Friday, September 9, 2011
You must have less so bankers can have more. A lot more.
The bankers have set in motion the final stage in the collapse of the euro, the pound and the dollar. Let me work backwards from the immediate to the more long term. The economy is about to hit a wall in Europe and the United States with the rest of the world to follow.
Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, created two trillion dollars and lent it to the big banks. The banks used this two trillion dollar gift to buy US Treasury bonds. That was called sanitizing the money. Which means that newly created money was not put into our hands to be spent so it was not inflationary. Just recently that has changed. Bob Chapman says the banks have just begun a new program to lend that money out into circulation. With fractional reserve banking a 2 trillion dollar loan is deposited into the big banks. It appears as a credit to the banks and they can even under the old rules loan out 20 trillion dollars. This as you can easily figure out will be highly inflationary. This new stage is called debt monetization.
Let me emphasize this point. The current M2 US Money Supply is about ten trillion dollars. Bernanke loaned out (i.e. created) 16 trillion dollars. As I said previously, over 6 trillion dollars of that money went to European banks to buy the toxic mortgage debts the New York banks had sold them. Bernanke did that to keep the biggest criminals in history out of jail. Now he is going to let the banks loan out the two trillion dollars he loaned them originally to buy bonds. But fractional reserve banking will allow them to loan out 20 trillion dollars. So if we add 16 trillion to 10 trillion we should get an M2 Money Supply greater than 10 trillion? Right. No. Not according to the way Ben counts money. But surely adding 20 trillion dollars to ten trillion will increase the money supply 200%. And that is why I say that inflation is coming to the stores in your neighborhood. It might take awhile but it is coming.
I will have to disagree with Bob Chapman’s interpretation of why they are doing monetizing debt. The banks until recently have killed all job creation by refusing to loan to small businesses. This is part of the consolidation program where the big corporations use government regulations to add costs to small businesses and use the banks to cut off their credit to force them out of business. An example in America would be the animal ID and the Premises ID regulations. Tysons chicken can buy one ID for millions of chickens, cut up the chickens so uncleanly that they are all infected with salmonella and throw chicken parts into the river. But a small farmer has to pay more than his potential profit from the sale of his chickens to obey the federal regulations and avoid fines, legal fees and even jail for failure to comply. This forces the small family farms out of business, allows the big corporations to buy them out for a few dollars and raise prices to the consumer. This centralizes all power into the control of the New York and London banks who own everything including the government.
I do not dispute with Bob Chapman the fact that the banks will go from sanitizing debt to monetizing it and that this will spur inflation levels over the next two years. I also concede that the banks might loan out money and that some of it will be given to small businesses. I also concede that all that newly created money will juice up the markets and might even lower the current unemployment rate in America from 23% to a mere 22%. And I will further concede that they will use this huge money spurt to keep the economy going for awhile longer.
But my take is that the majority of those dollars Ben Bernanke just allowed to be monetized will go into acquiring every last thing of real value before the bankers deliberately crash the system. This is part of their long term strategy to bankrupt you, steal your pensions and savings, cut your wages and cut your benefits. A good way to phrase the policies dictated by the bankers to Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy, Berlusconi and Papandreou is this:
‘You must have less so bankers can have more. A lot more.’
The present rate of inflation according to the statistician John Williams at Shadow States is 11% in America and 12% in the United Kingdom. It will go a lot higher given that the banks will soon switch from debt sanitization to debt monetization. If you live in a country where you know debt monetization will not happen, you will still have to suffer from Ben Bernanke’s exportation of inflation. Suppose Jamie Dimon and Blythe Masters at JP Morgan in New York get their hands on half a trillion dollars at 0.078% interest. If anything they buy goes under, they can sell it to Ben Bernanke at 100 cents on the dollar. If they cannot lose, then they will be emboldened to speculate wildly on acquiring companies and buying up commodities. You will pay a lot more when those commodities get to the store shelves. And everyone in the world will pay those higher prices no matter conscientious your nation’s banks are.
I would like to comment on a few current events. The Rothschilds who own BNP Paribas and Santander banks were forced to put money into Soc Gen (Societe General) to keep it running for another few weeks. The biggest Italian banks including Unicredit are on the ropes as are the Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays in England. The CEO of Dexia, the largest bank in Belgium, was forced to resign. The CEOs of UBS and Deutsche bank went public saying the European taxpayer had to pay more taxes and receive even fewer benefits. Left unsaid was the bankers plan to monetize debt and to inflate away your ability to buy food and pay your bills. But as I just said,
‘You must have less so bankers can have more. A lot more.’
The CEOs of the banks were out warning Europeans that they will have civil war and martial law if they do not give every last euro to the bankers. Let me explain once again the fallacious nature of a fractional reserve banking system. There is absolutely no way you can avoid a bank collapse. It is inherent in the design and the bankers knew it when it was created. This system goes all the way back to the banks of Venice that went bankrupt in 1348. The bankers were allowed to escape with their loot to Wales and to the Netherlands where they took their old banking practices with them.
When a bank loans you ten thousand euros or dollars, you are obligated to pay back the ten thousand plus one thousand more in interest. Please note that you are obligated to pay back more money than he created. That loan cannot be repaid until the banker creates more money by creating even more money. There is a school of economics which says the government must borrow more money if unemployment is high and everyone else is afraid to borrow as they fear they cannot make the payments. Well, if the businessman can’t afford to make the payments, neither can the unemployed taxpayer. This fraudulent school of economics has dominated academia and the Western governments since the 1920s for a reason. That reason is because it is good for bankers. And the corollary is that you and your family do not count for anything.
Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy saw no reason why the government should have a national debt. They thought it was preposterous that the government gave the right to create money to the banks. Then the government gave the bankers Treasury bonds in exchange for the money the government should have created in the first place. Since the bankers do not create enough money to pay the interest, the government must borrow more and more until it reaches its limit and even goes beyond that. The US national debt is not 14.6 trillion dollars. It is more than 20 trillion dollars if you count those Freddy Mac and similar bonds.
The unemployment rate is 23%. That debt is unpayable. It was known by the bakers when they created this system that it would fail. They have been doing this for over 700 years.
No unpayable debt will ever be paid by the borrower.
The bankers know that. They just want to raise taxes and have Austerity cuts so they can squeeze every last dollar, euro and pound out of you. Then they will intentionally collapse all of the currencies .
On the horizon for September is the crisis in Greece and the German Bundestag vote on Frau Merkel’s policies to bail out the euro. She is a traitor to the German people. She is selling them, their businesses, their family farms, their pensions, their savings and their paychecks to the London and New York banks. If she had a conscience, she would be ashamed of herself. Her party lost their sixth straight local election. She has no coalition partners left as the Free Democrats left. She is facing a revolt led by the 81 year-old former Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Merkel only has 239 of 622 seats in the Bundestag. She depended on the Free Democrats for their 93 votes to form a coalition. The Social Democrats and the Greens are crazy people who do not understand money and business. The Merkel government could collapse by the end of September. It will be interesting to see if the euro lasts until October or even November. The euro will go first because it is an artificial construct and the Europeans have no love for it. The pound will go next because they are so closely entwined with the continent. Then the New York banks will be asked to pay a couple hundred billion dollars in Credit Default Swaps (a kind of insurance) they will owe on those failing European bonds. I predict they will refuse to pay. The Mew York banks are broke and cannot pay. Ben Bernanke will step up to replace the Germans as the euro’s cash machine. He will create as many trillions of dollars as needed to keep things going for as long as possible. He might loan some out to the insolvent European banks and even buy more toxic assets. He might even do more currency swaps with his ECB counterpart Jean Claude Trichet. Incidentally, his name Trichet in French means cheater. That is the most likely scenario at this point.
When will it all collapse? I do not know. But I do absolutely guarantee you that whatever the inflation rate is today in your country it will be twice as high by the end of next year.
Lest anyone accuse me of anti-Semitism, I have not mentioned that Trichet, Bernanke and Mervyn King, the head of the Bank of England, are all Jewish. They obviously were not selected for their positions because they are smarter than we are. My dog would be a better Fed Chairman than Ben Bernanke.
You can hear the Bob Chapman interview here. Warning the man doing the interview is rather crude for some tastes.
#
Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, created two trillion dollars and lent it to the big banks. The banks used this two trillion dollar gift to buy US Treasury bonds. That was called sanitizing the money. Which means that newly created money was not put into our hands to be spent so it was not inflationary. Just recently that has changed. Bob Chapman says the banks have just begun a new program to lend that money out into circulation. With fractional reserve banking a 2 trillion dollar loan is deposited into the big banks. It appears as a credit to the banks and they can even under the old rules loan out 20 trillion dollars. This as you can easily figure out will be highly inflationary. This new stage is called debt monetization.
Let me emphasize this point. The current M2 US Money Supply is about ten trillion dollars. Bernanke loaned out (i.e. created) 16 trillion dollars. As I said previously, over 6 trillion dollars of that money went to European banks to buy the toxic mortgage debts the New York banks had sold them. Bernanke did that to keep the biggest criminals in history out of jail. Now he is going to let the banks loan out the two trillion dollars he loaned them originally to buy bonds. But fractional reserve banking will allow them to loan out 20 trillion dollars. So if we add 16 trillion to 10 trillion we should get an M2 Money Supply greater than 10 trillion? Right. No. Not according to the way Ben counts money. But surely adding 20 trillion dollars to ten trillion will increase the money supply 200%. And that is why I say that inflation is coming to the stores in your neighborhood. It might take awhile but it is coming.
I will have to disagree with Bob Chapman’s interpretation of why they are doing monetizing debt. The banks until recently have killed all job creation by refusing to loan to small businesses. This is part of the consolidation program where the big corporations use government regulations to add costs to small businesses and use the banks to cut off their credit to force them out of business. An example in America would be the animal ID and the Premises ID regulations. Tysons chicken can buy one ID for millions of chickens, cut up the chickens so uncleanly that they are all infected with salmonella and throw chicken parts into the river. But a small farmer has to pay more than his potential profit from the sale of his chickens to obey the federal regulations and avoid fines, legal fees and even jail for failure to comply. This forces the small family farms out of business, allows the big corporations to buy them out for a few dollars and raise prices to the consumer. This centralizes all power into the control of the New York and London banks who own everything including the government.
I do not dispute with Bob Chapman the fact that the banks will go from sanitizing debt to monetizing it and that this will spur inflation levels over the next two years. I also concede that the banks might loan out money and that some of it will be given to small businesses. I also concede that all that newly created money will juice up the markets and might even lower the current unemployment rate in America from 23% to a mere 22%. And I will further concede that they will use this huge money spurt to keep the economy going for awhile longer.
But my take is that the majority of those dollars Ben Bernanke just allowed to be monetized will go into acquiring every last thing of real value before the bankers deliberately crash the system. This is part of their long term strategy to bankrupt you, steal your pensions and savings, cut your wages and cut your benefits. A good way to phrase the policies dictated by the bankers to Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy, Berlusconi and Papandreou is this:
‘You must have less so bankers can have more. A lot more.’
The present rate of inflation according to the statistician John Williams at Shadow States is 11% in America and 12% in the United Kingdom. It will go a lot higher given that the banks will soon switch from debt sanitization to debt monetization. If you live in a country where you know debt monetization will not happen, you will still have to suffer from Ben Bernanke’s exportation of inflation. Suppose Jamie Dimon and Blythe Masters at JP Morgan in New York get their hands on half a trillion dollars at 0.078% interest. If anything they buy goes under, they can sell it to Ben Bernanke at 100 cents on the dollar. If they cannot lose, then they will be emboldened to speculate wildly on acquiring companies and buying up commodities. You will pay a lot more when those commodities get to the store shelves. And everyone in the world will pay those higher prices no matter conscientious your nation’s banks are.
I would like to comment on a few current events. The Rothschilds who own BNP Paribas and Santander banks were forced to put money into Soc Gen (Societe General) to keep it running for another few weeks. The biggest Italian banks including Unicredit are on the ropes as are the Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays in England. The CEO of Dexia, the largest bank in Belgium, was forced to resign. The CEOs of UBS and Deutsche bank went public saying the European taxpayer had to pay more taxes and receive even fewer benefits. Left unsaid was the bankers plan to monetize debt and to inflate away your ability to buy food and pay your bills. But as I just said,
‘You must have less so bankers can have more. A lot more.’
The CEOs of the banks were out warning Europeans that they will have civil war and martial law if they do not give every last euro to the bankers. Let me explain once again the fallacious nature of a fractional reserve banking system. There is absolutely no way you can avoid a bank collapse. It is inherent in the design and the bankers knew it when it was created. This system goes all the way back to the banks of Venice that went bankrupt in 1348. The bankers were allowed to escape with their loot to Wales and to the Netherlands where they took their old banking practices with them.
