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I've said over and over again since 9/11/2001, "Impossible. It's just impossible."
It was impossible for non-demolitioned buildings to fall like we saw them do on TV. (I worked in aerospace engineering for over 20 years.)
Ask my students with whom I discussed my skepticism the next day.
"Burning temperature of jet fuel (essentially kerosene): less than 1500 degrees Fahrenheit."
"Melting temperature of steel (iron) which was found flowing in numerous sites in the wreckage: at least 2700 degrees Fahrenheit."
"This is high school physics!"
"How can those massive steel columns disappear. Why aren't they poking up out of the ground?"
Who are you gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes?
Or ask these civil engineers, structural engineers, electrical engineers, materials science engineers, chemical engineers, mechanical engineers, metallurgists, physicists and clinical psychologists. (The very difficult fabrication of the explosive nanothermite found in the wreckage/debris and its uses in melting steel is explained precisely herein.)
"Over 100 first responders reported secondary explosions and flashes of light."
911 Experts Speak Out
Video
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Bird-Dogging Torturers in NYC
By Ray McGovern
As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 nears, many ex-Bush administration officials who approved torture in the "war on terror" and botched the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are back in the spotlight taking bows from appreciative audiences in tightly controlled settings.
By Dr. Michael Parenti
Globalization is an attempt to extend corporate monopoly control over the whole globe. Over every national economy. Over every local economy. Over every life.
And from the rightwingnut shouting "Traitors!" corner?
- - - - - - -"The Department of Defense is not what's causing the debt and the deficit. It's the entitlement programs," he told HUMAN EVENTS in an exclusive interview.
All those wondering just what rainy day BofA and all other banks had been conserving their ever growing cash stash for, just got their answer.
I also predicted prior to the 2008 TARP bailout that everybody would eventually be suing everybody else because the taxpayer bailout would be just the start of the hoped-for "getting even" (from their self-enriching casino behavior) actions for the banking/investment community. From Zero Hedge we learn what's happening internationally in law courts.
It was only a matter of time. A few weeks after every money losing firm in the US and the kitchen sink disclosed it would sue Bank of America in an accelerating attempt to salvage something through litigation, the worst case scenario for Brian Moynhian just got real.
. . . Norway's Government Pension Fund, which is another name for its Sovereign Wealth Fund, has just announced it is suing Bank of America for mortgage fraud. Not only that but it is also going after Countrywide, obviously, but far more importantly, is also suing KPGM, the auditor on the Countrywide transaction, and, drumroll, ole' Agent Orange himself.
If US bank analysts were busy quantifying the damages from every bank in the US suing BofA, just wait until the calculation is expanded to included every firm that bought mortgages from Bank of America... ever...in the entire world.
Pension Fund chief Yngve Slyngstad suing mortgage company Countrywide, the owner Bank of America and KPMG in the U.S. for fraud, (reports) newspaper Dagens Næringsliv.And just like the US lawsuit spigot opened ever so slowly at first, it is now gushing, and is absolutely certain that every company . . . that ever bought a mortgage from Countrywide, Merrill and Bank of America will serve the local branch of the bank with a summons over the next month.
Billions are at the game.
The Fund and 14 other large institutional investors meetings the parties to a court in California.
They claim that Countrywide - formerly the largest U.S. lender for residential purposes - held back important information and concealed the extent of credit risk that the company took. The company was one of the largest lending founders of so-called subprime loans, which was a major cause of financial crisis.
Because of the misrepresentation of the company and senior management, bought the oil fund and other investors in Countrywide shares at artificially high prices from March 2004 to March 2008, according to the fund.
Angelo Mozilo and two other former directors sued as well. They . . . have enriched (the)msel(ves) personally by selling shares of "several hundred million dollars" based on information that was not available in the market.
The company's auditor KPMG and Bank of America, which bought the company in 2008, accused in the lawsuit.
"Countrywide's shares traded as high as $ 45.2 February 2007. Just over a year later the stock was down by about 90 percent, which caused investors billions of dollars in losses. . . .
All those wondering just what rainy day BofA and all other banks had been conserving their ever growing cash stash for, just got their answer.
