Emil Lendof/The Daily Beast

J. North Conwa

Easy Money            http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/19/the-high-society-bank-robber-of-the-1800s.html

10.19.14

The High Society Bank Robber of the 1800s

He was wealthy, a member of New York City society, and a patron of the arts. And he was also the secret mastermind behind the biggest bank heists of his day.

On the morning of October 27, 1878, when bankers at the Manhattan Savings Institution, located at the corner of Bleecker Street and Broadway in New York City, opened their doors for business, they discovered, to their horror, the bank had been broken into over the weekend and the bank vault emptied of cash and securities. It seemed impossible since the bank was known as one of the securest in the country. Still, it was true. Thieves had broken in and stolen nearly $3 million. Based on current monetary standards, the Manhattan bank heist amounts to approximately $65 million today, far surpassing any previous robberies. According to bank examiners, the exact amount the robbers stole was $2,747,700, nearly $2.5 million of which was in stocks and bonds. The New York Times hailed it as “the most sensational in the history of bank robberies in this country.”
What made the robbery more incredible than just the amount stolen was that the bank was one of the largest and most imposing in the world. The Manhattan Savings Institution was not just a bank, it was a depository for the money, jewelry, securities, and other valuables of some of the most prominent and wealthy citizens of New York City, among them Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, James Fisk Jr., and Cornelius Vanderbilt. It was a ponderous labyrinth of bolts, locks, and steel doors, making it an almost impregnable fortress.
It took criminal mastermind, George Leslie, three years to plan the robbery down to the minutest detail. Leslie, a dashing, handsome, University of Cincinnati-educated architect, who came to New York City in 1869, was dubbed, “The King of Bank Robbers” by New York City police, newspaper reporters, and underworld figures, although they didn’t know his true identity until after his death. According to law enforcement authorities, from 1869 through 1878 Leslie was responsible for more than 80 percent of all the bank robberies in the country, either by planning the robberies or carrying them out himself. Despite his reputation, Leslie was never apprehended and never spent a day of his life in jail. Ultimately, it was Leslie’s roving eye, not his criminal exploits that led to his downfall.
Leslie was responsible for the three biggest bank heists of the day. Besides the Manhattan bank job, he was responsible for the 1869 Ocean National Bank robbery in New York City that netted thieves $800,000, then considered the largest theft of the era, and the 1876 Northampton Bank robbery in Massachusetts, where a record-breaking $1.6 million in cash and securities were stolen. Not a shot was fired in any of his robberies. Not a single person injured. Not a stick of dynamite used. And not one bit of property destroyed. Nothing like it had ever been pulled off in the annals of New York City crime. It was all done with Leslie’s characteristic finesse. Even the city newspapers gave credit to the culprits: “A masterful bank job pulled off by one very special bank robber,” the New York Herald reported following the Manhattan robbery.
Twenty-seven-year-old George Leslie arrived in New York City in 1869, a successful architect. With his good looks, education, and fine manners, he ingratiated himself into New York City’s high society, became a patron of the arts, attended the opera, and was invited to only the best New York City parties. But Leslie led a double life. Despite being able to slip seamlessly through the many layers of New York City’s high society, no one ever suspected he was the same man known as “The King of Bank Robbers.”
Before leaving Cincinnati, Leslie told friends he wanted to make some “easy money” in New York City. Leslie had no intention of resuming his architectural career, and had no interest becoming a Wall Street investor, although he had a small family fortune to play with. Coming to New York City, leaving behind old friends and family (his mother and father had both died, and he had no siblings), shedding the baggage of his past, Leslie set his sights on a life of crime. He intended to make his “easy money” by becoming a bank robber—but not just any old run-of-the-mill bank robber. He wanted to be the best, the most successful, and the richest.
If ever there was a place to begin a criminal career, New York City was it. A would-be bank robber like Leslie couldn’t have been better situated. The wealthiest men and women in the country made New York City their home, which meant they kept their money, jewels, stocks, and other valuables in local banks, which seemed to stand on every street corner of the city. There had to be millions of dollars just sitting there, waiting for the right kind of criminal visionary to come along and make an unlawful withdrawal. George Leslie intended to be that man.

Not a shot was fired in any of his robberies. Not a single person injured. Not a stick of dynamite used. And not one bit of property destroyed. Nothing like it had ever been pulled off in the annals of New York City crime.

