Tension in the Black Sea Escalates, Russian Jets Clash With U.S. Destroyer (Source thetrumpet.com)

Russia scrambled military jets in the Black Sea in response to a United States Navy destroyer on Saturday. Both Russia’s state news service and the Pentagon confirmed the confrontation. The USS Ross left the port of Costanta in Romania. Russia’s RIA Novosti claimed the Ross was acting “provocatively and aggressively” and was heading for Russian waters. In response, Russia scrambled SU-24 attack aircraft. Meanwhile, a Pentagon spokesperson claims the American ship was carrying out routine operations in international waters. Russia’s defense minister said that American missile ships close to Russian waters “pose a danger to strategic stability” between the U.S. and Russia. The latest clash shows heightened tension in the Black Sea between Russia and Western powers.

DE-DOLLARIZATION DU JOUR: RUSSIA BACKS BRICS ALTERNATIVE TO SWIFT (Source zero hedge) Back in February, Russia detailed a SWIFT alternative that would link 91 domestic banks to the Central Bank of Russia. On the one hand, the plan represented yet another move towards global de-dollarization but on the other, was borne out of necessity when Russia began to believe it may be expelled from SWIFT as punishment for its support of rebels in Ukraine. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned of “unlimited consequences” if the West decided on a punitive SWIFT freeze. Two months later, Moscow would receive a seat on the SWIFT board. Now, Russia is taking de-dollarization a step further by suggesting that a BRICS alternative to SWIFT may be in the cards. The Central Bank of Russia has proposed a discussion about establishing an analogue to the SWIFT global network for transmission of financial information that processes $6 trillion worth of communiqués daily. The CBR hopes to cut the risks of possible disruptions. “Seriously speaking, there is no analogue to SWIFT at the moment in the world, it is unique. The only topic that may be of interest to all of us within BRICS is to consider and talk over the possibility of setting up a system that would apply to the BRICS countries, used as a backup,” said Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation Olga Skorobogatova. This comes as Russia (which, incidentally, is the second heaviest SWIFT user) is set to convene a BRICS summit in Ulfa on July 8-9 where the $100 billion BRICS bank will officially be launched along with a $100 billion currency reserve.

“The Ocean is Dying”: Marine and Animal Life Die Offs, California Coast (Source shtfplan.com)

It was the dying cry of Charlton Heston in the creepy 1973 film Soylent Green… and it could resemble our desperate near future. The ocean is dying, by all accounts – and if so, the food supply along with it. The causes are numerous, and overlapping. And massive numbers of wild animal populations are dying as a result of it.  Natural causes in the environment are partly to blame; so too are the corporations of man; the effects of Fukushima, unleashing untold levels of radiation into the ocean and onto Pacific shores; the cumulative effect of modern chemicals and agricultural waste tainting the water and disrupting reproduction. A startling new report says in no uncertain terms that the Pacific Ocean off the California coast is turning into a desert. Once full of life, it is now becoming barren, and marine mammals, seabirds and fish are starving as a result. According to Ocean Health: The waters of the Pacific off the coast of California are a clear, shimmering blue today, so transparent it’s possible to see the sandy bottom below. Clear water is a sign that the ocean is turning into a desert, and the chain reaction that causes that bitter clarity is perhaps most obvious on the beaches of the Golden State, where thousands of emaciated sea lion pups are stranded. The same is true of seabirds on the Washington State coast: In the storm debris littering a Washington State shoreline, Bonnie Wood saw something grisly: the mangled bodies of dozens of scraggly young seabirds. Walking half a mile along the beach at Twin Harbors State Park on Wednesday, Wood spotted more than 130 carcasses of juvenile Cassin’s auklets—the blue-footed, palm-size victims of what is becoming one of the largest mass die-offs of seabirds ever recorded. “It was so distressing,” recalled Wood, a volunteer who patrols Pacific Northwest beaches looking for dead or stranded birds. “They were just everywhere. Every ten yards we’d find another ten bodies of these sweet little things.” “This is just massive, massive, unprecedented,” said Julia Parrish, a University of Washington seabird ecologist who oversees the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST), a program that has tracked West Coast seabird deaths for almost 20 years. “We may be talking about 50,000 to 100,000 deaths. So far.

FBI Says Racist Organizations Have Been Infiltrating Police Departments For Years (Source Counter Current News) Many have said it for years, but now the Federal Bureau of Investigation is claiming that police departments have been deliberately infiltrated by racist, white supremacist organizations. The claim comes after what the FBI says has been nearly a decade of federal law enforcement’s confirmed and documented acts of infiltration by white supremacist groups into American police departments. The FBI warning first came back on October 2006, but it fell on largely deaf ears. Now, the report entitled “White supremacist infiltration of law enforcement” is being revisited by many experts in fighting back against organized hate group terrorism.

