - the Eglin blast effects study and General Partin's Report prove this is the case.

Things that go BOOM in the night! Before proceeding to the acoustical data, let me explain a little something about explosives and how people perceive them. I work in special effects. In films, great use is made of low velocity explosives such as untamped black powder and ANFO because they are low velocity explosives. With a great whoosh and roar they belch forth with fire and smoke in a manner that has caused folks to drop their popcorn in matinees ever since sound came in. Movies have conditioned people to expect a certain look and sound to explosions, all based on very low velocity explosives. In a stunning ironic twist, moviegoers seem to perceive the slower explosions as more powerful. Demolition experts will tell you that high brissive or high velocity explosives actually are more powerful, as they build up a powerful shock wave. However, except for actually collapsing a structure, such explosives are unsuitable for film. The blast is over so quickly it can be missed while the film is moving between one frame and the next. There is very little visible smoke and flash, and the "crack" of a C-4 cutter charge is downright disappointing to hear. Thus, the average person's awareness of what an explosion is supposed to look and sound like is based on the movies and low velocity explosives only. In not knowing what high velocity explosives sound like or feel like (as the shock wave moves through the earth), many people might not understand what they have heard or felt on April 19th. With that in mind... Click for full size image The Lawyer's Dictation Tape This is the dictation tape made by a lawyer which captures the sounds of the blast which destroyed the Oklahoma Federal Building on April 19th, 1995. Note the sounds of a rattle which precedes the blast by one second. This sound is the surface wave from the ANFO Truck Bomb which arrives ahead of the airborne concussion, traveling through the Earth's surface. 4.2 seconds ahead of the start of the rattle, a "thump" is heard on the tape, overlapping the second syllable of the word "attorneys". mp3 of tape Events marked on the jpg file The thump at -4.2 seconds. An airborne event which arrives at the correct place to be associated with event 1, if it originates at the same location as the truck bomb itself. This marks the start of the arrival of the surface wave from the truck bomb. On the tape, this can be heard as a rattle building under the lawyer's voice. Note that unlike the lawyer's voiceprints, which show clear banding in frequency, the sounds from the truck bomb surface wave are smoothly distributed in the lower frequencies. This is the arrival of the airborne concussion from the truck bomb. Like the surface wave, this signal lacks the striations of the lawyer's voice. The most notable difference is the sudden transition to high frequency components. Note that the Surface Wave / Air Wave delays are identical in both cases, indicating similar distances from the recording device. When I originally heard this tape, I discarded the "pop" at the -4.2 second mark as just noise on the tape. However, when the Water Board tape (which follows) also had an artifact at the -4.2 second mark, I ran a frequency domain audio spectrogram on the lawyer's dictation tape. The spike corresponding to the pop at the -4.2 second mark is circled. The other event marks were added later. The stripe at the top is electronic noise, possibly from the dictation machine itself. The Oklahoma Water Board Tape At the time when the Truck Bomb exploded outside the Murrah Federal Building on April 19th, The Oklahoma Water Board was meeting in a building diagonally across the street. 4.2 seconds prior to the truck bomb blast, a loud "thump" is heard on the tape, just as the speaker finishes the phrase," are four elements that I have to..". On this tape, the speaker pauses after the thump is heard, and just prior to the main blast, if you listen real close, other voices can be heard just starting to speak up. mp3 of tape

What does it all mean? From the above evidence, it is clear that an event which generated a high frequency surface wave which preceded the main truck bomb blast by 4.2 seconds. This event was recorded at two different locations at distances of 100 yards and 1/3 of a mile. Because the 4.2 second interval remains constant at both distances, theories of mechanism producing echoes are eliminated. Because the spectrogram of the lawyer's tape shows BOTH surface and airborne waves separated by 4.2 seconds from BOTH surface and airborne waves of the truck bomb, arguments of a surface/air phenomenon are invalid. Two events at the Murrah building 4.2 seconds apart produced two sets of surface/air pairs 4.2 seconds apart at the lawyer's office.