It was the Civil War that drove Leslie from his Cincinnati home to the bustling metropolis of New York City. The bloodiest conflict in the country’s history had come to an end just four years prior to his arrival in the city, and the wounds were still fresh for both the North and South. Close to three and a half million men fought in the war, and nearly 700,000, both Union and Confederate troops, died. A million more were maimed or wounded. Although George Leslie wasn’t one of them, it wasn’t luck that had saved him; it was money—his father’s money.
Men and women, fathers and sons, brothers and sisters, women and children—all suffered through the four bloodiest years in American history. Leslie’s home state of Ohio provided a quarter-million able-bodied men as soldiers and military officers during the war. Thousands of young men from Cincinnati flocked to Union military service at the outset of the war in 1861 or were drafted, but Leslie wasn’t one of them. There was a provision in the Union Conscription Act of 1863 that allowed wealthy men to pay $300 to buy their way out of service. Leslie’s father, who was a prosperous Cincinnati brewer, paid the money to keep his son out of harm’s way. Although it was perfectly legal, it became a highly unpopular course of action, and one that many did not forget after the war ended. Wealthy young men like George Leslie were considered worse than deserters. After the war was over, Leslie found himself facing public scorn, hostility, and ostracism from many Cincinnati families and former friends who had served or lost someone in battle. Their resentment overwhelmed him. He wanted to start over in a new place where no one knew him or his history. New York City was the perfect spot to lose his past and reinvent himself.
All of Leslie’s bank jobs were arduous undertakings. He would meticulously survey the building’s layout by frequenting the bank and sometimes depositing his own money there so as not to arouse suspicion. Then, using his training and talent as an architect, he would draw up blueprints. Inside an abandoned warehouse, he would build a replica of the bank vault, where he would rehearse the robbery with his handpicked gang for months, with each member responsible for a specific function, at a specific time. The entire team studied the blueprints and drilled on the step-by-step process they would follow during the robbery. Leslie timed each of the steps to ensure split second precision. Timing was everything, as far as he was concerned. He had his team practice the bank heist over and over, throwing in various possibilities and forecasting alternative measures. He even had the gang rehearse their movements in the dark, in case something happened to the lighting inside the bank. No one had ever gone to the extent Leslie did in planning a robbery.
Leslie always carried out his big heists on the weekends when the banks were closed for business, and, hopefully, bank officials and authorities wouldn’t discover the robbery until the following Monday morning. This would give his gang plenty of time to rob the bank and make their getaway.
Prior to Leslie’s emergence into the crime world, burglars used dynamite to blow open bank vaults. But, the robbers often blew up more than just the door. Hundreds of times, robbers used too much dynamite and ended up blowing up all the cash, securities, and other valuables inside—or worse, themselves. Plus, the blast from the dynamite drew attention and caused panic, leading to many a failed robbery attempt.
Besides his obsessive preparations, Leslie introduced another tool to the bank-robbing trade —“the little joker.” Credit for the invention of the gadget goes to another New York City criminal, Max Shinburn, but Leslie was responsible for perfecting its use. The “little joker” was a small tin wheel with a wire attached to it, which fit inside the combination of any bank safe. All a thief had to do was take off the dial knob on the safe and place the little joker on inside of it. Then, after carefully replacing the knob, it could be left there undetected. When bank officials next opened the safe,the little joker, still concealed under the safe’s knob, would record where the tumblers stopped by making a series of deep cuts on the tin wheel. The deepest cuts in the wheel showed the numbers of the combination. Although it wouldn’t record their exact order, it would only be a matter of trying several different combinations before the safe would open wide.
Using the device did require a robber to break into a bank twice—once to place the contraption inside the dial of the vault, and a second time to retrieve it. Not many robbers had the aptitude or patience to perform such a tricky endeavor. It took a special, meticulous kind of person to accomplish the undertaking, someone with brains, patience, and nerves of steel. George Leslie was that person. Although time-consuming, “the little joker” eliminated the need to use dynamite to blow open a safe and the need for the usual long and laborious safecracking techniques used by many robbers—turning the dial this way and that, listening with a stethoscope to determine the right sequence of combination clicks. Leslie sometimes broke into a bank two or three times in order to place and retrieve his “little joker” without ever once being caught. His usual trick: bribing the night watchman to let him into the bank. On several occasions, he also changed tactics and deposited a considerable sum of his own money in his targeted bank to become a valued customer, and then he convinced the bank to hire one of his cronies as a watchman.
Leslie intended the Manhattan robbery to be the final jewel in his crown as “King of the Bank Robbers.” He would have enough money from the robbery to quit the criminal business, move out west, and once again make a new name for himself. His wife had absconded to Philadelphia to wait for him, and all the plans were in place for their escape.
But Leslie had one Achilles heel: women. Known as a ladies’ man, he engaged in a slew of romantic liaisons with women from both sides of the tracks —high society and criminals. He wasn’t particularly discerning, nor was he discriminating when it came to single or married women.
In May 1878, five months before Leslie planned to rob the Manhattan Savings Institution, he stopped at Murphy’s Saloon in Brooklyn. Someone in the saloon approached him and handed him a note. He recognized the handwriting as that of Babe Draper, the 21-year old wife of one of his gang members, Shang Draper, an infamous criminal and thug. Leslie had been secretly carrying on an affair with Babe. In the note, Babe asked to see Leslie one last time before he left New York City forever. Leslie couldn’t resist. He left the bar to have one final rendezvous.
On June 4, 1878, Leslie’s body was discovered at the foot of Tramp’s Rock, in Mott’s Woods, three miles from Yonkers. His body was partly decomposed and lying under some bushes. He had been shot twice, once in the heart and once in the head. The murder of George Leslie, who was just 40 years old, was never officially solved, although police investigators surmised that he had been lured to his death by Babe Draper and killed by her husband, who had found out about the illicit affair. The King of Bank Robbers, the man responsible for carrying out or masterminding the robbery of millions of dollars, was buried in a $10 pauper’s grave in the Cypress Hill Cemetery. Only his criminal cohorts knew who he was since none of his high society friends ever dreamed someone like him would be murdered in such a violent way, and no one had access to his money to give him a nicer burial. Not long after Leslie’s body was discovered, Babe Draper’s body was found in the waters near the Brooklyn Bridge, her throat slit.
On October 27, 1878, five months after Leslie’s murder, his gang, including Shang Draper, broke in and robbed the Manhattan Savings Institution. One of the largest investigations in New York City police annals began immediately following the heist, and slowly, one by one, the men who robbed the Manhattan Savings Institution were tracked down and brought to justice—all except George Leslie. Through a series of informants, mostly criminal underlings who were jealous of Leslie’s success, police were able to identify Leslie as the ring-leader. They were later able to connect Leslie to most of the bank robberies throughout the country. Since a bulk of the loot stolen from the Manhattan Savings Institution was in the form of certificates that the robbers were unable to spend, most of the loot was returned to the bank. Only a mere $15,000 in cash from the haul was never recovered.
Leslie, the architect from Cincinnati, who had been looking to make some “easy money,” had pulled off the biggest bank heist in history, but he never lived to see it. Easy money was harder to come by than he thought.
Based on the book King of Heists by J. North Conway, Globe Pequot, 2009.

