The bodies keep piling up: From Kenya to Iraq shocking new images show how a wave of Islamist carnage has signalled a new era of barbaric terror across the world

Somali militants who shot dead 48 people in a Kenyan village as they watched the World Cup, went door to door asking residents if they were Muslim or spoke Somali before shooting them dead if the either answer was 'no', witnesses have revealed.

The attack in rural Mpeketoni, about 30-miles southwest of the tourist centre of Lamu, came at the end of a weekend of heavy bloodshed that has exposed the world to the shocking depravity of terrorists who appear emboldened by each other's acts. 

The string of bloodthirsty atrocities, spanning two continents from Kenya to Iraq, has raised the spectre of a new era of barbaric terror that is sweeping the globe.

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Kenya: Residents look at slain bodies of people killed when unidentified gunmen attacked the coastal Kenyan town of Mpeketoni - the latest in a string of Islamic militant attacks across two continents that have shocked the world

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Bodies piled high: Last night's atrocity saw at least 48 people killed when gunmen in two minibuses sped into a town on Kenya's coast, shooting soccer fans gathered to watch a World Cup match in a television hall and targeting hotels and a bank

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Carnage: Police said Somalia's Al Shabaab Islamist group was most likely to blame for Sunday night's assault on the town of Mpeketoni

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Horror: Sunday's assault is the worst since last September when Al Shabaab gunmen attacked Nairobi's Westgate shopping mall, leaving 67 people dead

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About 30 gunmen raced into Mpeketoni in two minibuses, the kind used as public taxis in Kenya, and hit two hotels, a bank and a police station with guns and at least one explosive device

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Brutal: Kenyan residents at the scene of one of the bodies of those killed in Mpeketoni. Police said the attackers targeted only men in the village, leaving women and children alone

In the space of just three days:

• Images of Iraqi men being rounded up at gunpoint, beaten, herded like cattle into lorries and shot dead in a ditch by a row of masked ISIS fanatics sent shockwaves across the world.
• Taliban insurgents sliced off the fingers of 11 people as punishment for voting in Afghanistan’s democratic presidential election while 60 people were killed in a series of rocket barrages and scattered attacks
• The desperate search continued for three Israeli teenagers allegedly kidnapped by Hamas militants as more than 150 suspects were arrested in relation to the abduction.
• Nigeria's former president admitted that the 200 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram militants two months ago may never be found.
• Pakistani jets killed 37 militants in retaliatory airstrikes today, a week after Taliban insurgents stormed Karachi airport and opened fire in a commando-style attack that left 38 people dead.

Over the past month, the world's media has been awash with gruesome images depicting insurgent barbarism whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kenya, Palestine or Syria.

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Iraq: Images of Iraqi men being rounded up at gunpoint, beaten, herded into lorries and shot dead in a ditch in the desert by a row of masked ISIS fanatics sent shockwaves across the world

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Afghanistan: Taliban insurgents sliced off the fingers of 11 people as punishment for voting in Afghanistan¿s democratic presidential election while 60 people were killed in a series of rocket barrages and scattered attacks

Taliban cut off fingers of 11 Afghans because they voted

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Palestine: Israeli soldiers arrest Abdel Aziz Dweik (left) - speaker of the Palestinian parliament and a senior Hamas figure - at his home during a huge military operation to search for three missing Israeli teenagers

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Grim prediction: The former president of Nigeria has said he does not believe all of the schoolgirls taken by Boko Haram, seen here in a video released by their kidnappers, will return home

The terror groups behind these acts appear to relish their growing publicity, increasingly courting online platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to promote their hate-filled agendas of murder and oppression.

 

Professor Lee Marsden, international terrorism expert and head of East Anglia University's School of Political, Social and International Studies, said: 'Images of brutality perpetrated by these terrorist groups are being circulated around the world on an unprecedented scale. 

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Terror: Pictures posted online by ISIS show men purportedly moments before their executions, as they are herded into large trucks and driven to their deaths. They huddled and cowered in the overfilled vehicles, some covering their faces as they awaited their fate

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Carnage: Footwear is pictured amid broken glass at the scene of a bomb blast in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, today. It was one of a series of attacks designed to disrupt voting in the country's election that killed 60

Missing: American-born Naftali Frenkel (left) was abducted with Israelis Eyal Yifrah (centre), 19, and Gilad Shaar (right), 16, as they headed home from a West Bank religious school in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc

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Armed: Israeli soldiers patrol the streets of the West Bank town of Hebron early this morning. They arrested 40 Palestinians overnight, bringing the total detained since Thursday's abduction to 150

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Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau appears in a video where he showed some of the hundreds of schoolgirls his terror group abducted nearly two months ago

'While the levels of brutality seen here by ISIS and al-Shabaab are no different from what we have seen them do before, the way they are publicising their acts of terror is wholly new.

