How The Rothschilds Made America Into Their Private Tax Fraud Backyard

Back in September 2012 we first presented "the world's biggest hedge fund nobody had ever heard of": a small, previously unknown company called Braeburn Capital which, however, managed more cash than even Ray Dalio's Bridgewater, the world's largest hedge fund. 

How had the little firm operating out of a non-descript office building in Nevada achieved this claim to fame? By managing the cash hoard (now well over $200 billion) of the world's biggest and most valuable company: Apple.

But what was perhaps more notable is where Braeburn was physically located: Reno, Nevada. 

We explained the company's choice for location with one simple word: "taxes", or rather the full, and very much legal, avoidance thereof.

Three and a half years later we encounter this quiet Nevada town once again, and once again it is Reno's aura of tax evasion that brings is to the world's attention courtesy of a Bloomberg report discussing "The World’s Favorite New Tax Haven."

Only instead of Apple this time, the focus falls on a far more notorious company: the Rotschilds.

As Bloomberg writes, "last September, at a law firm overlooking San Francisco Bay, Andrew Penney, a managing director at Rothschild & Co., gave a talk on how the world’s wealthy elite can avoid paying taxes.  His message was clear: You can help your clients move their fortunes to the United States, free of taxes and hidden from their governments. Some are calling it the new Switzerland."

Ah, the rich irony: years after Obama single-handedly destroyed the secrecy-based Swiss banking model, the U.S. itself has taken over the role of the world's biggest, if no longer very secret, tax haven, and the epicenter is this modest Nevada city located next to lake Tahoe, which has become the favorite city, if only for tax purposes, for such names as Apple and the Rothschild family.

The Swiss are not amused:

After years of lambasting other countries for helping rich Americans hide their money offshore, the U.S. is emerging as a leading tax and secrecy haven for rich foreigners. By resisting new global disclosure standards, the U.S. is creating a hot new market, becoming the go-to place to stash foreign wealth. Everyone from London lawyers to Swiss trust companies is getting in on the act, helping the world’s rich move accounts from places like the Bahamas and the British Virgin Islands to Nevada, Wyoming, and South Dakota. 

“How ironic—no, how perverse—that the USA, which has been so sanctimonious in its condemnation of Swiss banks, has become the banking secrecy jurisdiction du jour,” wrote Peter A. Cotorceanu, a lawyer at Anaford AG, a Zurich law firm, in a recent legal journal. “That ‘giant sucking sound’ you hear? It is the sound of money rushing to the USA.”

It will probably come as no surprise, that the firm at the center of it all is the (in)famous financial institution: Rotschild & Company.

Rothschild, the centuries-old European financial institution, has opened a trust company in Reno, Nev., a few blocks from the Harrah’s and Eldorado casinos. It is now moving the fortunes of wealthy foreign clients out of offshore havens such as Bermuda, subject to the new international disclosure requirements, and into Rothschild-run trusts in Nevada, which are exempt.

The firm says its Reno operation caters to international families attracted to the stability of the U.S. and that customers must prove they comply with their home countries’ tax laws. Its trusts, moreover, have “not been set up with a view to exploiting that the U.S. has not signed up” for international reporting standards, said Rothschild spokeswoman Emma Rees.

And where the Rothschilds are to be found, everyone else quickly arrives: "Geneva-based Cisa Trust Co. SA, which advises wealthy Latin Americans, is applying to open in Pierre, S.D., to “serve the needs of our foreign clients,” said John J. Ryan Jr., Cisa’s president."

Trident Trust Co., one of the world’s biggest providers of offshore trusts, moved dozens of accounts out of Switzerland, Grand Cayman, and other locales and into Sioux Falls, S.D., in December, ahead of a Jan. 1 disclosure deadline. 

“Cayman was slammed in December, closing things that people were withdrawing,” said Alice Rokahr, the president of Trident in South Dakota, one of several states promoting low taxes and confidentiality in their trust laws. “I was surprised at how many were coming across that were formerly Swiss bank accounts, but they want out of Switzerland.”

Next comes the need to legitimize US hypocrisy and to justify how America, in demanding everyone else opens their books, is ignored when not only does it keep its own books closed but is openly welcoming all those millionaires and billionaires whose offshore accounts were closed as a result of US intervention!

Rokahr and other advisers said there is a legitimate need for secrecy. Confidential accounts that hide wealth, whether in the U.S., Switzerland, or elsewhere, protect against kidnappings or extortion in their owners’ home countries. The rich also often feel safer parking their money in the U.S. rather than some other location perceived as less-sure. 

“I do not hear anybody saying, ‘I want to avoid taxes,’ ” Rokahr said. “These are people who are legitimately concerned with their own health and welfare.”

Picture that: nobody wants to admit they are intent on evading taxes to their financial advisor. How quaint.  But the greatest thing about US-based tax evasion is that it is taking place right under the nose of the world's allegedly biggest tax-fraud chaser. It also happens to be perfectly legal. 