                                    

Electricity Superhighwayhttp://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/16/electricity-superhighway.html

It finally looks like New York, which is perpetually addled by traffic, will be constructing a new expressway.

The proposed 333-mile line that will run from the Canadian border to New York City will differ significantly from the New York Thruway. It will built and owned by private investors instead of the government. It will be largely invisible to most drivers, since it will be buried under Lake Champlain and the Hudson River. And instead of carrying cars and trucks, it will carry electrons.
It turns out the Champlain Hudson Power Express, which received a permit from the Department of Energy in early October but must still surmount regulatory barriers, is designed to carry electricity. Specifically, it is meant to ferry clean power from hydroelectric plants in Canada to charge iPhones in hipster Brooklyn and keep the lights on in the Empire State Building.
You’ve heard of the interstate highway system and the information superhighway – both vital pieces of infrastructure for the U.S. economy. Today, the biggest and most important construction projects may be a new transportation network: the growing electricity interstate superhighway system.
America’s rise to an economic power was enabled by a series of networks that helped bind the massive country together into a single, integrated market. With each successive layer of networks, the U.S. became more potent. Canals, and then railroads, provided vital transportation networks. The Erie Canal in upstate New York allowed farm products in Michigan and Ohio to reach international markets. Once the railroad system was built, it meant a company could make beer in St. Louise and ship it anywhere in the U.S. in a few days Information-transport systems came next – the telegraph and the telephone, their wires often running alongside or above railroads. In the 20^th century, interstate highways provided the distribution networks for big-box retailers like Walmart. And the contributions of the internet to the modern economy are obvious.
When a country spreads over a large and varied land mass, connections can be as important as resources. This is evident in the next infrastructure boom unfolding before our eyes: electricity transmission lines. Until recently, electricity was generally created at big gas and coal-powered power plants that could be located near population centers. But this model is changing – in part because there is less desire to use coal, and in part because land in urban and suburban areas often has a higher value for other uses. But it’s changing mostly because vast new supplies of power are springing up far from cities.
Across the country, huge new resources that always existed – the rushing waters of Canada, the powerful sun of the desert southwest the fiercely blowing winds of the Great Plains, the geothermal power bubbling underneath the surface of the American west –are now being tapped. The U.S. is in the midst of a historic renewables boom. But huge distances separate these resources from the population centers where the power is needed.
And so the private sector – with an occasional assist from government – is starting to build a new set of toll roads to transport the resources.
In Nevada, a 230-mile line,  built at a cost of $552 million – with federal loan guarantees backing it – called the One Nevada Transmission Line, is now in service. It connects geothermal plants in the sparsely populated northern part of the state to the burgeoning Las Vegas area.
In Texas, a multi-year project has just been completed that saw companies roll out some 3,500 miles of lines that connect wind farms in the western and northern parts of the states to the population centers of Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin. The total cost of the so-called Competitive Renewable Energy Zones: $7 billion. The lines may not seem like much – a punch of poles, wires and equipment. But the impact is huge. Texas, which has more wind power than any other state by a long shot, is now able to use all the wind power it produces; before the transmission lines were built, much of it went to waste. And when the wind really gets blowing, it can provide 30 percent of the state’s electricity.
More are on the way. In the Upper Midwest, ITC Holdings wants to build the Green Power Express, a 3,000-mile network of wires that could funnel up to 12,000 megawatts of wind power from the upper plains – the Dakotas, and Minnesota – into Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois.
Perhaps the most ambitious of the new network builders is Clean Line Energy, a private company that is aiming to build a series of long, high-capacity toll roads for electricity in the heartland. Clean Line wants to construct networks on which it will sell capacity both to utilities (i.e. the buyers of electricity) and wind farm companies (i.e. the producers). And it has given its proposed projects names that echo those of the railroads that helped knit the country together more than a century ago. There’s the Rock Island Express, which would ferry power from Iowa to Illinois. The Grain Belt Express Clean Line would carry up to 3,500 megawatts of wind power over 750 miles from western Kansas and Missouri to Illinois, Indiana. The Centennial West line, which would be about the same size, would sweep west from Oklahoma towards California.
These new lines may not carry the same romance of the old railroads. It won’t be possible for passengers to ride the Grain Belt Express, and the Champlain Hudson Power Express won’t offer scenic views (it’s underground, after all). But their economic impact is likely to be just as potent.

This content is partner content, and was not necessarily written or created by The Daily Beast editorial team.

The Sandy Hook “Smoking Gun”: Game, Set, Match!

The Sandy Hook Hoax “Smoking Gun”: Game, Set, Match!

 Oops !!!

by Jim Fetzer (with Dan Cady )

BREAKING NEWS! A photograph of the photographer taking the photograph proves that it was a drill.

Shannon Hicks receives NENPA award for her staged Sandy Hook photograph

During a debate about Sandy Hook with someone who refused to identify himself other than as “Count One”, I was repeatedly challenged to produce extraordinary evidence.
He repeated and repeated the refrain, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof!” But the evidence I was producing, time after time, was extraordinary and met that standard.
The most extraordinary is that the “iconic” photograph taken by Shannon Hicks for which she was named “Photographer of the Year” was actually one in a series staged for the fake shooting!
This case abounds with extraordinary proof that has been published in “Top Ten Reasons: Sandy Hook was an elaborate Hoax”, “Sandy Hook Elementary School: Closed in 2008, a stage in 2012″ and “The Newtown School Board meeting and the meaning of silence”, including, for example:

* that the final report from Connecticut authorities does not included the names, the ages or the sex of the alleged victims of the shooting: THAT IS EXTRAORDINARY!
* that the Clerk of Newtown entered into secret negotiations with the state legislature to avoid releasing their death certifications: THAT IS EXTRAORDINARY! 
* that Connecticut State’s Attorney Steven Sedensky opposed the release of the 911 calls and had to be denied withholding them by courts: THAT IS EXTRAORDINARY!
* that a special panel of the state legislature recommended state employees who released information about Sandy Hook be subject to an E-felony: THAT IS EXTRAORDINARY!
* that those who were involved in the demolition of the school building itself were required to sign life-time gag orders about anything they saw or did not see: THAT IS EXTRAORDINARY!

