T.Y. LIN GETS ANOTHER CONTRACT FOR A BRIDGE THAT CAN'T BE BUILT
The Cable-Stayed Bridge over the Cooper River in Charleston, S.C.
I mentioned previously that HBG, along with Sweden's Skanksa, received a $631 million contract from SCDOT in 2001 to construct a new cable bridge over the Cooper River in Charleston. It appears that there were some serious politics involved in that decision. During the July 2, 2001 groundbreaking ceremony, SCDOT Democratic Chief Commissioner Morgan Martin said that when S.C. Democratic Gov. Hodges appointed him, his instructions were to make the Cooper River Bridge his number one priority. Significantly, the mayor of Charleston, Joe Riley, is also a Democrat. Ed Sloan, the aforementioned contractor, has sued SCDOT over this project for violating state procurement laws. There are currently two bridges over the Cooper River and only one is in need of replacement. The plan is to replace both of them with a cable bridge. The natural question is, why not just replace the one in disrepair? The reason is that the clearance is too low for the large ships owned by global shipping corporations such as COSCO, and someone desperately wants to make Charleston a deep-water port to allow such large ships to enter the harbor. Who might that be?
Martin gave a good clue when he stated that Gov. Hodges ordered him upon appointment that his first priority was the Cooper River bridge. We can surmise that Hodges was getting his marching orders from those who put him in office, i.e. the DNC/Chinese/Olympians, who wanted the bridge for Chinese shipping interests such as COSCO.
Not coincidentally, the S.C. Ports Authority began pushing in 1999 for a "Global Gateway" expansion of the Charleston Port facilities (The State, 3/20/02). A S.C. Legislative Audit found that the proposal was unjustified. Interestingly, Gov. Hodges appointed Charles Way as Secretary of Commerce, who promoted the project and stood to gain financially from it (The State, 12/9/01).
Cooper River Bridge Design Cannot Be Built
I received a copy of the following internal FHWA memo from Washington, D.C. which gives some idea of the grandiose nature of the proposed scheme. I'm leaving out the names and some identifying details because I don't think the engineer who wrote this realized what he was stepping into when he told the truth [emphasis mine]:
"As discussed during our meeting with xxxxxxx and xxxxxxxx on xxxxxxxxx, 2000 in xxxxxxxxx, the Federal Highway Administration strongly recommends against the construction of a single width structure with a single or dual plane of cable stays for the Cooper River Bridge crossing. We do recommend dual bridges for a number of reasons.
"There are structural, aerodynamic, maintenance, and even traffic handling concerns in regards to a single width structure...It should be noted that currently the widest single plane long span cable stayed structure with a single line of stays in the United States is the Sunshine Skyway Bridge; its width is 100 feet. The Cooper River Bridge with eight lanes of traffic, plus pedestrian and bicycle accommodations will exceed a width of 140 feet. The proposed 1546 foot main channel span...will be the longest in the Western Hemisphere. The combination of the span length and proposed width for a single width structure exceed current technology for cable-stayed bridges. It should be noted that the Charleston area has a history of major earthquakes and hurricanes, which will further test the design of this structure.
"From the aerodynamic standpoint, the width of a wide single structure makes the structure behave, in effect, as a flat plate. This could result in a serious aerodynamic wind vibration problem that would require costly corrective retrofitting...Another issue is the projected area of the cable-stays to the wind. The area would be large and as a result, the static wind load would be substantially larger...
"Future maintenance and the handling of traffic is a concern for the single width bridge. The possibility of damage and/or deterioration of the deck, a cable-stay, or other elements may occur, and the subsequent repair/maintenance could necessitate closure of a full-width bridge. If this were to happen, it would require a detour route...capable of accommodating the large volume of traffic...
"The design build method does not lend itself to solving complex design problems or major changes in the design during construction...The construction of a single width, single or dual plane of stay structure, which exceeds current cable stayed technology could become a major problem for the State..."
In essence what the brave FHWA engineer is saying above is that it is technologically impossible to build this bridge. In other words, T.Y. Lin has obtained contracts for steel cable bridges on both the west and east coasts, for designs that are impracticable.