There’s nothing illegal about banks luring foreigners to put money in the U.S. with promises of confidentiality as long as they are not intentionally helping to evade taxes abroad. Still, the U.S. is one of the few places left where advisers are actively promoting accounts that will remain secret from overseas authorities.

Put all that together, and one company has realized there are billions in "fees" to be made by taking advantage of what is now officially the biggest hypocrite in the world: the United States of America. And adding insult to irony is that the "not easy to find" Rothschild Reno office is located just 6 floors away from the U.S. attorney's office!

Rothschild’s Reno office is at the forefront of that effort. “The Biggest Little City in the World” is not an obvious choice for a global center of capital flight. If you were going to shoot a film set in Las Vegas circa 1971, you would film it in Reno. Its casino hotels tower above the bail bondsmen across the street, available 24/7, as well as pawnshops stocked with an array of firearms. The pink neon lights at casinos like Harrah’s and the Eldorado still burn bright. But these days, their floors are often empty, with travelers preferring to gamble in Las Vegas, an hour’s flight away.

The offices of Rothschild Trust North America LLC aren’t easy to find. They’re on the 12th floor of Porsche’s former North American headquarters building, a few blocks from the casinos. (The U.S. attorney’s office is on the sixth floor.) Yet the lobby directory does not list Rothschild. Instead, visitors must go to the 10th floor, the offices of McDonald Carano Wilson LLP, a politically connected law firm. Several former high-ranking Nevada state officials work there, as well as the owner of some of Reno’s biggest casinos and numerous registered lobbyists. One of the firm’s tax lobbyists is Robert Armstrong, viewed as the state’s top trusts and estates attorney, and a manager of Rothschild Trust North America.

A little history: the trust company was set up in 2013 to cater to international families, particularly those with a mix of assets and relatives in the U.S. and abroad, according to Rothschild. It caters to customers attracted to the “stable, regulated environment” of the U.S., said Rees, the Rothschild spokeswoman.

“We do not offer legal structures to clients unless we are absolutely certain that their tax affairs are in order; both clients themselves and independent tax lawyers must actively confirm to us that this is the case,” Rees said.

Reread that sentence again, and this time try not to laugh: imagine a world in which both clients and tax lawyers, who are both conflicted and incentivized monetarily to lie, affirmatively confirm that they are not tax cheats? This is almost as good as Wall Street policing itself.

The managing director of the Nevada trust company is Scott Cripps, an amiable California tax attorney who used to run the trust services for Bank of the West, now part of French financial-services giant BNP Paribas SA. Cripps explained that moving money out of traditional offshore secrecy jurisdictions and into Nevada is a brisk new line of business for Rothschild. 

“There’s a lot of people that are going to do it,” said Cripps. “This added layer of privacy is kicking them over the hurdle” to move their assets into the U.S. For wealthy overseas clients, “privacy is huge, especially in countries where there is corruption.”

Here are some examples of families whose affairs are in order (after active self-confirmation of just that): 

One wealthy Turkish family is using Rothschild’s trust company to move assets from the Bahamas into the U.S., he said. Another Rothschild client, a family from Asia, is moving assets from Bermuda into Nevada. He said customers are often international families with offspring in the U.S.

America's gain is Switzerland's, that centuries-old tax haven's, loss: Switzerland has been the global capital of secret bank accounts. That may be changing. In 2007, UBS Group AG banker Bradley Birkenfeld blew the whistle on his firm helping U.S. clients evade taxes with undeclared accounts offshore. Swiss banks eventually paid a price. More than 80 Swiss banks, including UBS and Credit Suisse Group AG, have agreed to pay about $5 billion to the U.S. in penalties and fines.

Guess who was among them? why yes, Rothschild Bank AG last June entered into a nonprosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice. The bank admitted helping U.S. clients hide income offshore from the Internal Revenue Service and agreed to pay an $11.5 million penalty and shut down nearly 300 accounts belonging to U.S. taxpayers, totaling $794 million in assets.

Well, Rothschild is doing it all over again, only this time in Uncle Sam's back yard. Wait, you mean paying a $11.5 million penalty didn't teach it a lesson? No way. 

But even more tragicomic is the US push for tax transparency, known as the FATCA. Well, a push everywhere except in the US itself.

The U.S. was determined to put an end to such practices. That led to a 2010 law, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or Fatca, that requires financial firms to disclose foreign accounts held by U.S. citizens and report them to the IRS or face steep penalties. Inspired by Fatca, the OECD drew up even stiffer standards to help other countries ferret out tax dodgers. Since 2014, 97 jurisdictions have agreed to impose new disclosure requirements for bank accounts, trusts, and some other investments held by international customers. Of the nations the OECD asked to sign on, only a handful have declined: Bahrain, Nauru, Vanuatu—and the United States. 

“I have a lot of respect for the Obama administration because without their first moves we would not have gotten these reporting standards,” said Sven Giegold, a member of the European Parliament from Germany’s Green Party. “On the other hand, now it’s time for the U.S. to deliver what Europeans are willing to deliver to the U.S.”