What good reason could there possibly be to withhold the names, ages and sex of the deceased from the final reports about this child massacre? The claim was made that it was to spare the feelings of their parents, but think about it: their parents already knew they were dead!

More “extraordinary proof”

Other examples are equally fascinating and constitute even more proof that meets that standard are to be found in “Wolfgang Halbig heads for Newtown and the truth about Sandy Hook”,  “Sandy Hook Redux: Obama officials confirm that it was a drill and no children died” and “Wolfgang Halbig: 11,000 page Sandy Hook script/CT state police gave false affidavits”, which effortlessly satisfy the standard of “extraordinary proof for extraordinary claims”:

* the school had some 489 students, which means there should have been 469 evacuated from the school, but you can search in vain: they aren’t there: THAT IS EXTRAORDINARY!
* The Newtown Bee published an interview with the school principal, Dawn Hochsprung, during the shooting itself, but she was officially already dead: THAT IS EXTRAORDINARY!
* the FBI report on the shooting, which was commissioned by President Obama, has been massively redacted, rendering it virtually unintelligible: THAT IS EXTRAORDINARY!
* Paul Preston, a school safety expert, received confirmation from several contacts in the Department of Education that it had been a drill and no one had died: THAT IS EXTRAORDINARY!
* two CT State Troopers have confirmed to Wolfgang Halbig that 11,000 pages he has in hand was actually “the script” for the Sandy Hook event: THAT IS EXTRAORDINARY!

And, as Tony Mead has reported in “Sandy Hook’s Disappearing Witnesses”, a stunning number of key players in this case, including the Connecticut State Police Commander, the State Police Commissioner, the Western Connecticut State Police Commander and the State Medical Examiner, among others, have been taken out of play either by retirement or death. THAT IS EXTRAORDINARY! And there is much, much more!

The “most extraordinary proof”

In the face of abundant “extraordinary proof”, which I presented during our debate, Count One challenged its authenticity across the board. Since we have documented it from publicly available sources, it constitutes (what is known as) a prime facie case, which is entitled to be accepted as true absent any rebuttal, which Count One made no effort to provide. It was a debating stunt that no one should take seriously. It was a verbal charade.
Perhaps the most extraordinary proof, however, is the “iconic” photograph that was taken by Shannon Hicks, Associate Editor of The Newtown Bee, which Dennis Cimino and I have subjected to an extensive and detailed analysis. It is the only photo we have seen of any children being evacuated from the school:

Hicks reportedly took this photo “as an associate editor” and then, when another editor arrived, “changed into her firefighting gear and tried to help.” The account was promoted by NPR. Rather to our astonishment, Dan Cady, “The Sun and Sandy Hook”, had established the fact of the matter on 14 January 2013, more than a year-and-a-half prior to our efforts.
He has concluded that the Shannon Hicks’ photograph was taken at 9:45 AM on 12 November 2012, over a month before Sandy Hook. For the details of his calculation of the specific date and time, check out the article cited above. But shadow analysis is surprisingly complex and, given the distribution of the vehicles in the photo, I would not be surprised if it had been taken in much closer proximity to the event. The crucial finding instead is that he published this extraordinary photograph of the photographer taking the photograph:

There was no emergency in progress, the people behind Hicks are all clearly part of a DRILL by their body language, where the at line sequence in the first photo is without the girl in the front, meaning her claim that she just took that photo is absurd because they STAGED MANY SHOTS and THEN SELECTED THE ONE THEY THOUGHT WAS BEST after compelling one of the kids to make an odd face, where close examination of the kids suggests that they were no more threatened than they would be at McDonald’s waiting for a milkshake.

Dan Cady has conjectured that Shannon Hicks is taking the picture of the conga line and the parents. It is his guess that Lisa Terifay (near center, blue sweatshirt, clear line of sight to the kids, in front of Shannon) took the photo that got the most attention. A relative with a keen eye, however, has observed, on the basis of the location of the (driving direction) white arrow, that the “iconic” photo was taken later and from a different position, which reinforces the obvious–that it was a staged photo on behalf of a fake shooting.

This photograph not only proves that the “iconic” Shannon Hicks’ photograph was staged but that the entire episode–the alleged shooting at the school–about which so many have published so much was indeed an elaborately fabricated event in which no children died, which appears to have been done to promote the anti-gun agenda of the administration, which makes this a terrorist act.

This photo is “the smoking gun” that proves that Eric Holder and Barack Obama have in fact committed treason in that they have staged hoaxes for the purpose of DISARMING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE–and they do not have that right insofar as they both took an oath to UPHOLD AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION FROM ALL ENEMIES FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC. Ironically, they have now solidly identified themselves as TROJAN HORSES inside the gates, betraying the Oath they both took but have blatantly violated.
As I have explained many places, including “Sandy Hook: My pick of the ‘top ten’ articles/videos/interviews”, which includes (now Attorney General) Eric Holder’s presentation to a Democratic Women’s National Conference in 1995 stating that the public needs to be “brainwashed” against guns. This event was fabricated to instill fear into the public to make it more amenable to political manipulation, which is the very definition of a “terrorist act”.

