Moscow may hand Iran S-300, breach arms embargo if Assad ousted

DEBKAfile
Thursday, July 5, 2012

Moscow has removed the gloves in its defense of Syrian ruler Bashar Assad. Wednesday, July 4, senior official Ruslan Pukhov warned: “If the Syrian regime is changed by force or if Russia doesn’t like the outcome, it most likely will respond by selling S-300s to Iran.”

Pukhov, who sits on the Russian Defense Ministry’s advisory board and heads a defense affairs think tank in Moscow, added: “The fall of the Syrian government would significantly increase the chances of a strike on Iran. Resuming S-300 shipments to Iran may be a very timely decision.”

Moscow has since 2010 withheld the S-300 air defense system from Iran at the request of the US and Israel. The Pukhov statement indicated that, just as that was the correct decision for the time, the strategic situation in the Middle East with regard to Syria and Iran has since changed, and so providing Iran with these weapons would be the timely decision now.

Kremlin strategic thinking on the region shifted radically in August 2011.

Full story here.

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Report: Al-Qaida planning to crash U.S. airline during London Olympics

Comment: The same old story is trotted out one more time – The mythical white Al Qaeda is going to hijack a plane and blow it up. Time to be scared.

Anshel Pfeffer
Haaretz
July 1, 2012

The al-Qaida branch in the Arabian Peninsula is believed to be planning a terror attack during the Olympic Games in London, scheduled to begin at the end of the month. According to a report in today’s Sunday Times, quoting intelligence services, the organization has recruited a Norwegian Muslim convert who was supposed to hijack a U.S. passenger plane and crash it on a suicide mission. It is not clear though that the attack targeted one of the Olympic venues, despite the timing.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been involved in a number of attempts to carry out high-profile attacks on Western targets.

Jonathan Evans, head of MI5, Britain’s domestic security service, said in a rare public address last week that “the games are not an easy target, and the fact that we have disrupted multiple terrorist plots here and abroad in recent years demonstrates that the UK as a whole is not an easy target.” Despite the successes in foiling terror attacks, Evans warned that “in back rooms and in cars on the streets of this country there is no shortage of individuals talking about wanting to mount terrorist attacks here,” and spoke of the threat of Western Muslim citizens who have been radicalized and trained in camps in countries such as Yemen and Sudan, traveling back to the West to carry out attacks.

According to the sources quoted in The Sunday Times, a Norwegian citizen in his mid-30s and who names himself Abu Abdulrahman converted to Islam in 2008 and has in recent months been undergoing training at AQAP bases in Yemen. There have been a number of reports over the last few months of Western citizens who joined al-Qaida and are involved in its operations in Yemen against the local Western-backed security forces.

Full article here

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Power grid goes down for millions of Americans as Mother Nature reminds us all to get prepared

Mike Adams
Natural News
July 1, 2012

Mother Nature has a way of interrupting our lives with not-so-subtle reminders to pay attention to reality. Over the last 48 hours, a blistering heat wave has swept across nine U.S. states, causing the power grid to fail for millions of residents. Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell has declared a state of emergency.

“Millions of people across nine states were reeling without power Saturday to deal with thermostat-popping temperatures after fierce thunderstorms pounded parts of the Midwest and Atlantic Seaboard,” reports CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/30/us/extreme-heat/index.html).

“In storm-affected areas, many people had no electricity to run fans, air-conditioning and refrigerators. Even in places where power was not disrupted, people with no air-conditioning were advised to spend the day in a library or a cooling center to avoid heat exhaustion.”

At the same time, a crushing, violent storm swept through Washington D.C., killing at least 10 more people and bringing down the power grid to millions more. “More than 3 million are without power — and without air conditioning — as crews work to clear downed tree limbs and restore electricity,” reports CBS News. (http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/06/30/eastern-u-s-storms-leave-5-…)

“Power outages were reported from Indiana to New Jersey, with the bulk of the service interruptions concentrated in the Mid-Atlantic region. Earlier Friday, the nation’s capital reached 104 degrees — topping a record of 101 set in 1934.”

Mother Nature’s way of reminding us all to live in a state of ongoing preparedness

These events are often called “natural disasters,” but that’s a misnomer. These aren’t disasters except for the fact that so many humans depend on the power grid for their very survival. Nature has, for millions of years, functioned just fine with forest fires, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and violent storms. It is only modern human civilization — and its remarkably fragile state of existence — that has turned such events into “disasters.”

A d v e r t i s e m e n t

The disasters, therefore, are really man-made disasters, not “natural” disasters. If you stand in the path of a two-ton boulder rolling downhill, it’s sort of juvenile to blame the boulder for whatever transpires…

Regardless of what you call them, these disasters are made far worse by the reality that most people refuse to prepare for the unexpected. These are what I call the “unprepared masses” who gamble with their lives, placing bets on the power grid, 911 emergency response, the water system, the food supply and all the other systems that (barely) keep them alive from day to day. They are inadvertent gamblers with their own lives. It’s not that they intend to be huge risk-takers; it’s just that they don’t take steps to avoid risk and shore up their protections against the unexpected.