As it turns out the US had no qualms about implementing global tax disclosure standards... as long as it itself would be exempt and benefit from the entire world parking its criminal money on US territory:

The Treasury Department makes no apologies for not agreeing to the OECD standards. “The U.S. has led the charge in combating international tax evasion using offshore financial accounts,” said Treasury spokesman Ryan Daniels. He said the OECD initiative “builds directly” on the Fatca law.

“To the extent non-U.S. persons are encouraged to come to the U.S. for what may be our own ‘tax haven’ characteristics, the U.S. government would likely take a dim view of any marketing suggesting that evading home country tax is a legal objective,” he said.

And since the US now openly welcome all forms of hot, laundered, embezzled, or otherwise misappropriated money, there are countless banks willing to provide the service of parking that money in the US... for a commission. What amounts are we talking about? 

Well, trillions.

At issue is not just non-U.S. citizens skirting their home countries’ taxes. Treasury also is concerned that massive inflows of capital into secret accounts could become a new channel for criminal money laundering. At least $1.6 trillion in illicit funds are laundered through the global financial system each year, according to a United Nations estimate.

And most of those funds are now being parked in the US, where a key portal is Rothshild's Reno, NV office. 

But what makes this particular case of tax evasion particularly abominable is that it is nothing less than a symbiosis between proven and charged tax evaders and a U.S. government which has once again proven it can be bought for pennies on the dollar by banks like Rothschild, and legislate to make sure the bank continues pocketing billions in fees for the foreseeable future.

We dare readers to read the following several concluding sections without sending their blood pressure to dangerously homicidal levels:

For financial advisers, the current state of play is simply a good business opportunity. In a draft of his San Francisco presentation, Rothschild’s Penney wrote that the U.S. “is effectively the biggest tax haven in the world.” The U.S., he added in language later excised from his prepared remarks, lacks “the resources to enforce foreign tax laws and has little appetite to do so.”

Rothschild says it takes “significant care” to ensure account holders’ assets are fully declared. The bank “adheres to the legal, regulatory, and tax rules wherever we operate,” said Rees, the Rothschild spokeswoman. 

Except in cases like Switzerland where it didn't exactly "adhere to the legal, regulatory, and tax rules." This time will be different though.

Penney, who oversees the Reno business, is a longtime Rothschild lawyer who worked his way up from the firm’s trust operations in the tiny British isle of Guernsey. Penney, 56, is now a managing director based in London for Rothschild Wealth Management & Trust, which handles about $23 billion for 7,000 clients from offices including Milan, Zurich, and Hong Kong. A few years ago he was voted “Trustee of the Year” by an elite group of U.K. wealth advisers. 

In his September San Francisco talk, called “Using U.S. Trusts in International Planning: 10 Amazing Feats to Impress Clients and Colleagues,” Penney laid out legal ways to avoid both U.S. taxes and disclosures to clients’ home countries. 

In a section originally titled “U.S. Trusts to Preserve Privacy,” he included the hypothetical example of an Internet investor named “Wang, a Hong Kong resident,” originally from the People’s Republic of China, concerned that information about his wealth could be shared with Chinese authorities. 

Instead Wang will buy, sight unseen a Manhattan duplex for call it $50 million or whatever amount the seller demands, using a Nevada LLC with which to shield his purchase. In the process Wang's purchase, under the sage advice of Rothschild's Mr. Penney, assures that the luxury US housing bubble grows so big, and real estate prices rise so high, not a single law-abiding US citizen can afford to buy any form of luxury real estate.

Putting his assets into a Nevada LLC, in turn owned by a Nevada trust, would generate no U.S. tax returns, Penney wrote. Any forms the IRS would receive would result in “no meaningful information to exchange under” agreements between Hong Kong and the U.S., according to Penney’s PowerPoint presentation reviewed by Bloomberg. 

Keep in mind: all of this is legal, and with the express permission of a US government, which one can rightly say is as criminal as any of the advisors who are merely explaining to their wealthy clients how to cheat the system best.

There was a catch: not all western governments are muppets for the Rothschilds of the world: 

"Penney offered a disclaimer: At least one government, the U.K., intends to make it a criminal offense for any U.K. firm to facilitate tax evasion." 

Of course not the US, even though with that line it makes it very clear that what the US is doing is encouraing the criminal offense of facilitating tax evasion. Or maybe not. 

Rothschild said the PowerPoint was subsequently revised before Penney delivered his presentation. The firm provided what it said was the final version of the talk, which this time excluded several potentially controversial passages. Among them: the U.S. being the “biggest tax haven in the world,” the U.S.’s low appetite for enforcing other countries’ tax laws, and two references to “privacy” offered by the U.S.

“The presentation was drafted in response to a request by the organizers to be controversial and create a lively debate among the experienced, professional audience,” Rees said. “On reviewing the initial draft, these lines were not deemed to represent either Rothschild’s or Mr. Penney’s view. They were therefore removed.”

And that was that.