What does it mean?

The best question Count One raised during out debate was to ask why so many members of the community would participate in a staged event and cover it up? The answer, I believe, is that Connecticut is a strongly anti-gun state and that there are many do-gooders who believed that the country had to be “wakened up” about the dangers of having so many weapons available to the public. Since it would be a staged event and no one would actually die, it may have seen irresistible, especially when it received support from the Attorney General of the United States on behalf of the President himself.
Indeed, the chain of command appears to extent from the President to the Attorney General to the Connecticut State Police, the Newtown Police Department, the Newtown trustees and the Newtown School Board, are any of them vulnerable to prosecution? Dan Cady has identified E. Patricia Llodra, the Mayor of Newtown, and William Halstead, FEMA Incident Commander, as #1 and #2 on his list of responsible agents. But could they possibly be indicted, tried, convicted and sentenced to significant terms in prison?
Because the events that happened in Sandy Hook were not real but staged, the legal status of the situation is more complex than one might initially suppose. TV performance. Cady believes that a staged TV performance might actually be legal under Federal Law. “And if this is the case,” he remarks, then nothing illegal did happen, and people just believed what they saw on TV.” But millions of dollars have been contributed on behalf of the families of the alleged victims of Sandy Hook, which suggests that they may all be eligible for indictment under RICO statutes of the United States.
This nation has never seen anything like this before. As I have observed, it is bigger than Watergate! In ordinary times, under the rule of law, many of our highest federal officials, as well as those of Connecticut, would be subject to impeachment or prosecution for violation of the law. But we have long since become a nation under the rule of men, not of laws, and all bets are off. I have written to the NENPA to request that they investigate the authenticity of Shannon Hicks’ “iconic” photograph, but it remains to be seen if even this professional newspaper organization has the integrity to admit its mistake and rescind the honors it has bestowed upon an unworthy recipient.
Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Shadow Facts About Shadow Government

By David Swanson

Global Research, October 19, 2014

War is a Crime

Region: USA

Theme: Militarization and WMD, Oil and Energy, US NATO War Agenda

Tom Engelhardt keeps churning out great books by collecting his posts from TomDispatch.com. His latest book,Shadow Government, is essential reading. Of the ten essays included, eight are on basically the same topic, resulting in some repetition and even some contradiction. But when things that need repeating are repeated this well, one mostly wants other people to read them — or perhaps to have them involuntarily spoken aloud by everybody’s iPhones.
We live in an age in which the most important facts are not seriously disputed and also not seriously known or responded to.
The United States’ biggest public program of the past 75 years, now outstripping the rest of the world combined, is war preparations. The routine “base” military spending, not counting spending on particular wars, is at least 10 times the war spending, or enough to totally transform the world for the better. Instead it’s used to kill huge numbers of people, to make the United States less safe, and to prepare for wars that are — without exception — lost disastrously. Since the justification of the Soviet Union vanished, U.S. militarism has only increased. Its enemies are small, yet it does its best to enlarge them. U.S. Special Operations forces are actively, if “secretly,” engaged in war or war preparations in over two-thirds of the nations on earth. U.S. troops are openly stationed in 90 percent of the nations on earth, and 100 percent of the oceans. A majority of the people in most nations on earth consider the United States the greatest threat to world peace.
The U.S. military has brought death, terror, destruction, and lasting damage to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya — and spilling out of Libya into Mali, sparked a Sunni-Shiite civil war in Iraq that has spread to Syria, rendered Pakistan and Yemen more violent and insecure with drone strikes, and fueled violence in Somalia that has spilled across borders.
These facts are well-established, yet virtually incomprehensible to a typical U.S. news consumer. So, if they can be repeated brilliantly and convincingly, I say: the more times the better.
We’re rendering the earth uninhabitable, and the October 27, 2014, issue of Time magazine includes a section headlined “Why the Price of Oil Is Falling — And What It Means for the World.” In reality, of course, it means devastation for the world. In Time it means a happy American oil boom, more sales for Saudi Arabia, and a good reason for Russia to rein in its military. Yes, the same Russia that spends 7% of what the United States does on its military. To get a sense of how Russia could rein in that military, here is a video of a Pentagon official claiming that Russia has physically moved closer to NATO (and put little green men into Ukraine).
Years ago I wrote an article for TomDispatch called “Bush’s Third Term.” Now of course we’re into Bush’s fourth term, or Clinton’s sixth. The point is that presidential power abuses and war-making expand when a president gets away with them, not when a particular party or individual wins an election. Engelhardt explains how Dick Cheney’s 1 percent doctrine (justifying war when anything that has a 1% chance of being a danger) has now become a zero percent doctrine (no justification is needed). Along with war today comes secrecy, which encompasses complete removal of your privacy, but also — Engelhardt notes — the abandonment of actual secrecy for “covert” operations that the government wants to have known but not to have held to any legal standard.
The White House went to the New York Times prior to President Obama’s reelection and promoted the story that Obama personally goes through a list of men, women, and children on Tuesdays and carefully picks which ones to have murdered. There’s no evidence that this hurt Obama’s reelection.
The Bush White House went to the New York Times and censored until after Bush’s reelection, the story that the government was massively and illegally spying on Americans.  The Obama White House has pursued a vendetta against whistleblower Edward Snowden for making public the global extent of the spying. While Engelhardt tells this story with the usual suggestion that Snowden let us in on a big secret, I always assumed the U.S. government was doing what people now know it is. Engelhardt points out that these revelations have moved European and Latin American governments against the U.S. and put the fear of major financial losses into Silicon Valley companies known to be involved in the spying.
Engelhardt writes that with the NSA and gang having eliminated our privacy, we can now eliminate theirs by publicizing leaked information. At the same time, Engelhardt writes that dozens of Snowdens would be needed for us to begin to find out what the U.S. war machine is doing. Perhaps the point is that the dozens of Snowdens are inevitable. I hope so, although Engelhardt explicitly says that the shadow government is an “irreversible way of life.” I certainly hope not, or what’s the point of opposing it?
Engelhardt notes that the U.S. government has turned against massive ground wars, but not against wars, so that we will be entering an era of “tiny wars.” But the tiny wars may kill in significant numbers compared with wars of centuries gone by, and may spark wars by others that rage on indefinitely. Or, I would add, we might choose to stop every war as we stopped the Syrian missile crisis of 2013.
Engelhardt pinpoints a moment when a turning point almost came. On July 15, 1979, President Jimmy Carter proposed a massive investment in renewable energy. The media denounced his speech as “the malaise speech.” “In the end, the president’s energy proposals were essentially laughed out of the room and ignored for decades.” Six months later, on January 23, 1980, Carter announced that “an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” The media took this speech quite seriously and respectfully, labeling it the Carter Doctrine. We’ve been having increasing trouble with people whose sand lies over our oil ever since.