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The Seismographic Records from Norman Oklahoma These images are scans of the seismographic output from the Norman Oklahoma Z-axis recorder for April 19th and May 23rd; the bombing and the demolition respectively. This is the raw data which led Ray Brown and Charles Mankin to decide that there may have been a second explosion. It turns out that the 10 second delay is caused by differing propagation times through the layers of shale and sandstone that lie under Oklahoma City. April 19th: The Bombing of the Murrah Building The FAX cover logo from the Oklahoma Geological Survey Click for full size image Scan of the seismographic record. Note the circle around the Murrah events. Click for full size image Circled Detail of the Murrah events. Click for full size image May 23rd: The Sequenced Demolition of the Murrah Building The additional spikes on this record are caused by wind flexing the radio antenna which is used to transmit the data to the Oklahoma Geological Survey. Seismographic record of the Murrah Building Demolition Click for full size image Detail of the Murrah Demolition. Click for full size image Note that the 8 second long sequenced demolition of the remainder of the Murrah Building yielded a trace the same length as the original bombing. The first trace, if indeed a single explosion, should be shorter. But it isn't, suggesting that BOTH events consisted of multiple sequenced detonations over several seconds' duration.

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The Murrah Building Cover-up (literally)

The minister who married my wife and I was in OK City right after the Murrah Building bomb(s) exploded, and he volunteered to help dig for survivors. He told of three very odd occurrences. In the first, he was required to show his ID six times before being allowed to help look for survivors. In the second, he confirmed the stories told by others that men in suits and ties were literally stepping over the wounded in their haste to gather up files and certain other items in the debris.

Lastly, and the oddest story of all, he told of more men in suits and ties taping plastic sheeting over portions of the building wreckage! The plastic sheeting used was very thin, could not possibly provide any mechanical support for the covered items, and seemed to serve no other purpose than to conceal the wrapped object from view. This story has also been confirmed by other witnesses. Finally, a photo surfaced which confirms this story (see right).