'Through the use of social media, like Twitter and Facebook, such groups are seeking to maximise coverage of their atrocities with great effect.

'Certainly in Iraq, where Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is widely regarded as being a tool of the Americans - anything that shows they can defeat the Iraqi army is not just a defeat of Shiite forces but also a victory over the West. And it makes for a very powerful recruiting tool.''One element of publicising such acts on the internet is to show other terror groups, and potential recruits, particularly those committed to establishing a caliphate, what they are capable of and the lengths to which they will go to promote their causes. 

Political risk consultancy The Soufan Group added: 'The two Pakistan Taliban attacks on Karachi airport over the last few days, together with Boko Haram’s brazen kidnapping of another 20 women and several bloody attacks on rural communities in Northeastern Nigeria, are a reminder—if any is needed—of the threat posed by today’s terrorist groups. 

'But neither the Pakistan Taliban nor Boko Haram can compete with the challenges posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS).

'ISIS has become indisputably the most effective and ruthless terrorist organization in the world. It now challenges the authority of two of the largest states in the Middle East, and has attracted significant numbers of fighters, not just from Iraq and Syria, but also from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states including Jordan.'

In Iraq, another town fell to ISIS militants this morning, solidifying their hold in the north of the country, as evidence of the jihadists' brutal reign intensified with shocking images of fighters massacring helpless prisoners.

Tal Afar, close to the Syrian border, was taken before dawn today a week after Mosul, Iraq's second city, fell to the jihadist fighters.

It came as pictures posted on a militant website appeared to show masked fighters forcing captives to lie down in a shallow ditch. Further images seem to show the bodies of the men soaked in blood after being shot.

Most of the soldiers who appear in the pictures are in civilian clothes. Some are shown wearing military uniforms underneath, indicating they may have hastily disguised themselves as civilians to try to escape.

Other scenes show men purportedly moments before their executions, as they are herded like cattle into large trucks and driven to their deaths. They huddled and cowered in the overfilled vehicles, some covering their faces as they awaited their fate.

'This is the fate of the Shi'ites which Nuri (al-Maliki, Iraq's president) brought to fight the Sunnis,' a caption to one of the pictures reads.

Meanwhile, in nearby Afghanistan, Taliban insurgents hellbent on destroying the first peaceful transfer of authority, ordered voters not to participate in the weekend's general election.

Anyone who did in Taliban-held areas, faced having their voting fingers hacked off as a punishment. The referendum was further marred by a series of rocket barrages and other scattered attacks that killed 60.

Later on Saturday, a minibus hit an improvised explosive device in the northern Samangan province, killing six women, one child and four men.

And in Israel today, the mother of one of three Israeli teenagers abducted in the West Bank issued a emotional message to her son, telling him the authorities are 'doing everything' to bring the boys home.

'Mommy and Daddy and your brothers love you until the end of the world and you should know that the people of Israel are doing all they can to bring you back home,' Racheli Frenkel told her U.S.-born son Naftali.

Her comments came as Israel arrested 40 more people, including a senior figure in the Palestinian government, as part of a massive manhunt for the teenagers it says were kidnapped by Hamas.

American-born Frenkel was abducted with Israelis Eyal Yifrah, 19, and Gilad Shaar, 16, as they headed home from a West Bank religious school in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc.

The crisis has escalated already heightened tensions between Israel and the new Palestinian government, which is headed by Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas but backed by Hamas, as Israeli special forces arrested more than 150 people as their hunt for the boys continued.

And in further blow to the global fight against terrorism, Nigeria's former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, said the 200 schoolgirls taken snatched from the classrooms in the village of Chibok in northeast Nigeria in April may never return home.

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Death toll rising: Authorities have blamed al-Shabab, Somalia's al-Qaida-linked terror group, for last night's atrocity in Kenya

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A burnt out van in the town of Mpeketoni following an attack by Somali militants

Obasanjo, who stepped down in 2007 and nurtured Jonathan's own rise to power, said President Goodluck Jonathan's administration had taken too long to respond to the mass abduction.

