The JFK Assasination. Disputing the Official Theory that Lee Harvey Oswald was the “Lone Assassin”

By Dr. Gary G. Kohls

Global Research, November 20, 2013

Below is more documentation putting the lie to the media coverage (and the perpetual cover-up) of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of JFK. The powers-that-be desperately want as many of us viewers as possible to believe the easily disprovable Big Lie Theory that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone crazed assassin of the president on November 22, 1963.

Last week I watched three of PBS’s JFK retrospectives, including Frontline’s  “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?” and the fraudulent pseudoscientific “ballistics special” on NOVA [proudly underwritten by David Koch!]. I also caught some specials on NBC, CBS and ABC, and I was uniformly frustrated (predictably) at the consistency of the propaganda that is being orchestrated to lead us comfortably numb sheeple to nod our heads and agree that the official theories about the assassination were correct. None of the compelling evidence that I list below was allowed to be shown.

During some of the retrospectives that I watched there usually was some denegration of the true patriots who have resisted the brain-washing and independently examined the evidence disproving the official story. These dissenters (who haven’t yet lost the ability to think critically) were just dismissed as “conspiracy theorists”.

The following are some of the important items that disprove the official story line and that were never mentioned on any of the JFK retrospectives that I watched.

1) JFK’s brain or parts of his skull were thrown backwards (out of a large exit wound in the back of the skull) onto the trunk of the limo – which is the reason why Jackie was famously seen on the film footage turning around and reaching backwards. The Secret Service guy testified frequently that Jackie was not reaching for him, but for fragments of JFK’s brain. Again this is more evidence that one of the two head shots that killed JFK came from the front.

Below is the link to the statement of secret service agent Clint Hill (from 1975) saying that Jackie wasn’t reaching out to him, but rather she was reaching to retrieve a chunk of JFK’s brain. (Apparently, according to other interviews that Hill has given, he has also been spouting the easily refutable official story about Oswald being the lone shooter and that there were only 3 audible shots – which contradicts many witnesses who heard up to 6 shots. Hill knows what happens to whistleblowers who tell unwelcome truths that expose government conspiracies.)

Watch this video: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfrHqqzC3Sw

2) Also proving that there was at least one shooter in front of the motorcade, the surgical resident at Parkland Hospital, (Dr Ronald Jones) who was one of the several Parkland Hospital surgeons who attended JFK (all of whom, incidentally, also testified about the existence of the small entrance bullet wound in JFK’s throat), gave testimony on last Sunday’s Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer about the tiny “1/4 inch” entry wound in JFK’s throat (trauma surgeons know that entry wounds are small, and exit wounds are large – like the large blow-out wound at JFK’s right occipital area of the skull, also proving a shot coming from in front of the motorcade).

That small entry wound proves the conspiracy theory (now a “conspiracy fact”) that there was more than one shooter and therefore discredits the Warren Commission’s conclusions about a “lone crazed gunman” and therefore “no conspiracy”.

Check out minute 4 at: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50159338n.

By the way, any good journalist would have asked Dr Jones about the significance of the tiny entrance wound in the front of the neck, but of course Scheiffer is no longer a good journalist. Rather, he is just an average millionaire talking head/anchor man, a mouthpiece of officialdom and a mouthpiece for the powerful multinational mega-corporate owners of the mainstream media who want us to not ask questions, not to rock their boat, to not panic and to not start thinking critically about what we are told to believe. Whomever pays the piper, calls the tune.

3) Thirdly, it is important for citizens who should be exposed to the non-corporate side of the story to consult some of Jim Fetzer’s powerful documented evidence that there was a conspiracy to kill JFK and a conspiracy to cover up the evidence which would have led honest investigators to find and name the conspirators. Indeed much of the available evidence presented in Fetzer’s writings about the assassination may not even have involved Oswald (except as a patsy). Read some of that evidence at http://www.und.edu/org/jfkconference/UNDchapter30.pdf.

It is useful to read what Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren said about the sealed documents that his commission examined. Apparently 50 years of secrecy protecting the identity of the many co-conspirators isn’t long enough. Arlen Specter, George H. W. Bush, the families of Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford and other commission members don’t want to risk being humiliated with the evidence of being involved in the murder or the cover-up.

Now -deceased FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who considered himself above the law, perjured himself in front of the Commission (Warren Commission member congressman Hale Boggs said that Hoover “lied his eyes out”); and Hoover’s loyal FBI “family“, even now, will probably do anything to prevent the release of information exposing Hoover’s involvement in the assassination. (Interestingly, Hoover, a homosexual and a cross-dresser, has no known offspring that would care about the besmirching of his legacy.) Others who want to have the past forgotten forever are the guilty or complicit members of Kennedy’s Secret Service, his Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA who are still alive and prosecutable if their involvement were to be revealed.

Current information says that more than a thousand sealed documents with secret information that only commission members and/or its investigators have seen are due to be released in 2017. Previously the sealed documents were not to be opened until 2039. For more check out: http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/9-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-warren-commission

                        

Earl Warren said:

“There will come a time when testimony taken by the Commission will be made public. But it might not be in your lifetime. There may be some things that would involve security. This would be preserved but not made public.” — Earl Warren

And listen to some 1968 quotes and warnings from comedian and JFK assassination expert Mort Sahl, who was black-listed after JFK’s death when he came out publically disputing the Warren Commission’s “lone assassin” theory:

“Once the neo-fascists became bold enough to slay the President on the street, they showed their hand. They showed how arrogant they had become.”—Mort Sahl

“(America) has to hang on through a period of the military and the CIA who have a blank check trying to sell fascism. If she can hang on long enough, Americans may yet live in the country in which they were born. And that is the country structured by Tom Paine and Tom Jefferson.” – Mort Sahl

“(Fascism in America) started with the death of Roosevelt. They moved in and they negated every treaty we made with every world leader who didn’t fit the fascist/militarist mold.”—Mort Sahl

For more of the transcript of a 1968 interview with Sahl, go to: http://www.assassinationscience.com/AnHistoricalPerspective-MortSahl.html