Click for full size image

Note at the very right edge of the photo a large piece of the building covered in shiny black plastic, partly obscured by the flat piece of floor leaning against it. Note the ladder to get a sense of the size of the covered object. PROOF there were additional explosive charges. LATEST UPDATES FOLLOW THE DOCUMENTS Tiffany Bible affidavit Click for full size document. Tiffany Bible was a paramedic called to the Murrah Building following the bombing. This affidavit reports three important facts. 1. The ATF were not in the building. 2. That the ATF was already putting out a story that the Murrah Building was bombed "because of Waco" only a few hours after the actual blast and before Tim McVeigh was even arrested. 3. That an unexploded bomb was found attached to a gas line inside the building. Arlene Blanchard Press Release Click for full size document. Arlene was a survivor of the bombing. In this press release, issued at the time of her grand jury appearance, she reveals that she was ordered to keep silent about what she knew of the bombing by the Army under threat of court martial. DoD Atlantic Command Memo Click for full size document. This memo, issued 36 hours after the bombing, reports at least two additional bombs were found in the Murrah Building. FEMA Situation Report Click for full size document. This FEMA memo also reports at least two additional bombs were found in the Murrah Building. U.S. Forces Command Daily Log Click for full size document. Again, confirmation of at least two additional bombs which were found in the Murrah Building. Joe Harp affidavit Click for full size document. Joe Harp, based on his military explosives experience, refutes the ANFO claim and identifies the additional bombs he sees removed from the building as being military in nature. Jane Graham Statement Click for full size document. Click for full size document. Click for full size document. This statement by a survivor tells of three men she saw in the Murrah Building Garage the week prior to the bombing, and the FBI's obvious disinterest in the matter. Oklahoma Highway Patrol Radio Logs Click for full size document. Click for full size document. Click for full size document. Click for full size document. These four pages are the radio log of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. Note that the reports of additional bombs are confirmed by the fire department. Virgil Steele Affidavit Click for full size document. Click for full size document. Virgil Steele is the elevator inspector who discovered that the story told by a senior BATF agent about being trapped in a plummeting elevator was a lie. The elevators were in working order except for being without power, and nobody had been trapped in them. Virgil also sees two additional bombs being removed from the building. Recently, in response to repeated attempts to claim that the above documents are fakes, independent corroboration of the above documents was performed by two posters to the Free Republic web site named "roughrider" and "rwfromkansas". Working from the information contained within the documents themselves, roughrider arrived at the following conclusions. 06/13/2001 16:05:32 PDT by roughrider The following investigation was conducted at 11:00 AM this morning. I obtained the following information: The FEMA Regional Office that is responsible for the Oklahoma City area was telephoned. The woman who answered provided the following information: There is no one in DELL GREER's former office, as there are two disasters to which the FEMA Regional Office was responding on 6/13/2001, one in Southern Louisiana and one in Texas. DELL GREER has not worked for FEMA in some years. GREER did work in that office for FEMA at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing. The name RICHARD W. KRIMM was familiar to the woman, but KRIMM also no longer works for FEMA. FEMA employs "media monitors" in their regional offices. The media monitors watch television coverage of disasters to which FEMA is responding. The purpose of the media monitors is to ascertain if the media coverage is accurate, so that FEMA can issue press releases if any inaccurate information is broadcast. FEMA officials like DELL GREER would not put reports from "media sources" in a press release, but might put them in internal communications such as a Situation Report. FEMA is not responsible for investigations of such criminal matters as the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. FEMA is tasked with providing personnel, material, and other assistance for search, rescue, and disaster relief and recovery. This being the case, until the responsible law enforcement agencies disseminate information to FEMA, FEMA must learn what is happening through monitoring the news media. FEMA does receive information from the wire services. She concurred that FEMA is not responsible for informing the public what caused the explosion at the Alfred P. Murrah Building, and that the described content of the FEMA Situation Report Number 5, written by DELL GREER to RICHARD W. KRIMM is only descriptive of the media reports to which GREER had access at that time. Other situation reports subsequent to Number 5 might have been changed to reflect the change in the media reports from two unexploded bombs to no unexploded bombs. The time 2100L on the Situation Report Number 5 is military time and reflects that the document was written on 4/20/2001 at 9:00 PM. She suggested that the FEMA web site might reveal more. She asked how a FEMA internal document found its way to the Internet, and I responded that I did not know, but it was my understanding that several FEMA documents concerning the bombing have been made public, and there was no classification stamp on the copy I saw on the Internet. Unless anyone is still not satisfied, I am closing down the investigation. The references in the FEMA and DOD documents came from the same media reports that indicated two unexploded bombs were removed from the Murrah Building, and it is my conclusion that this explains the similarity in wording. Both FEMA and DOD Atlantic Command were only interested in disaster relief and recovery efforts and were not responsible for investigating the bombing, therefore they were relying on extant media reports to inform superiors. It is reasonable to conclude that, as the media reports changed, additional communications were disseminated by both agencies to update their respective management teams about the changing situation. The documents only serve as proof that the media did indeed report that unexploded bombs were removed, not that FEMA employees saw them. Subsequently, rwfromkansas telephoned the Oklahoma Bombing Investigation Committee and verbally confirmed that the above documents are known to Charles Key's investigation. The above documents are genuine.

Weather records are a state secret

The IPCC's computer models have proved just as wrong in predicting global temperatures as the Met Office has been in forecasting those mild winters and heatwave summers, says Christopher Booker.

Sir John Houghton, former head of the Met Office, edited the first three IPCC reports between 1990 and 2001

Everyone has enjoyed the discomfiture of the Met Office, caught out over its April forecast that we were in for a "barbecue summer" – not least because this is the third year running that our weathermen have got their predictions for both summer and winter hopelessly wrong. In 2007 and 2008 they forecast that summers would be warmer and drier, and winters milder than average – just before temperatures plunged and the heavens opened, deluging us with abnormal rain or snow according to season.