‘I believe that some of them will never return. We will still be hearing about them many years from now,’ Obasanjo told the BBC's Hausa-language radio service. ‘If you get all of them back, I will consider it a near-miracle...'

Boko Haram, which wants to set up an Islamist caliphate in Africa's largest economy, has fought back against an army offensive and killed thousands in bomb and gun attacks, striking as far afield as the central city of Jos and the capital Abuja.

In Kenya, dozens of extremists attacked a Kenyan coastal town for hours, killing those who weren't Muslim and those who didn't know the Somali language, officials and witnesses said today. At least 48 people were killed and two hotels were set on fire. 

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The attack happened in Mpeketoni, which is about 30-miles southwest of the tourist centre of Lamu

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Authorities have blamed al-Shabab, Somalia's al-Qaida-linked terror group, for the attack last night

The assault in Mpeketoni began on Sunday night as residents watched World Cup matches on TV and lasted until early on Monday morning, with little resistance put up by Kenya's security forces. Cars and buildings still smoldered at daybreak. 

Authorities blamed al-Shabab, Somalia's al-Qaida-linked terror group, who have vowed to carry out terror attacks to avenge the Kenyan military presence in Somali. Along with its Somali fighters, the group also has many Kenyan adherents. By midday Monday the group had not claimed responsibility. 

Like the gunmen who attacked Nairobi's Westgate Mall last year, the Mpeketoni attackers gave life-or-death religious assessment, a witness said, killing those who were not Muslim. 

'They came to our house at around 8 p.m. and asked us in Swahili whether we were Muslims. My husband told them we were Christians and they shot him in the head and chest,' said Anne Gathigi. 

Another resident, John Waweru, said his two brothers were killed because the attackers did not like that the brothers did not speak Somali. 

'My brothers who stay next door to me were killed as I watched. I was peeping from my window and I clearly heard them speak to my brothers in Somali and it seems since my brothers did not meet their expectations, they sprayed them with bullets and moved on,' said Waweru. 

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Local people from Mpeketoni in Kenya photographed after the attack by Somali militants last night

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Dangerous: Mpeketoni is about 60 miles from the Somali border and few foreigners visit the region

At the Breeze View Hotel, the gunmen pulled the men aside and ordered the women to watch as they killed them, saying it was what Kenyan troops are doing to Somali men inside Somalia, a police commander said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to share such details of the attack. 

Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku said the attackers fled into the nearby wilds, known as the Boni Forest after a 'fierce exchange of fire' with security forces. 

He said 20 vehicles had been set on fire. 

At a news conference, Ole Lenku was forced to defend the government's security record after a string of attacks. He also warned opposition politicians against inciting violence, saying it was possible the attack was linked to politics. The claim was immediately dismissed by security experts who are now a staple of Kenyan news shows. 

Kenya's top police commander, David Kimaiyo, said the death toll was 48. A police spokeswoman said authorities believe that several dozen attackers took part. 

  

The aftermath of the attack in Kenyan coastal resort

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Attack occurred in the town of Mpeketoni, which is about 30 miles from the tourist centre Lamu (pictured)

Mpeketoni is about 20 miles (30 kilometers) southwest of the tourist center of Lamu. Any tourism in Mpeketoni is mostly local, with few foreigners visiting the area. The town is 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the Somali border and 360 miles (600 kilometers) from the capital, Nairobi. 

Kenya has experienced a wave of gunfire and explosive attacks in recent months. The U.S., U.K., France, Australia, and Canada have all recently upgraded their terror threat warnings for the country. U.S. Marines behind sandbag bunkers are now stationed on the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. 

The Interior Ministry said that at about 8 p.m. on Sunday, two minivans entered the town. Militants disembarked and began shooting. Kenya's National Disaster Operations Center said military surveillance planes were launched shortly afterward. 

Lamu is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is the country's oldest continually inhabited town. The region saw a spate of kidnappings of foreign tourists in 2011 that Kenya said was part of its motivation for attacking al-Shabab in Somalia. Since those attacks and subsequent terror warnings, tourism has dropped off sharply around Lamu. 