When a bank loans you ten thousand euros or dollars, you are obligated to pay back the ten thousand plus one thousand more in interest. Please note that you are obligated to pay back more money than he created. That loan cannot be repaid until the banker creates more money by creating even more money. There is a school of economics which says the government must borrow more money if unemployment is high and everyone else is afraid to borrow as they fear they cannot make the payments. Well, if the businessman can’t afford to make the payments, neither can the unemployed taxpayer. This fraudulent school of economics has dominated academia and the Western governments since the 1920s for a reason. That reason is because it is good for bankers. And the corollary is that you and your family do not count for anything.
Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy saw no reason why the government should have a national debt. They thought it was preposterous that the government gave the right to create money to the banks. Then the government gave the bankers Treasury bonds in exchange for the money the government should have created in the first place. Since the bankers do not create enough money to pay the interest, the government must borrow more and more until it reaches its limit and even goes beyond that. The US national debt is not 14.6 trillion dollars. It is more than 20 trillion dollars if you count those Freddy Mac and similar bonds.
The unemployment rate is 23%. That debt is unpayable. It was known by the bakers when they created this system that it would fail. They have been doing this for over 700 years.
No unpayable debt will ever be paid by the borrower.
The bankers know that. They just want to raise taxes and have Austerity cuts so they can squeeze every last dollar, euro and pound out of you. Then they will intentionally collapse all of the currencies .
On the horizon for September is the crisis in Greece and the German Bundestag vote on Frau Merkel’s policies to bail out the euro. She is a traitor to the German people. She is selling them, their businesses, their family farms, their pensions, their savings and their paychecks to the London and New York banks. If she had a conscience, she would be ashamed of herself. Her party lost their sixth straight local election. She has no coalition partners left as the Free Democrats left. She is facing a revolt led by the 81 year-old former Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Merkel only has 239 of 622 seats in the Bundestag. She depended on the Free Democrats for their 93 votes to form a coalition. The Social Democrats and the Greens are crazy people who do not understand money and business. The Merkel government could collapse by the end of September. It will be interesting to see if the euro lasts until October or even November. The euro will go first because it is an artificial construct and the Europeans have no love for it. The pound will go next because they are so closely entwined with the continent. Then the New York banks will be asked to pay a couple hundred billion dollars in Credit Default Swaps (a kind of insurance) they will owe on those failing European bonds. I predict they will refuse to pay. The Mew York banks are broke and cannot pay. Ben Bernanke will step up to replace the Germans as the euro’s cash machine. He will create as many trillions of dollars as needed to keep things going for as long as possible. He might loan some out to the insolvent European banks and even buy more toxic assets. He might even do more currency swaps with his ECB counterpart Jean Claude Trichet. Incidentally, his name Trichet in French means cheater. That is the most likely scenario at this point.
When will it all collapse? I do not know. But I do absolutely guarantee you that whatever the inflation rate is today in your country it will be twice as high by the end of next year.
Lest anyone accuse me of anti-Semitism, I have not mentioned that Trichet, Bernanke and Mervyn King, the head of the Bank of England, are all Jewish. They obviously were not selected for their positions because they are smarter than we are. My dog would be a better Fed Chairman than Ben Bernanke.
You can hear the Bob Chapman interview here. Warning the man doing the interview is rather crude for some tastes.
#
9/11 Ten Years Later: What have we learned?
Jamal Kanj*
Like many, I remember vividly the morning of September 11, 2001. I was in Pennsylvania participating in a conference for the American Public Works Association at Philadelphia’s Convention Centre. Walking into the conference hall just around 9 am, I couldn’t help but noticing a large group of likewise professionals congregating around a wall mounted TV screen watching a live news break.
The news was reporting on a plane crashing into a New York tower. I didn’t think much of it at first. Minutes later as another passenger plane hit a second tower I realized the incident was far more serious. A third plane followed crashing at the Pentagon in Washington and a fourth in the fields of Pennsylvania.
Today, ten years later, the US and people around the world, more importantly next of kin families, remember the life of more than 3,000 innocent victims who lost their life in that bestial act. This year we must also honor the memories of the more than 650,000 innocent Iraqis who lost their life for being “good targets” to avenge the victims of 9/11.
In his book Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, former White House counter-terrorism advisor Richard Clarke, wrote that on September 12, US Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld “was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq .” “And we all said … no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan.” And Rumsfeld said “there aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, ‘Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.”
As for the President, Clarke wrote “But, M r. President [Bush], al Qaeda did this.” “I know, I know, but – see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred . . .”
Bush and Rumsfeld’s military IQ must be a match to the leaders of Al Qaida. For the Twin Towers in New York were too chosen for being “good targets” with equal disregard to human life.
Unfortunately ten years later, 9/11 has turned to symbolize a monument of irrational hate propagated by a Neo Conservative political agendum intended to perpetuate collective anti Muslim sentiment in the US, rather than taking a coherent inward look to learn from those tragic events and the unjust debauchery wars that followed.
Israel’s men in Washington started instigating the Iraqi invasion long before 9/11. For instance, Paul D. Wolfowitz co-authored an article in the Weekly Standards advocating a military attack against Iraq four years prior to 9/11. Paul D. Wolfowitz, who served as the Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Iraq war, was dual Israeli citizen who worked closely with various Israeli governments.
Paul Wolfowitz was even more audacious when he revealed in an interview published in Vanity Fair on M ay 28, 2003 that “For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, [as justification for invading Iraq ] because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.”
This year’s 9/11 remembrance should also be a tribute to the life of more than 4000 American soldiers who in the words of Richard Clarke “went to their death in Iraq thinking that they were avenging September 11th, when Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th.”
Putting emotions and national pride aside, America must take a constructive critical look into the events following 9/11 and its misguided foreign policy in the Middle East by trying to answer these questions:
Why was America’s target derailed from fighting the purported perpetrators of 9/11? Who has gained the most out of these wars? Who has a first class “Sayanin” (Zionist citizens in host nations) spying network capable of instigating these wars? Who has the interest in a perpetuating conflict between the West and Muslims? The only answer for all these questions: Israel.
9/11 CAFE – Memoirs Of A 9/11 Truth Activist
BeforeItsNews
By Nila Sagadevan
September 7, 2011
A serendipitous encounter in Prague last month revealed that the 9/11 truth movement isn’t as isolated or on the fringe as the mainstream media would have the world believe.
I’ve spoken with a few high-level foreign diplomats who have suggested that, at the very least, there are far too many lingering questions about the official story of the events of that doomful day.
And this I found to be highly encouraging. If this spreading awareness and energy at the top begins to percolate down to the grassroots, as I suspect it inevitably will, critical mass could be a lot closer than we think.
In December 2006, I was invited by a British university to attend a UN-sponsored conference in Prague. Organized to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the UN Resolution on Religious Tolerance, the event was attended by representatives from over a hundred countries who reflected theological and spiritual thinking from across the spectrum.
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This unique setting gave me an extraordinary opportunity to speak, in a good deal of depth, with people from a multiplicity of religious faiths, nationalities, and backgrounds. Over a period of several days I slowly threaded my way through this eclectic throng, pausing briefly to chat and pick up on the energy and vibration of this sprawling event.
I began to discover, to my dismay, that the overarching emotion that seemed to seep insidiously into many of the conversation was one rooted in fear — attributable, not surprisingly, to the “The War On Terror” and its sweeping global ramifications.
It seemed wherever I turned, it was the topic of ‘terrorism’ that was floating wispily in the air, its toxic tendrils permeating this peaceful gathering, searching for some fertile place to settle.
In addition to the broad palette of religious types in attendance, the event was peppered with dozens of officers of NGOs (Non-governmental Organizations) as well as an array of diplomats from various embassies located in Prague.
And it was my conversations with some of the distinguished members of the latter persuasion that ultimately inspired me most, and what this story is about.
THE PALACE ZOFIN
A magnificent neo-Renaissance edifice built in the 1800s, the Palace Zofin was the venue of this bustling two-day affair. I had met and consorted with numerous attendees during the course of the convention, but, for reasons more of personal proclivity than professional strategy, found myself gravitating towards members of the diplomatic contingent, whom I generally found to be more affable, lively and, well, interesting.
As would be expected of any serious seeker of truth — spiritual or otherwise! — I was eager to find opportunities in this remarkably diverse mise-en-scene to pan for any potential 9/11-related nuggets.
Ever vigilant for any tempting conversational openings, I set about to take full advantage of this unique opportunity to conduct field research and perform an informal ‘survey’. (The way I saw it, this scenario was vastly more productive than attending, say, another 9/11 conference where it seems everyone’s preaching to the choir).
As I deftly chiseled “awkward” little questions into every available conversational crevice, I was heartened by the almost imperceptible nods I evoked, the barely suppressed coughs I provoked, the reflexive eyebrows I raised during a few of these tentative exploratory forays.
On more than one occasion I detected faint cracks in the facades on the official positions on 9/11 — especially during the nightly soirees when defenses were pleasantly lowered and tongues suitably loosened through the liberal flow of libations.
The story begins at the gala “farewell banquet” held on the eve of the second and final day.
The air was alive with cheer and conviviality as stiff upper lips began to soften and defenses drop along with people’s self-conscious facades as they realized they’d all be dispersing the next day to return to their home countries, unlikely to ever see the others again.
It was party time.
I found myself engaged in a friendly little chat with a gentleman to whom I’d been introduced the previous day, an ambassador for a European country (that I won’t name). Having just finished dinner, we, along with a few dozen other guests, had retired to the large lounge where people was mingling about, chatting, indulging in after-dinner drinks, cigars…
The ambassador and I found ourselves casually standing, elbows propped against one of the islands of little stand-up ‘bars’ scattered about the place meant for small groups to congregate. The atmosphere was decidedly relaxed, my distinguished companion nursing a flute of champagne, and I a glass of Scotch.
A good a setting as any for a bit of cursory 9/11 R&D, I thought.
Our conversation this evening, our second in two days, began with Czechoslovakia’s tumultuous Warsaw Pact years, and from there flowed effortlessly into NATO, which I then gently steered towards that organization’s current (and controversial) engagement in Afghanistan.
With a touch more finesse, I nudged it in the direction of a related topic, the Taliban, until we arrived, inescapably, at…Usama-the-evildoer — the irreducible launch platform for all things 9/11.
I sort of wondered out aloud how incredibly brilliant this man must be to have outwitted all of NORAD’s sophisticated defense systems on 9/11 — especially when he was holed up in a cave thousands of miles away.
“I suppose…,” he trailed off with the hint of an indifferent shrug as he swilled the bubbly around in his glass before drawing a swig.
Continuing to watch closely for reactions, I slid gingerly into ‘wondering’ why a single fighter interceptor hadn’t turned a wheel that day when all these airliners were traipsing about the American skies.
Staring at the fast-vanishing contents of his glass, he quietly let slip there were “some things we don’t fully understand”, but dismissed anything beyond that as “just rumors.”
Having got this far, I wasn’t about to let the man’s glass run dry. A passing waiter was quickly flagged and a round of replenishments ordered. I was elated — at least he’d heard “rumors”; this would make him infinitely easier to work with than one mind-locked on the Muslim menace and who’d never strayed beyond the OCT (Official Conspiracy Theory).
Needless to say, that’s all it took for yours truly to ratchet matters up a notch and get down to deep penetration.
I didn’t have to try very hard. It soon became clear His Excellency was just warming up. His properly refined tongue loosening apace with the steady wash of Louis Roederer, I was relieved of any further burden to add momentum to the now effortlessly flowing conversation.
I shifted up a gear. I asked him if he knew that on the day before 9/11, $100,000 was wired directly into Mohammad Atta’s bank account by Pakistan’s intelligence chief, General Mahmoud Ahmed.
This round caught him in mid-sip and elicited a confused squint from over the rim of his glass.
I smoothly reloaded, took a sip of my Glenmorangie and continued.
Was His Excellency aware that this wire transfer was followed by that very Pakistani general’s visit to the White House and the Pentagon the very next day, 9/11?
He looked a little puzzled and claimed he hadn’t heard about any of this. He threw another quick glance at my name badge, which sported “Writer, USA” below my name, and probably wondered what it was that I really wrote about and how — and why — I managed to infiltrate, of all things, a conference on religion.
He set his glass down and looked at me with a look I can only describe as one of confused curiosity and asked, “How do you know all this?”
Before I could answer, three cocktail-laden, cigar-wielding gentlemen with whom the ambassador was clearly acquainted happened to stroll by. He jovially hailed them over. I realized as we were introduced that these gentlemen were of different nationalities, each from their respective embassies in Prague — a First Secretary, Chargé d’affaires, and Cultural Attache’.
A cozy little diplomatic social club, I recall thinking, noting that one of them, the Chargé d’affaires — a mid-sixtyish, rather portly chap — was already two sheets to the wind, his snifter vulgarly filled almost to the brim, doubtless with some celestially expensive cognac.