* * * 

While none of the above should come as a surprise to anyone who has been following our series since 2012 showing how US real estate has been used by foreign oligarchs to park illegal cash, what we would find very interesting in the next and final expose in this series, is for Bloomberg's Jesse Drucker to find how many billions (or maybe only millions - the US government is a very cheap whore) were paid under the table by Rothschild et al to bribe the US government to enable this kind of circular, incestuous legalized tax fraud on US soil, one for which Rothschild will collect billions in financial advisory fees for the indefinite future, and which blatantly steals from those who do pay their taxes: the middle class.

Credit to Zero Hedge

‘Bodies remain in the streets for weeks’: Anti-Kurdish op expanded in Turkey’s Diyarbakir

Refugee Murders 22-Year-Old Swedish Woman In Knife Attack

As you might have heard, the European Union is on the brink of collapse.

The bloc has been inundated with asylum seekers from the war-torn Mid-East and the influx of refugees now threatens to shatter the Schengen dream. Some European officials (most notably Angela Merkel) are fighting to preserve Europe’s open borders but others have reached their breaking point with what they see as a hostile foreign invasion.

Far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders even went so far as to call Arab migrants “Islamic testosterone bombs” who need to be “locked” in asylum centers to prevent them from waging a “sexual jihad” on Dutch women.

Wilders was referencing widespread reports of sexual assaults allegedly perpetrated by men and male teenagers “of Arab origin.” These attacks began to make international headlines after eyewitnesses in Cologne, Germany went public with accounts of an apparent sexual melee that unfolded in the city center on New Year’s Eve. Women, the reports indicated, were assaulted by “gangs” of refugees who groped them and in some cases robbed them.

Once the Cologne attacks became big news, Nyheter Idag released an investigative reportalleging prominent Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter sought to conceal from the public a wave of sexual assaults at a youth festival and concert in central Stockholm’s Kungsträdgården last August. Dagens Nyheter denied the allegations, saying it was in fact Swedish police that were responsible for the coverup. 

Swedish politicians promised a thorough investigation into the matter and voiced their disgust for the alleged attacks.

“This is a very big problem for those affected and for the whole of our country,” Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said. “We will not budge an inch, and we should not look away.”

Well if Löfven thought roving gangs of teenage refugees groping girls at concerts was a “big problem,” he has an even bigger issue now because on Monday, 22-year-old Alexandra Mezher was stabbed to death by a 15-year-old migrant at an asylum center.

“Mezher began working at an asylum center in the city of Molndal, helping unaccompanied minor migrants adapt to life in their adopted home,” The Washington Post writes. “She was killed by one of those young migrants.”

“It is so terrible. She was a person who wanted to do good,” Mezher’s cousin said “And then he murdered her when she was doing her job.”

She had only worked at the center for "a few months" according to Expressen, who adds that "the company that runs [the Molndal house] has many similar places throughout western Sweden." Here's more the Daily Mail:

Alexandra, of Lebanese Christian origin, lived with her parents Boutros, 46, and Chiméne Mezher, and her two younger brothers in Borås, some 40 miles from Molndal. 

Her father came to Sweden from Beirut, Lebanon, in 1989 and her mother moved there three years later. 

It has now emerged that Miss Mezher had been working alone at the housing in Mölndal, which is home to ten unaccompanied minors.

Despite rules that the staff should work in pairs, Miss Mezher had been working a night shift all by herself and was attacked just half an hour before daytime staff were due to take over, it is claimed. 

A colleague speaking on condition of anonymity said that staff had previously complained about having to work alone overnight.

'Everyone cried and someone said that this was something we had brought up before, that no one should work alone.'

The teenage migrant accused of murdering a young Swedish social worker at a refugee centre will stand trial as an adult, MailOnline has learnt.

Authorities in Sweden have taken the unusual step of keeping the 15-year-old suspect in police custody due to the serious nature of the crime. 

Youngsters are normally sent to a secure children’s home following arrest, but the teenager is being held behind bars due to public outrage follow the brutal knife killing of Alexandra Mezher.

And he will be held in an adult prison until he goes on trial.

‘A person is criminally responsible when they reach 15-years-old in Sweden,’ a Gothanburg Police spokesman told MailOnline.

‘The boy is being held at the police station.

‘But it is very unusual that children to be kept in custody by the police.

‘However the public prosecutor has deemed this as a special case due to the nature of the crime and will ask for the boy to be held in prison until he goes to trial.’

This is a "terrible crime" PM Löfven said, after visiting the scene. “It was messy, of course, a crime scene with blood,” police spokesman Thomas Fuxborg recalled. 

"The symbolism of Mezher’s slaying was not lost on the country’s politicians," WaPo continues, noting that Löfven took to the air waves following the young woman's death to acknowledge the country's growing disaffection with the refugee situation. "I believe that there are quite many people in Sweden who feel a lot of concern that there can be more cases of this kind," he told Radio Sweden.

Yes Mr. Löfven, we "believe" that you are correct and make no mistake, if European politicans do not find an effective way to get the situation under control, the public will remove them - either with the ballot or with the torches and pitchforks. 