Amazon to Lawmakers: Keep the Internet Open & Limit Copyright Excesses

• Andy
• November 20, 2013
• copyright

Speaking to members of a U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Courts subcommittee, Amazon’s vice president for global public policy has urged that potential barriers to digital content delivery should be addressed in order to ensure the development of distribution platforms. Exorbitant statutory damage awards for copyright infringement could chill innovation, the executive warned, adding that the Internet should remain a non-discriminatory and open platform to maintain consumer choice.
A hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet has heard opinions from leading content providers and technology advocates on how best to progress online digital distribution.
The Rise of Innovative Business Models: Content Delivery Methods in the Digital Age heard testimony from Amazon, the MPAA, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and PreEmptive Solutions, an anti-piracy and reverse engineering mitigation company.
John McCoskey, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at the Motion Picture Association of America, began with an overview of how video content is currently being consumed. No longer are people simply sat in a theater or in front of a TV.
“Nearly 42 million homes in the United States now have any number of Internet-connected media devices, including game consoles, smart TVs, and online set-top boxes. More than 90 legitimate online services are already enabling those homes to download or stream movies and TV shows, offering a service for every type of content consumer out there,” McCoskey said.
He went on to speak of MPAA member companies embracing portability and flexibility so that viewers can “watch what they want, when they want, where they want.”
This innovation, McCoskey said, is a testament to a robust copyright regime that encourages the creation and delivery of content, adding that working together to crack down on infringement will be of benefit to all.
“We all share a responsibility to curb abusive practices online that stunt investment in content, hurt the rapidly evolving digital marketplace, and harm the interests of consumers who benefit from these innovations. That means finding ways of working together in good faith on voluntary solutions where everyone shares in the responsibility of creating a healthy digital marketplace for the exchange of ideas, goods, and services; one that promotes creativity, investment, innovation, and job creation,” McCoskey explained.
Also speaking at the hearing was Paul Misener, Amazon.com’s Vice President for Global Public Policy. He began with a brief history of his company and how it has developed from an Internet-based distributor of physical goods into one increasingly supplying digital products online.
“The content is the same, of course: digital bits that, once delivered, various electronic devices can convert into text, sounds, and images. And so our digital delivery business today is a natural continuation of our origins as a place where customers can find and discover content they want to buy online,” Misener said.
In common with the MPAA, Misener said that Amazon also recognizes the importance of supplying content for consumption on a wide range of platforms, but unlike their movie industry counterparts the company had a warning concerning unnecessarily tough copyright law and punishing damages for infringement.
“The risk of exorbitant statutory damage awards that the current system allows could chill the development of new products and services designed to help consumers enjoy copyrighted works,” Misener said.
“It may make sense to limit the availability of statutory damages in certain situations, such as where the defendant acted with a good faith belief that its use of copyrighted works was non-infringing or fair, or where the outcome turns on a novel question of law.”
After noting that digital music distributors have to negotiate a tough path to offering official content due to the lack of centralized information on music creators/publishers and no system for blanket licensing, Misener moved onto perhaps the most important issue of all – the preservation of the Internet itself.
“Continued growth and innovation in digital content delivery assumes that the Internet will remain a non-discriminatory, open platform, where bits are bits and arbitrary limits do not
inhibit consumer access to content. Consumer choice, without impairment, must be preserved,” Misener concluded.
The importance of giving customers what they want was later underlined by David Sohn, General Counsel and Director at the Center for Democracy & Technology. The success of iTunes proves that it is indeed possible to “compete with free” as long as services offer great choice and are easy to use. Failure to do so, Sohn said, can result in consumers making other choices.
“If lawful services fail to give consumers what they want, when they want it, unlawful sources will be out there, waiting to fill the gaps and satisfy the unmet demand.
“In a world in which information technology has made incredibly powerful tools for copying and disseminating data cheap and ubiquitous, no amount of wishing and no enforcement strategy will be able to fully eliminate unlawful sources of copyrighted material,” Sohn warned.
When considering reform of copyright law, Sohn said that Congress should keep in mind that the best defense against widespread infringement is via a “robust and evolving content marketplace” that satisfies consumer demand via convenient and attractive alternatives to piracy.
The key to that, he said, is by recognizing the importance of existing innovation-boosting elements in current law – the safe-harbor provisions of the DMCA, the “Sony doctrine” concerning products with substantial non-infringing uses, and fair use.
“Continued innovation and development in the online content marketplace would suffer greatly if Congress were to narrow or otherwise undermine any of these three legal principles,” Sohn said.
With technology companies and advocates recommending a softening of statutory damages while maintaining safe harbor and the expansion of fair use, the MPAA and other entertainment companies are again finding themselves at odds with their potential distribution partners. Bridging that gap will be an important challenge in the months and years to come.

NSA Worked Out Deal With GCHQ To Spy On UK Citizens, Secretly Expanded It

from the funny-how-that-works dept

Early on in the Snowden leaks, it became clear that the NSA and its UK equivalent, GCHQ, had a very close relationship, sharing lots of data with each other. We noted a convenient potential byproduct of this collaboration: while, technically speaking, NSA isn't supposed to spy on Americans and GCHQ isn't supposed to spy in UK citizens, if they spy on the others' citizens and then share the results, they can get around that loophole. In response to that, the NSA, GCHQ and the three other signals intelligence agencies that make up the so-called "Five Eyes" surveillance collaboration between the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, suggested that they had "minimization" procedures in place not to actually spy on "non-target" citizens of each members' countries.

But, of course, that's not what's actually happening. The latest Snowden document published by The Guardian reveals two important, but related things. First, the GCHQ and the NSA worked out a deal to let the NSA spy much more broadly on UK citizens, allowing them to build a database of previously "restricted" materials on UK citizens. Second, the NSA appears to have taken this small opening by the GCHQ to spy on the UK citizens under certain circumstances and massively expanded it, without telling GCHQ. First, the NSA and GCHQ decreased the rules for "minimization" on "incidentally collected" information, allowing it to be "unminimized" (which most people would call "maximized"), in 2007. Basically, the GCHQ allowed the NSA to do pattern analysis on all that data from UK persons, which had previously been off limits. The idea was to try to piece together connections to suspected terrorists, drug dealers and criminals. Technically, the new "agreement" barred targeting UK citizens to look at the content of their communications. However, as another revealed memo also shows, the NSA took this small opening to conclude that it can basically surf through GCHQ data at will -- something it purposely chose not to inform GCHQ about -- so long as it was good for the US.

The document, titled 'Collection, Processing and Dissemination of Allied Communications', has separate classifications from paragraph to paragraph. Some are cleared to be shared with America's allies, while others – marked "NF", for No Foreign – are to be kept strictly within the agency. The NSA refers to its Five-Eyes partners as "second party" countries.

The memo states that the Five-Eyes agreement "has evolved to include a common understanding that both governments will not target each other's citizens/persons".

But the next sentence – classified as not to be shared with foreign partners – states that governments "reserved the right" to conduct intelligence operations against each other's citizens "when it is in the best interests of each nation".

"Therefore," the draft memo continues, "under certain circumstances, it may be advisable and allowable to target second party persons and second party communications systems unilaterally, when it is in the best interests of the US and necessary for US national security."

Basically, GCHQ agreed to share more data on UK persons under the understanding that it wouldn't be abused, and the NSA took the opportunity to tell NSA folks "feel free to abuse it" so long as you can claim "it's in the best interests of the US." And they didn't let anyone in the UK know about that part. In other parts of the document -- which are shared with the Five Eyes partners, the NSA makes it sound like it will work collaboratively with those agencies when it comes up with important terrorist/criminal information.

Of course, you also have to assume that this original deal was not one-sided. It almost certainly involved the NSA telling GCHQ that it could also collect data and "unminimize" information it collected on US persons as well. And, it wouldn't be surprising to find out that the GCHQ has similar procedures in place that give it "for the good of the UK" exceptions to whatever limits the NSA tried to place on such data.

LG Smart TV Caught Collecting Data On Files Stored On Connected USB Drives

from the if-you-give-a-TV-an-internet-connection... dept

The growing presence of "smart" devices, each one requiring a connection to the outside world, is a bit alarming (Samsung TV zero day exploit, anyone?). The territory still remains largely uncharted and device manufacturers are still pretty much free to decide just how much data these devices will cough up when phoning home.

A blogger (and developer and Linux enthusiast) going by the name of DoctorBeet noticed his newly-purchased LG Smart TV was displaying ads on the "home" screen. He dug around and found more info on an LG corporate page that described the process in cheery let's-sell-some-ads tones.