[The banquet was hosted by the government of the Netherlands, and I must say they pulled out all the stops on this one; the evening was a festal cornucopia of nothing but the very best of everything.]
Surprisingly taking the initiative, the ambassador (I’ll refer to him as #1) threw out for discussion to the now considerably swollen group “…All these stories about 9/11”.
One of the new arrivals, the First Secretary (let’s call him #2,) nonchalantly let drop that he’d “heard some things” but didn’t elaborate, instead taking a puff from his cigar and not looking particularly invigorated.
The Chargé d’affaires (#3, Mr. Cognac) offered that he always thought it “strange” how “these guys flew all over America for 2 hours without getting shot down”.
I spied the ambassador shift his weight as he threw a quick glance at me; our eyes met momentarily and I instantly sensed his surprise at the coincidence of #3’s comment and my earlier ‘observation’ about the absent interceptors.
This was richer than I expected; things were moving along swimmingly.
The Cultural Attache’ (#4), however, remained virtually silent — and sober — throughout the half-hour-or-so-long conversation and simply continued to look impassively at me while he drank nothing. I must admit I found this more than a little unnerving, and it actually caused me to say less than I otherwise would have.
(Once, when he briefly excused himself to use the facilities, I couldn’t help wonder who he was about to call — Interpol or the white coats). The man was about as transparent as a slab of granite. I also noted that he didn’t seem quite as tight a part of this clique as the other three who seemed far better acquainted.
Taking great care to package my points more as innocuous ‘questions’ than authoritative statements, I tossed a low ball to test the water.
Smiling, I Addressed #2, the First Secretary — partly because he was conveniently standing directly in front of me, and partly because he was clearly possessed of an incisive wit coupled with a sharp intellect; he was a also very distinguished looking fellow, certainly the most ‘presidential-looking’ of the lot.
My smile was driven with an intensity that showed I wasn’t being flippant. “Sir, let’s for a moment say you were president of your country. One morning you find yourself in a classroom reading to a group of little children a story about a pet goat…”
Through the corner of my eye I could see #1 straighten up; it looked like he knew exactly where I was going with this. #2 continued to look directly at me, a little amused as if he’d just settled down to a game of chess.
I continued, “Your Chief of Staff rushes up to you and whispers in your ear, ‘Mr. President, terrorists have flown a plane into the Parliament Building; the nation is under attack.’ Now, I ask you, sir, how would you respond?”
Intending the question to be rhetorical, I continued with barely a pause.
“I’ll tell you what my reaction would not be: It most certainly would not be the reaction demonstrated by the president of the United States on the morning of 9/11. I would be concerned for the thousands of my fellow citizens burning to death in an inferno.
But I suspect before I would have a moment to react, my highly trained security detail would be whisking me out of that school to my limousine to put as many miles between the school and I as possible.
“Why? My location that morning common public knowledge, it was widely televised. So I — and my security team — would be very concerned these clearly well-organized ‘terrorists’ would be targeting me next by diving one of their aircraft into the school where I was located. But on 9/11, the President sat in that classroom for the next ten minutes narrating a tale about some pet goat — even after he was informed again, for the second time, that a second building had been hit.
What does the Commander-in-Chief then do in the midst of what is clearly a full-blown attack on the country? He stands up and casually drifts around the classroom taking advantage of a photo op by posing with some of the teachers, smiling as if he didn’t have a care in the world.”
I slowly surveyed my audience before continuing. To a man they were riveted.
“Gentlemen, that’s what I call confidence — confidence not for this President’s ability to remain calm under fire, but confidence that he wasn’t a target of the terrorists! Mr Bush, his staff, and his entire security detail had to have known with a good deal of certainty that the president was safe, because no effort whatsoever was made to get him out of that classroom in accordance with standard emergency procedures.
And when he did eventually leave the school, the presidential motorcade casually drove back to the airport along the pre-determined route — also televised and widely known in advance — instead of following standard emergency procedure and taking an alternate route. I ask you, gentlemen: How could the president have been so absolutely sure he wasn’t a target when the nation was under a massive, concerted, clearly well-planned and ruthlessly executed attack?”
#3, the Charge’, began to laugh, shaking his head as if to say this couldn’t possibly be true, but I sensed it was laughter born of nervousness more than mirth. The First Secretary (#2), a little surprised asked, “For 10 minutes? Are you sure?”
The ambassador piped in without looking directly at me, “Yes, I’ve heard this.” I saw #4 give a barely perceptible nod as if in agreement with #1’s comment.
I addressed #1: Your Excellency, you might be interested to note that the first thing the new owners of the World Trade Center complex did was appoint a new security company—Securacom.
This company was also responsible for security at Logan airport, the main 9/11-related airline hub from where the alleged hijackers departed. Securacom’s CEO as well as its managing director, were both first cousins of George W. Bush.”
Looks were richocheting faster than my rounds. This was beginning to look good.
I briefly explained the mystery behind the collapse of Building 7.
Building what? This was big news. None of them even knew what it was, much less heard of its mysterious collapse. They were all visibly surprised, with #3 asking, “Three towers? Really?” They all exchanged looks that seemed to ask, ‘did you know about this?’
I then mentioned the WTC’s new owner, Larry Silverstein’s serious slip-up on national television when he inadvertently admitted to having given the order to “pull” the building. “Pull,” as is commonly known, is industry parlance for controlled demolition.
I then dropped the bomb that just two months prior to the attacks, Silverstein had obtained new insurance policies for the complex with a face amount of $3.55 billion. After 9/11, Silverstein sued the insurance companies arguing that two planes were two separate attacks. He ended up raking in $4.57 billion. Not a bad payback on a 6-month investment of $100 million.
I could feel the back-slapping banter and jocularity evaporate; I’d definitely got their attention (except #4’s, it seemed).
“But that’s not all. I’ve read some reports from scores of firemen, policemen and other rescue workers who were at the WTC that they found pools of molten metal in the basements of all three towers.”
Beginning to look increasingly disoriented, the ambassador admitted he hadn’t heard about “any of this stuff”. However, I was a little disappointed the revelation about molten metal hadn’t drawn the startled wide-eyed reaction I hoped it would.
I adjusted my sights. “Have any of you gentlemen been out camping?” I asked matter-of-factly. They looked at me a little perplexed wondering where I was going with this, but when I added nothing further, I suppose they felt obliged to respond and three of them nodded or mumbled in the affirmative. #4 remained apparently unperturbed (and continued to remain so for the rest of our discussion).
Addressing no one in particular I asked, “Then I suppose you’ve used a kerosene camping stove?” Faint nods all round.
“I trust your stoves made it back home looking like stoves? Or did they come back looking like melted ingots from a smelting furnace?”
Utterly confused looks all round coupled with perceptible uneasiness. I detected what I thought was a look of mild impatience from #2.
I proceeded without missing a beat, worried I was beginning to lose traction. “Did you know that ‘jet fuel’ is nothing more than kerosene, the same stuff you put in your camping stoves?”
I could distinctly see surprise on three faces, a few eyebrows racing skywards. The ambassador was clearly surprised. “Really? Kerosene?”
“Yes, gentlemen, just kerosene. And it is impossible for jet fuel to melt high-grade construction steel.”
It took a few seconds for the penny to drop, but drop it did — and with a resounding crash, judging by the expressions on the faces encircling me.
I could see I’d sucked the fun right of the party. If I could only see their synapses firing at that moment, I thought, their heads would probably glow like light bulbs.
9/11 truth had arrived in Prague. Big time.
I cut loose another round. “A friend who’s a professor of Physics at a major university back in the States told me molten metal is the direct byproduct of a special kind of military explosive called Nanothermite. Evidently, molten metal flows copiously during a Thermate reaction.”
With that, I shut up. The floor was open for comment, but none was forthcoming.
The ambassador, in particular, was beginning to exhibit clear signs of discomfiture, standing erect and stretching, arching backwards, looking around.
I could see he was trying to contain his nervousness—possibly fear, who knows—at where all this was leading. I was beginning to fear imminent disruption, or, worse, an abrupt shutdown of this now galloping drama.
At that moment, an announcement was made by a Dutch embassy ‘crier’ that the evening was “drawing to an end,” his refined, mellifluous tone concealing an underlying order: “Okay, you freeloaders, It’s time to take your parties elsewhere.”
Damn, I thought…not now. But I wasn’t altogether displeased. I’d given four members of the global diplomatic community something to really think about.
A 9/11 activist’s job is merely to help open people’s eyes, I told myself as if to mollify my own deep dejection at not being able to go the distance. But at the same I realized it would have been impossible given the limitations and constraints of the situation. Regardless, I felt I’d acquitted myself rather well by doing a yeoman’s job, especially given the caliber of the audience.
As things quickly wound down, the three late entrants, looking decidedly less spirited than when they joined, thanked me for the “interesting” conversation and politely took their leave. (#4 simply shook my hand without saying a word).
I was alone again with the ambassador, but, surprisingly, he seemed in no great hurry to leave; to hell with the crier. There was no doubt in my mind he was rattled, but I could see he was working hard not to show it.
He said he found all this “very interesting” and very nonchalantly asked me, “So when are you leaving Prague?” When I told him I’d be in town for four more days, he suggested we meet for lunch in the “next few days” so we could have a “longer chat.” So we exchanged cards, I gave him the name of the hotel where I was staying and we parted on his promise to call me “soon.”
I was sure I’d seen the last of the man.
That night, it was Sunday, I walked out of the Palace Zofin for the last time. The conference was over, and I felt a little saddened. The past two days had been hectic, at times almost overwhelming…the pageant of personalities, the riveting discussions, the intellectual intensity – and of course the fun.
Wrapped tightly in my coat I walked out into the cold winter night and strolled back to my hotel, just ten minutes away.
Café Slavia, Prague; painting by Ivan Lomova
THE SUMMIT
Two days later, early on Tuesday afternoon, I took a cab back to my hotel to drop off a load of shopping. There was a message awaiting me at the desk. On very impressive ambassadorial stationery—embossed, gilt-edged cotton stock—was a handwritten invitation to lunch the next day, Wednesday. RSVP.
It was from the ambassador.
Amazing! And in the nick of time, I thought — I was scheduled to fly out to London on Thursday. Calling the number on the card summoned the ambassador’s personal assistant who appeared to be expecting my call, and I accepted the gracious invitation. I was told a car would be at my hotel at 12:45 p.m. the following day to take me to the Cafe Slavia for “lunch with His Excellency.”
[The Café Slavia turned out to be the most famous Cafe in Prague...its Art Deco interior sumptuously decorated in cherry-wood and onyx and polished limestone topped tables, big windows overlooking the river Volta. The Czech National Theatre was just across the street.
I was told intellectuals gathered here to read papers, discuss politics, plot artistic activities — even political coups...apparently Vaclav Havel’s bloodless coup was hatched within its hallowed walls.]
The next day, a perfectly punctual, chauffeur-driven, but otherwise unremarkable black Mercedes materialized outside my hotel to pick me up. It was empty of occupants save for the frosty, expressionless chauffeur.
Upon arriving at the Slavia, I was met by a black-suited “security” type who briskly escorted me into the café and on to the furthest end of the L-shaped interior where about a 10-table section had been cordoned off with a red velvet cord. Standing guard at the ‘entrance’ to this partitioned little sanctuary was another dark-suited type, this one visibly more brutish than the first, who struck me as the sort best avoided at all cost.
Sitting in a large cherry-paneled booth overlooking the river was my smiling diplomatic host. And did he have a surprise for me.
Seated around him were the three others from the initial meeting.
I was stunned. I hadn’t at all expected this. Nonetheless, their greetings were warm and cordial and seemed quite genuine (but then, isn’t diplomacy the trained art of always appearing genuine, I couldn’t help wonder). Even the enigmatic #4, seated at the furthest end of the longish table, managed to crack a smile. I was politely directed to a chair opposite #4, where he held me in his icy sights thereafter. For some strange reason this chap made me a little nervous.
The ambassador, clearly in charge, wasted little time getting down to business. He told me they were very interested to hear more about “the subject” we’d touched upon the other evening. Lunch was ordered without further ado, giving me the impression he wished to get trifling social formalities briskly out of the way.
Sitting amidst this distinguished little coterie for the next five straight hours, well past dusk, I had the singular pleasure of engaging in what I consider to be one of the most intense discussions of my life.
I believe it was also the most persuasive and effective presentation I’ve made on any subject. We spoke of nothing but 9/11…every imaginable aspect of it. We covered it forwards, backwards and sideways (within the confines of my own knowledge base, of course, which is not inconsiderable).
When the meeting finally wound down around six o’clock I found #1, my amiable, chatty host who’d been drinking nothing but Evian with a twist all afternoon, clearly shaken. It seemed every detailed response I’d offered to his frequent questions through the course of the afternoon caused him to sink deeper into some dark abyss. In the end he seemed a different man…sullen, somber, pensive, shaken.