On that note we close with one more quote from Mezher's relatives:

“It is the Swedish politicians’ fault that she is dead."

Credit to Zero Hedge

German bus driver grabs Muslim "refugee" in headlock after attempted theft

Argentina "Plagues Of Locust" Apocalyptic Signs

GIANT El Nino waves total safety car in Chile

Industrial Light and Magic

Original ILM Logo

With the invention of television and motion pictures, a powerful new tool was placed into the hands of those who practice deception. The ability to convince men and women that fabricated events are in fact reality rose to a new level. Grand illusions could be passed off as fact. From very rudimentary beginnings, the ability of a skilled cameraman and director to create credible facsimiles of reality advanced rapidly. Soon, it became difficult to discern what was fake and what was authentic.

All was fine as long as viewers were informed when they were watching a staged studio production. If a person turns on the television to watch a sitcom (situational comedy), they are informed beforehand that what they are viewing is fiction. It may appear very real, but the context announces it to be merely a clever production. Aside from the fact that the television network advertises the program as “entertainment,” the audio may include canned laughter and other elements which reveal to the viewer that they are watching a work of fiction.

Many works of fiction include visual elements that appear very real. From meticulously crafted stage sets, some the size of several city blocks, to recreations of scenes of war such as the opening moments of the movie Saving Private Ryan, it is very difficult for the viewer to perceive the falseness of what he is seeing.




If I took the image above and inserted it into a documentary book full of dramatic images from World War II, placing a caption under it identifying it as a picture of Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944, could you tell that it is actually a screen shot from the movie Saving Private Ryan? The image appears convincingly realistic. That is the magic of Hollywood. The entire industry is geared toward creating believable illusions.

Look again at the logo for the visual effects company Industrial Light and Magic. A magician is surrounded by a large gear. This signifies that magic is being accomplished through industrial means. Hollywood is like a large and complex machine designed to create illusions which appear as reality to the viewer. Light is the medium which the motion picture industry employs to create their magic. Apart from light we could not see. By manipulating light, a false image can be made to appear as reality. Oddly, it is the Lumiere brothers of France who are credited with developing the first commercial motion picture system. The French word lumiere means “light,” sharing the same base as the English word luminous.

The logo for Industrial Light and Magic is pregnant with meaning. A magician is someone who uses misdirection, slight of hand, and various acts of deception to create an illusion of reality before the eyes of his audience. The global center for the movie industry is Hollywood, California. Witches uses Holly wood to craft their magic wands. It was from the wood of a Holly tree that Harry Potter’s wand was created. The association of the motion picture and television industries to occult practices and acts of deception is profound. Television and the movies are used to mesmerize, deceive, and exert an invisible control over the masses.

As disciples of Christ living as aliens and strangers in a world which lies under the dominion of Satan, we are admonished to be “wise as serpents, yet harmless as doves.” We are further commended to “beware of men.” It would be naive for the Christian to assume that those who control the media would not use this power and influence as an instrument of deception to further a personal agenda. Let us not be simple-minded and think that the powers which control Hollywood productions will act with integrity by always maintaining a clear distinction between what is real and what is illusory. To assume that men and women in positions of power and influence would not pass off staged productions as reality, would predispose the individual to be deceived.

In the book Dragon Flood, I cited a number of occasions where government leaders used lies and deception to justify entry into wars; wars which were immensely profitable to global corporate interests. One of these events was the sinking of the Lusitania. Following is an excerpt from the chapter titled The Lies of War.

The Lies of War





The Lusitania - Precursor to America’s Entry to WWI

The hand of the invisible government has found it needful to devise atrocities that will mobilize public sentiment in favor of entry into war. The powers which govern realize that Americans are reluctant to engage in foreign wars. This was all the more true a century ago after a long period of isolationism. Americans viewed World War I as an European conflict. Most citizens of the United States believed that it was none of their affair. The banking interests needed some event to serve as a catalyst to move American opinion in the direction of open engagement in the war. The sinking of the ocean liner Lusitania proved to be that catalyst.

The sinking of the Lusitania was a contrived affair. Although reported as an unprovoked attack of a German submarine on a defenseless passenger ship which carried nothing that threatened Germany’s war effort, the truth was far different. Of course, it was not the truth which was reported in the New York Times, or other newspapers of America. They printed propaganda with the sole aim of getting the American public to embrace entry into the war.

Cunard Lines, a British shipping company, owned the Lusitania. They had turned the ship over to the British Navy for use by England in her war against Germany. The First Lord of the Admiralty during WWI was Winston Churchill. The Lusitania was operating as an auxiliary ship of the English Navy.

Churchill sent the Lusitania to New York City where it was loaded with six million rounds of ammunition, owned by J.P. Morgan & Co., to be used by England and France in their war against Germany. England broke the German war code on December 14, 1914, and by the end of January 1915 British Intelligence was able to advise the Admiralty of the departure of every German U-boat as it left for patrol. Winston Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty knew when German U-boats would be in the area of the English Channel, the body of water which separates England and France.