At least 67 people were killed in September when four al-Shabab gunmen attacked an upscale mall in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Kenya sent its troops to Somalia in October 2011.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2658751/Red-Cross-34-die-militant-attack-Kenya-town.html#ixzz34oUb63PV 

Russia Tests Pantsir Air Defense Systems in Arctic

MOSCOW, June 16 (RIA Novosti) — Russia is testing its Pantsir S-1 short-range air defense system in the Arctic to ensure security in the resource-rich region, which is soon expected to become the centre of oil and gas exploration for the country, Alexander Denisov, head of the High-Precision Systems holding told RIA Novosti Monday.

"We are proud that Pantsir S-1 has been entrusted with the role of a pioneering air defense system in the Arctic Circle. Today, a squad of several war vehicles is already undergoing a stage of experimental military testing in the extreme conditions of the North," he said.

The Pantsir S-1, produced by Russia’s KBP, is a gun-missile system combining a wheeled vehicle mounting a fire-control radar and electro-optical sensor, two 30-mm cannons and up to 12 57E6 radio-command guided short-range missiles. It is designed to take on a variety of targets flying at low altitudes, as well ground and water-surface threats.

The number of vehicles can grow in the North as infrastructure expands there, but "the decision will be made by the Defense Ministry depending on the complex evaluation of the situation," Denisov said.

The Arctic testing comes at the time of Russia's active resource exploration in the region. The Arctic's potential resources are evaluated at $30 trillion, and that is where Russia will shift its oil and gas exploration activities soon, specialists at Russia's Emergencies Ministry say, hence the need to protect the territory.

Russia regards Arctic exploration as one of its top priorities and economic growth drivers. The discovery of large hydrocarbon deposits in the Arctic has sparked international competition over the region’s resources. Last year, Moscow unveiled a strategy aimed at increasing its presence in the Arctic and boosting the region’s development by 2020.

A new version of the defense system Pantsir SM, currently under development, will be able to shoot at ballistic targets and will come out in 2017, Denisov said.

"The system will also allow destroying air threats flying at the speed of several thousand meters per second. Today, as you know, it is 1,000 meters per second. Its main difference from the existing air defense system is the ability to shoot at ballistic targets," he said.

The Pantsir system was developed in 1994 and has undergone significant modernization since then.

RIA Novosti

TOTAL DEBT IN AMERICA HITS A NEW RECORD HIGH OF NEARLY 60 TRILLION DOLLARS

What would you say if I told you that Americans are nearly 60 TRILLION dollars in debt? Well, it is true. When you total up all forms of debt including government debt, business debt, mortgage debt and consumer debt, we are 59.4 trillion dollars in debt. That is an amount of money so large that it is difficult to describe it with words. For example, if you were alive when Jesus Christ was born and you had spent 80 million dollars every single day since then, you still would not have spent 59.4 trillion dollars by now. And most of this debt has been accumulated in recent decades. If you go back 40 years ago, total debt in America was sitting at about 2.2 trillion dollars. Somehow over the past four decades we have allowed the total amount of debt in the United States to get approximately 27 times larger. This is utter insanity, and anyone that thinks this is sustainable is completely deluded. We are living in the greatest debt bubble of all time, and there is no way that this is going to end well. Just check out the chart…



When the last recession hit, total debt in America actually started going down for a short period of time.

But then the Federal Reserve and our politicians in Washington worked feverishly to reinflate the bubble and they assured everyone that everything was going to be just fine. So Americans once again resorted to their free spending ways, and now total debt in the United States is rising at almost the same trajectory as before and has hit a new all-time record high.

We see a similar thing when we look at a chart for consumer debt in America…



For a while after the recession it was trendy to cut up your credit cards and get out of debt.

But that fad wore off rather quickly, didn’t it?

It is almost as if 2008 never happened. We are making the same mistakes with debt that we did before.

As I noted recently, total consumer credit in the U.S. has risen by 22 percent over the past three years alone, and at this point 56 percent of all Americans have a subprime credit rating.

And have you noticed that a lot of people are not afraid to extend themselves in order to buy shiny new vehicles these days?

During the first quarter 0f this year, the size of the average vehicle loan soared to a new all-time record high of $27,612.

Five years ago, that number was just $24,174.

And as I noted in one recent article, the size of the average monthly car payment in this country is now up to $474.

That is practically a mortgage payment.

Speaking of mortgage payments, even though home sales have been falling and the rate of homeownership in the United States is the lowest that it has been in 19 years, a very large percentage of those who own homes are still overextended.