LG Smart Ad analyses users favourite programs, online behaviour, search keywords and other information to offer relevant ads to target audiences. For example, LG Smart Ad can feature sharp suits to men, or alluring cosmetics and fragrances to women.

The endearingly sexist sales pitch attempting to sell other pitchmen on LG's "smart" ad platform/TV makes it pretty clear that LG's TV is very interested in any "interactions" you have with your device.

What the sales pitch failed to make clear is that LG will be grabbing this behavioral data no matter what.

In fact, there is an option in the system settings called "Collection of watching info:" which is set ON by default. This setting requires the user to scroll down to see it and, unlike most other settings, contains no "balloon help" to describe what it does...

At this point, I decided to do some traffic analysis to see what was being sent. It turns out that viewing information appears to be being sent regardless of whether this option is set to On or Off.

Not only was LG sucking up viewer data, it was sending the data on each interaction completely unencrypted. This isn't necessarily a huge problem if the data collection was limited to the channel watched and for what length of time. But as the increasingly creepy sales pitch above points out, LG also wants "search keywords" and a potentially unlimited amount of "other information."

At this point, LG already has a bit of privacy problem. Sending data on channel selection is one thing. Collecting and sending unencrypted web data like search terms is quite another. And it gets even worse.

It was at this point, I made an even more disturbing find within the packet data dumps. I noticed filenames were being posted to LG's servers and that these filenames were ones stored on my external USB hard drive.

DoctorBeet tested his hunch by mocking up an .avi file that would be immediately distinguishable from any other "normal" traffic. Plugging in a USB stick with the bait (Midget_Porn_2013.avi) into his TV, DoctorBeet soon saw data on his faux porn headed to LG's servers in unencrypted plain text. DoctorBeet (and his shocked wife) also watched his children's names being harvested from the file name of a Christmas video located on another connected drive. [Click picture to open a full size version in another tab.]


The implications of this data collection are huge. As DoctorBeet points out, it's simply an invasion of privacy at best. Who knows what ads LG might serve when faced with a hard drive full of porn? Who knows what it might do if it goes trolling through media files at the behest of publishers, studios and labels? It's not tough to imagine a scenario where "connected" files become bricked because of a perceived lack of license. As we've seen before, companies are seeking to patent methods of utilizing connected devices (like the now-mandatory Xbox "camera") to determine who's enjoying what content for ad-serving purposes/licensing fee extraction.

If nothing else, a "smart" TV shouldn't be gathering, much less sending, file data back home from customers' non-LG devices. The fact that LG does this in unencrypted form is also troubling. The fact that LG does this even when you specifically tell it not to is the sort of thing that becomes the basis for a class action lawsuit.

LG's pass-the-buck response to DoctorBeet's complaints makes everything so much worse.

Thank you for your e-mail.

Further to our previous email to yourself, we have escalated the issues you reported to LG's UK Head Office.

The advice we have been given is that unfortunately as you accepted the Terms and Conditions on your TV, your concerns would be best directed to the retailer. We understand you feel you should have been made aware of these T's and C's at the point of sale, and for obvious reasons LG are unable to pass comment on their actions.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause you. If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us again.

Kind Regards

Tom

LG Electronics UK Helpdesk
Tel: 0844 847 5454
Fax: 01480 274 000
Email: cic.uk@lge.com

In other words:

"Sorry" if you misunderstood the Terms and Conditions you were compelled to accept if you wanted to use your new purchase. "Sorry" these same terms and conditions nullified your preferences on sending data without your permission. Oh, and by the way, not our fault -- the helpful people with the name tags at your local electronics store should have been intimately familiar with the Terms and Conditions of our entire product line and ensured that potential customers knew they were purchasing a SPY TV rather than a SMART TV.

If you have any other questions about our intrusive data collections, please don't hesitate to fuck off and die.

LG's representation may not care (at the moment) whether DoctorBeet feels LG's watching him more than he's watching its TV, but as this story continues to spread across the internet, I would imagine its tune will change. And when that changes, hopefully it will alter the Terms and Conditions as well.

People don't implicitly surrender their privacy when they attach a "smart" device to the internet. There are responsible ways to collect data and responsible ways to protect this data and, from what's being shown here, LG is doing neither.

Massive Pentagon Waste, Fraud and Grand Theft

By Stephen Lendman

Global Research, November 20, 2013

Region: USA

Theme: Global Economy

Longstanding Pentagon operations reflect a black hole of unaccountability. Reuters published a two-part report. In July, it discussed the Defense Department’s “payroll quagmire.”
It’s bureaucracy is stifling. It’s “unyielding,” said Reuters. Active duty and retired military personal are routinely cheated. Pay errors are widespread.
Correcting “or just explaining them can test even the most persistent soldiers.” Weeks or months pass without resolution.
Some personnel are cheated on pay. Others are penalized for overpayments. Their earnings are “drastically cut” unfairly. Precise figures are impossible to calculate.
At issue is “the Defense Department’s jury-rigged network of mostly incompatible computer systems for payroll and accounting, many of them decades old, long obsolete, and unable to communicate with each other,” said Reuters.
“The Defense Finance and Accounting Services (DFAS) still uses a half-century-old computer language that is largely unable to communicate with the equally outmoded personnel management systems employed by each of the military services.”
A December 2012 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report revealed unaccountable accounting. No way exists to assure correct amounts are paid. Errors can’t be tracked.
Pentagon accounting reflects epic failure. Nothing is done “to keep track of its money,” said Reuters.
US law requires annual audits of all federal agencies. The Pentagon alone never complied. It’s accounting is in too disarray to do so. It remains unaccountable.
In May 2012, then Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said:

“DOD, I’m sorry to say, is the only major federal agency that cannot pass an audit today.”

It bears repeating. It’s a black hole of unaccountability. It literally wastes trillions of dollars.
It uses about 2,200 error-prone computer systems. Billions of dollars are spent operating them. They manage finances, human resources, logistics, property, and weapons acquisitions. According to former Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England:
“There are thousands and thousands of systems. I’m not sure anybody knows how many there are” or how many are in use.
The Pentagon is the world’s largest property owner. It has more than 5,000 sites in 41 countries.
It’s the world’s largest polluter. It’s exempt from environmental regulations and wildlife treaties.
It poisons the earth. Its desecration is virtually unreported. It’s responsible for genocide and ecocide.
It’s destroying the planet’s ability to sustain life. It spends trillions of dollars doing so.
On November 18, Reuters headlined ”Behind the Pentagon’s doctored ledgers, a running tally of epic waste.”
Since 1996, DOD was never held accountable for $8.5 trillion. On September 10, 2001, then Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said:
“According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.” At issue is massive waste, fraud and abuse.
Sweetheart deals, bribes and kickbacks are commonplace. So is routine over-billing. Unaccountability is standard practice.
Jeff St. Clair’s book titled “Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Corruption and Profiteering in the War on Terror” exposed massive corruption and warprofiteering.
DOD has a virtual blank check. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Bechtel, Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, Blackwater USA (now ACADEMI), and other Pentagon favorites cash in hugely.
They do it at taxpayers’ expense. They sacrifice peace, equity and justice in the process.
From White House and Pentagon war rooms to warprofiteer board rooms, “Grand Theft Pentagon” explains America’s out-of-control imperial agenda. War on humanity reflects it.
Trillions of dollars are spent waging it. According to Reuters, DFAS fudged accounts reflect standard practice.