Germany had spies who worked on the New York docks. They reported that weapons were being loaded onto the Lusitania, which was also set to carry more than a thousand passengers to be disembarked in Ireland. Germany did not want America to enter the war on the side of the English and French. The German government did all it could to avoid inflaming American public opinion. When Germany learned that the Lusitania was being used to ferry both passengers and war supplies (a violation of International law), the German Embassy in America took out ads in 50 American newspapers, most of which were on the East Coast. The advertisements read:

NOTICE! Travelers intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that in accordance with formal notice given by Imperial German government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or of any of her allies, are liable to destruction in these waters and that travelers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.

The advertisement included a picture of the Lusitania with her sailing schedule.

The American State Department intercepted the ads and would not permit them to be posted in the American papers. Only one ad slipped by them, and this one was printed in the Des Moines Register, from which the above image was obtained. Captain Dow, the captain of the Lusitania resigned on March 8, 1915, just two months before the ship was sunk, because he was unwilling to shoulder the responsibility of hazarding passenger lives by carrying munitions on the ship.

When the Lusitania arrived in the English Channel off of Ireland it slowed to await the arrival of the escort ship Juno which was to lead her into port. Churchill ordered the Juno back to port, causing the Lusitania to idle for hours out in the channel where German U-boats were known to be operating. On May 7, 1915, a single torpedo from a German U-boat struck the Lusitania with its 300 pound charge of explosives. A secondary, and much larger explosion followed. This second explosion was caused by the ammunition exploding that was being carried illegally in the ship. So great was the damage caused by the second explosion that the Lusitania sank approximately 18 minutes later with a loss of more than 1,200 lives, more than a hundred of which were Americans.

The sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-boat was splashed all over the front pages of America’s largest newspapers. Germany was vilified, and eventually America entered the war on the side of Great Britain.

Cunard Lines had merged with White Lines, and J.P. Morgan was a major shareholder in the company. It is estimated that the J.P Morgan banks issued more than $500,000,000 worth of loans to nations on both sides of the war.
[End Excerpt]

Television had not yet been invented in 1918, the year the Lusitania sank, but silent movies were commonplace and popular. No time was wasted in coming up with propaganda pieces to “regiment the masses,” inflaming the emotions of Americans so they would enter the war on the side of England. Following is a popular 9 minute animation which was shown repeatedly at movie houses following the sinking of the Lusitania. It is an obvious piece of propaganda.

https://youtu.be/ko418jQabuY

It is apparent that this is an animated re-creation of the Lusitanian saga. It would be unlikely that anyone would mistake it as an actual video of the event. Although this short movie is deceptive in that it presents a false history of what actually occurred, it does not have the same power of persuasion that actual footage of the event might wield. It would be an altogether different matter if the media created fake footage of the Lusitania sinking and passed it off as authentic. Such an act would constitute a betrayal of public trust. This in fact did happen. British media filmed a re-enactment of people floundering in the water and fighting to get into lifeboats, showing the film at movie houses while billing it as actual footage of the aftermath of the sinking of the Lusitania. The scenes were in fact filmed on a London pond. Following is an excerpt from the documentary What Happened On The Moon - Hoax, Lies, and Videotape.

https://youtu.be/om4vRZabtro


Before the advent of television, news reels were shown at movie theaters before the main film began. They served as the equivalent of the network television news broadcasts of more recent years. As far back as the days of silent movies, the news media was faking scenes and passing them off as authentic. Special interests were using this new medium as a tool of deception. It would be naive to think that network television did not continue the practice. Indeed, such deceptions have been commonplace from the beginning of televised news and continue on a daily basis. Consider this relatively recent example of a news broadcaster misleading viewers by making it appear that Nancy Grace of Headline News was holding a conversation with Ashleigh Banfield of CNN at a remote location. Examination of the background of both women reveal they were located in the same parking lot about 30 feet apart. See link below for details.

http://www.thewire.com/national/2013/05/nancy-grace-ashleigh-banfield-cnn-parking-lot/64965/

The article gives a partial defense of the two newswomen by stating, “cable TV news often features "remote" split-screen interviews with hosts and guests, even when they're in the same building.” In other words, it was not such an egregious deception because it is a common practice. Although misrepresenting one’s location may seem fairly benign, it reveals that in the minds of the media, to create a credible illusion is as good as the real thing. The mainstream media has no scruples against employing deception. Creating a crude deception that can be readily detected may be considered a faux pas, but the industry has no shame.

In watching television broadcasts of the Apollo 11 lunar mission, I have been struck by the odd behavior, body language, and mannerisms of those involved. The three astronauts who participated in this hoax appear discomfited, even ashamed, as if they were worried that their secret would come out and they would be branded as charlatans. NASA cloistered the astronauts away for three weeks before they were allowed out into the public to do interviews. I suspect this was to give them time to steel themselves as willing accomplices in an act of betrayal of the public trust. They need not have worried too much, for the government was careful to control the environment of their questioning, holding an official press conference where all three men fielded questions from a select group of media representatives.