In the 2006 report, the FBI found that federal court determined that members of a Los Angeles sheriffs department had organized a Neo Nazi gang. The officers involved did not keep their racist ideas to themselves either, as the FBI found that these same officers “habitually terrorized” the African American community. The FBI also found that the Chicago police department fired a detective after it was discovered that he had strong ties to the Ku Klux Klan. That detective, Jon Burge, was found to have tortured over 100 African American suspects. The City of Cleveland, in news lately for their shooting of Tamir Rice, and other extreme instances of police gunning down unarmed African Americans, found that police locker rooms had been overrun with “white power” graffiti and vandalism. In Texas, a sheriff department found that two of their deputies not only were in the Klan, but were actually prominent recruiters for the hate group.

Now, just as the FBI had warned, the number of white supremacist members infiltrating law enforcement has soared. Between the years of 2008 to 2014, that number of documented infiltrators rose from just shy of 150, to one thousand. Even worse is the fact that most of them were never fired after their hate group affiliation was discovered.

IRS believes massive data theft originated in Russia (Sources CNN) The Internal Revenue Service believes that a major cyber breach that allowed criminals to steal the tax returns of more than 100,000 people originated in Russia, Rep. Peter Roskam confirmed to CNN on Thursday. The Illinois Republican, who is chairman of a House subcommittee with IRS oversight, said IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told him about the theft’s Russian provenance in a phone call. CNN first reported the breach’s Russian origin on Wednesday. “It’s a problem, no matter where it’s coming from, for the taxpayers and the IRS. It surely doesn’t help matters though that it’s coming from Russia for all the obvious geopolitical reasons,” Roskam said. The IRS announced Tuesday that organized crime syndicates used personal data obtained elsewhere to access tax information, which they then used to file $50 million in fraudulent tax refunds.

US preparing for war on China, Russia to save banks: Analyst (Source presstv.ir) US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter warned China to stop developing man-made islands in the South China Sea, vowing that the United States would not stop patrolling international waters and airspace in the Asia-Pacific region. “There should be no mistake, the United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows, as we do all around the world,” Carter said at the US military’s joint base at Pearl Harbor. US President Barack Obama is trying to keep his focus on a widely advertised shift to Asia, which he has pursued since 2011. The White House argues that no region is more important to America’s long-term interests than Asia. “The point that has to be made is that the Chinese, like the Russians, are very, very clear that the United States and their NATO allies are in a war mobilization, preparing for war on Russia, preparing for war on China,” Michael Billington, Asia editor for the Executive Intelligence Review stated. “There’s a general recognition growing that the driving force for this war is the utter collapse of the entire Western banking system,”

Collapsing Global Economy, Imploding Financial System (Source globalresearch.ca) China is a huge importer of gold AND the largest producer of gold in the world.  NONE of their production ever leaves their borders.  I assume the number is 10,000 tons or more, this is a safe number in my mind.  I think it is also a safe bet to say the U.S. has sold a minimum of one half of “our” gold which would leave about 4,000 tons.  If this is the case, there is already a new world order where China has as much gold as numbers 2, 3 and 4.  Looking backwards in time, after the Bretton Woods agreement, the U.S. had every incentive to keep the “price” of gold down at $35.  This is so and evidenced by the old saying “it’s as good as gold”.  The saying originally came about as a description of the dollar.  As it turns out, the dollar was NOT as good as gold, in fact it was not as good as anything, even a cup of coffee.  The dollar was overprinted and abused (inflated) by politicians (the Fed) in order to hide anything and everything “bad”.  This worked until we hit the wall, let’s call this wall “debt saturation”.  Now, the process is reversing and will end in a massive deflation versus real money while fiat currencies follow their issuers into insolvency. Getting back to China, whenever they do make an announcement of how much gold they have, the yuan will appreciate greatly versus all fiat currencies. The Chinese are very smart people, they can see the West is hitting the debt wall.  They also know that as the wall is hit and markets begin to implode, their “customers” are going to have an even harder time buying Chinese produced goods.  In fact, they already know this.  They already know this is happening and can see it in their trade figures …which is why they recently formed the AIIB and are working feverishly to open the “old silk road” trade route!  They are simply lining up new customers from one end of the silk road to the other!

