Russian troops to seize CIA facility in elaborate war game… On U.S. soil

I spoke with the officer who answers the phones at Fort Carson Public Affairs next. She said that 20 Russian special forces soldiers were coming the end of May to be trained because her understanding was that they were going to take part in operation Enduring Freedom to help the Afghanis and us [that's a good thing.]

She said that it was the first time Russians were being trained on U.S. soil but it was being done partly to improve diplomatic relations and partly because the terrain outside Fort Carson is similar to the terrain of Afghanistan and she went into some detail explaining how. That is something I have heard before.

She told me she would have the Lt. Col. who will be in charge of the training call me and call me he did.

He said he was concerned about the EU Times and everything in it was inaccurate. He said that he wanted the truth to get out and he was very open with me.

The Lt. Col. said there are 20 soldiers, which is a handful, and did people actually think they would let them run loose? They would never allow 20 soldiers (nor would they be able to) take over the Denver airport via the CIA.

He said that the Russian soldiers will be escorted and watched 24/7 and they will not be running loose.

The Lt. Col. said that for years and years, the military has had a bilateral training program with the Russians. The program runs joint training missions.

Still, as the Independent Sentinel notes even with the story being misinterpreted, “we will know the complete truth on May 31st.”

According to reports, the U.S. and Russian military will be engaging in an anti-terrorism exercise that will involve Russian paratroopers using U.S. weapons to “take and hold” the main facilities of the CIA and Denver International Airport in Colorado and the National Security Agency in Utah.

The European Union Times has more on the report announcing this exercise from the Russian Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation:

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Colonel Alexander Kucherenko publically announced this 24-21 May “anti-terror drill” this Friday past noting that this will be the first time Russian airborne forces have held exercises with the US airborne forces on US territory. Colonel Kucherenko stated, “According to the exercise scenario, soldiers of the two countries will hold a tactical airborne operation, including the reconnaissance of imaginary terrorists’ camp and a raid. After the operation, a helicopter will evacuate the soldiers.” He further added that Russian airborne troops would be training with US special service weapons in these drills in Fort Carson, Colorado.

Puzzling to Russian military analysts about this exercise, this report says, are that according to the American plans, Russian airborne troops (using US weapons that they had previously trained with at Fort Carson) will fly to and then parachute from their planes having the objectives of seizing the CIA’s main computer facility in Denver, the NSA’s main computer facility in Bluffdale, Utah, and taking control of main runways and terminals of the Denver International Airport.

The purpose of seizing the Denver International Airport, this report continues, is for the evacuation of the key personal and equipment previously “freed” from the CIA’s Denver base, and the NSA’s base in Utah, who were, supposedly, under “imminent threat” from an unspecified enemy, according, that is, to the American scenario for this war game.

Also interesting to note, this report says, is that this entire exercise will be overseen by the “drone army” owned and operated by the University of Colorado who have over the past few years has applied for and obtained over 100 Certificate of Authorization’s (COA) from the US government to fly their pilotless surveillance aircraft for reasons still as yet unknown.

Business Insider notes this is the first time the Russian military will have been invited onto U.S. soil for a military drill.


The Blaze

40 killed in violent hailstorm in China: hailstorms relentless since May 8

May 14, 2012 – CHINA – Forty people were killed when a brief but violent hailstorm and torrential rain swept through a mountainous region of northwest China. Eighteen others remained missing in Min County, a disaster-prone area of Gansu province, while 87 had been sent to hospital, the local government said. Officials said 29,300 people were evacuated after rain and hail battered the county for just an hour late on Thursday afternoon.

 It “wreaked havoc” on all of the county’s 18 townships and affected more than two-thirds of its 450,000 residents, the state-controlled Xinhua news agency reported. “Roads were blocked, houses collapsed, farmland was destroyed, and the power supply and telecommunications services were disrupted by the extreme weather,” the agency said, quoting Xu Guangyao, a senior county official. Min County is 90 miles from Zhouqu County, where a rain-triggered mudslide killed about 1,500 people in August 2010. Hailstorms in the central province of Hunan have also killed six people and left one missing, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs on Sunday, Xinhua reported. 

Since May 8, hailstorms have struck across the province, affecting 3.42 million people, the ministry said. About 64,000 people have been relocated to safer areas and 7,600 houses have collapsed. –Telegraph

Volcano grows at astounding rate

An astounding pulse of destruction and growth at an underwater volcano north of New Zealand has provided a new insight into the behaviour of submarine mountains.

The Monowai seamount, which lies at the intersection of the Pacific and Indo-Australian tectonic plates at the Tonga-Kermadec subduction zone, underwent one of the fastest episodes of volcano growth documented on Earth.

It added about 8.75 million cubic metres of rock to its summit - a volume equal to 3500 Olympic-size swimming pools - in just five days.

New lava flows raised that area by 79.1 metres, while part of the volcano's summit collapsed by as much as 18.8 metres. Most striking was the creation of an entirely new volcanic cone.

The changes were measured by crew aboard the research vessel Sonne who had set out on a routine mapping expedition in the South Pacific last autumn.