BBC Sherlock: Malaysian Airlines False Flag Scripting

jay008 / July 20, 2014

Season 2, Episode 1, “A Scandal in Belgravia,” in 2012: Mycroft tells Sherlock Flight 007 was a false flag with already dead bodies.

Like Many 9/11 Examples, the Scripting of the Malaysian Plane Fiasco Matches the Plot of BBC’s Sherlock
By: Jay
Our latest media theatrical blitz is the Hollywood-esque sequel to last month’s suspicious and likely scripted airplane disaster, the mystical Malaysian Plane fiasco.  News junkies and analysts will recall the recent “loss” of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 which sparked a media furor of high ratings, speculation, pundit nonsense and even the enlistment of Courtney Love’s noteworthy, famed sleuthing abilities.  In a rare anomaly, Love was  in this case, unable to solve the so-called disaster.  Followers of JaysAnalysis or my Twitter or Facebook feed know that I deemed this event unworthy of any attention, and that I think it was likely staged, with a high probability of there being no plane at all.  That may seem extreme to some newer readers, but longtime readers will recall the numerous instances of known, staged and faked newscasts cataloged here when RawStory attacked me.
However, with the new Malaysian Plane Flight MH17, we have what appears to be something more significant – an emerging false flag event run by western intelligence and NATO to frame Russia for the purpose of further US/EU/NATO operations in staving off Russia.  In this article, I want to present that false flag thesis and other speculations based on the evidence that has emerged so far.  I will investigate the known facts to date, based on reliable sources with a good track record, the motives for the so-called attack, and the more esoteric and speculative connections that may also be relevant to seeing the “calling card” of who might have been behind the event.
The first and most obvious suspicion is that this is Malaysian Airlines, part deux.  I am not saying anything ridiculous like they are the same planes, but rather that two Malaysian Airlines flights become “diverted” to become center stage media foci within a month as mere coincidence stretches credulity.  One recalls immediately the numerous TWA flights of the last several decades that mysteriously were lost, hijacked and shot down, all of which served specific political motives advantageous to the Western establishment.  A second related question involves Malaysian Airlines itself – who owns this airline, and what intelligence agencies might be able to utilize it for such covert operations?  Hardly anyone in the media is asking this question, nor was it asked the last go around.

Malaysian Airlines was started by the Liverpool-based Ocean Group together with Imperial Airways, back in 1937.  It is crucial to note that Malaysia was a part of the British Empire, and thus associations with British Intelligence will not be far removed.  Though the company was broken up soon thereafter, it was incorporated with various shareholders holding close connections to, and positions in, offices of Malaysian government.  For example, former Malaysian Airlines CEO Idris Jala formerly held high level positions with gas giant and Western establishment megacorporation, Shell, before entering Malaysian politics.  Malaysian Airlines is a GLC, or “government linked company,” which we can translate into intelligence linked company, bringing to mind classic examples of intelligence linked airlines, such as Evergreen, the famed CIA shell company that succeeded Air America.  Consider the extent of the CIA connections to airlines according to a 1986 Time Magazine article:
“Officially, the CIA says it has no record that Doole ever worked there, but among old agency hands, he is a legend. Operating out of a small, nondescript office on Connecticut Avenue, he founded and ran a far-flung network of airlines that the agency used to carry out its covert operations all over the world. Owned by a holding company, the Pacific Corp., that was itself a CIA front, Doole’s empire included Air America, Civil Air Transport, Southern Air Transport, Air Asia and dozens of small puddle-jumper lines. Together, at their peak in the mid ’60s, these CIA “proprietaries” added up to an airline that was almost the size of TWA, employing nearly 20,000 people (as many as the CIA itself) and operating some 200 planes. Even the CIA was not sure just how many. Asked by then Deputy Director Helms to account for all the planes in Doole’s regime, a staffer spent three months on the project before confessing that he could never be more than 90% certain. The problem, explained the exasperated staffer, was that Doole was forever leasing planes between his shell corporations and changing their markings and tail numbers.”
Malaysia is also home to a host of Western intelligence shady dealings, according to insider Peter Levenda.  Levenda claims as follows in his Sinister Forces, Vol. 3:
“Friends of mine in Kuala Lumpur-otherwise intelligent, rational people with a love for business and the easy, good life of their tropical paradise-take it for granted that the world has targeted Muslim Malaysia out of jealousy for the strength of their economy…[erroneously thinking] there was simply no truth to the reports that Malaysia was a haven for terrorists, even as one of their political parties praised the bombers of Bali, the World Trade Center, of the Marriot Hotel in Jakarta and met with Hamas and Hezbollah leaders in Malaysia in May of 2002.” (pg. 443)
Indeed, Malaysia was a meeting place of some of the bombers on 9/11.  The Asian Times reported of Malaysia and 9/11:
“Terror summit
Intelligence records show that they were hosted by Yazid Sufaat, a Malaysian microbiologist and former army captain educated at California State University-Sacramento in the 1980s, in a gated community of clustered red brick condominium towers. There they were joined by at least nine other terrorists for what was later to be dubbed the “Kuala Lumpur Summit”.
The meeting was a planning operation for the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole warship in Aden, Yemen, headed by an operative known as Khallad, as well as the 9/11 attacks before al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi traveled to Los Angeles en route to San Diego via Bangkok. Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, both Saudi nationals and then future hijackers of the American Airlines Flight 77 that smashed into the Pentagon, were able to enter Malaysia visa-free as citizens of signatory states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
Their meeting was secretly monitored by Malaysia’s Special Branch intelligence unit, which had closely tracked the movements of Al-Mihdhar, al-Hazmi, Khallad and other participants as they shuttled back and forth from Sufaat’s condo. Malaysian agents were acting on a tip from the US Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) dedicated Osama bin Laden tracking unit, known as Alec Station.”
Informed readers will not find the irony here surprising, given that Alec Station knew all along what the so-called Al Qaeda minions were doing and when and where they were at all times, as Bamford has shown in his Shadow Factory, pages 18-21.  The attacks of 9/11 were launched in part from Malaysia, so what we see from this is a clear dark side Western intelligence connection to operations and activities in Southeast Asia, and Malaysia in particular.  With these thoughts in mind, it is not a leap of logic to consider intelligence connections to the present government connected Malaysian Airlines, which would therefore be an easy tool for Western covert air operations and/or false flags, considering the CIA and SIS have a long history of Southeast Asian operations.