In fact, one recent survey discovered that a whopping 52 percent of Americans cannot even afford the house that they are living in right now.

At the same time, an increasing number of Americans are acting as if the last financial crisis never happened and are treating their homes like piggy banks. Home equity loans are soaring again, and when the next great crisis strikes a lot of those people are going to end up getting into a lot of financial trouble.

There has been much written about what is wrong with the housing industry, but the truth is that home prices are still way too high and young adults cannot afford to purchase homes because they are already loaded down by huge amounts of debt even before they get to the point where they are ready to buy.

In fact, a newly released survey found that 47 percent of millennials are spending at least half of their paychecks on paying off debt…


Four in 10 millennials say they are “overwhelmed” by their debt — nearly double the number of baby boomers who feel that way, according to a Wells Fargo survey of more than 1,600 millennials between 22 and 33 years old, and 1,500 baby boomers between 49 and 59 years old.

To try to get out from underneath it, 47% said they spend at least half of their monthly paychecks on paying off their debts.

When I read that I was absolutely astounded.

Of course the biggest debt that many young adults are facing is student loan debt. According to the Federal Reserve, there is now more than 1.2 trillion dollars of student loan debt in this country, and about 124 billion dollars of that total is more than 90 days delinquent.

What we have done to our young people is shameful. We have encouraged them to sign up for a lifetime of debt slavery before they even understand what life is all about. The following is an excerpt from my previous article entitled “Is College A Waste Of Time And Money?“…

In America today, approximately two-thirds of all college students graduate with student loan debt, and the average debt level has been steadily rising. In fact, one study found that “70 percent of the class of 2013 is graduating with college-related debt – averaging $35,200 – including federal, state and private loans, as well as debt owed to family and accumulated through credit cards.”

That would be bad enough if most of these students were getting decent jobs that enabled them to service that debt.

But unfortunately, that is often not the case. It has been estimated that about half of all recent college graduates are working jobs that do not even require a college degree.

Considering what you just read, is it a surprise that half of all college graduates in America are still financially dependent on their parents when they are two years out of college?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, only 36 percent of all Americans under the age of 35 own a home at this point. That is the lowest level that has ever been recorded.

And we are passing on to our young people the largest single debt in all of human history. Weighing in at 17.5 trillion dollars, the U.S. national debt is a colossal behemoth. And almost all of that debt has been accumulated over the past 40 years. In fact, 40 years ago the U.S. national debt was less than half a trillion dollars.

But this is just the beginning. As the Baby Boomer “demographic tsunami” washes through our economy, we are going to be facing a wave of red ink unlike anything we have ever contemplated before.

Meanwhile, the rest of the planet is drowning in debt as well.

As I wrote about the other day, the total amount of debt in the world has risen to a new all-time record high of $223,300,000,000,000.

Our “leaders” keep acting as if these debt levels can keep growing much faster than the overall level of economic growth indefinitely.

But anyone with even a shred of common sense knows that you can’t spend more money that you bring in forever.

At some point, a day of reckoning arrives.

2008 should have been a major wake up call that resulted in massive changes. But instead, our leaders just patched up the old system and reinflated the old bubbles so that they are now even larger than they were before.

They assure us that they know exactly what they are doing and that everything will be just fine.

Unfortunately, they are dead wrong.

Credit to Infowars

War & Negative Interest Rates, We Are at the Very, Very End

Russia Halts Gas Supplies To Ukraine

 

After weeks of worthless foreplay whose outcome was known from the beginning despite just as worthless EU middleman Oettinger assuring everyone a deal was imminent any second now, overnight we got the long-anticipated mutual defection outcome and - as we warned - negotiations between Gazprom and Ukraine/EU fell apart with the Russian energy giant halting supplies to Ukraine unless Kiev prepays any and all gas deliveries from now on. Gazprom said it hadn't received payment for a debt it put at $4.458 billion by the Monday deadline it had set. "Ukraine will receive gas only in the amounts it has paid for," Gazprom said.

The reason for the collapse in talks: Kiev wants to pay $268.5 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas - the price it had been offered when Yanukovich was in power - but, in a compromise last week, said it would agree to pay $326 for an interim period until a lasting deal was reached. Moscow had sought to keep the price at the 2009 contract level of $485 per 1,000 cubic meters, but had offered to waive an export duty, bringing down prices by about one-fifth to $385, which brings it broadly into line with what Russia charges other European countries.

