Signs of sophisticated cellphone spying found near White House, U.S. officials say

Members of the Secret Service patrol from the top of the White House. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

 

A federal study found signs that surveillance devices for intercepting cellphone calls and texts were operating near the White House and other sensitive locations in the Washington area last year.

A Department of Homeland Security program discovered evidence of the surveillance devices, called IMSI catchers, as part of federal testing last year, according to a letter from DHS to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on May 22. The letter didn’t specify what entity operated the devices and left open the possibility that there could be alternative explanations for the suspicious cellular signals collected by the federal testing program last year.

FBI: Iran to Launch New Cyber Attacks

 

Iranian hackers poised for wide-ranging strikes in retaliation for U.S. leaving nuclear deal

The FBI is warning that Iranian hackers could conduct new cyber attacks on American businesses and government networks in response to the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal.

“The FBI assesses foreign cyber actors operating in the Islamic Republic of Iran could potentially use a range of computer network operations—from scanning networks for potential vulnerabilities to data deletion attacks—against U.S.-based networks in response to the U.S. government’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),” the FBI said in a cyber alert to U.S. businesses.

The Future the US Military is Constructing: a Giant, Armed Nervous System

Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. John Richardson, gives a keynote address during the Naval Future Force Science and Technology (S&T) Expo, July 21, 2017. This is a slide from his presentation.

 

Service chiefs are converging on a single strategy for military dominance: connect everything to everything.

Leaders of the Air Force, Navy, Army and Marines are converging on a vision of the future military: connecting every asset on the global battlefield.

That means everything from F-35 jets overhead to the destroyers on the sea to the armor of the tanks crawling over the land to the multiplying devices in every troops’ pockets. Every weapon, vehicle, and device connected, sharing data, constantly aware of the presence and state of every other node in a truly global network. The effect: an unimaginably large cephapoloidal nervous system armed with the world’s most sophisticated weaponry.

Unconscionable Manipulation in the Stock Market

 

Last week casino owner and billionaire Steve Wynn admitted something that few people on the inside are every willing to acknowledge. He clearly stated that stock market can be manipulated using the very loopholes that we identified at work in the 2008 collapse, including naked short selling, dark pools, and high-frequency trading. Here are some quotes from his recent conference call:

“…the exchanges don’t enforce the rules of naked shorts. So, I mean, it’s unconscionable manipulation of the stock that occurs. They open up every morning, and the high-frequency traders in the shorts have a ball selling shares, and then value buyers step in the afternoon and they cover the shorts. I mean, it’s regular casino activity.” The company currently has about 14 million shares short, or almost one-quarter of total float.

China, U.S. Reach Agreement on High-Speed Rail Before Xi Visit

A China Railway Group-led consortium and XpressWest Enterprises LLC will form a joint venture to build a high-speed railway linking Las Vegas and Los Angeles, the first Chinese-made bullet-train project in the U.S.

Construction of the 370-kilometer (230-mile) Southwest Rail Network will begin as soon as next September, according to a statement from Shu Guozeng, an official with the Communist Party’s leading group on financial and economic affairs. The project comes after four years of negotiations and will be supported by $100 million in initial capital. The statement didn’t specify the project’s expected cost or completion date.

U.S. government airline Janet hides in plain site

 

AS PASSENGERS fly in and out of Las Vegas’ main commercial airport, few are aware they are sharing the space with a secret airline that holds the U.S. government’s biggest secrets.

And it’s hidden in plain view.

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Due to the top secret nature of the airline, little is known about its operations. But a few interesting details have been uncovered over the years.

Lake Mead reaches another record low as water apocalypse nears for Las Vegas, a city living in denial

(NaturalNews) The severe droughts affecting the western United States are approaching apocalyptic proportions as the water level of Lake Mead – America’s largest capacity reservoir – has reached the lowest point in its history.

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The water levels have just dropped (as of this writing on April 30, 2015) below 1,080 feet – that’s lower than last year’s record low level of 1080.19 feet.

Obama just seized over one million acres of state land, claiming ownership by the federal government

(NaturalNews) The federal government once more dramatically increased its land holdings at the expense of states in recent days, as noted by a White House announcement that said President Obama has used the century-old Antiquities Act again to designate three new national monuments totaling 1 million acres.