Pristine passport photos reminiscent of the magical 9/11 hijacker passports.

Though forgotten in the black hole of infinite infostream, it was reported at the time of the MH370 “loss” that I was not alone in my thesis – former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahatir Mohamad claimed what was most likely the case – the CIA and Boeing ran the MH370 “disappearance” operation.  He stated according to Time:
“Clearly Boeing and certain agencies have the capacity to take over ‘uninterruptible control’ of commercial airliners of which MH370 B777 is one,” Mohamed wrote.  “Someone is hiding something,” he added. “It is not fair that… Malaysia should take the blame. For some reason the media will not print anything that involves Boeing or the CIA.”
21stCenturyWire has rightly called attention to the apparently staged aspects of MH17, noting the pristine passports and luggage, as well as numerous anomalies regarding the “no fly zone” mandates that were apparently unheeded.  These oddities are reminiscent of 9/11 inconsistencies. Why a supposed passenger liner would fly directly into a war zone has yet to be answered, but regardless of facts and evidence, the mainstream media was ready with neo-con and Clintonista establishment accusations and propaganda within minutes, blaming Russia. From John McCain to Strobe Talbott, to Hillary Clinton to the British Secretary of Defense, it was clear without any investigation – “Putin and Russia did it!” and “Get the gas and stop Gazprom!’  Nevermind the fact that the respected Jane’s Quarterly stated that the Kiev forces were the most likely possessors of this SAM (surface to air) technology.  
Similarities to the 1983 KAL Flight 007 are also emerging, which was another false flag event that killed famed Rep. Larry McDonald, a prominent investigator of the CFR and its support of Soviet and US convergence.  McDonald had famously investigated and published evidence of a conspiracy to build a socialist one world government through entities like the United Nations and CFR.  That McDonald’s plane was brought down by Russia, according to the official story, stretches credulity as well, unless by “Russia” it is meant Soviets in league with the CFR.  But that his flight was “007” is highly significant for another reason.

KAL Flight 007, in which Larry McDonald was killed.

In 2012, the popular BBC show Sherlock began its second season with a curious plot. In “A Scandal in Belgravia,” Sherlock is hired by the crown to recover compromising photos of a high level British official, becoming involved in a plot of intrigue far beyond his initial considerations.  As it turns out, his nemesis Moriarty is planning on a terrorist bombing that is “foiled” by Mycroft, who works for Mi5/Mi6 by utilizing an old SIS plan from World War II, the Coventry Blitz.  What is really interesting for investigators of twilight language is the similarity of Mycroft’s plot to the recent Malaysian Plane event.  Mycroft and Mi5 load a Boeing, titled Flight 007, and “Operation Bond Air,” with already dead bodies.  The false flag event will allow Moriarty to believe he has actually blown up a passenger liner, while Mi5 will organize the order out of the chaos.  The BBC is, of course, run by British Intelligence.
The amazing parallels are evident in other ways, too.  Larry McDonald’s KAL flight was Flight 007, and most curious of all, a Russian commander has come forth claiming the downed MH 17 was populated with bodies already dead, prior to the flight, with no blood.  Pro-Russian leader Igor Girkin claimed as follows:
“The pro-rebel website Russkaya Vesna on Friday quoted Igor Girkin as saying he was told by people at the crash site that “a significant number of the bodies weren’t fresh,” adding that he was told they were drained of blood and reeked of decomposition.”
If true, the similarities to the BBC Sherlock cannot be coincidence.  JaysAnalysis has documented countless cases of film and television scripting being used for propaganda and psy ops in real covert operations, and this could be one of the more spectacular examples.  Also of note are the numerological associations that are not coincidental.  It should also be understood that according to the NSA itself in its scholarly publications, numerology and the occult have a long history of usage in cryptography and intelligence communcations.   Twilight Language as investigated on this blog is confirmed as a real, legitimate form of cryptography in examples such as this linked article.   With all that in mind, and considering the propaganda and media blitz like this and this and this, while stories like this are ignored, it is not a stretch to consider the MH17 flight downing’s twilight language as a classic Mi6/CIA calling card.
Let us also not forget the IMF head Christine Lagarde and her “numerology” speech that focused on the “magic 7,” and according to her, its importance for 2014. The supposed downing of the plane occurred on 7 – 17 – 2014.  As far as I am aware, I was the first to consider the possible numerological connections to the plane events, consider the associations that Lagarde herself mentioned in her Press Club speech.  Let’s review her speech again, focusing on her actual statements, and not so much on the interpretation of the video maker.