“Former military service officials say record-keeping at the operational level throughout the services is rife with made-up numbers to cover lost or missing information.”

Warnings are systematically ignored. According to GOA’s December 2011 report:
Unaccountable accounting “without documentation (masks) much larger problems.”
DOD “chronic(ally) fail(s) to keep track of its money – how much it has, how much it pays out, and how much is wasted or stolen,” said Reuters.
It’s entire record keeping system is dysfunctional. Nothing effective is done to fix it.
Pay errors reflect a small portion of huge sums “annually disappear(ing) into (DOD’s) vast bureaucracy.”

“(T)he Pentagon is largely incapable of keeping track of its vast stores of weapons, ammunition and other supplies.”

It spends huge amounts on more of what’s not needed. It amassed a half trillion dollar plus backlog of unaudited vendor contracts.
How much is spent for goods and services isn’t known. Operations are rife with waste and fraud. Abuses go undiscovered for years. Accountability is entirely lacking.
DOD can’t “tally its accounts,” said Reuters. Congressional 2009 legislation requires annual DOD audits by 2017. Reuters said DOD won’t meet its deadline.
“The main reason is rooted in the Pentagon’s continuing reliance on a tangle of thousands of disparate, obsolete, largely incompatible accounting and business-management systems.”
Many date from the 1970s. They use outmoded computer languages on old mainframes.
They use antiquated file systems. It’s nearly impossible to search for data. What’s gotten is “corrupted and erroneous.” According to a former defense official:

“It’s like if every electrical socket in the Pentagon had a different shape and voltage.”

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates called DOD operations “an amalgam of fiefdoms without centralized mechanisms to allocate resources, track expenditures, and measure results.”
“My staff and I learned that it was nearly impossible to get accurate information and answers to questions such as ‘How much money did you spend’ and ‘How many people do you have?’ ”
Tens of billions of dollars were spent upgrading systems. Many new ones failed. They were scrapped altogether. Doing so compounded waste.
DOD’s mess is its own making. Unaccountability lets massive waste, fraud and abuse persist. According to Reuters:

“The secretary of defense’s office and the heads of the military and DFAS have for years knowingly signed off on false entries.”

Congress largely ignores abusive practices. A single DFAS Columbus, Ohio office “made at least $1.59 trillion – yes, trillion – in errors in financial reports for the Air Force in 2009,” said Reuters.
“Those amounts far exceeded the Air Force’s total budget for that year” and then some.
Dysfunctional Pentagon accounting is reflected in Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) operations.
It buys, stores and ships Pentagon supplies. They range from aircraft parts to uniform zippers. “It has way too much stuff,” said Reuters.
It pays way too much for it. According to DLA  process and planning directorate head Sonya Gish, no system tracks whether vast quantities of supplies received are put in correct bins.
Failure to do so makes inventorying them impossible. Nothing is done to track or estimate employee theft losses.
In 2004, the Pentagon was mandated to begin using a modern labeling system. Doing so would enable knowing what supplies are available in what amounts for what service branch.
“To date,” said Reuters, “DLA ignored the directive.” Deputy distribution director William Budden said doing so would exceed benefits. DLA’s existing systems are adequate, he claimed. Evidence shows otherwise.
Many obsolete weapons and munitions remain in inventory. Ammunition manager Keith Byers said they sit year after year because “it’s cheaper for the military to store (them).”

“What’s counterproductive is that what you’re looking at (are) stocks that are going to be destroyed eventually anyway.”

Older headline-grabbing reports focused on $600 toilet seats and $7,600 coffee makers, etc. They’re minor compared to countless billions wasted, stolen or otherwise disappeared.
Many billions more were wasted on dysfunctional computer systems. In the last decade alone, DOD spent trillions of dollars for goods and services. According to Reuters:

“How much of that money is wasted in overpayments to contractors, or was never spent and never remitted to the Treasury, is a mystery.”

“Spotty monitoring of contracts is one reason Pentagon personnel and contractors are able to siphon off taxpayer dollars through fraud and theft – amounting to billions of dollars in losses, according to numerous GAO reports.”

“In many cases, perpetrators were caught only after outside law-enforcement agencies stumbled onto them, or outsiders brought them to the attention of prosecutors.”

A footnote in the Navy’s 2012 financial report “acknowledge(d) that it has a material internal control weakness in that it does not reconcile its” numbers with the Treasury’s.
It claims it’s working to correct the problem. It’s longstanding. It persists.
Congressional budget debates largely ignore massive Pentagon waste, fraud and abuse. Lip service at most is paid to it.
Advancing America’s imperium matters most. Pedal-to-the-metal unaudited spending continues out-of-control.

Fake Employment Numbers – And 5 More Massive Economic Lies The Government Is Telling You

By Michael Snyder, on November 19th, 2013

According to a whistleblower that has recently come forward, Census employees have been faking and manipulating U.S. employment numbers for years.  In fact, it is being alleged that this manipulation was a significant reason for why the official unemployment rate dipped sharply just before the last presidential election.  What you are about to read is incredibly disturbing.  The numbers that the American people depend upon to make important decisions are being faked.  But should we be surprised by this?  After all, Barack Obama has been caught telling dozens of major lies over the past five years.  At this point it is incredible that there are any Americans that still trust anything that comes out of his mouth.  And of course it is not just Obama that has been lying to us.  Corruption and deception are rampant throughout the entire federal government, and this has been the case for years.  Now that some light is being shed on this, hopefully the American people will respond with overwhelming outrage and disgust.
The whistleblower that I mentioned above has been speaking to John Crudele of the New York Post.  In his new article entitled "Census ‘faked’ 2012 election jobs report", he says that the huge decline in the unemployment rate in September 2012 was "manipulated"...

In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington.
The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.

Two years earlier, the Census had actually caught an employee "fabricating data", but according to this whistleblower the corruption at the Census Bureau goes much deeper than that...

And a knowledgeable source says the deception went beyond that one employee — that it escalated at the time President Obama was seeking reelection in 2012 and continues today.
“He’s not the only one,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous for now but is willing to talk with the Labor Department and Congress if asked.
The Census employee caught faking the results is Julius Buckmon, according to confidential Census documents obtained by The Post. Buckmon told me in an interview this past weekend that he was told to make up information by higher-ups at Census.

Well, is it really such a big deal that some of the unemployment numbers were faked?
After all, hasn't the unemployment rate been consistently going down anyway?
Unfortunately, as you will see below, that is simply not the case.  The following are five massive economic lies that the government has been telling  you...
"The Unemployment Rate Has Been Steadily Going Down"
According to the official government numbers, the U.S. unemployment rate has fallen all the way down to 7.3 percent.
That sounds really good, and it would seem to imply that a higher percentage of the American people are now working.
Sadly, that is not the truth at all.
Posted below is one of my favorite charts.  The employment-population ratio measures the percentage of the working age population that actually has a job.  As you can see, this number fell dramatically during the last recession and since the end of 2009 it has remained remarkably flat.  In fact, it has stayed between 58 and 59 percent for 50 months in a row...

At the moment, the employment-population ratio is just one-tenth of one percent above the lowest level that it has been throughout this entire crisis.
So are we in an "employment recovery"?
Absolutely not, and anyone that tries to tell you that is lying to you.
So how is the government getting the unemployment rate to go down?
Well, they are accomplishing this by pretending that millions upon millions of unemployed Americans have disappeared from the labor force.
According to the government, the percentage of Americans that want to work is now supposedly at a 35 year low...