In particular, as reported by the San Jose Mercury News, Obama created the 704,000-acre Basin and Range National Monument north of Las Vegas, the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, a 100-mile stretch of land reaching across roughly 100 miles of northern California, and Waco Mammoth National Monument in Texas.

Leaking Las Vegas

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas… apart from the water. As the following interactive chart from ProPublica shows, water usage in the greater Las Vegas region has more than doubled in the last 40 years and with the drought conditions, every reservoir is near record lows. Welcome To Las Vegas (while water supplies last).

Click here for large interactive version

Vegas Water History

1905    The Las Vegas Land and Water Company is formed to build and operate groundwater wells which the city then depended on for decades.

1922    The seven basin states sign the Colorado River Compact, estimating the river’s annual supply at 18 million acre-feet of water and dividing 15 million acre-feet between the northern and southern states. The river would eventually prove to flow with just 14.8 million acre-feet a year.

Lake Mead Water Level Mysteriously Plunges After Nevada Quake

An update on the situation has been posted on Zero Hedge. Apparently there was an ‘error’ in reporting on the government’s side and it has now been corrected. The correction created a miracle recovery that you can compare with the chart below.

 

 

A 4.8 magnitude earthquake (originally reported 5.4) shook Las Vegas and surrounding areas Friday morning causing roads and bridges to be closed. The quake went little-reported outside of local news (since there was at first glance minimum damage caused) but, since the quake’s occurrence, something considerably more worrisome has occurred.

In the 36 hours since the quake’s occurrence, water levels at Lake Mead have plunged precipitously. While we know correlation is not causation, the ‘coincidence’ of an extreme loss in water levels occurring in the aftermath of one of the largest quakes in recent Vegas history does raise a suspicious eyebrow – especially when there has been no official word on the precipitous decline.

The Greatest Water Crisis In The History Of The United States

 

What are we going to do once all the water is gone?  Thanks to the worst drought in more than 1,000 years, the western third of the country is facing the greatest water crisis that the United States has ever seen.  Lake Mead is now the lowest that it has ever been since the Hoover Dam was finished in the 1930s, mandatory water restrictions have already been implemented in the state of California, and there are already widespread reports of people stealing water in some of the worst hit areas.  But this is just the beginning.  Right now, in a desperate attempt to maintain somewhat “normal” levels of activity, water is being pumped out of the ground in the western half of the nation at an absolutely staggering pace.  Once that irreplaceable groundwater is gone, that is when the real crisis will begin.  If this multi-year drought stretches on and becomes the “megadrought” that a lot of scientists are now warning about, life as we know it in much of the country is going to be fundamentally transformed and millions of Americans may be forced to find somewhere else to live.

Iran Rapidly Building Cyber Warfare Capabilities

Highlighted in teal below is a perfect example of grey terror during the ‘overture’ phase, as described in Soviet defector Viktor Suvorov’s book “Spetsnaz. The Story Behind the Soviet SAS” in chapter 15, Spetsnaz’s First World War.

Here’s a lengthy exerpt:

In Washington, as the President’s helicopter is taking off, several shots are fired at it from sniper’s rifles. The helicopter is only slightly damaged and the crew succeed in bringing it down again safely. No one in the craft is hurt. Responsibility for the attack is claimed by a previously unknown organisation calling itself ‘Revenge for Vietnam’.

There is a terrorist explosion at Vienna airport.

A group of unidentified men attack the territory of the British military base in Cyprus with mortars.

A serious accident takes place on the most important oil pipeline in Alaska. The pumping stations break down and the flow of oil falls to a trickle.

In West Germany there are several unsuccessful attempts on the lives of American generals.

In the North Sea the biggest of the British oil rigs tips over and sinks. The precise reason for this is not established, although experts believe that corrosion of main supports is the culprit.

In the United States an epidemic of some unidentified disease breaks out and spreads rapidly. It seems to affect port areas particularly, such as San Francisco, Boston, Charleston, Seattle, Norfolk and Philadelphia.

There are explosions practically every day in Paris. The main targets are the government districts, communication centres and military headquarters. At the same time terrible forest fires are raging in the South of France.