#2, the First Secretary, though rather stoic, remained piercingly engaged throughout. He didn’t miss a beat. He continued to bury me in a torrent of questions, mostly technical (radars, transponders, etc.), while feverishly filling page after page of detailed notes on a large, fat pad. I envisaged a new presentation taking shape, his own, for audiences yet to assemble that I’d likely never see.
#3, the chubby Chargé d’affaires (Mr. Cognac was on a strict regimen of Sapphire-Tonics, clearly the noonday prescription) had difficulty containing his enthusiasm during much of the afternoon, nodding vigorously in agreement with a lot of what I said with an undisguised look of almost childish excitement, as though he were being let into some clubby fraternity secret.
I was actually a little perplexed by his insouciant reactions to revelations this profound, and could only attribute it to the euphoric effects of good English gin.
#4, the incorrigibly stone-faced Cultural Attache’, had pretty much remained his stolid self throughout, occasionally muttering something to #1 or #2 who were seated closer to him, but mostly listening, fiddling, staring impassively, sometimes at me, mostly at the river, imbibing an endless chain of espressos occasionally interspersed with a shot of Ouzo.
The man seemed impervious to stimulus, incapable of emotion. Not only did he ask no questions, nothing I said seemed to faze him, to the extent I wondered if his mind was there at all.
I was certain 1, 2, and 3 were convinced beyond a reasonable doubt there were far too many ‘coincidences’ and inconsistencies for 9/11—at the very least—to not have received considerable assistance from within the halls of power.
Precisely which power that might be was something that was never discussed. Being the quintessential diplomats, I suppose, none of them broached the subject, and I wisely concluded it would be a serious faux pas to start tunneling in that direction.
#3 (Mr. Cognac) was the only one who took this delicate point furthest when he almost irreverently (for a diplomat) blurted out that he “knew all along 9/11 was homemade”.
Then, out of the clear blue, the ambassador dropped a bombshell.
He asked me—me—what I thought he should do with this information!
I was flabbergasted, and left momentarily speechless. This, I had never expected.
Here I was, a little nobody from Boonesville USA, sitting amidst a group of diplomats in an elegant café in a European city, and an ambassador was asking me for advice on how best to proceed with this earthshaking newfound information?
I found the flood of feelings and emotions that engulfed me to be maddeningly confusing. I felt at once flattered, empowered, inadequate, disheartened, terrified…
In retrospect, flattered, I suppose, because the ego, after all, falls prey all too easily to homage. Doesn’t a faint sliver of narcissism live in each of our hearts that yields, even unconsciously, to adulation?
Empowered, because I realized I had before me a brilliant opportunity to possibly influence meaningful change at a significant level.
Inadequate, because I felt I wasn’t capable, or even sufficiently worthy, to proffer anything truly substantive in a matter of such overwhelming global moment.
Disheartened, because I realized this whole 9/11 thing is far bigger that it might appear on the surface even to hardened ‘veterans’, and, perhaps, lies beyond our power to fully expose let alone understand; it’s truly a tough nut to crack—a lot tougher than many of us realize.
And terrified, because of a sudden, the raw reality of 9/11 hit me like a sledgehammer; for the first time, I realized this whole thing’s scarier than hell. The sheer gravitas implicit in the ambassador’s question had helped reinforce that jarring realization.
I recovered quickly. Hoping they’d mercifully attribute my temporary stupification to some weighty geostrategic rumination I was churning around in my head, I respectfully offered something quite anticlimactically prosaic.
“Sir, I’m greatly honored that you ask me, but all I am is a simple messenger. Besides, I prefer to stick to the fields of physics, engineering, aeronautics and the like than venture into the vagaries of geopolitics. The question you ask me is one that can best find its answers within your own knowledge, experience and ambit.”
While I felt this modest response was respectfully received by all, it has bothered me ever since. It haunts me as having been a missed opportunity. Then again, was it? What more could someone like I possibly have added, I wonder.
Opening up a discussion along those lines surely would’ve been beyond the scope of any casual café gathering…I could see it flowing into days, weeks even, covering vast historical and geopolitical terrain, international banking, elite power blocs, secret societies and other esoterica.
No, 9/11 is far too immense, too frighteningly gargantuan to be readily resolved through some naïve, formulaic, UN-style boilerplate action. This is an indescribably pernicious cancer that needs to be ripped from its roots — and that’s going to take serious unconventional thinking, unique strategies, and unprecedented action to achieve.
Ghandian “Sathyagraha”, or civil disobedience, comes to mind as the benign extreme of a spectrum of possibilities; a V For Vendetta-style mass uprising falls at the other…but I’m obviously speculating beyond my bailiwick
Frankly, the most I had expected to accomplish from this little ‘meeting’ in Prague was to be able to plant some serious seeds of doubt so these influential individuals would begin to dig deeper on their own.
I’m pleased I also managed to recommend David Ray Griffin’s The New Pearl Harbor (in my opinion the finest introduction to the subject), and point them towards a few good websites in the hope they’d be sufficiently inspired by the newfound information to take it from there.
Given the responses I received and the powerful emotional energy that enveloped us all at the end, I felt I’d achieved far more. This presentation, in my estimation, was an unqualified coup (the undemonstrative #4 notwithstanding).
In the end, I believe these men were most impressed by the following important points, which I expanded:
The 10 Important 9/11 Points I Covered:
1. Building 7 — The impossibility of a 47-storey skyscraper that was not struck by an airplane to have collapsed neatly into its own footprint in a 6.6-second freefall;
2. Molten metal in the basements of all three towers — Kerosene cannot melt steel;
3. Freefall speeds of all three towers — A violation of the laws of physics;
4. The complete and utter pulverization of the three buildings, and the transmutation of over 400,000 cu. ft. of concrete into 50 micron particles of dust;
5. The discovery of shards of human bones and flesh deposited on rooftops 600 feet away;
6. The Pentagon — The small entry hole, the absence of crash debris…no seats, luggage, bodies, etc.; the ‘failure’ of all 90 external CCTV cameras; the deactivation of surface-air-missile batteries; IFF (Identification Friend/Foe) handshakes;
7. NORAD — A discussion on types of radar, intercept protocol, FAA emergency procedures, etc.
8. The six military “war games” that were being enacted at exactly the same time the alleged hijackings were taking place; the fact that two of these war games involved the hijacking of airliners;
9. The shocking increase in stock market activity prior to 9/11 – especially the put options on United and American Airlines;
10. The hijackers — Their nonexistent flying skills; the fact that seven of the men turned up alive in the Middle East;
Finally, our meeting concluded on an important point that was made clear to me in no uncertain terms by the ambassador.
It had never occurred.
I’d half expected this. Further, they entreated me to keep their identities confidential, and wished to have no further communications, of any kind, on this matter. They lauded me for my “courage,” and thanked me profusely for my time.
On an impulse, I looked directly at #4. I’d decided I was going to approach this chap, look him in the eye and level a few straight questions; at this point I knew I had nothing to lose.
I didn’t need to. As we all stood up to leave, he ambled up to me.
He stood still for a few long seconds looking into my eyes, then slowly clenched my hand firmly in a beefy fist and spoke in a gravelly, deeply accented voice: “I have known of everything you have told us. You have studied the subject well. Now I will give you a tip: Follow the money.”
He shook my hand firmly, gave me a warm, sincere smile and added, “Hope you have a safe trip home.”
With that, he quietly walked away.
Cultural Attache’ indeed, I thought.
The ambassador said he’d call me if he ever passed through California. He offered me a ride back to my hotel, which I politely declined; I had this impulse to get lost in some crowded bar, sip a Scotch and slowly replay in my head the emotive events of this unforgettable afternoon.
I felt utterly drained, vulnerable and, yes, admittedly a little daunted. Of one thing I was certain: I needed time to myself, to just sit and think.
I wriggled into my coat, flung my scarf about my neck and stepped out into the chilly Czech winter evening. The icy wind from the river to my back, I started walking slowly up Narodni towards the bustle of Wenceslas Square.
By Nila Sagadevan
September 7, 2011
A serendipitous encounter in Prague last month revealed that the 9/11 truth movement isn’t as isolated or on the fringe as the mainstream media would have the world believe.
I’ve spoken with a few high-level foreign diplomats who have suggested that, at the very least, there are far too many lingering questions about the official story of the events of that doomful day.
And this I found to be highly encouraging. If this spreading awareness and energy at the top begins to percolate down to the grassroots, as I suspect it inevitably will, critical mass could be a lot closer than we think.
In December 2006, I was invited by a British university to attend a UN-sponsored conference in Prague. Organized to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the UN Resolution on Religious Tolerance, the event was attended by representatives from over a hundred countries who reflected theological and spiritual thinking from across the spectrum.
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This unique setting gave me an extraordinary opportunity to speak, in a good deal of depth, with people from a multiplicity of religious faiths, nationalities, and backgrounds. Over a period of several days I slowly threaded my way through this eclectic throng, pausing briefly to chat and pick up on the energy and vibration of this sprawling event.
I began to discover, to my dismay, that the overarching emotion that seemed to seep insidiously into many of the conversation was one rooted in fear — attributable, not surprisingly, to the “The War On Terror” and its sweeping global ramifications.
It seemed wherever I turned, it was the topic of ‘terrorism’ that was floating wispily in the air, its toxic tendrils permeating this peaceful gathering, searching for some fertile place to settle.
In addition to the broad palette of religious types in attendance, the event was peppered with dozens of officers of NGOs (Non-governmental Organizations) as well as an array of diplomats from various embassies located in Prague.
And it was my conversations with some of the distinguished members of the latter persuasion that ultimately inspired me most, and what this story is about.
A magnificent neo-Renaissance edifice built in the 1800s, the Palace Zofin was the venue of this bustling two-day affair. I had met and consorted with numerous attendees during the course of the convention, but, for reasons more of personal proclivity than professional strategy, found myself gravitating towards members of the diplomatic contingent, whom I generally found to be more affable, lively and, well, interesting.
As would be expected of any serious seeker of truth — spiritual or otherwise! — I was eager to find opportunities in this remarkably diverse mise-en-scene to pan for any potential 9/11-related nuggets.
Ever vigilant for any tempting conversational openings, I set about to take full advantage of this unique opportunity to conduct field research and perform an informal ‘survey’. (The way I saw it, this scenario was vastly more productive than attending, say, another 9/11 conference where it seems everyone’s preaching to the choir).
As I deftly chiseled “awkward” little questions into every available conversational crevice, I was heartened by the almost imperceptible nods I evoked, the barely suppressed coughs I provoked, the reflexive eyebrows I raised during a few of these tentative exploratory forays.
On more than one occasion I detected faint cracks in the facades on the official positions on 9/11 — especially during the nightly soirees when defenses were pleasantly lowered and tongues suitably loosened through the liberal flow of libations.
The story begins at the gala “farewell banquet” held on the eve of the second and final day.
The air was alive with cheer and conviviality as stiff upper lips began to soften and defenses drop along with people’s self-conscious facades as they realized they’d all be dispersing the next day to return to their home countries, unlikely to ever see the others again.
It was party time.
VICTOR BREGEDA – “Setting the Stage”
SETTING THE STAGEI found myself engaged in a friendly little chat with a gentleman to whom I’d been introduced the previous day, an ambassador for a European country (that I won’t name). Having just finished dinner, we, along with a few dozen other guests, had retired to the large lounge where people was mingling about, chatting, indulging in after-dinner drinks, cigars…
The ambassador and I found ourselves casually standing, elbows propped against one of the islands of little stand-up ‘bars’ scattered about the place meant for small groups to congregate. The atmosphere was decidedly relaxed, my distinguished companion nursing a flute of champagne, and I a glass of Scotch.
A good a setting as any for a bit of cursory 9/11 R&D, I thought.
Our conversation this evening, our second in two days, began with Czechoslovakia’s tumultuous Warsaw Pact years, and from there flowed effortlessly into NATO, which I then gently steered towards that organization’s current (and controversial) engagement in Afghanistan.
With a touch more finesse, I nudged it in the direction of a related topic, the Taliban, until we arrived, inescapably, at…Usama-the-evildoer — the irreducible launch platform for all things 9/11.
I sort of wondered out aloud how incredibly brilliant this man must be to have outwitted all of NORAD’s sophisticated defense systems on 9/11 — especially when he was holed up in a cave thousands of miles away.
“I suppose…,” he trailed off with the hint of an indifferent shrug as he swilled the bubbly around in his glass before drawing a swig.
Continuing to watch closely for reactions, I slid gingerly into ‘wondering’ why a single fighter interceptor hadn’t turned a wheel that day when all these airliners were traipsing about the American skies.
Staring at the fast-vanishing contents of his glass, he quietly let slip there were “some things we don’t fully understand”, but dismissed anything beyond that as “just rumors.”