And the funniest, or saddest, depending on one's perspective, thing is: insolvent European banks, as long as they bought any toxic bonds without doing much if any homework, are about to pad their empty coffers courtesy of America's biggest bank... which in turn will lead to TARP 2, better known as the taxpayer funded bailout of European bank(s) with a Bank of America conduit.
But, back to the future (er, present):
How Little We Know about The Origins of 9/11
By Robert Scheer
For a decade, the main questions about 9/11 have gone unanswered while the alleged perpetrators who survived the attacks have never been publicly cross-examined as to their methods and motives. It is not conspiratorial but rather obviously plausible to suggest that they have been kept out of sight because legal due process, constitutionally guaranteed to even the most heinous of criminals, might provide information that our government would find embarrassing.
We remain in ignorance as to what drove religious zealots formerly allied with the United States to turn against us, and what was the role of our ally, Saudi Arabia, the country of origin for most of the hijackers and their financing. Why in the aftermath of the attack did the United States embrace Pakistan, which was one of only three governments (Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were the others) to diplomatically recognize the Taliban and which turned out to be harboring the fugitive Osama bin Laden? And why did we instead invade Iraq, a nation known to be engaged in a deadly war with bin Laden and his al-Qaida?
How little we know about the origins of the Sept. 11 attacks is laid out in the disclaimer on Page 146 of the official 9/11 presidential commission report. A box on that page states clearly that the conventional narrative of how those portentous events unfolded is based largely on the interrogation under torture of key witnesses who have never been permitted a single moment in a publicly observed court of law.
As the bipartisan commissioners ruefully conceded, their examination of the motives, financing and actions of the alleged 9/11 perpetrators had to “rely heavily on information from captured al Qaeda members” that the commissioners, despite having been granted the highest security clearance, were never allowed to seriously vet:
“We submitted questions for use in the interrogations but had no control over whether, when, or how questions of particular interest would be asked. Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and clarify ambiguities in the reporting. We were told that our requests might disrupt the sensitive interrogation process.”
That sensitive interrogation process included the waterboarding of the key witnesses, led by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was scheduled to go on public, civilian trial in Manhattan last spring, until the Obama administration caved in to hysterical Republican-led pressure and called off the trial.
The fear of a public trial is apparently that it will be an occasion to humanize the presumed perpetrators of barbaric acts, but by that standard no alleged murderer should ever be tried in civilian court. The counterargument is that we as a society have, from the drafting of our Constitution, been committed to due process of law. But an even more compelling objection to the present secrecy flows not from the inalienable rights of the accused to justice but rather from the need to fully inform the public as to the dangers faced by our society.
Major policy developments, including two undeclared wars, were conducted in the name of defeating the perpetrators of 9/11 without the pubic being made aware of the relevant facts. Surely a public trial would have revealed, to the deep embarrassment of the Bush administration, that there was no connection between the 9/11 hijackers and the government of Iraq that the United States overthrew.
At the very least, such testimony would have shed light on the cozy relationship between the U.S. government and the key leaders of al-Qaida, particularly the American-educated Mohammed, recruited by the CIA to join the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. It certainly could also have proved embarrassing to former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who, during the Bush administration, opposed public trials and managed last March to get President Barack Obama to reverse his pledge of civilian trials.
Gates boasted in his 1996 memoir of his long history of working with Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan, dating to his days in the Carter administration. As his book publisher bragged at the time, Gates exposed “Carter’s never-before revealed covert support to Afghan mujahedeen — six months before the Soviets invaded.”
Of course 9/11 changed everything; nations were invaded, trillions of dollars were wasted, hundreds of thousands of civilian and military lives were lost, torture became acceptable and the public has come to tolerate a daily governmental assault on privacy as normal. But for all of the high drama and cost of the U.S. response, when it comes to understanding the forces behind the attack, we still do not know what we are talking about.
This article was published at NationofChange.
Obama’s Speech, His Banks, Our Jobs
By Nomi Prins
Before tomorrow's 2012 pre-election speech in which President Obama's vocal elocution will be earnest, and results - to put it mildly - tepid, about how he could create jobs dammit, if only the Republicans would behave, it's interesting to note who's supporting Obama keep his job.