One cause of the blunders that have made the Met Office a laughing stock is less widely appreciated, however. It is that the multi-million pound computer it uses to assist its short-term forecasting for Britain is also one of the four main official sources of data used by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to predict global warming. In this respect the IPCC's computer models have proved just as wrong in predicting global temperatures as the Met Office has been in forecasting those mild winters and heatwave summers.

Back in 1990, Mrs Thatcher, temporarily under the spell of the prophets of runaway global warming, authorised lavish funding for the then-head of the Met Office, Sir John Houghton, to set up its Hadley Centre in Exeter, as a "world-class centre for research into climate change". It was linked to the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, to create a record of global temperatures based on surface weather stations across the world, a data set known as HadCrut. Sir John himself played a key role at the top of the new IPCC as chairman of its scientific working group.

Sir John was a fervent believer in the theory that the cause of global warming is man-made CO2, and the HadCrut computer models, run by his CRU ally Professor Phil Jones, were programmed accordingly. Sir John (and the Hadley Centre) continued to play a central part in the running of the IPCC, selecting many of the contributors to its reports that were the main driver of global warming alarm. He and Prof Jones were also prominent champions of the IPCC's notorious "hockey stick" graph, which rewrote climate history by suggesting that global temperatures had suddenly shot up in the late 20th century to easily their highest level in history.

In recent years, however, the whole theory has come under increasing fire because, as CO2 levels continue to rise, temperatures have failed to follow suit as the IPCC's computer models predicted they should. Part of the reason why the Met Office has made such a mess of its forecasts for Britain is that they are based on the same models which failed to predict the declining trend in world temperatures since 2001.

In recent months, in fact, a curious little drama has been unfolding over attempts by Steve McIntyre, a Canadian statistical expert, to get the Met Office and the CRU to divulge the computer data on which they base their temperature record. Mr McIntyre was not only the chief demolisher of the "hockey stick", showing how it was based on a seriously skewed computer model, but later exposed the "adjustments" which had skewed the other official record of surface temperatures, run by Dr James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. (The two other official sources of temperature data are based on satellite measurements.)

When Mr McIntyre made Freedom of Information requests to see the data used to construct the HadCrut record (as he has chronicled on his ClimateAudit blog) he was given an almighty brush-off, the Met Office saying that this information was strictly confidential and that to release it would damage Britain's "international relations" with all the countries that supplied it.

The idea that temperature records might be a state secret seems strange enough, but when the policies of governments across the world are based on that data it becomes odder still that no outsider should be allowed to see it. Weirdest of all, however, is the Met Office's claim that to release the data would "damage the trust that scientists have in those scientists who happen to be employed in the public sector".

Doesn't the Met Office realise that trust in it has already been damaged enough by its batty predictions of "barbecue summers"? If it wants to restore that trust, it should first come clean about its data, and then reprogramme its computer to give us forecasts that are not skewed by its obsession with global warming – which is not happening.

Command vehicles unfit for 'operational duties'

In August 2005, with the aid of my expert colleague Richard North, I exposed the scandal of a £166 million purchase by the Ministry of Defence of 401 Panther command vehicles, made by the Italian company Iveco. This was at the time when the MoD was lashing out billions on EU-made equipment, as part of its drive to integrate Britain’s defence effort with “Europe”. My piece prompted an irate letter to The Sunday Telegraph from a Mr Andrew Simpson, defending the Panther and pointing out that, having been “the MoD desk officer” who initiated the programme leading to its purchase, he was now “a consultant to Iveco”.

So useless did these vehicles prove that for a long time they sat unused somewhere in Britain. More recently, however, the MoD spent £20 million more adapting 67 of them for Afghanistan where, at now £700,00 each, they proved still so useless that, as Ann Winterton MP lately established via a parliamentary question, they are not permitted on “operational duties”.

The MoD could have followed the Irish and Swedish example by buying far more suitable, battle-ready RG?32Ms for only a quarter of the money.

The real problem with the MoD’s conduct of this war is not, as is often claimed, “underfunding”, but prodigal overfunding in far too many wrong directions.