Having got this far, I wasn’t about to let the man’s glass run dry. A passing waiter was quickly flagged and a round of replenishments ordered. I was elated — at least he’d heard “rumors”; this would make him infinitely easier to work with than one mind-locked on the Muslim menace and who’d never strayed beyond the OCT (Official Conspiracy Theory).
Needless to say, that’s all it took for yours truly to ratchet matters up a notch and get down to deep penetration.
I didn’t have to try very hard. It soon became clear His Excellency was just warming up. His properly refined tongue loosening apace with the steady wash of Louis Roederer, I was relieved of any further burden to add momentum to the now effortlessly flowing conversation.
I shifted up a gear. I asked him if he knew that on the day before 9/11, $100,000 was wired directly into Mohammad Atta’s bank account by Pakistan’s intelligence chief, General Mahmoud Ahmed.
This round caught him in mid-sip and elicited a confused squint from over the rim of his glass.
I smoothly reloaded, took a sip of my Glenmorangie and continued.
Was His Excellency aware that this wire transfer was followed by that very Pakistani general’s visit to the White House and the Pentagon the very next day, 9/11?
He looked a little puzzled and claimed he hadn’t heard about any of this. He threw another quick glance at my name badge, which sported “Writer, USA” below my name, and probably wondered what it was that I really wrote about and how — and why — I managed to infiltrate, of all things, a conference on religion.
He set his glass down and looked at me with a look I can only describe as one of confused curiosity and asked, “How do you know all this?”
Before I could answer, three cocktail-laden, cigar-wielding gentlemen with whom the ambassador was clearly acquainted happened to stroll by. He jovially hailed them over. I realized as we were introduced that these gentlemen were of different nationalities, each from their respective embassies in Prague — a First Secretary, Chargé d’affaires, and Cultural Attache’.
A cozy little diplomatic social club, I recall thinking, noting that one of them, the Chargé d’affaires — a mid-sixtyish, rather portly chap — was already two sheets to the wind, his snifter vulgarly filled almost to the brim, doubtless with some celestially expensive cognac.
[The banquet was hosted by the government of the Netherlands, and I must say they pulled out all the stops on this one; the evening was a festal cornucopia of nothing but the very best of everything.]
Surprisingly taking the initiative, the ambassador (I’ll refer to him as #1) threw out for discussion to the now considerably swollen group “…All these stories about 9/11”.
One of the new arrivals, the First Secretary (let’s call him #2,) nonchalantly let drop that he’d “heard some things” but didn’t elaborate, instead taking a puff from his cigar and not looking particularly invigorated.
The Chargé d’affaires (#3, Mr. Cognac) offered that he always thought it “strange” how “these guys flew all over America for 2 hours without getting shot down”.
I spied the ambassador shift his weight as he threw a quick glance at me; our eyes met momentarily and I instantly sensed his surprise at the coincidence of #3’s comment and my earlier ‘observation’ about the absent interceptors.
This was richer than I expected; things were moving along swimmingly.
The Cultural Attache’ (#4), however, remained virtually silent — and sober — throughout the half-hour-or-so-long conversation and simply continued to look impassively at me while he drank nothing. I must admit I found this more than a little unnerving, and it actually caused me to say less than I otherwise would have.
(Once, when he briefly excused himself to use the facilities, I couldn’t help wonder who he was about to call — Interpol or the white coats). The man was about as transparent as a slab of granite. I also noted that he didn’t seem quite as tight a part of this clique as the other three who seemed far better acquainted.
Taking great care to package my points more as innocuous ‘questions’ than authoritative statements, I tossed a low ball to test the water.
Smiling, I Addressed #2, the First Secretary — partly because he was conveniently standing directly in front of me, and partly because he was clearly possessed of an incisive wit coupled with a sharp intellect; he was a also very distinguished looking fellow, certainly the most ‘presidential-looking’ of the lot.
My smile was driven with an intensity that showed I wasn’t being flippant. “Sir, let’s for a moment say you were president of your country. One morning you find yourself in a classroom reading to a group of little children a story about a pet goat…”
Through the corner of my eye I could see #1 straighten up; it looked like he knew exactly where I was going with this. #2 continued to look directly at me, a little amused as if he’d just settled down to a game of chess.
I continued, “Your Chief of Staff rushes up to you and whispers in your ear, ‘Mr. President, terrorists have flown a plane into the Parliament Building; the nation is under attack.’ Now, I ask you, sir, how would you respond?”
Intending the question to be rhetorical, I continued with barely a pause.
“I’ll tell you what my reaction would not be: It most certainly would not be the reaction demonstrated by the president of the United States on the morning of 9/11. I would be concerned for the thousands of my fellow citizens burning to death in an inferno.
But I suspect before I would have a moment to react, my highly trained security detail would be whisking me out of that school to my limousine to put as many miles between the school and I as possible.
“Why? My location that morning common public knowledge, it was widely televised. So I — and my security team — would be very concerned these clearly well-organized ‘terrorists’ would be targeting me next by diving one of their aircraft into the school where I was located. But on 9/11, the President sat in that classroom for the next ten minutes narrating a tale about some pet goat — even after he was informed again, for the second time, that a second building had been hit.
What does the Commander-in-Chief then do in the midst of what is clearly a full-blown attack on the country? He stands up and casually drifts around the classroom taking advantage of a photo op by posing with some of the teachers, smiling as if he didn’t have a care in the world.”
I slowly surveyed my audience before continuing. To a man they were riveted.
“Gentlemen, that’s what I call confidence — confidence not for this President’s ability to remain calm under fire, but confidence that he wasn’t a target of the terrorists! Mr Bush, his staff, and his entire security detail had to have known with a good deal of certainty that the president was safe, because no effort whatsoever was made to get him out of that classroom in accordance with standard emergency procedures.
And when he did eventually leave the school, the presidential motorcade casually drove back to the airport along the pre-determined route — also televised and widely known in advance — instead of following standard emergency procedure and taking an alternate route. I ask you, gentlemen: How could the president have been so absolutely sure he wasn’t a target when the nation was under a massive, concerted, clearly well-planned and ruthlessly executed attack?”
#3, the Charge’, began to laugh, shaking his head as if to say this couldn’t possibly be true, but I sensed it was laughter born of nervousness more than mirth. The First Secretary (#2), a little surprised asked, “For 10 minutes? Are you sure?”
The ambassador piped in without looking directly at me, “Yes, I’ve heard this.” I saw #4 give a barely perceptible nod as if in agreement with #1’s comment.
I addressed #1: Your Excellency, you might be interested to note that the first thing the new owners of the World Trade Center complex did was appoint a new security company—Securacom.
This company was also responsible for security at Logan airport, the main 9/11-related airline hub from where the alleged hijackers departed. Securacom’s CEO as well as its managing director, were both first cousins of George W. Bush.”
Looks were richocheting faster than my rounds. This was beginning to look good.
I briefly explained the mystery behind the collapse of Building 7.
Building what? This was big news. None of them even knew what it was, much less heard of its mysterious collapse. They were all visibly surprised, with #3 asking, “Three towers? Really?” They all exchanged looks that seemed to ask, ‘did you know about this?’I then mentioned the WTC’s new owner, Larry Silverstein’s serious slip-up on national television when he inadvertently admitted to having given the order to “pull” the building. “Pull,” as is commonly known, is industry parlance for controlled demolition.
I then dropped the bomb that just two months prior to the attacks, Silverstein had obtained new insurance policies for the complex with a face amount of $3.55 billion. After 9/11, Silverstein sued the insurance companies arguing that two planes were two separate attacks. He ended up raking in $4.57 billion. Not a bad payback on a 6-month investment of $100 million.
I could feel the back-slapping banter and jocularity evaporate; I’d definitely got their attention (except #4’s, it seemed).
“But that’s not all. I’ve read some reports from scores of firemen, policemen and other rescue workers who were at the WTC that they found pools of molten metal in the basements of all three towers.”
Beginning to look increasingly disoriented, the ambassador admitted he hadn’t heard about “any of this stuff”. However, I was a little disappointed the revelation about molten metal hadn’t drawn the startled wide-eyed reaction I hoped it would.
I adjusted my sights. “Have any of you gentlemen been out camping?” I asked matter-of-factly. They looked at me a little perplexed wondering where I was going with this, but when I added nothing further, I suppose they felt obliged to respond and three of them nodded or mumbled in the affirmative. #4 remained apparently unperturbed (and continued to remain so for the rest of our discussion).
Addressing no one in particular I asked, “Then I suppose you’ve used a kerosene camping stove?” Faint nods all round.
“I trust your stoves made it back home looking like stoves? Or did they come back looking like melted ingots from a smelting furnace?”
Utterly confused looks all round coupled with perceptible uneasiness. I detected what I thought was a look of mild impatience from #2.
I proceeded without missing a beat, worried I was beginning to lose traction. “Did you know that ‘jet fuel’ is nothing more than kerosene, the same stuff you put in your camping stoves?”
I could distinctly see surprise on three faces, a few eyebrows racing skywards. The ambassador was clearly surprised. “Really? Kerosene?”
“Yes, gentlemen, just kerosene. And it is impossible for jet fuel to melt high-grade construction steel.”
It took a few seconds for the penny to drop, but drop it did — and with a resounding crash, judging by the expressions on the faces encircling me.
I could see I’d sucked the fun right of the party. If I could only see their synapses firing at that moment, I thought, their heads would probably glow like light bulbs.
9/11 truth had arrived in Prague. Big time.I cut loose another round. “A friend who’s a professor of Physics at a major university back in the States told me molten metal is the direct byproduct of a special kind of military explosive called Nanothermite. Evidently, molten metal flows copiously during a Thermate reaction.”
With that, I shut up. The floor was open for comment, but none was forthcoming.
The ambassador, in particular, was beginning to exhibit clear signs of discomfiture, standing erect and stretching, arching backwards, looking around.
I could see he was trying to contain his nervousness—possibly fear, who knows—at where all this was leading. I was beginning to fear imminent disruption, or, worse, an abrupt shutdown of this now galloping drama.
At that moment, an announcement was made by a Dutch embassy ‘crier’ that the evening was “drawing to an end,” his refined, mellifluous tone concealing an underlying order: “Okay, you freeloaders, It’s time to take your parties elsewhere.”
Damn, I thought…not now. But I wasn’t altogether displeased. I’d given four members of the global diplomatic community something to really think about.
A 9/11 activist’s job is merely to help open people’s eyes, I told myself as if to mollify my own deep dejection at not being able to go the distance. But at the same I realized it would have been impossible given the limitations and constraints of the situation. Regardless, I felt I’d acquitted myself rather well by doing a yeoman’s job, especially given the caliber of the audience.
As things quickly wound down, the three late entrants, looking decidedly less spirited than when they joined, thanked me for the “interesting” conversation and politely took their leave. (#4 simply shook my hand without saying a word).
I was alone again with the ambassador, but, surprisingly, he seemed in no great hurry to leave; to hell with the crier. There was no doubt in my mind he was rattled, but I could see he was working hard not to show it.
He said he found all this “very interesting” and very nonchalantly asked me, “So when are you leaving Prague?” When I told him I’d be in town for four more days, he suggested we meet for lunch in the “next few days” so we could have a “longer chat.” So we exchanged cards, I gave him the name of the hotel where I was staying and we parted on his promise to call me “soon.”
I was sure I’d seen the last of the man.
That night, it was Sunday, I walked out of the Palace Zofin for the last time. The conference was over, and I felt a little saddened. The past two days had been hectic, at times almost overwhelming…the pageant of personalities, the riveting discussions, the intellectual intensity – and of course the fun.
Wrapped tightly in my coat I walked out into the cold winter night and strolled back to my hotel, just ten minutes away.
THE SUMMIT
Two days later, early on Tuesday afternoon, I took a cab back to my hotel to drop off a load of shopping. There was a message awaiting me at the desk. On very impressive ambassadorial stationery—embossed, gilt-edged cotton stock—was a handwritten invitation to lunch the next day, Wednesday. RSVP.
It was from the ambassador.
Amazing! And in the nick of time, I thought — I was scheduled to fly out to London on Thursday. Calling the number on the card summoned the ambassador’s personal assistant who appeared to be expecting my call, and I accepted the gracious invitation. I was told a car would be at my hotel at 12:45 p.m. the following day to take me to the Cafe Slavia for “lunch with His Excellency.”
[The Café Slavia turned out to be the most famous Cafe in Prague...its Art Deco interior sumptuously decorated in cherry-wood and onyx and polished limestone topped tables, big windows overlooking the river Volta. The Czech National Theatre was just across the street.
I was told intellectuals gathered here to read papers, discuss politics, plot artistic activities — even political coups...apparently Vaclav Havel’s bloodless coup was hatched within its hallowed walls.]
The next day, a perfectly punctual, chauffeur-driven, but otherwise unremarkable black Mercedes materialized outside my hotel to pick me up. It was empty of occupants save for the frosty, expressionless chauffeur.