Occult Message in Speech by Christine Lagarde of IMF

The day of the MH17 event, I stated as follows.



Notice that in Lagarde’s speech she mentions war, Bretton Woods and the emerging international order.  It is my thesis that Lagarde is referring possibly to the “magic 7″ event of the Malaysian Plane false flag, and that this may be a signifier of the coming international economic order and reorganized monetary reset, as well as war with Eurasia or Russia, primarily signified and fulfilled in the MH17 false flag fiasco.  It is important to see this in connection to the BRICS meeting, which is an attempt at an eastern counter to the IMF.  Lagarde is thus giving the twilight language cryptography in reference to the London/Wall Street establishment’s response to BRICS.  Russia does not stand to gain from blowing up a passenger liner full of “AIDS researchers,” but the Anglo establishment does, to blame an attack on Russia for more EU/NATO expansion.  One is immediately reminded of the PR propaganda from the Iraq war, where the laughable lie was that “babies were thrown out of incubators.” The numerology and the BBC scripting are evidence of the western intelligence establishment’s “calling card,” reminiscent of both Operation Northwoods and Gladio.  
See also:

Evidence to Frame Russia For MH17 Shoot Down Fabricated?

How The Simpsons predicted US Ebola outbreak in 1997

Posted by George Freund on October 9, 2014

Episode shows Marge offering a sick Bart children's book 'Curious George and the Ebola Virus'

Episode called 'Lisa's Sax' first aired on October 19, 1997

The season nine episode shows Marge trying to coax a sick Bart to read a book called 'Curious George and the Ebola Virus'

An apocalyptic drawing by Bart shows the sun crying above dead bodies and blood

By Mail Online Reporter

Published: 19:19 GMT, 9 October 2014 | Updated: 21:05 GMT, 9 October 2014

The Simpsons has been at the cutting edge of popular culture for a quarter of a century - but do Springfield's most famous residents have the ability to predict the future?

According to Internet conspiracy theorists, the simple answer is yes.

They claim the world famous TV series predicted the Ebola crisis back in a 1997 episode in which Marge tries to coax a sick Bart out of bed, as proof.

She suggests he reads a book before producing one entitled 'Curious George and the Ebola Virus'.


Conspiracy theorists have pointed to these clips in The Simpsons for its apparent ability to foresee the Ebola crisis which now threatens to become a pandemic as the US records its first victim.



According to Internet conspiracy theorists, a 1997 episode from season nine of the popular cartoon, features Marge trying to coax a sick Bart into reading 'Curious George and the Ebola Virus'



The book's cover shows a monkey lying in bed. The monket has long been suspected of being a carrier of the virus which has now made its way to America and claimed its first victim, Eric Thomas Duncan




Marge then asks if Bart would like 'to color something', to which he replies: 'I already did', and points to an apocalyptic drawing of a dead Bart surrounded by blood and bodies with the sun and clouds crying

Did The Simpsons predict Ebola outbreak back in 1997 ?

The clip appeared on a YouTube channel called the Controversy7 where the host discusses the Ebola virus among various other theories about the power of the Hollywood film industry.

The presenter of the site, Emmanuel Lokonga, wrote: 'Is there something we are not being told? Is it by pure chance & coincidence that the Simpsons would do predictive programming?'

The YouTube commentators were split on Mr Lokonga's theory. VSR wrote: 'US Government has had ebola vaccines for a couple of years now. Look it up.'

Sourjouneth Truth added: Thank you so very much for this video! Very good information. You have done an excellent job on this. Puppets on their strings, they think. NOT! Our Father has His Children's Backs. The rest of the story is being written and the fate of the evil is predetermined. Read Psalms 73.'

However some skepticism came from Jayden Morpeth, who commented: 'You realize the Ebola virus has been around for a long time it just hasn't be as serious as it is now.'

Despite the apparent chilling prediction from The Simpsons, Ebola was already well-known as a havoc-wreaking deadly virus in the late Nineties.

Airline cabin cleaners walk out in protest at JFK and LaGuardia over fears they could be exposed to...

From thongs to maternity outfits - the bizarre Ebola gifts available online

Ebola was discovered in 1976 following major outbreaks that year in the Sudan and Zaire. In the 1990s, the disease saw a resurgence with an outbreak in Gabon in 1994, followed by another in Zaire in 1995.

It could be said that other than the current Ebola crisis, the worst in recorded history, The Simpsons episode actually predicted the outbreak which occurred three years after the show aired.

Between 2000-2004, close to 500 people died from Ebola in Uganda, Gabon, the Republic of Congo and Sudan.

The current outbreak, which began last December, has so far killed more than 3,800 people, according to the latest World Health Organization figures.

The vast majority of those deaths have been in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. On Wednesday a Liberian man, Eric Thomas Duncan, became the first Ebola victim to die on US soil. On Thursday a British man died from suspected Ebola in Macedonia.

The Simpsons episode called Lisa's Sax aired on October 19, 1997 - and appeared to hold a chilling prediction about the future