? Correction: Last week I quoted a report by Joanne Nova (Science and Public Policy Institute website) which shows, on official figures, that the world market in buying and selling “carbon credits’, the right to emit CO2, was worth $126 billion in 2008. In trying to squeeze down my copy, I quoted a claim that this would make “carbon the largest single commodity traded”. This should correctly and more plausibly have applied to a forecast that the market’s value could eventually rise to $10 trillion.

Texas Engineer Demolitions the 9-11 WTC 7 Fairy

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Media Lies by Omission: Biased survey over-inflates public support for airport scanners

"Deception by an omission of the truth is as bad as a lie."
Jennifer Chiaverini

The mainstream media was quick to publicise the findings of a survey that showed widespread public support for the global drive to install 'naked' full-body scanners at airports.

Articles such as Sky News: UK Holidaymakers Back Use Of Full-Body Scanners and Agence France-Presse: Opinion poll: US anti-terror too lax, uncritically repeated the report's findings without questioning the reliability of the survey or mentioning the conflict of interests held by those in the security industry who stand to profit from rolling out these dangerous machines.

There is one glaring omission from these and the many media reports that published 'news' articles based on the Unisys press release. That is who Unisys is, their connections with government, military, Homeland security, the Transportation Services Authority (TSA) and how they profit from airport security technologies. The failure of the mainstream media to report the true source and motives behind this survey is a clear example of how they lie by omitting the most important facts.

The survey generated headlines in Austrailia, New Zealand, America and the UK. All with similar sweeping joyous news of approximately 80% of air travelers from these countries who just can't wait to get zapped and show their privates to security guards in order to catch their flight.

Reading the triumphant headlines, you'd be forgiven for believing the incredible turnaround in public support for invasive technology that has generated many serious concerns, including:

• Perverted airport workers ogling at images of female colleagues passing through the scanners.
  
• The failed trials of this technology that breaks child pornography laws
  
• The privacy issues resulting from scanners that 'show passengers naked'
  
• Health risks of miscarriages and DNA damage from the dangerous levels of radiation:

One only has to dig a little deeper into who is responsible for this survey to discover the profit-driven agenda of the company Unisys. No surprises, it supplies products and services to support the implementation of increasing security systems at airports worldwide.

Who is Unisys?

From the Unisys Website:

For more than 50 years, our federal government clients have trusted Unisys to help them support their mission-critical programs. When it comes to protecting your assets, data, systems, and citizens, we deliver the best combination of industry and subject matter expertise - every time. Governments around the world trust Unisys to help them solve their business problems through systems that optimize the organization and secure the enterprise.

A Unisys press release on the same day as the survey results were announced, illustrates clearly the need for Unisys to gain acceptance for increased airport security to maximise its revenue: "Unisys Next Generation Airport Passenger Security Solution Delivers Enhanced Security for Air Travel Consumers Worldwide"

New solution builds on Unisys experience with advanced biometric technologies to enhance security, speed passenger processing time and reduce costs [...]

Drawing on the company's experience with the aviation industry and advanced biometric-based security solutions for governments and commercial organizations, the new Unisys solution will integrate the various stages of the air passenger experience with a biometric component to uniquely identify each passenger. The end-to-end solution covers the key touch points of air travel: from electronic boarding passes, to boarding plane, to passing through immigration, to baggage collection.

"Travelers around the world are being squeezed by a growing number of critical but costly and inconvenient airport security procedures that are taking the joy out of traveling," said Terry Hartmann, vice president, identity and credentialing global practice, Unisys. "With the technologies we have today, air travel doesn't have to be such a difficult experience. Unisys has extensive experience applying advanced biometric technology to address the most demanding identification challenges, and we look forward to helping airports, airlines and immigration agencies make better use of these technologies to bring a new level of convenience and efficiency to air travel."

Some facts about Unisys' operation show some interesting connections and paint a picture of a company that uses corrupt lobbyists to win government contracts. It has been accused of swindling the TSA to maximise revenue and it is an organisation who cares little for its American employees:

• Unisys clients are typically large corporations or government agencies, and have included various branches of the U.S. military, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), numerous airports, the General Services Administration, U.S. Transportation Security Administration and Internal Revenue Service


• Unisys operates the world's largest RFID network for the U.S. military, tracking 9 million containers yearly to 1,500 nodes in 25 countries. It also created the universal identification card for citizens of South Africa.