Other Cable Bridge Failures
I will briefly mention a couple other cable bridge failures which document that just because a cable bridge has been mathematically modeled, the tested design is not necessarily safe. The Tacoma Narrows bridge in Washington was a well-publicized failure. It was called "Galloping Gertie" because it would swing violently in the wind. Although it was engineered to withstand wind speeds up to 120 mph, it finally collapsed in a mere 42 mph wind in 1940. Engineers cannot yet agree on the reasons for its failure.
Another unexplained cable bridge failure was the Millennium pedestrian bridge over the Thames River, which was officially opened by the Queen of England in 2000. It had to be closed because it would vibrate in the wind and in harmonics with foot traffic. It was different from the Tacoma Narrows bridge because not only did it swing sideways, but also undulated up and down.
In 1989 Hurricane Hugo, a Category 4 storm, struck Charleston, S.C. Highest recorded winds were 138 mph on a Coast Guard cutter in the Cooper River (http://wchs.csc.noaa.gov/hurrican_stats.htm). What would be the result of a similar storm upon the proposed Cooper River cable-stayed bridge, and how could this possibly be accurately modeled?
Differences Between Steel Cable Bridges
I should briefly explain the differences between the two types of steel cable bridges. One is the suspension bridge, like the Golden Gate bridge. It consists of a major cable strung between towers, with smaller cables coming down off of the cable itself and anchoring on the bridge. The other type is the cable-stayed bridge, which consists of smaller independent cables coming off the towers and extending directly to the bridge.
What is quite interesting is that T.Y. Lin (the man) said that for longer spans, such as over the Pudong or Cooper Rivers, the cable-stayed bridge is inferior because it is not a good engineering design for long spans. In these cases a suspension bridge is safer. Yet the design for the Cooper River is cable-stayed.
This raises the obvious question, why would the state of S.C. knowingly give a contract to a foreign-owned construction company to build a bridge that cannot be built, and which would be the longest bridge in the Western hemisphere and the widest in America? If I knew the answer I would say so, but I can only throw out some "coincidences."
Take a guess as to where the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world is currently: Shanghai, China. The Yangpu bridge is in the north of the Suzhou River and the lower reaches of the Huangpu River. It has a sister bridge 11 km away, the Nanpu Bridge, which is the third largest suspension in the world. The Yangpu has a 1975' long span and was built in 1993. The Yangpu and Nanpu bridges were named by "comrade Den Xiao Ping." The Yangpu bridge was built by the government-sponsored Shanghai Urban Construction (Group) Corporation, which is authorized to do foreign business. The Cooper River bridge is simply a copy of these two Chinese bridge designs.
Chinese Invade S.C.
Another reason for the building the Cooper River Bridge is to facilitate China's flow of manufactured goods out of S.C. You see, the Chinese company Haier has built a plant in Camden, S.C. (100 miles from Charleston) and has plans to build four or five more there, according to the Far Eastern Economic Review (3/29/01). In order to get a job at this plant, a prospective applicant must take a two week indoctrination class and see if the Chicoms approve of the person's worldview and decide if he will fit in with the company. Haier has even sent employees back to China for a two-week brainwashing program. The plant was constructed in a government-funded industrial park. It would be interesting to find out if the state of S.C. gave Haier any development money or other economic incentives to come, and whether the Chinese gave Gov. Hodges any campaign contributions. Unfortunately we will never know.
If you go into any Wal-Mart now, you will find the shelves stocked full of Haier goods. I suppose that now Wal-mart can truthfully say "Made in USA." According to investigative journalist Sherman Skolnick, Wal-mart also got a foreign trade zone in Arkansas where they can bring in Chinese goods duty-free.
According to The State (3/29/02), the Chinese ambassador to the U.S. visited S.C. for three days. His itinerary included a private meeting with Hodges, S.C. Commerce Secretary Way, a dinner hosted by the S.C. Dept. of Commerce, and a speech at the Global Leadership Forum at Clemson University. The article states that S.C. is "aggressively positioning itself to take advantage of one of the world's largest markets."
As Commerce Secretary, Way approved thousands of taxpayers' dollars for nonstate functions such as golf outings at locales as far away as Pebble Beach (The State, 11/25/01). As a result, Attorney General Charlie Condon began an investigation into the agency this year.