Upon arriving at the Slavia, I was met by a black-suited “security” type who briskly escorted me into the café and on to the furthest end of the L-shaped interior where about a 10-table section had been cordoned off with a red velvet cord. Standing guard at the ‘entrance’ to this partitioned little sanctuary was another dark-suited type, this one visibly more brutish than the first, who struck me as the sort best avoided at all cost.
Sitting in a large cherry-paneled booth overlooking the river was my smiling diplomatic host. And did he have a surprise for me.
Seated around him were the three others from the initial meeting.
I was stunned. I hadn’t at all expected this. Nonetheless, their greetings were warm and cordial and seemed quite genuine (but then, isn’t diplomacy the trained art of always appearing genuine, I couldn’t help wonder). Even the enigmatic #4, seated at the furthest end of the longish table, managed to crack a smile. I was politely directed to a chair opposite #4, where he held me in his icy sights thereafter. For some strange reason this chap made me a little nervous.
The ambassador, clearly in charge, wasted little time getting down to business. He told me they were very interested to hear more about “the subject” we’d touched upon the other evening. Lunch was ordered without further ado, giving me the impression he wished to get trifling social formalities briskly out of the way.
Sitting amidst this distinguished little coterie for the next five straight hours, well past dusk, I had the singular pleasure of engaging in what I consider to be one of the most intense discussions of my life.
I believe it was also the most persuasive and effective presentation I’ve made on any subject. We spoke of nothing but 9/11…every imaginable aspect of it. We covered it forwards, backwards and sideways (within the confines of my own knowledge base, of course, which is not inconsiderable).
When the meeting finally wound down around six o’clock I found #1, my amiable, chatty host who’d been drinking nothing but Evian with a twist all afternoon, clearly shaken. It seemed every detailed response I’d offered to his frequent questions through the course of the afternoon caused him to sink deeper into some dark abyss. In the end he seemed a different man…sullen, somber, pensive, shaken.
#2, the First Secretary, though rather stoic, remained piercingly engaged throughout. He didn’t miss a beat. He continued to bury me in a torrent of questions, mostly technical (radars, transponders, etc.), while feverishly filling page after page of detailed notes on a large, fat pad. I envisaged a new presentation taking shape, his own, for audiences yet to assemble that I’d likely never see.
#3, the chubby Chargé d’affaires (Mr. Cognac was on a strict regimen of Sapphire-Tonics, clearly the noonday prescription) had difficulty containing his enthusiasm during much of the afternoon, nodding vigorously in agreement with a lot of what I said with an undisguised look of almost childish excitement, as though he were being let into some clubby fraternity secret.
I was actually a little perplexed by his insouciant reactions to revelations this profound, and could only attribute it to the euphoric effects of good English gin.
#4, the incorrigibly stone-faced Cultural Attache’, had pretty much remained his stolid self throughout, occasionally muttering something to #1 or #2 who were seated closer to him, but mostly listening, fiddling, staring impassively, sometimes at me, mostly at the river, imbibing an endless chain of espressos occasionally interspersed with a shot of Ouzo.
The man seemed impervious to stimulus, incapable of emotion. Not only did he ask no questions, nothing I said seemed to faze him, to the extent I wondered if his mind was there at all.
I was certain 1, 2, and 3 were convinced beyond a reasonable doubt there were far too many ‘coincidences’ and inconsistencies for 9/11—at the very least—to not have received considerable assistance from within the halls of power.
Precisely which power that might be was something that was never discussed. Being the quintessential diplomats, I suppose, none of them broached the subject, and I wisely concluded it would be a serious faux pas to start tunneling in that direction.
#3 (Mr. Cognac) was the only one who took this delicate point furthest when he almost irreverently (for a diplomat) blurted out that he “knew all along 9/11 was homemade”.
Then, out of the clear blue, the ambassador dropped a bombshell.
He asked me—me—what I thought he should do with this information!
I was flabbergasted, and left momentarily speechless. This, I had never expected.
Here I was, a little nobody from Boonesville USA, sitting amidst a group of diplomats in an elegant café in a European city, and an ambassador was asking me for advice on how best to proceed with this earthshaking newfound information?
I found the flood of feelings and emotions that engulfed me to be maddeningly confusing. I felt at once flattered, empowered, inadequate, disheartened, terrified…
In retrospect, flattered, I suppose, because the ego, after all, falls prey all too easily to homage. Doesn’t a faint sliver of narcissism live in each of our hearts that yields, even unconsciously, to adulation?
Empowered, because I realized I had before me a brilliant opportunity to possibly influence meaningful change at a significant level.
Inadequate, because I felt I wasn’t capable, or even sufficiently worthy, to proffer anything truly substantive in a matter of such overwhelming global moment.
Disheartened, because I realized this whole 9/11 thing is far bigger that it might appear on the surface even to hardened ‘veterans’, and, perhaps, lies beyond our power to fully expose let alone understand; it’s truly a tough nut to crack—a lot tougher than many of us realize.
And terrified, because of a sudden, the raw reality of 9/11 hit me like a sledgehammer; for the first time, I realized this whole thing’s scarier than hell. The sheer gravitas implicit in the ambassador’s question had helped reinforce that jarring realization.
I recovered quickly. Hoping they’d mercifully attribute my temporary stupification to some weighty geostrategic rumination I was churning around in my head, I respectfully offered something quite anticlimactically prosaic.
“Sir, I’m greatly honored that you ask me, but all I am is a simple messenger. Besides, I prefer to stick to the fields of physics, engineering, aeronautics and the like than venture into the vagaries of geopolitics. The question you ask me is one that can best find its answers within your own knowledge, experience and ambit.”
While I felt this modest response was respectfully received by all, it has bothered me ever since. It haunts me as having been a missed opportunity. Then again, was it? What more could someone like I possibly have added, I wonder.
Opening up a discussion along those lines surely would’ve been beyond the scope of any casual café gathering…I could see it flowing into days, weeks even, covering vast historical and geopolitical terrain, international banking, elite power blocs, secret societies and other esoterica.
No, 9/11 is far too immense, too frighteningly gargantuan to be readily resolved through some naïve, formulaic, UN-style boilerplate action. This is an indescribably pernicious cancer that needs to be ripped from its roots — and that’s going to take serious unconventional thinking, unique strategies, and unprecedented action to achieve.
Ghandian “Sathyagraha”, or civil disobedience, comes to mind as the benign extreme of a spectrum of possibilities; a V For Vendetta-style mass uprising falls at the other…but I’m obviously speculating beyond my bailiwick
Frankly, the most I had expected to accomplish from this little ‘meeting’ in Prague was to be able to plant some serious seeds of doubt so these influential individuals would begin to dig deeper on their own.
I’m pleased I also managed to recommend David Ray Griffin’s The New Pearl Harbor (in my opinion the finest introduction to the subject), and point them towards a few good websites in the hope they’d be sufficiently inspired by the newfound information to take it from there.
Given the responses I received and the powerful emotional energy that enveloped us all at the end, I felt I’d achieved far more. This presentation, in my estimation, was an unqualified coup (the undemonstrative #4 notwithstanding).
In the end, I believe these men were most impressed by the following important points, which I expanded:
The 10 Important 9/11 Points I Covered:
1. Building 7 — The impossibility of a 47-storey skyscraper that was not struck by an airplane to have collapsed neatly into its own footprint in a 6.6-second freefall;
2. Molten metal in the basements of all three towers — Kerosene cannot melt steel;
3. Freefall speeds of all three towers — A violation of the laws of physics;
4. The complete and utter pulverization of the three buildings, and the transmutation of over 400,000 cu. ft. of concrete into 50 micron particles of dust;
5. The discovery of shards of human bones and flesh deposited on rooftops 600 feet away;
6. The Pentagon — The small entry hole, the absence of crash debris…no seats, luggage, bodies, etc.; the ‘failure’ of all 90 external CCTV cameras; the deactivation of surface-air-missile batteries; IFF (Identification Friend/Foe) handshakes;
7. NORAD — A discussion on types of radar, intercept protocol, FAA emergency procedures, etc.
8. The six military “war games” that were being enacted at exactly the same time the alleged hijackings were taking place; the fact that two of these war games involved the hijacking of airliners;
9. The shocking increase in stock market activity prior to 9/11 – especially the put options on United and American Airlines;
10. The hijackers — Their nonexistent flying skills; the fact that seven of the men turned up alive in the Middle East;
Finally, our meeting concluded on an important point that was made clear to me in no uncertain terms by the ambassador.
It had never occurred.
I’d half expected this. Further, they entreated me to keep their identities confidential, and wished to have no further communications, of any kind, on this matter. They lauded me for my “courage,” and thanked me profusely for my time.
On an impulse, I looked directly at #4. I’d decided I was going to approach this chap, look him in the eye and level a few straight questions; at this point I knew I had nothing to lose.
I didn’t need to. As we all stood up to leave, he ambled up to me.
He stood still for a few long seconds looking into my eyes, then slowly clenched my hand firmly in a beefy fist and spoke in a gravelly, deeply accented voice: “I have known of everything you have told us. You have studied the subject well. Now I will give you a tip: Follow the money.”
He shook my hand firmly, gave me a warm, sincere smile and added, “Hope you have a safe trip home.”
With that, he quietly walked away.
Cultural Attache’ indeed, I thought.
The ambassador said he’d call me if he ever passed through California. He offered me a ride back to my hotel, which I politely declined; I had this impulse to get lost in some crowded bar, sip a Scotch and slowly replay in my head the emotive events of this unforgettable afternoon.
I felt utterly drained, vulnerable and, yes, admittedly a little daunted. Of one thing I was certain: I needed time to myself, to just sit and think.
I wriggled into my coat, flung my scarf about my neck and stepped out into the chilly Czech winter evening. The icy wind from the river to my back, I started walking slowly up Narodni towards the bustle of Wenceslas Square.
9/11: Open Letter & Challenge to ADL’s Abe Foxman
Abraham Foxman has been the director of the Anti-Defamation league since 1987.
“Mr. Foxman, your assertion that criticism of Israel is by definition a manifestation of anti-Semitism, is Zionist propaganda nonsense for a blackmail purpose, the purpose being to silence criticism and prevent informed and honest debate about Israel’s policies and actions.”
Dear Abe Foxman,
In your lengthy article Decade of Deceit: Anti-Semitic 9/11 Conspiracy Theories 10 Years Later, you label a number of named writers and commentators including me who say that Israel’s Mossad was or even might have been involved in the 9/11 terror attack as anti-Semitic, and you assert that they are demonizing “the Jews”. You also say: “Anticipating criticism, a number of these anti-Semitic conspiracists now try to immunize themselves against charges of anti-Semitism by making disclaimers up front about not being anti-Semitic. Their own works and record, however, blatantly contradict their innocuous self-characterizations.”
I have to assume that I am one of the “number” in the above quotation because when you introduce at the end of your piece a few sentences of what I have said on the subject of 9/11, you do so with these words: “After pre-emptively trying to dismiss charges of anti-Semitism, Hart asserts…”
I also have to assume that you have not read (surprise! surprise!)
my epic book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, three volumes in its American edition (www.claritypress.com). Except those who are brainwashed by Zionist propaganda and deluded to the point of clinical madness, nobody could read this book and conclude that I was anti-Semitic. The first picture in it is of Golda Meir when she was prime minister, inscribed it in her own hand “To a good friend, Alan Hart.” Do you believe, Mr. Foxman, that old lady was so stupid that she couldn’t have seen through me if I was anti-Jew?As I say in the book and on every public platform on which I speak, THE key to understanding is knowledge of the difference between Judaism and Zionism. Here is how I am going to summarise this difference in a speech in Germany on this September 11.
JUDAISM is the religion of Jews, not “the” Jews because not all Jews are religious. Like Christianity and Islam, Judaism has at its core a set of moral values and ethical principles.
ZIONISM is a sectarian, colonial-like nationalism which created a state for some Jews in the Arab heartland mainly by terrorism and ethnic cleansing, and by doing so demonstrated contempt for, and made a mockery of, Judaism’s moral values and ethical principles. In reality mainstream Judaism and Zionism are total opposites.
I’m also going to wonder aloud how many in my German audience are aware of two particular background facts. One is of that the return of Jews to the land of biblical Israel by the efforts of man – one possible but wholly inadequate definition of Zionism – was proscribed by Judaism. The other is that prior to the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust, the vast majority of Jews everywhere, and especially many eminent American Jews including the then owner of The New York Times, were totally opposed to Zionism’s Palestine project. Why? They believed it to be morally wrong. They feared it would lead to unending conflict with the Arabs and the wider Muslim world. But most of all they feared that if Zionism was allowed by the big powers to have its way, it would one day provoke violent anti-Semitism on a grand scale.
I am then going to give the two main reasons why knowledge of the difference between Judaism and Zionism is the key to understanding.
