Vladimir Putin's 'Nuclear Sabre-rattling' Political NATO Persecutions Continue as Russia Promises 40 New Missiles

""Nato accused Russia of "nuclear sabre-rattling" on Tuesday when Vladimir Putin promised to deploy at least 40 new inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) this year.

Russia possesses about 300 ICBMs, so this ambitious plan will see the replacement of 13 per cent of the country's entire arsenal in one year, representing an almost unprecedented rate of modernisation.

The older weapons will be withdrawn and succeeded by new SS-27 missiles, each capable of delivering between four and six strategic nuclear warheads. If loaded to full capacity, these new ICBMs could deliver 240 nuclear warheads – more than Britain’s entire arsenal.

Speaking at the opening of “Army 2015”, an exhibition of weapons outside Moscow, Mr Putin said: “This year the size of our nuclear forces will increase by over 40 new inter-continental ballistic missiles that will be able to overcome any, even the most technologically advanced, missile defence systems.”

Mr Putin’s announcement came after Poland and Lithuania said they were negotiating with America over a plan to store US heavy weapons, including Abrams main battle tanks, within their borders. The plan calls for the US army to “pre-position” the weapons and equipment – but not troops – for one brigade in six countries along Nato’s eastern flank.

The US air force is also considering whether to send its most advanced jet fighter, the F-22 Raptor, on rotational deployments in Europe.

Anatoly Antonov, the Russian deputy defence minister, said the Kremlin was obliged to respond to these moves. “There’s a feeling that our colleagues from Nato countries are pushing us towards an arms race,” he added.

Earlier, Russia’s foreign ministry described the plan to store US heavy weapons in Eastern Europe as an answer to a “perceived Russian threat” that was a “myth”.

A statement from the foreign ministry accused America of “fuelling tensions and nurturing its European allies’ anti-Russian fears” to create a pretext for expanding its “military presence and hence strengthen its influence in Europe”.

The ministry added: “There is growing risk that the US military strategy on Nato’s ‘eastern flank’ will take on a life of its own, disregarding realities and Europe’s political interests.”

But Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato secretary general, condemned Mr Putin's announcement of 40 new missiles. "This nuclear sabre-rattling by Russia is unjustified, destabilising and it is dangerous," he said.

John Kerry, the US secretary of state, joined the condemnation, saying: "Nobody should hear that kind of announcement from the leader of a powerful country and not be concerned about what the implications are.""

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/11678521/Vladimir-Putin-says-Russia-beefing-up-nuclear-arsenal-with-40-new-ballistic-missiles.html

Risk of EMP Attack Crippling North America has NORAD Returning to Cheyenne Mountain Complex

""The potential of a devastating attack to the US power grid by nuclear states such as North Korea or Iran has prompted the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to return to its former location inside Cheyenne Mountain near Colorado Springs, Colorado, two former Reagan-era government officials write in The Wall Street Journal.

"Why the return?" write Henry F. Cooper and Peter Vincent Pry. "Because the enormous bunker in the hollowed-out mountain, built to survive a Cold War-era nuclear conflict, can also resist an electromagnetic-pulse attack, or EMP."

While the Pentagon is moving to shield its global air defense command from being knocked out by an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, the Obama administration has failed to act on urgent recommendations to protect the country's civilian electronic infrastructure from a similar catastrophe, they write.

"An EMP strike, most likely from the detonation of a nuclear weapon in space, would destroy unprotected military and civilian electronics nationwide, blacking out the electric grid and other critical infrastructure for months or years," Cooper and Pry write. 

"The staggering human cost of such a catastrophic attack is not difficult to imagine."

The likeliest source of such an attack would be North Korea or Iran, according to Cooper, former director of the Strategic Defense Initiative, launched by the late President Ronald Reagan, and Pry, executive director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security and a veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Iran is a nuclear-ready state with ballistic missiles capable of striking the United States now, Cooper, Pry and and two other Reagan administration alumni wrote in an op-ed for Newsmax in February.

In the Journal, Cooper and Pry reiterate that "Iran should be regarded as already having nuclear missiles capable of making an EMP attack against the U.S.," noting, "Iran and North Korea have successfully orbited satellites on South-Polar trajectories that appear to practice evading U.S. missile defenses, and at optimum altitudes to make a surprise EMP attack."