Their findings have been published online in the journal Nature Geoscience. The article's authors include GNS Science geologist and geochemist Cornel de Ronde.

As they surveyed the seafloor near Monowai seamount in mid-May 2011 the crew noticed yellow-green water and gas bubbles rising above the volcano.

As the ship was leaving the area, near Tonga, it went through a patch of discoloured water with a strong smell, like rotten eggs, Oxford University geologist Anthony Watts said.

While the ship was surveying another area, a seismic station in the Cook Islands detected an intense five-day swarm of seismic activity and traced it to an eruption at Monowai seamount, MSNBC reported.

Watts and the ship returned in early June to find that part of the Monowai volcano had collapsed and another part had grown in dramatic fashion.

The new material lifting the peak was most likely magma that had erupted and hardened the week before, Watts, who led the study, said.

The rapid changes at Monowai suggest that the volcano grows and collapses in dramatic pulses.

Submarine volcanoes such as Monowai were much more difficult to study than volcanoes on land. Because so little was known about submarine volcanoes, it was unclear whether others also grew in rapid pulses, Watts said.

Had the ship been in the area of the volcano at the time of the eruption it could have been potentially dangerous, Watts told the BBC.

"If we had been over the volcano during the eruption, rocks could have hit the hull of the ship."

The researchers believe the changes are larger than at most other volcanoes. Only Vesuvius and Mount St Helens have recorded larger growth rates.

The paper said the speed of growth and change was "a reminder of how rapidly geological processes such as submarine landsliding and volcanism can occur".

"Any movement on the seabed has the potential to create a tsunami. An earthquake suddenly dislocates the seabed. Here a violent disturbance lasted five days with magma oozing out which might be too slow to trigger a tsunami - but it's unknown," Watts said.

Stuff.co.nz

US Army General Warns of Impending Fukushima Doom

Maj. Gen. Albert N. Stubblebine III (US Army Ret.), President of the Natural Solutions Foundation, an international NGO (non-governmental organization), released a 27 minute public service Estimate of Situation about Fukushima, Japan focusing on the immediate threat to the Northern Hemisphere emanating from the highly radioactive ruins of the 5 Fukushima nuclear reactors.

Gen. Stubblebine’s prognosis is dire: “When the highly radioactive Spent Fuel Rods are exposed to air, there will be massive explosions releasing many times the amount or radiation released thus far. Bizarrely, they are stored three stories above ground in open concrete storage pools. Whether through evaporation of the water in the pools, or due to the inevitable further collapse of the structure, there is a severe risk. United States public health authorities agree that tens of thousands of North Americans have already died from the Fukushima calamity. When the final cataclysm occurs, sooner rather than later, the whole Northern Hemisphere is at risk of becoming largely uninhabitable.”

General Stubblebine details in his riveting video the amounts of radioactive materials that will be propelled across the Pacific and across the United States if the Fukushima reactor structures (especially Spent Fuel Pool Number 4) collapse. With over 15,000 ‘spent fuel rods’ on the site, the Fukushima reactors have accumulated one of the largest stockpiles of these dangerous, intensely radioactive materials on the planet. No remediation work is being done at the site; there is no official remedial planning or disaster preparation. No private remediation, or public discussion of the need for it, is permitted by the Government of Japan under its new suppression of nuclear discussion laws.

The Natural Solutions Foundation joins seventy Japanese NGOs(1) in calling upon the Secretary General of the United Nations and Prime Minister of Japan last month to coordinate emergency action to shore-up critical structures now at imminent risk of collapse. It has been variously estimated(2), that a relatively mild earthquake (i.e., 5.0 or greater on the Richter Scale) will collapse the previously damaged Spent Fuel Rod holding tank of Unit No. 4, containing 85 times the amount of radioactive Cesium137 contained in Chernobyl's now-entombed reactor. An estimated 1Million Europeans are believed to have died as a direct result of that radiation emission following the nuclear explosion of Chernobyl.

The US Government's statistics document an excess death rate of 20,000 US residents, mostly healthy infants, in the first 9 months following the multiple nuclear events at Fukushima. .
As a humanitarian, strategist, intelligence analyst, father and grandfather, General Bert understands that doing nothing is, quite simply, not an option.

Following his incisive Estimate of Situation, General Bert’s free public service video outlines four simple steps you can take to protect yourself and your family.

Please visit http://www.GeneralBert.com to access this urgent warning and subsequent updates without cost. And please share this link with all your circles of influence.

The Trustees of the Natural Solutions Foundation, the largest health freedom organization in the world, urge your participation in disseminating this message since the mainstream media has remained curiously silent in the United States on this massive increase in radiation. The lack of information is, however, a matter of State policy in Japan where it is now a felony offense to discuss negative aspects of either nuclear power or the Fukushima situation in particular.

PRWEB

GREEK MINISTER: An Exit From The Eurozone Could Trigger Civil War

Who can proffer the sunniest outlook on a Grexit today? Michalis Chrysohoidis probably wins.

In case you haven't heard his name in the headlines much lately, he's a member of the Hellenic Parliament finishing up his term as the Minister of Citizen Protection, and according to the Telegraph, he just told a Greek radio station in an interview that a Greek departure from the eurozone would most undoubtedly be bad news for more than just international creditors holding the bag on debt payments.