If the labor force participation rate was still exactly where it was at when Barack Obama was first elected in 2008, the official unemployment rate would be about 11 percent right now.  People would be running around going crazy and wondering when the "economic depression" would finally end.
But when people hear "7.3 percent", that doesn't sound so bad.  It makes people feel better.
Of course if you are currently unemployed and looking for a job that doesn't exactly help you.  At this point there is intense competition even for minimum wage jobs in America.  For example, according to Business Insider you actually have a better statistical chance of getting into Harvard than you do of being hired at a new Wal-Mart that is opening up in the Washington D.C. area...

The store is currently combing through more than 23,000 applications for 600 available positions, reports NBC Washington.

That means that Wal-Mart will be able to hire one person for every 38 applications it receives — i.e., just 2.6% of applicants will walk out with a job.

That's more difficult than getting into Harvard. The Ivy League university accepts 6.1% of applicants.

"Inflation Is Low"
This is another lie that government officials love to tell.  In particular, the boys and girls over at the Federal Reserve love to try to convince all of us that inflation is super low because it gives them an excuse to recklessly print lots more money.
But anyone that goes to the grocery store or pays bills on a regular basis knows that there is plenty of inflation in the economy.  And if we were being given honest numbers, they would show that.
According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if the U.S. inflation rate was still calculated the exact same way that it was back when Jimmy Carter was president, the official rate of inflation would be somewhere between 8 and 10 percent today.
But the Federal Reserve certainly doesn't want everyone running around talking about "Jimmy Carter" and "stagflation" because then people would really start pressuring them to end their wild money printing schemes.
And without a doubt, what the Fed is doing is absolutely insane.  The chart posted below shows that the M1 money supply has nearly doubled since the beginning of 2008...

"Quantitative Easing Is Economic Stimulus"
How many times have you heard the mainstream media tell you something along these lines...

"The Federal Reserve decided today that the economic stimulus must continue."

There is just one thing wrong with that statement.
As I showed in a previous article, it is a total hoax.
In fact, a former Federal Reserve official that helped manage the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing program during 2009 and 2010 is publicly apologizing to the rest of the country for being involved in "the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time"...

I can only say: I'm sorry, America. As a former Federal Reserve official, I was responsible for executing the centerpiece program of the Fed's first plunge into the bond-buying experiment known as quantitative easing. The central bank continues to spin QE as a tool for helping Main Street. But I've come to recognize the program for what it really is: the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.

Yes, quantitative easing has most certainly helped Wall Street (at least temporarily).
Meanwhile, median household income in the U.S. has fallen for five years in a row.
Meanwhile, the federal government is now spending nearly a trillion dollars a year on welfare.
Meanwhile, 1.2 million students that attend public schools in America are now homeless.  In fact, that number has risen by 72 percent since the start of the last recession.
"Obamacare Is Going To Be Good For Middle Class Americans"
There were three giant promises that were used to sell Obamacare to the American people...
#1 We would all be able to keep our current health insurance plans.
#2 Millions more Americans were going to be covered by health insurance.
#3 Most Americans would be paying lower health insurance premiums.
Well, it turns out that all of them were lies.
At this point, approximately 4 million Americans have already had their health insurance plans canceled due to Obamacare, and according to Forbes that number could ultimately reach 93 million.
And so far only about 100,000 Americans have actually signed up for Obamacare, so that means that the number of Americans with health insurance has dropped by about 3.9 million since the beginning of October.
Good job Obama.
Meanwhile, Americans all over the country are being hit with a massive case of sticker shock as they start to realize what Obamacare is going to do to their wallets.
According to one study, health insurance premiums for men are going to go up by an average of 99 percent under Obamacare and health insurance premiums for women are going to go up by an average of 62 percent under Obamacare.
And if you are a young man, you are going to get hit particularly hard.  At this point, it is being projected that health insurance premiums for healthy 30-year-old men will rise by an average of 260 percent.
But you don't have to be young to pay higher premiums.  As I mentioned the other day, one couple down in Texas was recently hit with a 539 percent rate increase.
"The U.S. National Debt Is Under Control"
The mainstream media would have us believe that the budget deficit is now under control and the U.S. national debt is not a significant problem any longer.
But that is not the truth.
The truth is that we are on pace to accumulate more new debt under the 8 years of the Obama administration than we did under all of the other presidents in all of U.S. history combined.
Every single hour of every single day, our politicians are stealing about $100,000,000 from future generations of Americans.  It is a crime so vast that it is hard to put into words, and it is literally destroying the economic future of this country.
Over the last 13 and a half months, the U.S. national debt has increased by more than 1.12 trillion dollars.
If you were alive when Jesus Christ was born and you had spent a million dollars every single day since then, you still would not have spent that much money by now.
And most Americans don't realize this, but the U.S. government must borrow far more than a trillion dollars each year.  Trillions more in existing debt must be "rolled over" just to keep the game going.
For example, the U.S. government rolled over more than 7.5 trillion dollars of existing debt in fiscal 2013.
So what is going to happen someday when the rest of the world pulls out and stops lending us trillions of dollars at ridiculously low interest rates that are way below the real rate of inflation?
Our financial system is far more vulnerable than we are being told.  We are in the terminal phase of the greatest debt bubble in the history of the planet, and when this bubble bursts it is going to be an absolutely spectacular disaster.
Please don't believe the mainstream media or the politicians when they promise you that everything is going to be okay.

A Higher Wage Is Possible

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November 19, 2013

|

Catherine Ruetschlin,

Amy Traub

American workers are working harder for less, with productivity rising but living standards stagnant or declining.¹ At the same time, stock market wealth and incomes for the highest-paid Americans have risen.² Against this backdrop, the pay practices of the nation’s largest private employer have come under increased scrutiny. Walmart, with 1.3 million U.S. employees and $17 billion in annual profits, sets standards for all other retailers and across the supply chain of one of the nation’s fastest growing industries.³ Walmart’s practices impact the public sector and taxpayers as well when employees earn too little to meet their needs and require public assistance.⁴ Finally, Walmart is a leader in promoting an employment model in which workers earn too little to generate the consumer demand that supports hiring and would lead to economic recovery. In the last year, Walmart employees themselves have been increasingly vocal in protesting their low pay. Since the last holiday season, Walmart employees in stores throughout the country have repeatedly spoken out in pursuit of a modest wage goal: the equivalent of $25,000 a year in wages for a full-time employee.

KEY POINTS

• Walmart workers and a growing number of community supporters are taking a stand this holiday season, calling for wage increases and sufficient hours on the job to earn the modest income of $25,000 a year. This brief explores one way to pay for raises.
• Walmart spent $7.6 billion last year to buy back shares of its own stock. The buybacks did nothing to boost Walmart’s productivity or bottom line. If these funds were redirected to Walmart’s low-wage workers, they would each see a raise of $5.83 an hour.
• Curtailing share buybacks would not damage the company’s competitiveness or raise prices for consumers.
• If Walmart redirected its current spending to invest in its workforce, the benefits would extend to all stake-holders in the company—customers, stockholders, taxpayers, employees and their families—and the economy as a whole.