In other words, the delta was less than $60, and certainly a "fair" offer to Ukraine considering it is what Europe pays. However, it wasn't low enough for Kiev, which certainly is out of money once again having to spend the bulk of its IMF/EU aid to keep its military armed, and the only logical outcome - one in which the country would no longer receive something for nothing - transpired.

This hardly will be surprising to anyone: moments ago Gazprom CEO Miller added that Ukraine is unable to pay for its gas obligations in arrears, something the Ukraine side had confirmed previously when Miller added Kiev had been pumping Russian gas in its underground storage facilities at a blistering pace preparing for just this eventuality.

End result, a few hours ago, Gazprom made the following announcement: "Today, from 10:00 a.m. Moscow time, Gazprom, according to the existing contract, moved Naftogaz to prepayment for gas supplies ... Starting today, the Ukrainian company will only get the Russian gas it has paid for."

Gazprom also warned EU on "possible gas transit risks", meaning since all the gas sent to Europe transits Ukraine, it was quite possible Kiev would simply continue to siphon off Russian gas without paying for it. The problem there, however, is that the parties impacted would be Ukraine's BFFs: Germany, central Europe, and, of course, the UK. And what better way to sow discord among otherwise bosom friends than have them start fighting for Russia's energy scraps...

And now the question: how long before Ukraine's alleged 14 BCM in gas held in storage runs out and Kremlin once again has all the leverage. According to simple estimates, a few months at most, and certainly just in time for Ukraine's winter.

Reuters has more:

Gazprom said on Monday it had filed a lawsuit at the Stockholm arbitration court to try to recover the debt, while Ukraine's Naftogaz said it was filing a suit at the same court to recover $6 billion in what it said were overpayments.

A source at Gazprom said supplies to Ukraine had been reduced as soon as the deadline passed. EU data suggested that volumes were broadly stable as of 0630 GMT (7.30 a.m. BST), but it could take hours for data on Russian gas flows via Ukraine to reflect any reduction in supply in Slovakia or elsewhere.

Any reduction of supply could hit EU consumers, which get about a third of their gas needs from Russia, around half of it through pipelines that cross Ukraine. Earlier price disputes led to the 'gas wars' in 2006 and 2009 and Russian accusations that Ukraine stole gas destined for the rest of Europe.

"The gas for European consumers is being delivered at full volume and Naftogaz Ukraine is required to transit it," Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov told reporters.

Ukraine's Naftogaz declined to comment, saying it would issue a statement later in the day, but its pipeline operator Ukrtransgaz said it was operating normally.

The "market" was quick to react and "punish" Gazprom:

Russian shares fell on the talks' collapse, which will increase tensions between Moscow and the West and could make it harder to arrange a truce in east Ukraine, where Ukrainian troops are fighting rebels who want the region to be absorbed by Russia.

At 0740 GMT, the dollar-denominated RTS index was down 2.2 percent at 1344 points, while the rouble-based MICEX slid 1.7 percent to 1,476 points, with investors fearful of growing tensions after the failure of talks.

Western countries see the talks as a gauge of Putin's willingness to compromise and had been looking for signs that he was trying to avert the threat of more Western sanctions.

Tensions were already high following Russia's annexation of Crimea after Moscow-leaning president Viktor Yanukovich was ousted and pro-Western leaders took over power in Kiev.

And now that Russia has not only cut off Ukraine but is allegedly once again piling up troops at the border following this weekend's bloodiest escalation yet, it is surely time to BTFD and BTFATH at the same time, because very soon it will surely be time for "Mr Chairman/woman to get to work" and inject gobs more liquidity to give the impression that all is still well.

Credit to Zero Hedge

The "Minerva Research Initiative" The Pentagon's Preparation For "Mass Civil Breakdown"

About a month ago we showed photos of the Chinese police engaged in a drill designed to crush a "working class insurrection", in which the police did precisely what would be required to end a middle class rebellion. It made us wonder: what does China know that the US doesn't. As it turns out, nothing.

Because long before China was practicing counter-riot ops using rubber bullets, all the way back in 2008 the US Department of Defense was conducting studies on the dynamics of civil unrest, and how the US military might best respond. The name of the project: "Minerva Research Initiative" and its role is to " “improve DoD’s basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the U.S."