The first is that when you know the difference, you can understand why it is perfectly possible to be passionately anti-Zionist (anti Zionism’s colonial enterprise) without being in any way, shape or form anti-Semitic in the sense of loathing and even hating all Jews everywhere just because they are Jews.The second is that when you know the difference between Judaism and Zionism, you can understand why it is wrong to blame all Jews everywhere for the crimes of the hard core Zionists in Israel.
Defenders of Israel right or wrong assert that Judaism and Zionism are one and the same in order to make the charge, as you do Mr. Foxman, that criticism of Israel is by definition a manifestation of anti-Semitism. That, I will tell my German audience, is Zionist propaganda nonsense for a blackmail purpose, the purpose being to silence criticism and prevent informed and honest debate about Israel’s policies and actions. And I will add this: “When you know the difference between Judaism and Zionism, you don’t have to be frightened about being falsely accused of anti-Semitism for speaking and writing the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel. You can say to your Zionist accuser, ‘Go to hell!’”.
Mr. Foxman, I’m not going to tell you to go to hell. I have a constructive suggestion to make. If you truly believe that I am anti-Semitic, why don’t you say so explicitly in writing (on ADL’s web site will be fine) and then I can sue you. And that will give us the Mother and Father of a test case to determine what anti-Semitism is and is not. (For some of my in-depth thinking on this matter you may care to visit http://kanan48.wordpress.com/2010/03/15/anti-semitism-%E2%80%93-zionist-myth-vs-truth-and-reality-by-alan-hart/. There you’ll find an article of mine with the headline Anti-Semitism – Zionist myth vs truth and reality.
While you are thinking about how to respond to my suggestion, you might like to consider two particular statements I make in my book and on most public platforms.
The first is this. I do not blame the Zionist lobby for acting in the way it does. It is only playing the game according to the rules. I blame a corrupt, pork-barrel system of American politics which puts what passes for democracy sale up to the highest bidders.
The second is this. The Jews, generally speaking are the intellectual elite of the Western civilization and the Palestinians are by far the intellectual elite of the Arab world. What these two peoples could do together in peace and partnership is the stuff that dreams are made of. They could change the region for the better and by doing so give new hope and inspiration to the whole world.
And I’ll add this. I have two driving motivations.
One is to contribute to the understanding needed if there is ever to be an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians. Without it the future is predictable – catastrophe for all, possibly in the shape of a Clash of Civilizations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic.
The other is to contribute to the understanding needed to stop Holocaust II, shorthand for another great turning against the Jews. My Gentile views on this aspect of the matter are in tune with the warning words of Yehoshafat Harkabi, Israel’s longest serving Director of Military Intelligence. In his book Israel’s Fateful Hour, published in 1986, he wrote this:
Israel is the criterion according to which all Jews will tend to be judged. Israel as a Jewish state is an example of the Jewish
character, which finds free and concentrated expression within it. Anti-Semitism has deep and historical roots. Nevertheless, any flaw in Israeli conduct, which initially is cited as anti-Israelism, is likely to be transformed into empirical proof of the validity of anti-Semitism. It would be a tragic irony if the Jewish state, which was intended to solve the problem of anti-Semitism, was to become a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism. Israelis must be aware that the price of their misconduct is paid not only by them but also Jews throughout the world.In the world today we are witnessing a rising tide of anti-Israelism provoked by Israel’s arrogance of power, its contempt for international law and its appalling self-righteousness. (In Harkabi’s view self-righteousness is the biggest threat to Israel’s existence). If Israel stays on its present course, the danger is, as Harkabi warned, that anti-Israelism will be transformed into anti-Semitism, leading to another great turning against Jews everywhere and quite possibly starting in America. In my view the real danger of that happening will be greatly reduced if those (mainly Westerners) among whom most of the Jews of the world live are made aware of the difference between Judaism and Zionism.
Also to be said is that the Jews of the world (those in North America and Europe especially) could and should act to best protect their own interests by distancing themselves from the Zionist state and its crimes. In the Prologue to Volume One of my book which is titled Waiting for the Apocalypse, I quote Dr. David Goldberg, a prominent liberal London rabbi, as saying the following in 2001: “It may be time for Judaism and Zionism to go their separate ways.”
Today I would say to him, it’s not “may be” time, it is time.
Awaiting your response.
Sincerely,
Alan Hart
Extended Footnote for the record: Text of my overview of 9/11.
The starting point for any serious and honest discussion of 9/11 has to be this question: Did the impact of the planes and the heat of their burning fuel bring the Twin Towers down? If the answer is “Yes”, there’s no need for conspiracy theories. If the answer is “No”, the speculative question has to be – Who did it and how and why?
My own answer is “No”. In my analysis there’s enough evidence – visual, technical and scientific, and from eye-witnesses including fire fighters – to invite the conclusion that the Twin Towers, like Building Seven, were pre-wired for controlled demolition.
For context, the first observation I’d like to offer is that the mainstream media’s complicity in suppressing even questions and debate about what really happened on 9/11 is consistent. What I mean is that for the past 63 years – from the creation of the Zionist (not Jewish!) state of Israel mainly by terrorism and ethnic cleansing to the present – the mainstream media has been complicit in Zionism’s suppression the truth about the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel. Put another way, the mainstream media has been content to peddle Zionism’s propaganda lies. The two biggest lies can be summed up in a very few words:
The first is that poor little Israel has lived in constant danger of annihilation, the “driving into the sea” of its Jews. The truth, as I document in detail through the three volumes of the American edition of my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, is that Israel’s existence has never, ever, been in danger from any combination of Arab force. Zionism’s assertion to the contrary was the cover that allowed Israel to get away where it mattered most – in the Western world and America especially – with presenting its aggression as self defense and itself as the victim when it was and is the oppressor.
The second is that Israel “never had Arab partners for peace” That is complete nonsense. Just two of many examples to make the point… From almost the moment he came to power in 1951, Eygpt’s President Nasser wanted an accommodation with Israel. He had secret exchanges with Israel’s foreign minister, Moshe Sharret, who was in my view the only completely rational Israeli leader of his time. For wanting to make peace with Nasser and the Arabs, Sharett was destroyed by Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion… Example number two: By the end of 1979, the pragmatic Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the PLO, had prepared the ground on his side for peace with Israel on the basis of a genuine and viable two-state solution – peace on terms which any rational government and people in Israel would have accepted with relief. But then, as is still the case today, Israel’s leaders and most of its Jewish citizens were not rational.
Prior to 9/11, the best single example of the mainstream media’s complicity in the suppression of the truth as it relates to conflict in the Middle East is Israel’s attack on the American spy ship, the USS Liberty, on 8th June 1967, the 4th day of the 6-Day war. (I was the first Western correspondent to the banks of the Suez Canal with the advancing Israelis, so I was in the Sinai desert at the time). That attack killed 37 Americans and seriously wounded more than 90 others. If things had gone according to the plan of the man who ordered that attack, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, the Liberty would have been sunk with all hands on board, leaving nobody to tell the story of what really happened… If it had been an Arab/Muslim attack on an American vessel, it’s reasonable to speculate that America would have resorted to a military strike, if not war, on the country or countries it held responsible. What did President Johnson do? Out of fear of offending the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress, he ordered a cover-up which remains in force to this day. And the mainstream media went along with it. As it still does.
The following are my summary thoughts on the possible/probable involvement of Israel’s Mossad in 9/11. Two scenarios – A or B.
In Scenario A it’s not impossible that 9/11 started out as an Arab/Muslim idea. But even if this was the case, Mossad would have had an inside track very quickly. From almost the moment of the Zionist state’s birth, Mossad put great effort into placing agents inside every Arab regime, every Arab military and security establishment and every Arab/Muslim liberation movement and terrorist group. Many of Mossad’s best and most effective agents were Moroccan and other North African Jews because they could pose most perfectly as Arabs. (In a moment I’ll tell you the short story of Mossad’s penetration of the Abu Nidal terrorist group).
In Scenario A the question is: Did Mossad tell anybody? My speculation is that it told some in the CIA and a few of Zionism’s neo-con associates, Jews and non-Jews, including Vice President Cheney (I call him the real Doctor Strangelove) and the likes of Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. In this scenario Mossad could have asked, “What do we do about this?” And the answer could have been something like, “We’ll use it for the Pearl Harbour-like pretext we need.”
In this scenario, 9/11, even if it started out as an Arab/Muslim idea, was a joint Israeli/Mossad and American/neo-con conspiracy.
For background a very short story about Mossad’s penetration of the Abu Nidal terrorist group. Abu Nidal was a member of Arafat’s Fatah but he broke with it when Arafat had come to terms with the reality of Israel’s existence and was preparing the ground on his side for compromise with Israel. The Abu Nidal group, based mainly in Iraq, was responsible for the assassinations, mainly in Europe, of more than 20 of Arafat’s emissaries who were telling Western governments behind closed doors that the Fatah-dominated PLO was serious about compromise with Israel. An investigation by Arafat and Abu Iyad, Fatah’s counter intelligence chief, subsequently revealed that Abu Nidal was an alcoholic
- he consumed between one and two bottles of whisky a day, and for much of most days he was drunk, not sober. His number two was running the show and targeting those to be assassinated and directing the killing. Abu Nidal’s number two was a Mossad agent.
It was, in fact, two Palestinian students in London who were activated by the Abu Nidal group to assassinate Israeli ambassador Argov. It was that assassination attempt in 1982 that gave Israeli Prime Minister Begin and Defense Minister Sharon the pretext they needed to launch their invasion of Lebanon all the way to Beirut, for the purpose of exterminating the entire leadership of the PLO and destroying its infrastructure… Ambassador Argov survived and quite some time after the event, he indicated that he suspected Israel’s involvement (he could only have meant targeting) in the attempt to kill him.
Scenario B has to be considered because it’s a fact that some of the Arab/Muslim plotters, actual or alleged, were under surveillance by various Western intelligence agencies for years before 9/11. The agencies who were tracking them as possible/probable terrorists included the those of America, Germany and Israel.
In this scenario it’s not impossible that the idea for 9/11 was put into the heads of possible/probable Arab/Muslim terrorists by Mossad agents.
In this scenario, Mossad was actually running the show with key American neo-cons fixing things in America to make sure the attack was successful. From all that happened on the day, I’m not convinced that President Bush was in the pre-9/11 fixing loop. I think Cheney was most probably in control of the American executive oversight of what was essentially a Mossad false flag operation.
Question: How did 9/11 serve the interests of the lunatic right in Israel and its neo-con associates in America?
In their view Saddam Hussein represented the only foreseeable potential Arab challenge to Greater Israel’s continued military domination of the whole Arab world. He had to be removed. By falsely claiming that Iraq was implicated in the 9/11 attack, Zionism and its neo-con associates in America set the stage for President Bush to be conned into going to war.
As we know, Zionism’s intention to get rid of Saddam Hussein was not a secret. In 1996, under the chairmanship of Richard Perle, widely known in informed circles as the “Prince of Darkness”, American Zionism presented a policy document with the title A CLEAN BREAK: A NEW STRATEGY FOR SECURING THE REALM.
It urged incoming Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to have no second thoughts about making a clean break with the Rabin policy of negotiating with the PLO and trading land for peace. Israel’s claim to all the land it occupied was “legitimate and noble”, the policy paper said. “Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs of our rights is a solid basis for the future.” After the clean break Israel would be free to shape its “strategic environment”. What would that involve? Among other things, “re-establishing the principle of pre-emption (pre-emptive strikes)… focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq… weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria, Hizbollah and Iran.”
In fact the commitment of Zionism’s in-America fixers and their neo-con associates to getting rid of Saddam Hussein goes back further than 1996. They were angry when President Bush the First refused to complete the job when he assembled a coalition to eject Iraq from Kuwait. After that Zionism’s in-America fixers and their neo-con associates needed two things – a president who was dumb enough to buy their ideas – they got that with George “Dubya” Bush; and a “Pearl Harbour” like event to trigger the action. They got that with 9/11.
But there was much more to it. 9/11 was a win-win for Zionism in a number of ways.
Predictably it provoked a rising tide of Islamophobia throughout the Western world and across America especially. In the minds of uninformed and ignorant Americans (i.e. most Americans), that in turn gave added credibility to the Zionist state’s claim to be America’s only true and reliable ally in the whole of the Arab and wider Muslim world.
As I say in the Dear America introduction to the American edition of Volume 1 of my book, when Americans asked “Why do they hate us?”, they were more or less all Arabs and Muslims everywhere. And I ask this question: What would Americans have learned if, instead of rushing to declare his war on global terrorism, President Bush had caused the Why-do-they-hate-us question to be addressed seriously?