There is no comparable effort under way in Washington to protect civilian electronic infrastructure, even though a prolonged nationwide blackout could result in chaos and death on a massive scale, according to findings of a national EMP Commission authorized by Congress. 

"Yet President Obama has not acted on the EMP Commission’s draft executive order to protect national infrastructure that is essential to provide for the common defense," Cooper and Pry write. "Hardening the national electric grid would cost a few billion dollars, a trivial amount compared with the loss of electricity and lives following an EMP attack.""

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/electromagnetic-pulse-attack-threat/2015/05/01/id/642149/

Trigger Bomb Plotted at Yellowstone to Erupt Supervolcano Ahead of Schedule

""A man on trial in Canada for an alleged plot to derail a passenger train wanted to trigger a catastrophic natural disaster by blowing up Yellowstone Park, his trial heard.

Tunisian student Chiheb Esseghaier spoke of the ‘death and destruction’ an eruption of the massive supervolcano beneath the national park would cause in the US, the court heard.

‘Wouldn’t it be great if my enemies’ worst national disaster could happen?’ an undercover FBI agent reported Essaghaier, 30, as saying, according to the The Canadian Press.

Yellowstone Park, which straddles Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, sits atop a swelling reservoir of magma 55 miles across and 30 miles wide. In parts it reaches depths of nine miles.

It is this subterranean lake of molten rock that heats the park’s famous geysers, but it has also been the cause of eruptions in the past that were so massive it has been dubbed a supervolcano.

Experts are divided on the impact an eruption of the supervolcano may have, but most say one would be catastrophic for the entire world.

In his third week of testimony, the undercover FBI agent said Essaghaier was ‘very passionate’ about the idea of triggering the Yellowstone volcano.

But in the end the doctoral student at the Université du Québec is said to have decided the idea was hopeless.

‘No. We cannot do anything to make the volcano erupt. It’s very deep. I don’t have any access,’ Essaghaier is alleged to have told the agent.

The court also heard that Essaghaier and his co-accused, Palestinian national Raed Jaser, considered a plot to poison soldiers and another to kill world leaders with a sniper rifle.

Studies have suggested that previous eruptions of Yellowstone Park’s supervolcano, which has lain dormant for 70,000 years, were a thousand times more powerful than the one in Mount St Helens in 1980.

When the super volcano last erupted about 640,000 years ago a cloud of ash covered the whole of North America and affected the global climate with an effect similar to a nuclear winter.

If it were to explode today, some say, the Yellowstone volcano would cover cities as far as 1,000 miles away with a layer of ash up to 10ft deep, killing all wildlife and making as much as two thirds of the U.S. uninhabitable.""

http://www.patriotnetdaily.com/terror-suspect-planned-to-blow-up-yellowstone-supervolcano-in-hopes-of-triggering-a-catastrophic-natural-disaster/

Measuring Billions of Elusive Neutrinos Flowing Through the Earth, UMass Amherst Physicists Learn More about the Sun

 ""AMHERST, Mass. - Using one of the most sensitive neutrino detectors on the planet, an international team including physicists Laura Cadonati and Andrea Pocar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are now measuring the flow of solar neutrinos reaching earth more precisely than ever before. The detector probes matter at the most fundamental level and provides a powerful tool for directly observing the sun’s composition.

Pocar, Cadonati and colleagues report in the current issue of Physical Review Letters that the Borexino instrument has now measured with high precision the flux of the beryllium seven (7Be) solar neutrino, abundant, low-energy particles once below the observable threshold. With this advance, they can now precisely study the behavior of solar neutrinos with kinetic energy below 1 megaelectron volt (MeV). Borexino scientists also recently reported the first observation of neutrinos produced in a little-studied solar nuclear process known as proton-electron-proton, or pep, and set of stringent limit on reactions involving carbon, nitrogen and oxygen (the CNO cycle) in the sun.

Cadonati says, "Borexino is the only detector capable of observing the entire spectrum of solar neutrinos at once. Our results, the culmination of 20 years of research, greatly narrow the observation precision. The data confirm the neutrino oscillations, flavor changes and flow predicted by models of the sun and particle physics."""

http://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/newsreleases/articles/138249.php