These hardly look like men who have just accomplished the greatest feat of exploration in human history. The men appear uncomfortable, embarrassed, worried, as if they are having difficulty carrying forward this public charade. Similar behavior is observed during the Apollo 11 television news broadcast of CBS which was anchored by Walter Cronkite. There is a disingenuous character to his mannerisms, as he appears to be faking his enthusiasm regarding what is occurring 240,000 miles away on the Moon. Observe both the mannerism of Walter Cronkite and astronaut Wally Schirra in this segment. Note especially Schirra’s face and forced smile which are consistent with someone who knows they are lying to the public and does not yet have the confident assurance that the deception will prove successful.

https://youtu.be/w__2L_F-R7M



Examine the words and actions of these two men and ask yourself whether they appear consistent with men who are witnessing the greatest human achievement of the 20th century. Bear in mind that Wally Schirra was close friends with the astronauts of Apollo 11. Do his words and actions reveal concern for their safety, or excitement for their achievement, or is there an appearance of discomfort and feigned enthusiasm at what he is observing? Walter Cronkite is clearly the more experienced deceiver, yet even in his words and actions there are telltale signs of acting. The moment when he takes off his glasses and wrings his hands is particularly telling.

What is Walter Cronkite’s relationship to the corporate elite who are seeking to bring forth a global government under the rule of Satan? Cronkite was a well paid corporate man. He has long been a willing pawn of the corporate global powers. He makes a startling announcement of his allegiance to Satan in the following video.

https://youtu.be/w2isCEoEmN8



This is the man who informed viewers of the way the world is five nights a week, and the populace eagerly accepted his word as gospel. Brothers and sisters, the rulers of this world realized very early on the potential present in motion pictures and television to deceive and guide the masses. For this reason the corporate powers purchased control of the movie houses and television networks. In this way they were able not only to control the narrative, but to create false events which served to regiment the masses to their will.

Over time the ability to create credible illusions has increased dramatically. Special effects, especially those which take advantage of computer power, have advanced the capabilities of the media until it is impossible for the average viewer to discern the difference between an illusion and reality. Consider the following video.

https://youtu.be/WhN1STep_zk



If you think the news media would not use green screen technology to fool their audience, you are wrong. They use it all the time. As far back as 1994, ABC News was in a flap when it was discovered that deception was used when anchorman Peter Jennings interviewed news correspondent Cokie Roberts as she was standing in front of the U.S. Capitol building on a cold winter day. The problem was that Roberts was actually inside a studio wearing a coat and the image of the Capitol building in the background was faked, a mere illusion. Similarly, CBS made the news when, during a Dan Rather year 2000 New Year’s Eve special at Times Square, the network altered the imagery of Times Square, placing a large CBS advertisement behind Dan Rather. The CBS billboard wasn’t actually there. What was there was an NBC sign and an ad for Budweiser, both of which were removed from the shot. The viewer could not detect the deception. Technology has only improved in the intervening years, making it nearly impossible to detect when an image has been altered or entirely imposed into a news broadcast.

One of the first uses of chroma key technology (green screen, blue screen, etc.) was by Industrial Light and Magic, a George Lucas company which he formed in order to create the special effects for his 1970s Star Wars movies. Lucas had originally contacted Douglas Trumbull, the special effects wizard whom Stanley Kubrick employed for 2001, A Space Odyssey. Trumbull was already committed to Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, so he recommended his assistant John Dykstra.

Keep in mind that this was 1975, the year of JAWS release and only a few years removed from Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. These were the pillars of visual effects at the time and JAWS was centered around a lone, malfunctioning (if now classic) mechanical shark. In comparison even to 2001, STAR WARS, as they say, was a whole new ball of wax.

So, was Dykstra prescient or just crazy?

Geniuses tend to be a little bit of both. Doug Trumbull, one of the visual effects maestros behind 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, pointed Lucas toward Dykstra when the young director was scouting for capable (and cheap) visual effects talent. A young Dykstra had impressed Trumbull while working for him at his company, Future General, on the 1972 sci-fi film SILENT RUNNING...

“What George came to me with was a perfect combination of the stuff that I had been doing with Doug Trumbull–using fairly low tech solutions [to create visual effects].”
[Source: http://www.propstore.com/john-dykstra-intergalactic-man-of-magic-part-1/]

Chroma key technology, which requires a computer, wasn’t available during the years Stanley Kubrick was working on 2001, A Space Odyssey; the years 1964-1968. These were the same years, incidentally, that NASA was gearing up for their Moon missions which would commence in July of 1969. The “fairly low tech solutions” employed by Kubrick and Trumbull included the front screen projection system.



Front Screen Projection System

The front screen projection system works by projecting a backdrop onto a mirror, which in turn projects the image onto a highly reflective fabric screen. The screen is typically made of 3M’s Scotchlite which consists of millions of glass beads affixed to the surface of a cloth material. Scotchlite reflects back 95% of the light cast on it. Because the Scotchlite material is so highly reflective, the required brightness of the projected image is relatively low. This allows for an actor, or other subject, to stand between the mirror and the Scotchlite, and not have the projected image show up on them.