The short answer I give in my Dear America Introduction – the long answer is in the three volumes of my book – begins with the statement that the overwhelming majority of all Arabs and Muslims everywhere do NOT hate America or Americans. What almost all Arabs and Muslims everywhere DO hate is American foreign policy – its double standards in general and, in particular, its unconditional support for an Israel which ignores UN resolutions, demonstrates its contempt for international law and human rights conventions and resorts to state terrorism… A truth is that for decades very many Arabs and other Muslims would, if they could, have migrated to America to enjoy a better life there. Today, however, the number of Arabs and other Muslims who would opt for American residence and citizenship if they could is greatly reduced because of the fact, sad but true, that the monster of Islamophobia is on the prowl across the Land of the Free and licking its lips.
Unlike most Americans, most Arabs and other Muslims know that America’s unconditional support for Israel is not in America’s own best interests. In fact it’s not in anybody’s best interests including those of the Jews of the world and Israel itself.
Images: My Catbird Seat
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REPORT: Big Banks Offered Fraud Settlement Deal
Notice the bold type in the final paragraph. This is a new development.
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(Reuters) - Big U.S. banks in talks with state prosecutors to settle claims of improper mortgage practices have been offered a deal that may limit their legal liabilities in return for a multibillion-dollar payment, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.
The talks aim to settle allegations that banks including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial, seized the homes of delinquent borrowers and broke state laws by employing so-called "robosigners," workers who signed off on foreclosure documents en masse without reviewing the paperwork.
The FT, citing five people with direct knowledge of the discussions, said state prosecutors have proposed settlement language in the "robosigning" cases that also might release the companies from legal liability for wrongful securitization practices.
Continue reading...
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A Raging Case of Bailout Fatigue
I’ve used the term outrage fatigue on numerous occasions in this forum as a way of trying to explain why there has been such a muted outcry from the general population as the tally of financial atrocities committed against American citizens has exploded.
August 22 was just another average day with another average headline that could easily have been ripped from some radical economic watchdog website (liberal or conservative, either one): Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion from Fed.
But the line wasn’t the work of someone out there on the anti-capitalist or anti-government fringe. It was attached to an article from the very mainstream Bloomberg News.
Bloomberg has been engaged in a long, frustrating FOIA litigation battle with the Federal Reserve over that entity’s reluctance publicly to reveal what it has been doing with our money. Slowly, the stone wall has been coming down. And looking at what’s behind it, it’s pretty obvious why the Fed would have preferred to keep its deeds locked away from all prying eyes.
Thus the above headline. And here’s an ugly truth that goes along with it: It’s a near certainty that the vast majority of those who saw it – probably not too many in number, since the story got scant coverage on the network news – said to themselves, Yeah, we already knew that. Ho hum.
Call it bailout fatigue.
Because, guess what? This is not a recycled story from last year. This is news that we didn’t know before the 22nd.
This money is not a part of the $16.1 trillion in emergency loans the Fed handed to US and foreign financial institutions between Dec. 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010, according to figures produced by the first-ever, one-time-only GAO audit of the central bank ordered by Dodd-Frank. Nor is it part of the $2 trillion quantitative easing program. Nor is TARP’s $700 billion in there, either.
Read that again. This $1.2 trillion – and perhaps we also have trillion fatigue, because that’s a lot of money – is separate from all that other stuff. It’s another hitherto secret funding program that we never would have heard of if Bloomberg hadn’t torn it from the Fed’s mouth like a rotten tooth.
The list of who got the bucks is a basic guide to the American banking industry. $107 billion to Morgan Stanley. $99 billion to Citigroup. $91 billion to Bank of America. Over $75 billion to State Street and just under that to Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase. And the list goes on. And on. And on. Even the disgraced Countrywide Financial got in on the act, claiming about $12.5 billion.
In addition, as the Fed was bailing the leaky American boat, it must have asked itself, Why stop here? There are foreigners out there who need our help just as much.
So, almost half of the Fed’s top 30 borrowers were European firms. They included the Royal Bank of Scotland, which was propped up to the tune of $84.5 billion, the most of any non-US lender, and Zurich-based UBS, which got $77.2 billion. The big foreign borrowers also included Dexia, Belgium’s biggest bank by assets, the French Société Générale, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and Crédit Suisse.
“These are all whopping numbers,” says Robert Litan, a former Justice Department official who investigated the savings and loan crisis in the 1990s. “You’re talking about the aristocracy of American finance going down the tubes without the federal money.”
So much for the free market, where failed business ventures … well, fail. But not to worry, the Fed did it all for us.
“We designed our broad-based emergency programs to both effectively stem the crisis and minimize the financial risks to the US taxpayer,” says James Clouse, deputy director of the Fed’s division of monetary affairs in Washington.
Furthermore, the Fed’s official line now is that “nearly all of our emergency-lending programs have been closed. We have incurred no losses and expect no losses.” In fact, $13 billion in interest income was supposedly realized.
That works out to an average of, yes, one percent.
Now that’s a pretty nice loan rate if you can get it. They could, and they did. Citigroup, for example, was the most frequent US borrower, in hock to the Fed on seven out of every 10 days from August 2007 through April 2010. On average, the bank had a daily balance at the Fed of almost $20 billion.
And the ability to raise truckloads of money for almost no interest raises another disturbing question: Did the banks really need this cash to stay afloat?
University of Pennsylvania finance professor Richard Herring, an authority on financial crises, is suspicious, saying that some banks may have used the program to maximize profits by borrowing “from the cheapest source, because this was supposed to be secret and never revealed.”
But regardless of whether banks needed the Fed’s money for survival or used it because it offered the opportunity to turn a quick, easy buck, the central bank’s lender-of-last-resort role amounts to a free insurance policy for banks, Herring notes.
Access to Fed backup support “leads you to subject yourself to greater risks,” Herring says. “If it’s not there, you’re not going to take the risks that would put you in trouble and require you to have access to that kind of funding.”
All of this might conceivably make citizens revolt against an entity that uses their money to secretly fund the “Wall Street aristocracy.” It might make them vote for a Gary Johnson or a Ron Paul, someone who favors dismantling the Fed.
Or not. When a story as big as this one generates a bare minimum of media coverage, you know it’s probably headed for that huge waste bin in the corner of the parking lot. The one marked Bailout Fatigue.
[No one can afford bailout fatigue, since the question regarding US debt is no longer “if,” but rather “when” the financial collapse will come. Truth be told, the process is already under way… but there’s still time to prepare. You can protect yourself, your family, and your investments – and even profit. Learn how big the problem is and how you can prepare by attending a free, online event. The American Debt Crisis will be held on September 14 at 2 p.m. EDT. Register today!]
August 22 was just another average day with another average headline that could easily have been ripped from some radical economic watchdog website (liberal or conservative, either one): Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion from Fed.
But the line wasn’t the work of someone out there on the anti-capitalist or anti-government fringe. It was attached to an article from the very mainstream Bloomberg News.
Bloomberg has been engaged in a long, frustrating FOIA litigation battle with the Federal Reserve over that entity’s reluctance publicly to reveal what it has been doing with our money. Slowly, the stone wall has been coming down. And looking at what’s behind it, it’s pretty obvious why the Fed would have preferred to keep its deeds locked away from all prying eyes.
Thus the above headline. And here’s an ugly truth that goes along with it: It’s a near certainty that the vast majority of those who saw it – probably not too many in number, since the story got scant coverage on the network news – said to themselves, Yeah, we already knew that. Ho hum.
Call it bailout fatigue.
Because, guess what? This is not a recycled story from last year. This is news that we didn’t know before the 22nd.
This money is not a part of the $16.1 trillion in emergency loans the Fed handed to US and foreign financial institutions between Dec. 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010, according to figures produced by the first-ever, one-time-only GAO audit of the central bank ordered by Dodd-Frank. Nor is it part of the $2 trillion quantitative easing program. Nor is TARP’s $700 billion in there, either.
Read that again. This $1.2 trillion – and perhaps we also have trillion fatigue, because that’s a lot of money – is separate from all that other stuff. It’s another hitherto secret funding program that we never would have heard of if Bloomberg hadn’t torn it from the Fed’s mouth like a rotten tooth.
The list of who got the bucks is a basic guide to the American banking industry. $107 billion to Morgan Stanley. $99 billion to Citigroup. $91 billion to Bank of America. Over $75 billion to State Street and just under that to Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase. And the list goes on. And on. And on. Even the disgraced Countrywide Financial got in on the act, claiming about $12.5 billion.
In addition, as the Fed was bailing the leaky American boat, it must have asked itself, Why stop here? There are foreigners out there who need our help just as much.
So, almost half of the Fed’s top 30 borrowers were European firms. They included the Royal Bank of Scotland, which was propped up to the tune of $84.5 billion, the most of any non-US lender, and Zurich-based UBS, which got $77.2 billion. The big foreign borrowers also included Dexia, Belgium’s biggest bank by assets, the French Société Générale, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and Crédit Suisse.
“These are all whopping numbers,” says Robert Litan, a former Justice Department official who investigated the savings and loan crisis in the 1990s. “You’re talking about the aristocracy of American finance going down the tubes without the federal money.”
So much for the free market, where failed business ventures … well, fail. But not to worry, the Fed did it all for us.
“We designed our broad-based emergency programs to both effectively stem the crisis and minimize the financial risks to the US taxpayer,” says James Clouse, deputy director of the Fed’s division of monetary affairs in Washington.
Furthermore, the Fed’s official line now is that “nearly all of our emergency-lending programs have been closed. We have incurred no losses and expect no losses.” In fact, $13 billion in interest income was supposedly realized.
That works out to an average of, yes, one percent.
Now that’s a pretty nice loan rate if you can get it. They could, and they did. Citigroup, for example, was the most frequent US borrower, in hock to the Fed on seven out of every 10 days from August 2007 through April 2010. On average, the bank had a daily balance at the Fed of almost $20 billion.
And the ability to raise truckloads of money for almost no interest raises another disturbing question: Did the banks really need this cash to stay afloat?
University of Pennsylvania finance professor Richard Herring, an authority on financial crises, is suspicious, saying that some banks may have used the program to maximize profits by borrowing “from the cheapest source, because this was supposed to be secret and never revealed.”
But regardless of whether banks needed the Fed’s money for survival or used it because it offered the opportunity to turn a quick, easy buck, the central bank’s lender-of-last-resort role amounts to a free insurance policy for banks, Herring notes.
Access to Fed backup support “leads you to subject yourself to greater risks,” Herring says. “If it’s not there, you’re not going to take the risks that would put you in trouble and require you to have access to that kind of funding.”
All of this might conceivably make citizens revolt against an entity that uses their money to secretly fund the “Wall Street aristocracy.” It might make them vote for a Gary Johnson or a Ron Paul, someone who favors dismantling the Fed.
Or not. When a story as big as this one generates a bare minimum of media coverage, you know it’s probably headed for that huge waste bin in the corner of the parking lot. The one marked Bailout Fatigue.
[No one can afford bailout fatigue, since the question regarding US debt is no longer “if,” but rather “when” the financial collapse will come. Truth be told, the process is already under way… but there’s still time to prepare. You can protect yourself, your family, and your investments – and even profit. Learn how big the problem is and how you can prepare by attending a free, online event. The American Debt Crisis will be held on September 14 at 2 p.m. EDT. Register today!]
Alt Media unstoppable now
1 start calling the official story parrots of 911 "911 deniers" of course they are not denying 911 happened at all but that's the same silly label given to you know who. Put them on the defense having to explain away a silly term. "I dont' deny 911 happened I just think it was 19 guys from caves like the TV said.
22 Rick Perry is a cheerleader deep throating corn dogs. And supported Al-Gore a man who'd have us recycle toilet paper.
Ron Paul is a medical doctor and military veteran.
Whose a better choice for president? Well the mass media thinks I'm a prophet Perry deserves more coverage. I'm sick of slick rick. Ron Paul for the long Haul!
3 Communism: when the government admittedly awards the nation's wealth to oligarchs.
Democratic-Republic: when the government also awards the the nation's wealth to oligarchs but tries to lie about it. And also invaded nations under the pretext of stopping communism.
4 Fighting Israeli terrorists is not anti-semitic, protecting them however is psychotic.
5 Israelis are protesting the high cost of housing. But you know their gov does that on purpose in order to create "economic settlers" that is people who move to the racial colonies for financial reasons not ideological. Same as the Russian Jews who fled to Israel during the fall of the USSR.
6 I'm not a Gentile or a Jew I refuse to even acknowledge those superstitious categories. People duped into accepting that have been duped into an "US vs Them" mentality coveted only by those harboring feelings of racial superiority. There is no race of god.
7 God is not a real estate agent nor a dietician nor does it need penis skins. Those are all someone else's perversions and desires.
8 On 911 everyone post War by Deception on the top of their pages, piss off the ADL show them not to mess with us. They can't intimidate us they just piss us off.
9 Dear 911 deniers, listen carefully as I speak very slowly. The Government Lies. Get over it.
10 Turn off your TV turn on your brain
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