Here's how he sees it going down:

“What will prevail are armed gangs with Kalashnikovs and which one has the greatest number of Kalashnikovs will count … we will end up in civil war.”

Business Insider

Brace, brace. Dark times ahead as Greece heads for the exit

Mistakenly, they have convinced themselves that it won't much matter if Greece leaves, and indeed that it might even help resolve the wider crisis to get rid of this persistent thorn in the flesh.

Bring it on, they mutter callously; it will be a lot worse for them than for us. On one level, this is just bravado. It's an attempt to put as nonchalant a face as possible on the now apparently inevitable. But they also seem to believe in their validity of their own analysis – that they have indeed used the past two years well, and are now fully prepared for a Greek exit.

Believe it if you will. The ineptitude to date of the eurozone's crisis response strongly suggests a different conclusion – both that the likely contagion from an exit has been hugely underestimated, and that by prompting a wider breakup, thereby tipping Europe into depression, it may end up as bad for everyone else as it is for Greece.

The Greek problem has been consistently misdiagnosed and mismanaged right from the start. First there was the suggestion a year ago from Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy that if Greece didn't buckle under and agree austerity it might be chucked out. Markets reacted logically by selling bonds in any country that looked vulnerable, thereby making it much harder for all periphery governments to fund themselves.

This disastrous admission was compounded by attempts to underpin confidence in the financial system by forcing banks to mark their sovereign debt to market. This destroyed the concept of the "risk free asset", forcing banks for the first time to apply capital to their sovereign debt exposures. Unsurprisingly, they stopped buying sovereign bonds in the distressed countries, again making it harder for governments to fund themselves.

These mistakes were partially reversed by the European Central Bank's LTRO programme, which provided banks with the liquidity they need to resume purchases of sovereign bonds. Unfortunately, this has only succeeded in creating its own problems. The completely inappropriate austerity of Europe's Fiscalpakt has sparked new doubts about debt sustainability, which has in turn further undermined confidence in bank balance sheets now stuffed to the gunnels with sovereign debt.

And they expect us to believe that a Greek exit can be managed without further cost? Let's just briefly deconstruct the increasingly desperate position that Greece finds itself in. Greeks have voted to reject austerity but remain in the euro. They won't be allowed both.

If they don't continue with the programme, they'll be denied the remainder of the bail-out money. Unable to pay wages, pensions, healthcare costs and bills, government will quickly grind to a halt. The state could theoretically force the banks to buy its bonds, but the ECB would soon in such circumstances refuse further funding. At that stage Greece would have no option but to return to the drachma.

Hyperinflation would replace grinding deflation. The effect on living standards would be equally catastrophic. It's true that properly managed, leaving the euro does in the long term have the potential to return Greece to competitiveness and growth.

But does anyone believe Greece capable of managing such a transition well given the positively heroic scale of mismanagement to date? And is it in any case possible to have a well managed exit for a country that doesn't want to leave? In or out, the outlook for Greece looks bleak.

It scarcely looks a great deal more appetising for the rest of Europe. Banking exposure to Greece has been minimised, so in theory the consequences for the rest of Europe's banks shouldn't be so bad. Instead, Greece's bad debts have been socialised by a combination of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the IMF and the European Central Bank's Target 2 liquidity support.

If Greece redominates all its debts in cut price drachmas, the ECB and its backers – in particular the German Bundesbank – will take a terrible hit, but it won't be terminal. The Bundesbank would most likely simply write off its Target 2 lending to Greece, which would certainly be a major curiosity given its abhorrence of debt monetisation but wouldn't of itself destroy either the Bundesbank or the euro.

The threat comes instead from market contagion to other eurozone countries worst hit by the debt crisis. To Germany, Greece has always been a special case, a nation which cheated its way into the euro, whose citizens are lazy and won't pay their taxes, and is in any case basically ungovernable. There is a very different attitude to Spain and Italy. Germany's determination to make the rest of the eurozone work should not be underestimated.

The trouble is that once one has left, and the principle has been established that it is indeed possible to leave the euro, it's going to be tough to impossible to contain the crippling capital flight which is certain to set in elsewhere. Greece is just the canary in the mineshaft, an outrider for the much wider problem of imbalances and divergent competitiveness.

Time is running out. There's little doubt where Francois Hollande finds himself in Churchill's famous dictum that Germany is either at your throat or at your feet. On his first day as President of France, he's off like a poodle to Berlin for crisis talks. Can he persuade Angela Merkel of some kind of cunning, alternative plan? Does he even have one? Now why does this seem so unlikely? What a mess.

The Telegraph

Moody's slashes ratings for 26 Italian banks

Moody's slashed its credit ratings for 26 Italian banks, including Unicredit and Intesa Sanpaolo, Monday by up to four notches, citing their vulnerability to more trouble in the eurozone.

"The ratings for Italian banks are now amongst the lowest within advanced European countries, reflecting these banks' susceptibility to the adverse operating environments in Italy and Europe," it said.


France 24