Prince Charles Organized Global Fascism Forum in Charleston
In another strange coincidence, Prince Charles chose Charleston, S.C. as the location to organize his "Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum" in 1990. This organization is an educational charity consisting of fifty multinational corporations in conjunction with various governmental agencies, the World Bank, the UN, etc. The purpose is to promote sustainable development and "good corporate citizenship." (Perhaps as an illustration of the latter, one of the sponsors is a global hotel chain being sued for hidden cameras in its rooms.) This event was two years before the Rio Earth Summit was even held. Attendees included William Reilly (then EPA-administrator) and socialist Rep. Charles Schumer (D-NY). Partners in the organization include the City of Charleston, the mayor of Shanghai and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
A WORD ABOUT GOVERNOR HODGES
I gave a little background on California Governor Gray Davis and now I should do the same for S.C. Governor Jim Hodges. Hodges came out of nowhere to beat the Republican incumbent David Beasley. How did this happen? The following is what I garnered from my research.
According to National Review (5/24/00), as a former state representative Hodges was against gambling, lotteries and the Confederate flag, which flew above the S.C. capital.
Beasley outlawed video poker and angered the organized crime and gambling interests, who were obviously out to get him. According to USA Today (1/7/99), Hodges spent at least $6 million in the election and half of that came from video poker operators. Hodges reversed his previous positions, and supported gambling and the Confederate flag. And in a likewise bizarre reversal, Beasley reversed his flag position, saying that God spoke to him and told him that the Confederate flag had to come down. Republicans en masse voted Beasley out. S.C. ended up with a state lottery and gambling boats. Recall again: "The first casino boat slipped into the Grand Strand in the quiet of [Gov. Jim Hodges' victorious] Election Night in 1998" (Sun News, 1/26/03). Perhaps the casino boat owners were just "gambling" on a victory.
So-called "state" lotteries are not exactly that. A Rhode Island company named Gtech administers 29 of the nation's 38 state lotteries. They get a 5% cut, earning them almost $1 billion a year. Some of their officials have been indicted as a result of investigations of bribery and corruption. Organized crime also knows that psychological studies document that the more people gamble, the more they will want to gamble, which then opens the door for legalization of other forms of gambling that they control.
On January 3, 2003, Beasley was interviewed on CNN when he said that he didn't try to campaign for reelection because organized crime was going to take over S.C. and he did not want to participate in their criminal activities. It would appear that Beasley threw the election because he was too honest, but that Hodges was willing to be the mule of organized crime.
Most politicians are mere puppets for their handlers, but besides organized crime, who might Hodges' handlers be?
Please bear with me while I quote a historical account of America that I found in David Ickes' book The Biggest Secret." While some of his ideas are off-the-wall, this account jibes with everything else I've found. As the old saying goes, the past is the key to the present, and while this may seem like dry stuff it is very important in understanding how we came to where we are today and who is pulling the strings:
"But there is also a French connection to this...Many times the French and English wings have battled for supremacy, but they are still, in the end, two sides of the same coin. The French Revolution of 1789 was wholly engineered by the Freemasons and their offshoot, the Bavarian Illuminati...After the 'revolutionaries' executed Queen Marie Antoinette, her son, Crown Prince Louis, still a toddler, was placed under house arrest...Two years later he was smuggled out in a laundry basket by his doctor...The retarded nephew of the Marquis de Jarjayes was substituted and he died in 1795. The prince was secretly taken to the Vendee Palace and...later moved to a fortress on the River Rhine... He arrived in England in February 1804 with the former royal paymaster of France, George Payseur, and was protected by King George III, the monarch at the time of the American War of Independence. The Prince changed his name again to Daniel Payseur while George Payseur became George Bayshore. King George III gave the prince, now Daniel Payseur, a ship and awarded George Bayshore 600 acres of land in North Carolina. When they arrived in America they were given help by the Boddie family, who were related to the British monarchy. Before leaving England, the prince bought shares in the Virginia Mining Company, which he purchased secretly using a trustee...With the invention of the steam engine, Payseur began to build railroads and leased them to operating companies. He also established the Lancaster Manufacturing Company to produce timber for railroad products and the Lincolnton Iron Company which later located in Chicago and formed two subsidiaries, Carnegie Steel and Pullman Standard Company. To provide fuel for locomotives (or so it was said), the Federal Government (the Virginia Company of which Payseur was a shareholder) allocated all land extending 100 feet either side of the tracks. Much larger areas of land alongside the railroads were also broken up into sections some ten miles square and half of these were given to Payseur who also bought up many others. Thus he and the railroads owned some of America's prime real estate. Much of this legislation is in the 1854 Congressional Record. The Payseur's Lancaster Railway was, through the Alabama Mineral Company, the controller of Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola, General Motors, Boeing, Ford and Standard Oil.