All these operations — because of course none of these events is an accident — and others like them are known officially in the GRU as the ‘preparatory period’, and unofficially as the ‘overture’. The overture is a series of large and small operations the purpose of which is, before actual military operations begin, to weaken the enemy’s morale, create an atmosphere of general suspicion, fear and uncertainty, and divert the attention of the enemy’s armies and police forces to a huge number of different targets, each of which may be the object of the next attack.

The overture is carried by agents of the secret services of the Soviet satellite countries and by mercenaries recruited by intermediaries. The principal method employed at this stage is ‘grey terror’, that is, a kind of terror which is not conducted in the name of the Soviet Union. The Soviet secret services do not at this stage leave their visiting cards, or leave other people’s cards. The terror is carried out in the name of already existing extremist groups not connected in any way with the Soviet Union, or in the name of fictitious organisations.

The GRU reckons that in this period its operations should be regarded as natural disasters, actions by forces beyond human control, mistakes committed by people, or as terrorist acts by organisations not connected with the Soviet Union.

The terrorist acts carried out in the course of the ‘overture’ require very few people, very few weapons and little equipment. In some cases all that may be needed is one man who has as a weapon nothing more than a screwdriver, a box of matches or a glass ampoule. Some of the operations can have catastrophic consequences. For example, an epidemic of an infectious disease at seven of the most important naval bases in the West could have the effect of halving the combined naval might of the Soviet Union’s enemies.

 

Cyber attacks on banks, casino highlight growing threat

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“Iranian hackers have been suspected in multiple incidents that inflicted damage on various entities in the private sector, including finance and energy firms,” according to the five-page report, “Pistachios and Saffron: Investigating the Iranian Cyber Threat.”

“Current analysis indicates Iran may intend to use its growing cyber force to attack global critical infrastructure,” the report added.

Once limited to website defacements and other less damaging attacks, Tehran’s hacker forces are now capable of using customized malicious software designed for use against specific victims.

Steve Wynn: Economic recovery ‘pure fiction’

If you’d like to get a better idea of what the true level of unemployment is, check out this U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics table… ‘U-6’ is what you want to see. Please also note, the methodology for coming up with these numbers was changed some years ago and still do not represent the true rates, which as Wynn says, are around 15% – 20% unemployment. Definitions have changed and some factors have been left out. For the foreseeable future, this is likely the most truth you’ll get from the government.

You can see the worthwhile 26 minute Steve Wynn’s KNPB interview HERE.

 

Las Vegas icon says don’t believe government stats on jobs, inflation

One of America’s most astute businessmen, known for having expanded the Las Vegas strip of resort hotels and casinos in the 1990s, says the U.S. remains mired in an economic funk and any talk of a broad recovery is “pure fiction. A lie.”

Steve Wynn,  the 73-year-old founder and CEO of Wynn Resorts, made the comments in a televised interview with Jon Ralston of PBS’ “Ralston Live.” He opened the Wynn Hotel and casino in Macao, China, in 2006, and is known as an international gaming and casino magnate.

Leaking Las Vegas: Lake Mead Water Levels Continue To Crash

 

The last time we looked at Las Vegas water supply, the comments from professionals were “Vegas is screwed,” and unless water levels in Lake Mead rise by 7%, “it’s as bad as you can imagine.” The bad news… Water levels in Lake Mead have never been lower for this time of year – and this is before the Summer heat seasonal plunge takes effect.

We noted previously, as with many things in Sin City, the apparently endless supply of water is an illusion.

Police: Las Vegas mentioned as al-Qaida terror target

LAS VEGAS (FOX5) – Metro police have confirmed al-Qaida leaders are encouraging lone jihadists to target Las Vegas for terror attacks. That information comes from a recent publication which names the city as a top spot to strike.

“It’s just a suggestive rhetoric to those who subscribe to violent jihadists ideologies,” said Lt. Nichole Splinter with the Southern Nevada Counter-Terrorism Unit.

It’s in a publication titled Palestine where you can see Las Vegas listed as a top spot for a potential terror attack. The city is listed in a section about building and using car bombs. Splinter said it’s not uncommon for publications like this to suggest the names of big cities to target.