Bin Laden's Letter to the American People

The Guardian deleted this letter because it's being interpreted wrong on social media. How does deleting source material qualify as journalism or even basic truth-seeking? There's no way to even combat false interpretations without the source material!

In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

From Usama Bin Muhammad Bin Ladin to the American people,

I speak to you about the subject of the ongoing war between you and us. Even though the consensus of your wise thinkers and others is that your time (TN: of defeat) will come, compassion for the women and children who are being unjustly killed, wounded, and displaced in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan motivates me to speak to you.

First of all, I would like to say that your war with us is the longest war in your history and the most expensive for you financially. As for us, we see it as being only halfway finished. If you were to ask your wise thinkers, they would tell you that there is no way to win it because the indications are against it. How will you win a war whose leaders are pessimistic and whose soldiers are committing suicide? If fear enters the hearts of men, winning the war becomes impossible. How will you win a war whose cost is like a hurricane blowing violently at your economy and weakening your dollar?

The Bush administration got you into these wars on the premise that they were vital to your security. He promised that it would be a quick war, won within six days or six weeks; however, six years have passed, and they are still promising you victory and not achieving it. Then Obama came and delayed the withdrawal that he had promised you by 16 more months. He promised you victory in Afghanistan and set a date for withdrawal from there. Six months later, Petraeus came to you once again with the number six, requesting that the withdrawal be delayed six months beyond the date that had been set. All the while you continue to bleed in Iraq and Afghanistan. You are wading into a war with no end in sight on the horizon and which has no connection to your security, which was confirmed by the operation of ‘Umar al-Faruq, which was not launched from the battlefield and could have been launched from any place in the world.

As for us, jihad against the tyrants and the aggressors is a form of great worship in our religion. It is more precious to us than our fathers and sons. Thus, our jihad against you is worship, and your killing us is a testimony. Thanks to God, Almighty, we have been waging jihad for 30 years, against the Russians and then against you. Not a single one of our men has committed suicide, whereas every 30 days 30 of your men commit suicide.

Continue the war if you will.

Palestine shall not be seen captive for we will try to break its shackles.

The United States shall pay for its arrogance with the blood of Christians and their funds.

Peace be upon those who follow right guidance.

Justice is the strongest army, and security is the best way of life, but it slipped out of your grasp the day you made the Jews victorious in occupying our land and killing our brothers in Palestine. The path to security is for you to lift your oppression from us.

Sectors Relative to QQQ

Manipulation to the Max?

I’ve been skeptical of claims the financial markets are manipulated by government. There had been evidence of banks manipulating indexes such as LIBOR, and in precious metals. There’s probably a lot of “legal” manipulation via HFTs frontrunning trades with the help of exchanges. I put legal in quotes because firms claim to be market making or providing liquidity, but market makers used to take risk, while some of these firms seem to never have down days. It'a a big red flag for fraud. Whether legal or not, when this era finally ends, Wall Street and financial markets will be treated similarly to how they were in the New Deal. Today’s heroes will become villains.

Still, until I see smoking gun evidence of fraud, it's an unverified claim. The markets are behaving as expected when there’s a relentless bid from retirement funds being invested in high risk securities through passive index funds, along with an endless bid from speculators who think the Federal Reserve’s number-one job is pumping the stock market.

After the bear market, firms such as Blackrock, Vanguard, Invesco and maybe companies offering 401k menus, the whole investment industry really, could be charged with fraud, criminal negligence and so forth. There won’t be any way to replace two generations of lost retirement savings, but all of these firms can be destroyed and their executives placed in jail. If this ends up being a bigger bust than 1929, expect a bigger response from government even if it is unfair, unjust scapegoating.

However. I saw this claim on Twitter:

If the Federal Reserve is manipulating commodity prices, it is engaged in criminal fraud. Everyone involved is committing criminal acts with no legal protection, only political cover if the current regime OK'd it. It is likely at the behest of the criminal regime in Washington, DC. If this is going on, and this is only a claim on social media, but at this point it wouldn’t shock given how the Federal Reserve has expanded its operations in the past decade. Nor would it shock considering all the criminal and seditious actions being taken by USG.

Widespread criminal activity at the heart of government and the financial system would be precisely the type of rot you’d expect ahead of or during a Fourth Turning. If the public ever move on from Trump, Kennedy and current outsiders, and found itself a real rival elite, and if such a man could win against a criminal regime willing to rig elections, he would become a defacto dictator for the simple reason that arresting most of the ruling class would be step one of any reform effort. Otherwise as with Trump, they would engage in seditious conspiracies to thwart any reform.

Moreover, they are building an authoritarian, fascist system fusing government power with corporate operations. The government is the iron hand of tyranny, corporations the velvet glove that carries out what is still currently illegal for government. It's like a turnkey operation for a would-be Pinochet.

The government doesn’t openly use all its powers because it would be unpopular at this stage. Probably not as unpopular as it should be. About a third of the country seems to be on board with fascism as long as it's against their enemies. When the depression is in full swing though, and if the public revolts for real, they will cheer a President who makes full use of the national security state against the current ruling class. He can use military tribunals to wipe them out, and his face will be added to Mount Rushmore. Such is the scale of coming events. That, or the bad guys win and consolidate power. They are already using state power against political enemies and jailing supporters of rival politicians. If they keep going, the USA turns into something like modern China with permanently manipulated markets with a fig leaf of private ownership and rigged elections acting as the veneer for a totalitarian state.