Three reasons why people don’t prepare

There are essentially three reasons why people don’t prepare against the unexpected. They are:

1) The dumbed-down masses. These people, who represent the great masses across the USA and elsewhere around the world, simply lack the intelligence or the desire to think ahead. They tend to be poorly educated (because investing in an education requires planning), poorly informed and live paycheck to paycheck. Their vision of reality is extremely narrow — often extending no further than their next meal or two.

2) The “think positive” people. These people believe that acknowledging risk will cause it to come true. They believe that “staying positive” will physically alter the world into a state that somehow averts disaster for them. The best way to avoid negative things from happening, these people believe, is to refrain from acknowledging their existence. There’s nothing wrong with being a positive person per se, but to do so in denial of a legitimate crisis is delusional and often destructive.

Reality has a way of bluntly reminding these people that they are not actually gods who can alter the physical universe. Mother Nature and her earthquakes, storms, tsunamis and heat waves have no concern whatsoever for whether individual humans think positive, negative or not at all. Interestingly, by the way, even the “think positive” crowd still wears seatbelts when they drive their cars, which is technically a contradiction of their own beliefs. Why not just drive down the highway without a seatbelt and “be positive?”

3) The procrastinators. These folks are often well-intentioned individuals who understand the importance of preparedness but nevertheless find their day-to-day lives too demanding to set aside the time (or money) to actually get prepared. To some extent, I’m guilty of this myself, and I’m sure this rings a bell with many NaturalNews readers. For some of us, lack of preparedness is a TIME issue, and for others it’s a MONEY issue, but we at least universally recognize that we are all, to some extent, behind schedule on getting fully prepared.

My rough estimate is that 80% of the population are dumbed-down masses, roughly 10% are the “stay positive” denialists, and another 9% are procrastinators. There might be 1% carved out of all this who are actually fully prepared, hence bringing the total number to 100%.

Cover the preparedness basics NOW, before something truly big happens

The most positive perspective on all this is that these storms have given us a practice run on basic preparedness. If you’re one of the millions of people who got caught with no air conditioning, sweltering heat, and all your frozen foods de-thawing in the freezer, you just got a — DING! — friendly reminder from Mother Nature to have a backup plan.

In fact, any reasonable preparedness plan must cover all the basics:

• Shelter
• Food
• Water
• Communications
• Defense
• Medicine
• Community
• Navigation
• Transportation

… and so on. I’ve spent the last several years working hard to help people get prepared for precisely such events. Here are the four available courses that I’ve produced, available now from Webseed.com:

• Be Prepared, Not Scared: Food Security by the Health Ranger and Robert Scott Bell – a well researched, downloadable program covering everything you need to know about food and water for emergency preparedness and survival:
http://premium.naturalnews.tv/Be_Prepared_Food_Security__NN.htm

• Surthrival with Daniel Vitalis and the Health Ranger – a large course featuring videos and downloadable audio covering urban survival skills, wilderness skills, light and heat, how to build your own water filter, discussion of reliable gear and more:
http://premium.naturalnews.tv/Surthrival_Vitalis_Adams__NN.htm

• Be Prepared, Not Scared: Financial Preparedness by the Health Ranger and Robert Scott Bell – a downloadable audio program giving you financial survival skills to avoid the worst of the coming economic collapse. Practical, step-by-step solutions to avoid losing your savings and your assets:
http://premium.naturalnews.tv/Be_Prepared_Not_Scared_Financial_Prepar…

• How to Protect and Defend Yourself by the Health Ranger – discussion of self defense, family protection, practical alert devices, firearms, cooperating with local law enforcement and more. Hard-core information on physical defense, alertness, protecting yourself from gangs and looters, etc. Downloadable audio plus streamed video:
http://premium.naturalnews.tv/Health_Ranger_Live_Defense__NN.htm

Enjoy these programs, and if you already own some of them, take time now to review them and shore up your knowledge and skills. We should all learn from this recent “grid down” event to make sure we have backup plans for when things go wrong — as they inevitably do from time to time.

Stay safe! Stay informed. And stay prepared.

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Obama directs FEMA to aid recovery in states hit by severe storms

Meghashyam Mali
The Hill
July 1, 2012

President Obama on Saturday spoke with governors from four states ravaged by severe storms to help coordinate federal assistance for the recovery efforts.

Obama made calls to Govs. John Kasich (R-Ohio), Bob McDonnell (R-Va.), Martin O’Malley (D-Md.), and Earl Ray Tomblin (D) to “receive an update on the severe storms… and to express his condolences for the loss of life and his concern for individuals and first responders still confronting the destruction and loss of power that is impacting communities as a result,” the White House said in a readout.