"After the manipulated American Civil War in the 1860s, all railroads and real estate owned by the supporters of the losers, the southern Confederates, were confiscated and auctioned off at Wilmington, North Carolina. They were bought by nine trustees of Daniel Payseur at extremely low prices. A deed of trust was signed in Nashville between the railroad owners and the government establishing the United States Military Railroad system which granted the developers a monopoly over transport and communications. All these agreements still apply. Payseur's chief trustee and general manager was a Rothschild relative called Leroy Springs, formerly Leroy Springstein...Many of the famous American families who appeared to be powerful in their own right turn out to have been leg-men for Payseur and the Virginia Company...
"Many of the major oil and mineral rights were transferred to petrol and railroad companies, and Payseur's mineral rights were transferred to petrol and mining companies in exchange for a controlling shareholding. Other rights were leased to timber companies. After Daniel Payseur died in 1860, his fantastic empire was managed by his grandson, Lewis Cass Payseur, and the expansion continued apace. In 1872, a Payseur company, the Charleston, Cincinnati and Chicago Railroad, established a telegraph company called Western Union. It formed a subsidiary called AT and T in 1875 and today it is one of America's biggest telephone and communications companies. The Charleston, Cincinnati and Chicago Railroad company is the parent company for the Federal Reserve, the privately owned 'central bank' of the United States. The Payseur empire became heavily involved in banking. Their Bank of Lancaster became the North Carolina Bank and then Nationsbank.. The biggest bank in Texas, Interfirst, of which George Bush is a director, merged in 1987 with Republic Bank to form First Republic. This was later absorbed by Nationsbank which then merged with the Bank of America [see Hugh McColl below-J.S.]...
"The Payseur family have now lost control of their empire...The Payseur's principal trustee, Leroy Springs, died in 1931 and his playboy son, Elliot, took over. He volunteered to upgrade the local County Records filing system and removed the records from the Lancaster courthouse. When he returned them, hundreds of Payseur land deeds had been reassigned to Elliot Springs, a Rothschild relative. [Likewise, recent AP stories reported on how hundreds of courthouses were burned down to destroy southern blacks' deeds so that local landowners or corporations could steal their land.-JS] It seems obvious that he was told exactly what to do to stop the Payseur daughters from inheriting the empire. In the early 1950s, Anne, the daughter of Elliot Springs, married a New Jersey organised crime figure called Hugh Close and Close was appointed chairman of all the Payseur companies stolen by Elliot Springs. Close's daughter, Mrs. Crandall Close Bowles, became a director of the Carolina Federal Reserve Bank. A battle continues for control of the former Payseur holdings, but at the moment it appears they are controlled by the Rothschilds."
At this point, if you waded through the above you are probably wondering, "what on earth does this have to do with S.C. Gov. Jim Hodges?" If you noted the Springs name from the above, when Hodges decided to run for governor of S.C., he quit his job as the lawyer for Springs Industries, owned by the same Close family cited above. Hodges is from Lancaster, S.C. near Charlotte, N.C. The Close family are big liberals-Elliot Close ran against S.C. Republican Senator Strom Thurmond in 1996. The Close family had President Clinton visit their town once. And Crandall Close Bowles' husband is Erskine Bowles, former President Clinton's White House Chief of Staff. Bowles was involved in a myriad of unethical and illegal activities (The Washington Times, 9/24/02). Bowles is now being sued by the State of Connecticut for alleged illegalities in state pension fund investments. The Close family is trying to take Springs Industries, a textile manufacturing company, private and are being sued by shareholders for undervaluing the stock to lower the purchase price. And on 9/5/97, the Wall Street Journal reported that the new U.S./China textile trade pact had a unique provision that gave the manufacturing business of cotton towels to U.S. companies, the prime beneficiary being Springs Industries.