A cursory look at the early stages of his campaign fundraising reveals that the same group of people that benefitted from policies (bi-partisan) that lavished them with cheap money, secret loans, debt guarantees and other forms of perks not available to the average citizen, are backing him for President. Big Time.
And whereas it's true, Obama's most recent poll numbers look as abysmal as any President (save FDR who he will never, ever be) facing a depressed economy and a near double-digit 'official' unemployment rate (worse if you get beneath its massaged surface), this isn't effecting his most important support, the financial kind. To date, Obama's Presidential bid dosh comes largely from - wait for it - the financial sector.
Yes, the same sector that screwed the country over, and that, despite some unpleasant lawsuits they will likely settle, remains as powerful, unrepentant, unaccountable, selfish and Main-Street-destabilizing as before Obama took office. No wonder he's been able to keep Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner by his side - someone has to allay Wall Street concerns that true retribution or meaningful regulatory repercussion will befall them.
So far, Obama has raised $49 million dollars. (More than all the GOP wannabes combined, but that's largely because he's got the head-start and incumbent factor going for him. Plus, he's a hit at fundraising events. Here in Los Angeles, he's tied up traffic several times with those already.) Nearly $35 million has come from 'bundlers', those wealthy, connected, folks that circumvent the caps on their individual donations by pooling their dough together. And just over a third of that, or $11.8 million, comes from the Finance Sector (and yes, one of the sector's 44 bundlers is from Goldman Sachs, his number two contributor in the 2008 election).
Now, it's not shocking that the banks are banking on Obama. Until they see a surer bet on the Republican side emerge, they're not going to be diffusive with their capital that way. And, beyond some scolding words a couple years ago around election time, followed by a Wall Street speech to which none of the CEOs showed, Obama has done zero to expose, denounce, or change the specific fraudulent actions of his supporters - that would be - political suicide for him. Plus, in the game of politics today, the issue for both parties is slamming each other, Wall Street ire has been replaced with entitlement spending cut banter, whether this results in meaningful policy is not even an afterthought.
Meanwhile, Obama will release details of a new $300 billion jobs stimulus program and urge the GOP to allow him to do his job by creating the nation's jobs. He might even throw in a sentence or two about helping downtrodden borrowers refinance, which will require bank approval and facilitation, which therefore will be as successful as HAMP. And the GOP will balk and say we must cut spending not increase it, refusing to acknowledge the extent of debt we created to float a criminal banking system.
Stalemate to the nth degree. Big yawns all around.
What Obama will not discuss, is the private lending problem that caps the ability of individuals to stay afloat and small and mid-size businesses to hire. Though they have been treated with kids gloves and deep pockets by Washington, the big banks have not shared the joy they received. Small business loans remain anemically at late 2008 levels inhibiting hiring or expansion - and these are the companies that don't offshore in a heartbeat.
Refinancing and mortgage restructuring, despite record low interest rates making the transaction sensible and reducing risk all around, are negligible, thus home movement is impossible and consumer confidence and construction jobs are hit in the process as well. Personal and business bankruptcies continue to mount absent opportunity. This isn't a healthy scenario for job growth.
You can blame it on 'the economy', 'tough times' 'all of us struggling together' or any other generic poli-sound bites. Or you can blame it on the biggest banks sitting on extra capital, which either a) is stored at the Fed in the form of $1.6 trillion worth of Treasury bonds that receive interest in excess of the cost of borrowing the money to purchase them, b) is used to trade and speculate, or otherwise derive ways to make a 'quick' buck, or c) is set aside to deal with lawsuits they brought upon themselves.
Again, none of this is nationally productive or job inducing.Yep. Can't do squat. After all, as not-so-Dumbya said, "It's your money!"
The private banking system is holding people's homes, potential jobs, and general confidence and economic well-being hostage. Thus, however Obama phrases whatever he says tomorrow, and even if his plan for a job stimulus package is verbalized in a more coherent strategy than last time - without a loosening of credit - new or re-negotiated or otherwise more befitting the low rate environment that the Fed offers banks, it's just one tiny piece of a giant puzzle that won't be able to do squat to turn the tide.
This article was published at NationofChange.
Ready to organize yet?
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