I have hypothesized many times in the past, China has built out their infrastructure and even “ghost cities” using credit.  Once the credit markets begin to default, they will be left with “stuff”, in place and will last for the next 50 to 100 years.  Roads, bridges, buildings, airports, ports, etc., you name it they have already built it.  And yes, their stock market will crash, their real estate market is already softening, in reverse and declining.  I am not saying it will be all rosy, to the contrary, there will be bankruptcies galore in China… with a caveat.  The “government” of China will go through this liquidation phase with the most gold in the world. Moving forward, since China will be hurt badly as investments default, I believe they will re price their gold higher initially.  I believe marking their gold higher in terms of yuan will be their only option.  They will be forced to in order to “recapitalize” themselves (and their banking system) and begin to fill in the black holes created by defaulted U.S. Treasuries and other “assets” held.  You see, not only is the old saying “he who owns the gold makes the rules” true, it is also true that he who owns the gold has the ability to PRICE IT. Let’s tie this all together and look at the old silk road and the trade route China is focusing on.  It goes from Asia, through the Middles East and into Europe.  Could this be why various European nations are repatriating their gold?  Not only because they have lost trust in their custodian but they also know China will put an emphasis on gold holdings in the future?  What do many Asians hold as money?  Yes, Gold.  Indians?  Gold.  Arabs?  Again gold.  The point I am trying to make is the “old silk road” might as well be called the “yellow brick road” and one paved with gold from beginning to end!  It seems to me, the only ones who don’t understand this or even disagree are Westerners and in particular, Americans.  Our standard of living is about to pulled right out from under us while violently proclaiming “it can never happen”.

Thousands worldwide march against Monsanto and GM crops ( Source AFP) Thousands of people hit the streets in cities across the world Saturday to protest against the American biotechnology giant Monsanto and its genetically modified crops and pesticides. The third annual March Against Monsanto — begun by the Occupy movement — was held in upwards of 400 cities in more than 40 countries from the Americas to Africa and Europe. About 2,500 people staged anti-Monsanto protests in the Swiss cities of Basel and Morges, where the company has its headquarters for Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Up to 3,000 protesters, rallied by environmental organisations including Greenpeace and anti-capitalist group Stop TAFTA, gathered in Paris, with Monsanto’s market-leading herbicide Roundup the main targets of protesters’ anger. The controversial product’s main ingredient was recently classified as “probably carcinogenic to humans” by the World Health Organization. Up to 1,000 anti-Monsanto activists also gathered in front of the European Parliament in Strasbourg as the sun was setting for a minute’s silence “in homage to the existing and future victims poisoned by pesticides,” according to the organisers. There were similar scenes in Los Angeles and Rio de Janiero. Up to 500 protesters, including families with small children, took part in a colourful and good-natured rally under the sun in Los Angeles. Another 250 people danced and sang in a noisy demonstration in Rio, accusing Monsanto of “bioterrorism.” About 1,000 people in Chile’s capital Santiago demanded the withdrawal of Monsanto from the country and the end of production of genetically modified foods.

The New “Water Barons”: Wall Street Mega-Banks are Buying up the World’s Water (Source globalresearch.ca) A disturbing trend in the water sector is accelerating worldwide. The new “water barons” — the Wall Street banks and elitist multibillionaires — are buying up water all over the world at unprecedented pace. Familiar mega-banks and investing powerhouses such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Macquarie Bank, Barclays Bank, the Blackstone Group, Allianz, and HSBC Bank, among others, are consolidating their control over water. Wealthy tycoons such as T. Boone Pickens, former President George H.W. Bush and his family, Hong Kong’s Li Ka-shing, Philippines’ Manuel V. Pangilinan and other Filipino billionaires, and others are also buying thousands of acres of land with aquifers, lakes, water rights, water utilities, and shares in water engineering and technology companies all over the world. The second disturbing trend is that while the new water barons are buying up water all over the world, governments are moving fast to limit citizens’ ability to become water self-sufficient (as evidenced by the well-publicized Gary Harrington’s case in Oregon, in which the state criminalized the collection of rainwater in three ponds located on his private land, by convicting him on nine counts and sentencing him for 30 days in jail). Let’s put this criminalization in perspective: Billionaire T. Boone Pickens owned more water rights than any other individuals in America, with rights over enough of the Ogallala Aquifer to drain approximately 200,000 acre-feet (or 65 billion gallons of water) a year. But ordinary citizen Gary Harrington cannot collect rainwater runoff on 170 acres of his private land. It’s a strange New World Order in which multibillionaires and elitist banks can own aquifers and lakes, but ordinary citizens cannot even collect rainwater and snow runoff in their own backyards and private lands.

Russia launches massive air force exercise with 250 aircraft (Source cnsnews.com) The Russian military has launched a massive exercise involving 250 aircraft and other weapons. The Defense Ministry said in a statement Monday the drills will involve air force and air defense units of the Central, Western and Southern Military Districts totaling 12,000 servicemen. Combat aircraft will deploy to temporary bases and air defense systems will be sent to the Ashuluk and Kapustin Yar shooting ranges in southern Russia for training with live ammunition. It also said long-range Russian bombers will launch cruise missiles at practice targets at a Siberian firing range. The exercise is part of a series of Russian military maneuvers taking place amid tensions with the West over Russian actions in Ukraine. The current drills are preparation for even more massive Center-2015 maneuvers set for later this year.