The administration said the president informed the governors that he had “directed FEMA to ensure they continue to provide necessary support to state and local officials in impacted areas as they respond to these events, especially considering the power outages and the high temperatures many of the impacted areas are currently experiencing.”

The mid-Atlantic region was hit by violent thunderstorms Friday night which killed at least nine people and have knocked out power to nearly 2 million, the Associated Press reports.

Full article here

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Iran obtains fresh information on downed US RQ-170 drone: Minister

Press TV
July 1, 2012

Iran’s Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi says the country has obtained new technical information regarding the downed US RQ-170 Sentinel reconnaissance drone.

“Acquiring the details and technical specifications of the RQ-170 is taking its normal course, and new achievements have been made in this respect; however, we do not intend to publicize them,” said Vahidi on Sunday.

On December 4, the Iranian military’s electronic warfare unit announced that the country had successfully downed the US RQ-170 Sentinel stealth reconnaissance aircraft inside Iran with minimal damage.

The aircraft, designed and developed by the American company Lockheed Martin, had crossed into Iran’s airspace over the border with neighboring Afghanistan.

In response to a question about Iran’s 2011 complaint against Russia at the International Court of Justice over Moscow’s refusal to ship S-300 air defense systems to Tehran, Vahidi noted that the issue is under examination at the relevant international legal bodies, adding that it is normal for legal proceedings at the international courts of law to get prolonged.

Under a contract signed in 2007, Russia is required to provide Iran with at least five S-300 air defense systems.

However, Moscow’s continuous delays in delivering the defense system has drawn criticism from the Islamic Republic on several occasions.

Russia has been refusing to deliver the system to Iran under the pretext that the system is covered by the fourth round of UN Security Council resolutions against Iran.

The Iranian defense minister also alluded to Iran’s endeavors to safeguard the security of the Strait of Hormuz, saying the Islamic Republic has so far been the key provider of security in the region and has countered threats against the strategic waterway.

Vahidi pointed to Iran’s vital interests in the Strait of Hormuz and reaffirmed Tehran’s resolve to monitor all the developments across the waterway.

The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow shipping channel that leads in and out of the Persian Gulf between Iran and Oman.

More than a third of the world’s seaborne oil exports pass through the narrow Strait of Hormuz, according to Reuters.

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Drone aircraft kills eight suspected militants in Pakistan

Reuters
July 1, 2012

A U.S. drone aircraft killed eight suspected Islamist militants in northwest Pakistan on Sunday, security officials said.

A drone missile struck a house in the Shawal Valley where militants were reported to be hiding in the North Waziristan tribal region near the Afghan border.

“Two missiles were fired on a house. Eight militants were killed,” said a local intelligence official.

Several of the men killed were loyal to Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a top militant leader in North Waziristan, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Full article here

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77% of JP Morgan’s Net Income Comes from Government Subsidies

Washington’s Blog
July 1, 2012

JP Morgan’s credit rating would be much lower without government backing.

As Bloomberg noted last week:

JPMorgan benefited from the assumption that there’s a “very high likelihood” the U.S. government would back the bank’s bondholders and creditors if it defaulted on its debt, according to the statement. Without the implied federal backing, JPMorgan’s long-term deposit rating would have been three levels lower and its senior debt would have dropped two more steps, Moody’s said.

And as the editors of Bloomberg pointed out a couple of weeks ago:

JPMorgan receives a government subsidy worth about $14 billion a year, according to research published by the International Monetary Fundand our own analysis of bank balance sheets. The money helps the bank pay big salaries and bonuses. More important, it distorts markets, fueling crises such as the recent subprime-lending disaster and the sovereign-debt debacle that is now threatening to destroy the euro and sink the global economy.

***

With each new banking crisis, the value of the implicit subsidy grows. In a recent paper, two economists — Kenichi Ueda of the IMF and Beatrice Weder Di Mauro of the University of Mainz — estimated that as of 2009 the expectation of government support was shaving about 0.8 percentage point off large banks’ borrowing costs. That’s up from 0.6 percentage point in 2007, before the financial crisis prompted a global round of bank bailouts.

To estimate the dollar value of the subsidy in the U.S., we multiplied it by the debt and deposits of 18 of the country’s largest banks, including JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. The result: about $76 billion a year. The number is roughly equivalent to the banks’ total profits over the past 12 months, or more than the federal government spends every year on education.

JPMorgan’s share of the subsidy is $14 billion a year, or about 77 percent of its net income for the past four quarters. In other words, U.S. taxpayers helped foot the bill for the multibillion-dollar trading loss that is the focus of today’s hearing. They’ve also provided more direct support: Dimon noted in a recent conference call that the Home Affordable Refinancing Program, which allows banks to generate income by modifying government-guaranteed mortgages, made a significant contribution to JPMorgan’s earnings in the first three months of 2012.

Waty to suck at the government teat, Mr. self-proclaimed free market champion.

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