Stanley Kubrick made extensive use of the front screen projection system in the opening scenes of 2001, A Space Odyssey. At the beginning of the movie, we are shown a group of ape like human ancestors in an environment that resembles some areas of Africa.




The image above is from the opening sequence of Kubrick’s movie. The foreground is a stage set where some wild pigs and some men in ape-like costumes are located. The background is an image projected onto a Scotchlite screen. If you look carefully you can see the intersection of the stage and the screen. It is marked with a lone below.




Looking at the sky, particularly the far left and far right, you can discern some lines and geometric shapes which are faintly discernible. These are caused by seams and wrinkles in the Scotchlite fabric. If the contrast and gamma of the image are altered, these background artifacts become more visible. These are the same type of artifacts which Richard Hoagland detected in the black sky of the Apollo lunar photos when he altered their visible properties. Jay Weidner has provided yeoman’s service by explaining the use of the front screen projection system and illustrating its application in 2001, A Space Odyssey as well as in the Apollo missions. Images shown here are from Weidner’s video Kubrick’s Odyssey - Part One.

As Jay Weidner points out, the director has to hide the bottom of the projection screen by having a raised surface on the stage in front of it. Also, by giving a contour to the foreground stage, it becomes more difficult to detect the point where the stage and the rear screen meet. If the stage were perfectly flat, differences in coloration between the stage and projected image would be more visible as there would be a straight line where the two meet, and the differences would be obvious. In the images above, you can see differences in shading and coloration between the foreground and background, but they would be far more obvious if the back edges of the stage were straight. Following are a couple additional examples showing where the stage ends and the Scotchlite backdrop begins. The blue line below marks the edge of the stage.








In the screen shot above you can see we have both the foreground stage with the actors, and the Scotchlite backdrop with the image projected onto it. In the photo below, we see the same stage from a slightly different angle, but now there is no projected image on the backdrop.




Following is a screen shot from a later scene in 2001, A Space Odyssey. No line has been drawn to mark where the edge of the stage intersects with the backdrop, but it should be obvious to the viewer.




Jay Weidner, who has worked in the film industry himself, stresses that this hiding of the bottom of the Scotchlite backdrop is always necessary when using the front screen projection system, and it serves as a telltale sign of its employment. Weidner proceeds to show images from the Apollo missions, noting where the stage edge intersects with the Scotchlite backdrop.




Can you tell where the stage ends in the image above. Look for a raised surface and a difference in shading and coloration. It is also helpful for the photo shoot director to place large objects just in front of the edge of the stage to make it more difficult to detect.





In many of the lunar photographs it is difficult to detect the evidence of the front screen projection system due to poor photo quality, as in the example above. As has been previously noted, NASA claims to have lost the high definition images taken from the Apollo missions, a claim which is difficult to believe, but necessary for the continuation of the deception. Following are more examples.





Do you perceive once more the raised edge of the stage and the difference in ground texture and shading where the projection begins?






Look carefully again for a change in the appearance of the ground’s texture and coloration, and note the placement of the Lunar Rover to hide much of the stage edge.




Jay Weidner states that not all Apollo photographs used the front screen projection system. Some, especially those of Apollo 11 and 12, simply had a black background which would not have required any image to be projected. In the later Apollo missions it becomes especially evident that the front screen projection system was used. Jay Weidner goes on to mention the anomalies discovered by Richard Hoagland, revealing them to be further evidence of use of the front screen projection system.




If you enlarge the image above you can see the two blips of light in the black sky. These are caused by misaligned glass beads in the Scotchlite material which are reflecting light back at the camera. Normally, the Scotchlite will only reflect light that strikes it at a right angle, but the rare misaligned bead will cast light in other directions. As Hoagland enhances the image, the fabric background becomes obvious.




In the enhanced image above you can see evidence of a backdrop being used. There are very evident horizontal and vertical lines. They are caused by the seams of the fabric panels which were stitched together and/or the scaffolding behind the fabric which was erected to support it.

Jay Weidner also mentions that in the original release of 2001, A Space Odyssey, there were many credits thanking NASA and a number of the aerospace companies which worked with NASA on the Moon landings. These credits were removed from later releases of the film. Kubrick was clearly working with NASA and its contractors. The movie 2001 provided suitable cover for Kubrick’s association with NASA, though it is my belief, as well as many others, that Kubrick was also directing the film shots of the Apollo landings from a stage here on Earth.



Frederick Orway - NASA Advisor, Deke Slayton - Astronaut, Arthur C. Clarke - Sci-Fi author, Stanley Kubrick, George Mueller - Senior Administrator of the Apollo Project

Would the U.S. government fake the Apollo moon landings, filming them on a studio lot and then present them as reality to the public? I have no doubt of the matter. In the next chapter we will look at Stanley Kubrick’s confession of his involvement in the Apollo missions.


Credit to Joseph Herrin