• One of Unisys' partners is OSI systems - the manufacturer of the Rapiscan naked body scanner


• In 2003 and 2004, Unisys paid influential lobbyist Jack Abramoff $640,000. Abramoff raised $100,000 for Bush's 2004 campaign representing clients lobbying the White House, including Unisys Corp.


• In January 2006, Abramoff pleaded guilty to five felony counts for various crimes related to his federal lobbying activities. The lobbying activities of Abramoff and his associates are now the subject of a large federal investigation


• In October 2005, the Washington Post reported that the company had allegedly over-billed on the $1 to 3 billion Transportation Security Administration contract for almost 171,000 hours of labor and overtime at up to the maximum rate of $131.13 per hour including 24,983 hours not allowed by the contract. Unisys denied any wrongdoing


• In 2009 Richard Marcello, president of technology, consulting, and integration solutions at Unisys said "We were able to eliminate a whole bunch of actually U.S.-based jobs and kind of replace them with two folks out of India "

Sound like a company that is genuinely concerned about helping travelers? Or more like one of the many that will employ a wide range of tactics to generate profits irrespective of the ethics?

The actual report of the survey in question can be downloaded from Unisys and shows that the telephone survey collated it's information from questions loaded with bias:

issue: which of the following statements describe your willingness to sacrifice some privacy for enhanced personal security and convenience when you travel by air?

There are emotive and assumptive terms used in the above statement that (even without knowing exactly how the questions were framed) help explain the results that the media propagated:

Some Privacy? Is 'some' privacy sacrifice an accurate reflection of allowing total strangers to view images of you and your children naked?

Enhanced Security? Is personal security actually enhanced when reports inform us of damming evidence on the ineffectiveness of this technology?

"Authoritative claims that officials at the [UK] Department for Transport and the Home Office have already tested the scanners and were not persuaded that they would work comprehensively against terrorist threats to aviation.".

Convenient? The gradual introduction of increasing layers of airport security over the last ten years HAS had the effect of making travel extremely inconvenient. There has been a carefully stage-managed succession of over-hyped and unsubstantiated terror threats. Whether it be shoes, liquids or underpants, each has been followed by new inconvenient and ineffective security procedures. None of these procedures are necessary and are simply excuses to implement increasingly invasive measures which use expensive technology.

If the survey question was more accurately worded perhaps it would read:

issue: To board an aircraft, which of the following statements describe your willingness to allow naked images to be taken of you through radiation-emitting procedures with health risks so that technology companies can make huge profits?

The results would be rather different, but as we know, the media shies away from reporting anything that doesn't encourage the public to accept their taxes being used to profit the shareholders of companies in the 'Airport Security Industrial Complex' like Unisys.

Three Ways Wall Street has Created a New American Serfdom. The Overly Expensive Mortgage Deduction, Wall Street Pseudo-Rally, and Attacking the Poor.

Last week the S&P 500 almost reached an impressive 80 percent gain from the red abyss seen in March of 2009. This puts this stock market rally up in the ranks of the strongest and fastest market turnarounds in history. Yet on Friday news of Goldman Sachs betting on toxic mortgages sold to clients brought the market down as the SEC has finally decided to bring a civil suit forward. Only took a full 27 months of the obvious. The case against Goldman Sachs is a good representation of what our stock market has become especially when it comes to financial institutions and their gaming of the system. Here you have a firm pushing toxic mortgage securities to their own clients yet at the same time, another division of the institutions is betting against the pool of securities because they know that it is junk. This is the story of the current financial system. What use is this really providing the market except enriching the most corrupt and elite financial institutions in the world?

It is fitting that on the same week of the 80 percent rally point, we find out that last month the U.S. saw the largest number of foreclosure filings on record. We also had many states, including the largest with California announcing a new record unemployment rate of 12.6 percent. Do we need more evidence that the stock market does not reflect the health of Main Street? And people act shocked. This is what happens when you inject $13 trillion into the financial sector on the backs of the American public.