Now as another holiday season approaches, this research brief considers one way Walmart could meet the wage target its employees are calling for— without raising prices. We find that if Walmart redirected the $7.6 billion it spends annually on repurchases of its own company stock, these funds could be used to give Walmart’s low-paid workers a raise of $5.83 an hour, more than enough to ensure that all Walmart workers are paid a wage equivalent to at least $25,000 a year for full-time work.⁵ Curtailing share buybacks would not harm the company’s retail competitiveness or raise prices for consumers. In fact, some retail analysts have argued that by providing a substantial investment in the company’s front-line workforce, higher pay could be expected to improve employee productivity and morale while reducing Walmart’s expenses related to employee turnover.⁶ With more money in their wallets, Walmart employees would likely spend a portion of the cash at Walmart itself, boosting the company’s sales. Sales might also increase as customers benefit from an improved shopping environment.⁷

In Demos’ prior study, Retail’s Hidden Potential: How Raising Wages Would Benefit Workers, the Industry and the Overall Economy, we found that increasing pay for low-wage workers at America’s largest retailers would also have benefits for the economy as a whole, reducing poverty, boosting economic growth, and creating over 100,000 jobs. While the impact of raising wages at a single company—even one as large and central as Walmart—would have a much smaller impact, similar benefits could be ex- pected from a wage increase: the economy would gain from the addition of economy-supporting jobs, taxpayers would pay less to subsidize Walmart’s low- wage business model, and the company would no longer be the leading example of inequality in an economy being rapidly undermined by the shrinking middle class and lack of purchasing power. Significantly, these gains could be attained without any impact on Walmart’s low prices.

See the Full Report Here

American workers are working harder for less, with productivity rising but living standards stagnant or declining. At the same time, stock market wealth and incomes for the highest-paid Americans have risen. Against this backdrop, the pay practices of the nation’s largest private employer have come under increased scrutiny. 

Walmart, with over 1.3 million U.S. employees and $17 billion in annual profits, sets standards for all other retailers and across the supply chain of one of the nation’s fastest growing industries.

In the last year, Walmart employees themselves have been increasingly vocal in protesting their low pay. Since the last holiday season, Walmart employees in stores throughout the country have repeatedly spoken out in pursuit of a modest wage goal: the equivalent of $25,000 a year in wages for a full-time employee.

Now as another holiday season approaches, this research brief considers one way Walmart could meet the wage target its employees are calling for—without raising prices.http://www.demos.org/walmart-can-give-its-low-wage-workforce-raise

NSA Memo Shows Unlimited Access To Bulk Records Unnecessary To Keep US Safe From Terrorists

from the but,-of-course,-the-program-must-not-be-restricted-in-any-way dept

The DNI's recent document dump has sprung loose an April 2009 "notification memorandum" from the NSA, which provides updates on its "end-to-end" reviews of both the Section 215 (phone metadata) and the Section 402 (email metadata) bulk records collections. As was noted in earlier posts, both programs were suspended by the FISA court because of the NSA's routine abuse FISA Act limitations.

The declassified document is addressed to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). There's no indication this information was also disseminated to the House Intelligence Committee, but perhaps that will surface in the future. The memo spends a few introductory paragraphs detailing the efforts the NSA has made to clean up its act before delving into more interesting details -- including the limitations placed on the Section 215 collection by the Judge Walton, as well as a new problem it uncovered during its 60-day "end-to-end" reviews.

Here are the rules the NSA was forced to comply with under Walton's court order.

Since the March 5, 2009 FISA Court order, the Court's approval has been required for each selector before it is tasked for BR FISA metadata analysis. On Mar 21 NSA resumed manual access to BR FISA metadata, allowing chaining [redacted] of FISA Court-approved selectors associated with [redacted] following multiple operational and technical reviews to ensure compliance.

This explains ODNI counsel Robert Litt's hesitancy to store metadata at a "neutral site." To do so would mean returning to 2009's restrictions -- which were brought on by the agency's own malfeasance. Utilizing a neutral site would likely mean the FISA court would be approving selectors rather than granting permission for rolling, 90-day collections of all phone records.

Also of note is how few court-approved selectors there were at that point.

A limited number of NSA analysts are now performing manual queries against 209 FISA Court-approved high-priority selectors daily…

Once again, hauling in millions of phone records seems like overkill. Since the agency has had (serious) trouble with adhering to the RAS (reasonable articulable suspicion) requirement, it would make more sense to return to this limitation if the Section 215 program is to remain running. With two bulk data programs suspended or significantly altered between 2009-2010, the US still somehow managed to avoid being overrun with terrorist attacks. If the program can't be eliminated, at the very least, it should return to this more minimal standard -- seeking court approval for RAS-compliant selectors and searching offsite, rather than simply amassing millions of non-relevant phone records.

Further down, more incidents of data abuse/misuse are detailed, this time at the hands of other agencies which were given access to the metadata collections

[Redacted; presumably includes a start date] NSA and DIA entered into a pilot program which allowed the DlA's Joint Intelligence Task Force - Combating Terrorism (JITF-CT) access to counterterrorism-related SIGINT information, including SIGINT collected pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court's (FISC) [redacted] . Access to this FISA data was controlled and was limited to JITF-CT who had undergone training on the application of NSA minimization procedures to the FISA data and who were subject to NSA oversight of their activities. Moreover, these personnel were required to coordinate with NSA regarding dissemination of the information outside of JITF-CT.

The NSA made these Task Force members "employees" in order to grant them the privileges needed to access the metadata collection in its unminimized form. While conducting a review of its systems in 2008, the NSA found that one database (name redacted in memo) "lacked sufficient controls." The database was shut down and resurrected with "correct" controls implemented. Unfortunately, it was this "uncontrolled" database that its new honorary employees had access to. The NSA revoked Task Force members' access to the databases but was unable to determine explicitly whether any sort of unauthorized access had occurred.

Instead of presenting a possible worst-case scenario, the agency memo delivers this powerful statement of (misplaced) faith.

[A sentence and half worth of redacted text] there is no way to determine whether, in fact, JITF-CT analysts accessed it without authorization. However, even if such access occurred, the analysts were trained in routine minimization procedures and were required to coordinate with NSA regarding dissemination of information outside JITF-CT…

Of course. Because the training and minimization procedures have always prevented actual NSA employees from abusing the bulk records collections.

This isn't the only case of problematic shared access. Another agency is discussed in a heavily-redacted paragraph. This unnamed agency was given access to unminimized X-KEYSCORE SIGINT data. Among the other unredacted sentences is one stating that this access is "predicated" on the principle that "collaboration is essential" to prevent terrorist attacks. Whichever agency is not being named here doesn't seem to have held up its end of the bargain, which resulted in the (perhaps temporary) suspension of its access to the data.

On review of this access NSA is considering whether allowing this [redacted] access to unminimized SIGINT collection fully complies with NSA procedures.

Whether or not that access has been returned is still open for debate considering the agency's name has been hidden away under the black and turquoise [!?] ink. What isn't open to debate is the fact that the NSA continues to struggle with handling its data collections responsibly. As more documents are pried loose thanks to the ACLU and EFF's efforts, I'm sure we'll see even more evidence that the agency isn't nearly as careful as its defenders assert it is. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131119/13573025294/nsa-memo-shows-unlimited-access-to-bulk-records-unnecessary-to-keep-us-safe-terrorists.shtml

THE PHILIPPINE TYPHOON, WEATHER WAR, AND THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW PLAYBOOK?