The Guardian which first revealed the details, reports that, "The multi-million dollar programme is designed to develop immediate and long-term "warfighter-relevant insights" for senior officials and decision makers in "the defense policy community," and to inform policy implemented by "combatant commands."

The premise behind Minerva is simple: study how violent political overthrow, aka mass civil breakdown, happens in the day and age of social networks, and be prepared to counteract it - by "targeting peaceful activities and protest movements" - when it finally reaches US shores.


Among the projects awarded for the period 2014-2017 is a Cornell University-led study managed by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research which aims to develop an empirical model "of the dynamics of social movement mobilisation and contagions." The project will determine "the critical mass (tipping point)" of social contagians by studying their "digital traces" in the cases of "the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the 2011 Russian Duma elections, the 2012 Nigerian fuel subsidy crisis and the 2013 Gazi park protests in Turkey."



Twitter posts and conversations will be examined "to identify individuals mobilised in a social contagion and when they become mobilised."



Another project awarded this year to the University of Washington "seeks to uncover the conditions under which political movements aimed at large-scale political and economic change originate," along with their "characteristics and consequences." The project, managed by the US Army Research Office, focuses on "large-scale movements involving more than 1,000 participants in enduring activity," and will cover 58 countries in total.

Minerva is well funded: From the outset, the Minerva programme was slated to provide over $75 million over five years for social and behavioural science research. This year alone it has been allocated a total budget of $17.8 million by US Congress.

Among the purely "theoretical" recent studies Minerva is funding is a University of Maryland project in collaboration with the US Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to gauge the risk of civil unrest due to climate change. The three-year $1.9 million project is developing models to anticipate what could happen to societies under a range of potential climate change scenarios.

But what is most disturbing is that since the pretext for Minerva is simply to conduct theoretical social science experiments, there should be zero practical uses of the knowledge gleaned. Well, no.


Although Office of Naval Research supervisor Dr Harold Hawkins had assured the university researchers at the outset that the project was merely "a basic research effort, so we shouldn't be concerned about doing applied stuff", the meeting in fact showed that DoD is looking to "feed results" into "applications," Corman said in the email. He advised his researchers to "think about shaping results, reports, etc., so they [DoD] can clearly see their application for tools that can be taken to the field."

Many independent scholars are critical of what they see as the US government's efforts to militarise social science in the service of war. In May 2008, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) wrote to the US government noting that the Pentagon lacks "the kind of infrastructure for evaluating anthropological [and other social science] research" in a way that involves "rigorous, balanced and objective peer review", calling for such research to be managed instead by civilian agencies like the National Science Foundation (NSF).

And tying it all together, is - who else - the NSA.

One war-game, said Price, involved environmental activists protesting pollution from a coal-fired plant near Missouri, some of whom were members of the well-known environmental NGO Sierra Club. Participants were tasked to "identify those who were 'problem-solvers' and those who were 'problem-causers,' and the rest of the population whom would be the target of the information operations to move their Center of Gravity toward that set of viewpoints and values which was the 'desired end-state' of the military's strategy."

Such war-games are consistent with a raft of Pentagon planning documents which suggest that National Security Agency (NSA) mass surveillance is partially motivated to prepare for the destabilising impact of coming environmental, energy and economic shocks.

As the Guardian's Nafeez Ahmed concludes, "Minerva is a prime example of the deeply narrow-minded and self-defeating nature of military ideology. Worse still, the unwillingness of DoD officials to answer the most basic questions is symptomatic of a simple fact – in their unswerving mission to defend an increasingly unpopular global system serving the interests of a tiny minority, security agencies have no qualms about painting the rest of us as potential terrorists."

We wonder: why is that surprising - by the time the "mass civil breakdown" is set to take place (and grand central-planning experiments by the Fed and its peers will merely accelerate said T-zero Day), virtually everyone who poses even the tiniest threat to the collapsing regime will be branded a terrorist.

Since as we reported previously, yet another current version of what previously was merely science fiction, namely the arrival of pre-crime, or where a big data NSA "pre-cog" computer will determine who is a future terrorist threat merely based on behavioral signals, is just around the corner too, it is simply a matter of time before men in gray suits or better yet - drones - quietly arrest any and all potentially threatening social network "nodes" of future terrorist behavior on the simple grounds that their mere presence threatens the status quo with an even faster collapse.

And now, just ignore all of the above, and keep buying stocks, because all is well: these most certainly aren't the droids you are looking for.






credit to Zero Hedge