Take a look at the power of this stock market rally:

Source: Chart of the Day

The 1932 stock market rally came after an 89 percent stock market collapse during the bottom of the depression. The 1942 rally came because Europe was bombed into oblivion during World War II and we were producing war goods like crazy. Those models don’t seem to apply today. The NASDAQ collapse is similar to the 1932 chart in that it fell approximately 80 percent from the peak. Today, the stock market is only off by 24 percent from the massive bubble peak achieved in 2007. Yet what has changed? Not much actually in terms of the real economy. Unemployment is still near the peak. We have 40,000,000 Americans on food stamps. Another 15 million are unemployed and another 9 million are working part-time but would like full-time work. This is not a recovery but a clandestine embezzlement of wealth from the overall public, to a select few that are directly linked to Wall Street.

The above information only adds fuel to why 13 percent of the population thinks the economy is doing well:

Let us examine three ways the rich are enjoying the stock market rally while the overall economy is still mired in the pangs of recession.

Top 1 Percent Control 40 Percent of Financial Wealth

The first obvious reason for why the public is not feeling the enjoyment of the stock market rally is most Americans don’t derive most of their income from stocks:

Source: William Domhoff

We have been bamboozled into believing that wealth is the person who has the most cars or the biggest homes. But that is not necessarily true. Many Americans bought homes that were too big with even bigger mortgages and many have lost those homes. Many have been deceived that wealth is the person that drives the nicest car even if they live in a tiny 500 square foot apartment to pay that enormous lease. True wealth is the actual power base of any economy and that comes from savings (i.e., capital stock, bonds, cash, etc). And financial wealth is the absolute nucleus of power. In the U.S. the top 1 percent control 42 percent of all financial wealth. In other words, this 80 percent stock market rally only applies to the absolute tiniest segment of our population.

That is why even after a near 80 percent stock market rally, the vast majority of Americans have no faith in the economy. Why should they? Most of those profits were brought by firing workers or squeezing productivity of those currently working while wages remain stagnant. Yet this is somehow a recovery? It isn’t and the fact that only 13 percent think things are good is a reflection of this new darker economic reality.

This notion of wealth by getting into debt was followed by many:

So you might say that those that took on too much debt should get their comeuppance. Many are through foreclosure and bankruptcy. Yet that top 1 percent isn’t because they have political connections with the corporatocracy and have managed to swindle trillions of dollars from the public to backup their terrible bets. You pay on both ends. The top 1 percent gets away on both ends.

The reason this problem keeps on going unresolved is that Americans are sold the notion that you too can be the next Horatio Alger. Just pull yourself up from your bootstraps. Good companies strive and bad ones fail is the myth. Yet we all know that isn’t true. Most of the banks would be gone today because what they did was in fact financially stupid. Yet we bailed them out. It is a hypocritical version of capitalism. Adam Smith would be turning in his grave if he saw what was going on today.

Housing Tax Breaks Benefit the Wealthy Disproportionately

Many don’t want to say this but we have subsidized housing enough. Housing is the most heavily subsidized industry in this country:

Source: CNN Money

We give more tax breaks with interest deductions on mortgage interest than any other item. Now this sounds good because many people own homes. Yet people fail to even examine the nuts and bolts of their taxes. People forget that we have standard deductions and the actual housing deduction does not add much when all things are said and done. Plus we have hidden costs that don’t show up immediately through higher taxes and horrible bailouts. Most Americans get a tiny benefit because most live with modest mortgages. Yet the bulk of this benefit once again goes to the wealthiest in this country. If you are paying $20,000 a month in interest on your mortgage do you think you can write more off than say someone who is writing off $800 a month? Who do you think wins here? Do the math. If you think the rich pay just look at this list released by the California Franchise Tax Board of the 250 folks who have actually not paid their taxes.