November 20, 2013 By Joseph P. Farrell

Mr. D.W. in the United Kingdom sent the following article to me, and many of you sent similar articles. Apparently we were all thinking the same thing: something “smells,” something is not quite right, with the typhoon in the Philippines and all the resulting human suffering there. In fact, when this occurred, I was searching the internet looking for articles when my email inbox started getting articles being sent from many of you… another strange testament to the fact that the internet revolution is also spurring people to question the spin of major “approved” media outlets.
Did the Philippines Become a Target of Weather Weapons?
As most readers here are aware, I’ve been in the camp of those who are suspicious that the tsunami and earthquake that led to the Fukushima-Tepko disaster in Japan may have been the product of sophisticated geo-weaponry, weather weapons or both. In that instance, I’ve argued that the Fukushima disaster, if viewed for the sake of argument that it was an engineered disaster, evidences the emergence of a new playbook by the western financial and technocratic oligarchs. Consider the elements of the recipe: (1) a foreign government that looked like it was beginning to stray off the reservation (recall the quiet overtures about state visits of the Japanese Emperor to China, and the Japanese request to the USA to close its base on Okinawa, long a festering sore in Japanese-American relations); (2) a sharp “warning” (basically a threat) delivered by the USA from then Defense Secretary Robert Gates to the Japanese government that if they continued on that course, there would be unimagineable consequences; and finally (3) the tsunami and earthquake, and the equally suspicious meltdowns of the Tepko nuclear reactors (not to mention, the suspicious indicators that the Japanese may have been up to far more than generating power with those reactors).
Then as this was taking place, former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the Bush I administration, Catherine Austin Fitts, indicated to me and to others during radio interviews, that there was suspicious sell-off activity in the bond markets in southeast Asia… with no apparent reason on any conventional scheme of financial analysis for the sell off…. until a week later when the Indonesian tsunami hit.
Now, with the Philippines, we may have another indicator that a new playbook is in the making, for note that the article indicates that the US “pivot to the Pacific” in response to growing Chinese power in the region, would inevitably involve a renewal and upgrade of American ties to the Philippines. Note that the article clearly indicates there was opposition within the Philippine government, not only to the plan but also to planned US strikes against Syria. Then there’s this, which I think is a clear indicator of a new meme being developed for the “playbook:”

“In August of 2013, while the situation in Syria was reaching a boiling point over false chemical weapons allegations, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel met with Filipino President Benigno Aquino to discuss the expansion of the U.S. military in the Philippines. The Obama administration had already been negotiating a deal to secure space for the US military to conduct military maneuvers at several locations in the area. This military deal was met with harsh backlash from the public as Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin of the Philippines was looking to finalize the deal:
“We’d want them near disaster-prone areas so they can help out if problems occur“.(Emphasis in the original)

In other words, “we need military bases in your country in order to be able to help you quickly with aid and assistance in case a natural disaster occurs.” And oh, by the way, here’s a “natural” disaster for you, just to reinforce the point. I strongly suspect this is the new meme, the new playbook, and of course, weather weapons, geo-engineering weapons, both afford the perfect platform for plausible deniability, especially since most of the public still thinks such horrendous weapons are the impossible stuff of the wildest science fiction, rather than a current reality.  To appreciate the somersaulting silliness and arrogance of this meme, imagine China or Russia insisting on military bases in the Amerikan midwest, to “assist localities” hit by tornados (and the Russians could make the point that they have experience in the matter, since they have tornadoes in that country as well).  And, just to reinforce the matter, imagine “high level talks” between Russia and Amerika, where the Amerikans said “no thanks,” and while on their way home, various cities in the country were suddenly hit by tornadoes, and Russian Illyushins full of aid (and soldeirs) suddenly descended on Amerikan airports to give “assistance.”
If this is not enough to indicate that a new “meme” justifying the placement of military bases around the world is in the works, then it is important to recall that a number of military exercises have also been staged in the Pacific, with the ostensible object of gaming out “disaster relief”, and oftentimes in conjunction with other militaries in the region, including the Chinese!
So what’s missing from the recipe, the new playbook? only one thing: asteroid impacts… And in that context, simply recall that strange fact that nearly a month before the Chelyabinsk meteor, Prime Minister Medvedev was calling openly for an asteroid defense system. So, yet another reason for those forward military bases; asteroid impacts are “natural” disasters too.
…watch for it.

Read more: THE PHILIPPINE TYPHOON, WEATHER WAR, AND THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW PLAYBOOK?

Did the Philippines become a target of Weather Weapons?

November 16, 2013 By Shawn Helton 

SEE ALSO: Philippines Typhoon linked to Man-Made Microwave Pulses

“Every conceivable type of weapon is being examined or explored by various individuals, if not with the support of their government.”
- Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen (1997-2001)

Shawn Helton
21st Century Wire

Do you believe that weather weapons exist?
In a United States Department of Defense transcript from April, 28th 1997, then Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, shocked the public by admitting that weaponized weather has been created through the use of “electromagnetic waves.” The Weather Modification Association has admitted that governments have been altering the weather since at least 1950.
The aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda), has been truly tragic as the situation has descended into total chaos, however, one cannot ignore the bizarre weather anomalies leading up to the “world’s biggest storm“.


Weather Manipulation: Weather modification technology exists and could be weaponized.

In the past week, independent weatherman ‘Dutchsinse’ shot several YouTube videos dissecting the typhoon system passing through the Philippines, believing it to be produced by weather manipulation, specifically microwave  pulse technology.  

Weather modification technology and geo-engineering would be a powerful weapon if deployed for strategic ends. If this is the case, what would be the geopolitical motive?
In August of 2013, while the situation in Syria was reaching a boiling point over false chemical weapons allegations, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel met with Filipino President Benigno Aquino to discuss the expansion of the U.S. military in the Philippines. The Obama administration had already been negotiating a deal to secure space for the US military to conduct military maneuvers at several locations in the area. This military deal was met with harsh backlash from the public as Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin of the Philippines was looking to finalize the deal:

“We’d want them near disaster-prone areas so they can help out if problems occur“.

The Philippines was a U.S. colony from 1898 to 1946 and had shut down the last U.S. base in 1991, through a Senate vote.

Filipino officials have stated that the United States has been attempting to procure an old airport to use as a drone base. The Daniel Romualdez  Airport which has been completely destroyed in the aftermath Haiyan has been placed under control by military and police since last Monday.

Will the airport remain in U.S.control under the guise of humanitarian oversight?

IMAGE: Skulls & Stripes burn over the U.S. military’s presence in the Philippines.

House Representative from the Akbayan Partylist, Walden Bello, was very outspoken in early September, condemning the actions of the Obama administration and their pursuit to strike Syria:

“Not only must President Aquino not repeat what his predecessor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, did with respect to Iraq, which was to join George W. Bush’s notorious “Coalition of the Willing.” He must forcefully register our country’s opposition to Mr. Obama’s dangerous plan, and here he can take a cue from the British Parliament, which has repudiated Prime Minister Cameron’s effort to drag Britain behind the American strike.”

Continuing, Bello added:

“Secondly, a US attack on Syria directly contradicts the national interest of the Philippines, which is bound up with the welfare of our OFWs. It will put at risk the lives of the several thousand OFWs that remain in Syria.