I also garnered the following very interesting facts here:
1. Hugh McColl was chairman of Nationsbank (in Charlotte) and when it merged with Bank of America, McColl became CEO of Bank of America. On December 7, 2000, McColl recommended a pardon for Rick Hendrick, owner of a major car dealership and NASCAR team owner in Charlotte, who was convicted for mail fraud. McColl said Bank of America would give $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Two weeks later Hendrick got his pardon.
2. Bank of America dumped money into the Clinton/Gore legal fight in the contested Florida presidential election
3. (Like S.C. Gov. Hodges) Hugh McColl was originally a two-bit executive with Springs Industries', at their credit union. He was always one step ahead of the repo man.
4. Hendrick had an aircraft sales and leasing business which he used to take politicians up for free rides, putting them on the books as "demo rides."
5. Clinton signed the Fair Trade in Financial Services Act on Sept. 29, 1994, which McColl said would save shareholders $50 million/year. Two weeks later, the DNC received a $3.5 million line of credit from NationsBank at a favorable interest rate.
6. After leaving Washington, Erskine Bowles sold his investment banking firm to First Union Capital Markets Corp. and took a Board seat on First Union in Charlotte, the cross town rival of Bank of America. The whole banking world there is inbred.
I hope the above illustrates how the Democrats are tied into all this corruption, which ultimately probably leads back to Europe through the Springs(tein) family tree and to the Committee of 300. I also found another example which proves how Hodges gets his orders from such authority. Al Gore, the UN and Prince Charles had the goal of requiring every county in America to have a land use plan to restrict growth, part of the Agenda 21 environmental "sustainable development" to limit growth and destroy property rights as previously discussed. They had to do this by lobbying for laws to be passed at the state level, which would then bypass state control. According to Insight Magazine (8/26/02), in S.C. Hodges introduced a bill to do this in 1994, which Gov. Beasley then signed. Some of the subsequent county plans were so restrictive that they received national awards, which has angered both white and black landowners.
A few other points should also be made. S.C. is the only state in the union wherein unlimited and undisclosed amounts of soft money can be donated to a political party, which is then funneled into a particular candidate's campaign. Hodges vetoed a bill in 2000 which would have required full public disclosure. Thus, the S.C. Democratic Party could be laundering money directly from the Olympians, the Chinese, etc. or their front companies and giving it to Hodges' campaign, and the public has no way of knowing.
In his 2002 campaign, Hodges accepted $42,000 in direct contributions from 12 firms that are part of the Palmetto Bridge Contractors, in charge of the Charleston Harbor bridge over the Cooper River (The State, 7/11/02). This consortium is headed by HBG and other foreign construction firms, which thus proves that he is taking money from foreign sources.
In a manner similar to California's Gov. Davis, Hodges took $21,000 in contributions from tobacco interests, who also contributed $75,000 towards Hodges' pet project, a statewide lottery. In return Hodges killed a proposal to raise the cigarette tax (The State, 4/20/02).
According to Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Miles, some businessmen who had received state contracts reported to him that Hodges was intimidating them into contributing to his gubernatorial campaign. He said, "All of Hodges' campaign disclosure terms have shown contributions from state vendors and contractors. This appears to be a repeat of what we saw two years ago when Hodges was caught soliciting the state's investment bankers for contributions to his lottery campaign...It smelled of corruption then, and it smells of corruption now."
[As further evidence that the above is true, as this is being posted on the Internet, Hodges recently lost his re-election bid and then went to work for the Charlotte, N.C. law firm of Kennedy Covington Lobdell & Hickman as a partner, and head of their consulting group to assist foreign businesses in opening plants in the Southeastern U.S. (Charlotte Business Journal, 1/31/03). Last year KCL&H participated in a seminar to bring Chinese business to America, along with China's First Secretary of Trade and Investment, China's First Secretary of the World Trade Organization, the U.S.-China Business Council in Washington, D.C., the deputy dean of Shanghai International Studies Institute and the S.C. Ports Authority of Charleston.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baigent M., R. Leigh and H. Lincoln. Holy Blood, Holy Grail. 1983.
Coleman, J. 1997. The Committee of 300.
Griffin, G.E. Creature From Jekyll Island-A Second Look at the Federal Reserve. 2002.
Lombardo, R. The Genesis of Organized Crime in Chicago. International Association for the Study of Organized Crime. 2002.