Yet this is the way things get done by brainwashing the public with crumbs while the rich corrupt the system with gimmicks that are bankrupting our country. It is actually irresponsible to continue giving maximum tax breaks while the country is massively in debt. Why not cap the deduction to the median home price nationwide? That would be fair. Or even cap it at $300,000. Either way, the current structure is merely a way of enriching the top 1 percent by allowing them to write-off giant mortgage interest from their income that many garner from gaming the Wall Street casino.

Going After Food Stamps and Unemployment Insurance

I’ve noticed this absurd trend that started in the last few weeks of going after food stamps and unemployment insurance. This is blatantly absurd and frankly, a disgrace. We spent $53 billion last year for food assistance to 40,000,000 American families. This works out to $1,325 per family for an entire year. We spent that much in one month with the Federal Reserve propping up the mortgage market. Unemployment insurance is keeping this recession from becoming the next depression and leading to a full blown revolution. Yet some people in the media have the gall behind their teleprompter and their comfy corporate media gig to try to eliminate these programs and talk them down.

They argue that food stamps and unemployment insurance keep people unmotivated from looking for work. Do they even realize that we have 6 people for every 1 job opening out there? The vast majority of Americans want to work but can’t find any work (i.e., look at Wall Street profits by slashing and burning American jobs). Yet they talk and talk while their corporate advertisers keep them on the air so they can keep their makeup straight and help them enjoy monthly botox injections. They really have no idea what is out there in the actual economy or the life that many average Americans are living.

Wall Street has polluted the current economy. Most Americans don’t buy the propaganda because all they need to do is look at their monthly paycheck. Or all they need to do is talk with their family and neighbors. Or all they need to do is look at their own retirement plans. We better wake up and do it fast because the wealth is being transferred quick and with no mercy.

Germany To Add To Goldman’s Headaches, Prepares To Sue Firm

The Pandora’s box of the SEC’s action against Goldman, which if validated in court will effectively make the issuance of every hybrid CDO product quasi-illegal, will lead to an explosion of lawsuits against virtually any bank that was active in the structured finance space during the housing boom, adding to a fresh round of “non-recurring” charges to bank income statements. Case in point – Welt am Sonntag reports that the German government is considering suing Goldman Sachs, and has asked the SEC for information in its fraud case against the firm. According to the WSJ a spokesman for Angel Merkel said earlier: “First we must ask for the documents, then evaluate [them] and then decide about legal steps.” The action stems from the SEC’s disclosure the German IKB may have been illegally “taken advantage of” through Abacus, and probably other CDO transactions, leading to losses of $150 million. In 2007 IKB had to be bailed out by the German government, in what some claim was the preamble to banking crisis that is now enveloping Europe (not sure if the sovereign catastrophe facing the EMU can also be blamed on Goldman’s CDO transactions, although Goldman will surely also be sued for that sooner or later). We have seen how eager Europe has been to scapegoat “speculators” and other Wall Street actors. We are positive that Germany will surely pursue action against Goldman as it will now provide a vent to pent up popular hatred of how the government has handled the crisis. At the end of the day, even if the SEC’s overture is nothing but a pr stunt cleverly orchestrated by Emmanuel Rahm, the unexpected fallout may well be where the real action is.

From the WSJ:

Germany’s interest in the case stems from the fact that German lender IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG bought a significant amount of the collateralized debt obligations in question, contributing to IKB’s heavy losses on U.S. mortgage-related securities. Those losses led to a €3.5 billion ($4.73 billion) bailout of IKB in mid-2007, with most of the money coming from IKB’s major shareholder, German state bank KfW.

IKB’s near-failure marked the start of an escalating banking crisis in Germany in 2007, which found that numerous state and private-sector banks in Europe’s biggest economy had invested and lost heavily in U.S. mortgage-related securities. The losses undermined German officials’ claims that the subprime-mortgage crisis was a U.S. problem, and forced Germany to announce a €500 billion bailout of its banking sector in October 2008.

And with everyone focusing on Goldman, somehow everyone forgot that Greece is ever faster sinking into the sea of ever rising debt spreads: the real first domino to the endspiel is about to topple.