It’s clear from the statements above that there were those within the Filipino government strongly opposed to Western intervention in Syria.

Was the typhoon a ‘soft war’ strategy of tension technique employed on the Philippines, to pressure them into supporting future destabilization campaigns directed by the West?

Then there’s the question of the Trans Pacific Partnership in all its intellectual and economic power grabbing. The TPP, said to consolidate over forty percent of world trade once its fully implemented, effectively putting an end to national sovereignty.

Wikileaks recently revealed documents exposing the TPP deal with twelve other countries being involved.

Philippines Trade Secretary Gregory Domingo has stated that the Filipino Constitution has certain limitations on how they can conduct business with foreign entities. This could be a major stumbling block for the U.S. as they would also like to lay claim to territory for RIMPAC (the Rim of the Pacific shared naval exercises) in addition to the TPP deal.

Domingo further explained the pressure to be a part of TPP:

“It (TPP) is something we have to engage in. We have no choice because the US is our second largest trading partner and many of our neighbors will become members of  TPP. If they have duty-free access, for example, in the US and we don’t, it will really handicap the Philippines and affect us in a significant way.”

Was the Syrian intervention, the TPP, or  RIMPAC the motive for the use secretive technology to politically punish or coerce the Philippines?

Western interests and in particular the U.S., stand to lose quite a bit if they cannot implement their military and economic plans, any delay could cause a serious rift between countries and their ‘corporate elect’ leaders.

In 2012, Iran’s chief meteorologist Hassan Mousavi claimed that the West was launching a climate war against the southern region of Iran, deliberately causing a drought.

Dutchsinse takes us through a step by step of weather modification below…

"Weather Modification 101" = Dutchsinse video response to Dr. Mahar Lagmay and ABS-CBN News (ANC)

READ MORE ABOUT PHILIPPINES AT: 21st Century Wire Philippines File

US Government Lets JPMorgan Off the Hook for Mortgage Fraud

By Andre Damon and Barry Grey

Global Research, November 20, 2013

World Socialist Web Site

Region: USA

Theme: Global Economy

On Tuesday, the US Justice Department announced a long-awaited official settlement with JPMorgan Chase & Co., the largest US bank, on an array of charges by state and federal agencies related to the bank’s sale of toxic mortgage-backed securities, which contributed to the 2008 financial crash.
US Attorney General Eric Holder touted the agreement, which includes $9 billion in fines and $4 billion in consumer relief, as a major victory for the public over the banks. “The size and scope of this resolution should send a clear signal that the Justice Department’s financial fraud investigations are far from over,” said Holder, adding, “No firm, no matter how profitable, is above the law, and the passage of time is no shield from accountability.”
In reality, the settlement falls far short of holding JPMorgan accountable for its fraudulent sale of mortgage-backed assets, which netted the bank tens of billions of dollars in profits while exacerbating the sub-prime mortgage crash that led to over ten million foreclosures in the US and a global economic downturn that thrust many millions more into unemployment and poverty.
Holder himself, in an interview broadcast Tuesday by NBC News, said that, in his opinion, JPMorgan’s actions played a direct role in the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Yet in return for the settlement, the bank is released from a raft of lawsuits by the Justice Department, state attorneys general and three federal agencies.
The settlement’s statement of facts asserts that “employees of JPMorgan… received information that, in certain instances, loans that did not comply with underwriting guidelines were included in the RMBS [residential mortgage-backed securities] sold and marketed to investors; however, JPMorgan… did not disclose this to securitization investors.”
New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, head of the Obama administration’s mortgage fraud task force, said the company “acknowledged it made serious, material misrepresentations to the public—including the investing public—about numerous RMBS transactions.”
While JPMorgan endorsed as factual the government’s claim that it knowingly sold defective mortgage-backed bonds to investors in violation of securities laws, the settlement does not include a direct admission of criminal wrongdoing by the bank. In months of closed-door negotiations between bank executives, including CEO Jamie Dimon, and top Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Holder, the bank resisted making such an acknowledgment of guilt, which would have opened it up to a wave of private lawsuits. In the end, the Obama administration complied with the bank’s wishes.
The Justice Department said it was continuing a criminal investigation of JPMorgan’s mortgage bond business, but there has as yet been no criminal indictment of Dimon or any other leading JPMorgan official.
This is in keeping with the administration’s policy of shielding the Wall Street elite from prosecution for its criminal actions both before, during and after the financial crash of September 2008. Not a single top banker has been criminally charged, let alone convicted and jailed, despite detailed exposures of illegal actions made public two years ago by a special investigatory commission into the financial crisis and, in a separate report, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
The settlement, hailed by the Obama administration and the media as a “breakthrough” in government policing of the banks, is nothing of the kind. The headline figure of $13 billion is deliberately deceptive. Only $9 billion of the total is in cash, the rest taking the form of relief to troubled homeowners, partly through reductions in mortgage principals and partly through the lowering of interest payments. It is likely that JPMorgan was already planning to offer much of this $4 billion in relief for business reasons.
Moreover, according to Reuters, $11 billion of the total penalty is tax deductible. The news agency quoted Gregg Polsky, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, as saying the bank’s fine would effectively be reduced by $4 billion. The total cost to the bank for settling virtually all outstanding civil suits stemming from its fraudulent mortgage business prior to the crash will thus be about a third of its reported $21 billion profit for 2012.
The deal worked out mutually between the US government and JPMorgan is calibrated to include a fine large enough to give the appearance of a sharp rebuke, while insuring the bank’s continued viability and profitability. JPMorgan has, moreover, already set aside $28 billion to settle the large number of lawsuits and investigations into its activities.
The very fact that top Justice Department officials have spent months cajoling Dimon to agree to a such a deal highlights the immense power wielded by Wall Street over the government and the entire political establishment. The victims of predatory loans sold by JPMorgan or packaged into securities sold by the bank, who were then unable to meet their mortgage payments, were accorded no such consideration before they were thrown onto the street and had their homes seized.
Following the Justice Department announcement on Tuesday, Dimon said in a statement: “We are pleased to have concluded this extensive agreement with the president’s RMBS Working Group and to have resolved the civil claims of the Department of Justice and others.”
The blanket settlement releases JPMorgan from civil investigations by the Department of Justice and the state attorneys general of California, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York, as well as civil litigation by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA).
The company’s stock jumped by 0.74 percent following the announcement, even as other financial stocks closed lower for the day.
Multiple probes into the fraudulent sale of mortgage bonds constitute only one area of JPMorgan’s activities that are currently under investigation. In September, the bank agreed to pay close to $1 billion to settle charges that it lied to investors and government regulators and committed accounting fraud to conceal $6.2 billion in losses in derivatives bets last year. A 300-page report on the so-called “London Whale” scandal issued last March by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations concluded that the bank sought “to hide hundreds of millions of dollars of losses,” and that top executives, including Dimon himself, knowingly misinformed the public and investors.
According to the New York Times, the bank is currently being investigated by “at least eight federal agencies, a state regulator and two European nations.”
The actions under examination include the bank’s participation in the Libor-rigging scandal, allegations that JPMorgan facilitated Bernard Madoff’s multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme, accusations by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that it manipulated energy prices, allegations that it bribed Chinese officials, and the bank’s participation in the so-called robo-signing scandal, in which the employees of major mortgage lenders claimed to have reviewed foreclosure documents with which they were totally unfamiliar.