Multinational force massed on Jordanian-Syrian border as 50 killed in Damascus bombings

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

Beset on two fronts, Bashar Assad rushed his elite Republic Division to Damascus Thursday, May 10, as two massive car bombs in the al Qaza district of Damascus demolished the command center of the Syrian military security service’s reconnaissance division, killing at least 50 people and injuring 170. Over to the southeast, 12,000 special operations troops from 17 nations, including the US and other NATO members, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, were poised on the Jordanian side of the Syrian border for an exercise codenamed “Eager Lion.”

debkafile’s military sources also disclose that the bomb attack on Damascus was the most serious his regime had suffered against a military target since the 14-month Syrian uprising began. For the first time, Assad moved his most loyal unit, the Republican Guard Brigade, into central Damascus.

Western and Arab pressure is building up to an intolerable pitch for the Syrian president to step down and save his people from the descent into the ultimate agony of a full-blown civil war. It is coming from two directions:

1. Special forces units of the US, France, Britain, Canada and other NATO members have gathered in Jordan alongside Saudi, Jordanian and Qatari special units for a large-scale ten-day military exercise in Jordan starting May 15.

The exercise was set up by the US Special Operations Command Central. It is the Obama administration's message to the Islamic rulers of Iran, Bashar Assad and his Moscow backers, as well as its answer to the complaints from Arab and other Western governments that America is doing nothing to stop the horrors perpetrated in Syria.

Since all 12,000 troops massed in Jordan are commandos, they stand ready at all times to cross the border into Syria if this is deemed necessary.

2. Syrian cities, especially the capital, are being targeted for violent bombing attacks designed to bring the Assad regime tumbling down. Behind these attacks are Persian Gulf emirates led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. debkafile’s intelligence sources disclose they have been joined in the last few days for the first time by Turkey which is contributing intelligence input. The military pressure on the Assad regime is thus reinforced by a campaign of terror against its props.

No connection is admitted between the multinational force on the Jordanian-Syrian border and the spate of bombings. However, if Saudi or Qatari intelligence did play a hand in the Damascus bombings, their special forces in Jordan will have been in the picture.

Euro Will Have to Be Devalued to Save EU: Siegel

By: Jeff Cox / CNBC.com Senior Writer

LAS VEGAS — Faced with a stubborn sovereign debt crisis that just won't go away, the European Central Bank will be forced into currency devaluation, Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel said.

Despite aggressive efforts to shore up problems in Greece, Spain, Portugal and elsewhere, the ECB has yet to find the formula that will assuage market concerns that not only could the countries default on their debts, but contagion also will spread to other nations.

One obvious solution to helping the troubled nations is a devaluation of the euro, something the ECB has resisted due primarily to pressure from Germany and nations that don't have the same debt issues. Devaluing a currency enables debtor nations to meet their obligations more easily, but European nations cannot act unilaterally in monetary policy.

"Europe is a big mess," Siegel said at the Skybridge Alternatives Conference here. "Greece leaving the euro zone — I think they would love to leave if they could figure out how. The ECB, in an attempt to save the union, will lower the euro."

Siegel sees the euro falling to 1.10 against the U.S. dollar, with a possibility that the two currencies even might reach parity.

Devaluing a currency enables debtor nations to meet their obligations more easily, but European nations cannot act unilaterally in monetary policy.

"Will that save the periphery?" Siegel said. "I give it a 50-50 chance."

Siegel has been in the news lately for a series of strongly bullish forecasts relative to the U.S. equity markets, including a recent prediction that the Dow Jones Industrial Average could hit 17,000 in 2013, a 30 percent gain from current levels.

Asked during a SALT panel discussion to name the factor that could pre-empt that forecast, he named not the troubles in Europe but rather the so-called fiscal cliff the U.S. faces if it fails to extend a number of tax breaks by the end of 2012.

Economists estimate that losing the payroll tax holiday, tax cuts enacted under former President George W. Bush and extended unemployment benefits, along with mandated tax increases and spending cuts, would sap about $500 billion or nearly 4 percent from the economy.

In his baseline forecast, Siegel sees Congress agreeing to extension for another six to 12 months.

"I do think we will get the extensions," he said. "But if we don't that's going to be hard."

'Netanyahu forming war government'

Arab newspapers interpret new Netanyahu-Mofaz alliance as preamble for war

by Roi Kais

Newspapers across the Arab world could not ignore Israel's political drama and the declaration of a unity government on Tuesday. Benjamin Netanyahu and Shaul Mofaz were described as conniving war mongers and corrupt politicians as editorials declared war was looming.

"Netanyahu is forming a war government," al-Quds al-Arabi's headline cried. "No one knows what goes on through the mind of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on many regional issues these days. One can predict that this man is scheming and planning wars after murdering the peace process with the settlement policy in the occupied Arab territories," the London-based paper said.

The UAE paper al-Bayan printed an editorial titled "A government challenges peace." The headline in Saudi Arabia's al-Madina paper read: "Israel prepares for war."

The paper analyzed Netanyahu as a statesman and ruled he was "concerned about his status in Israeli history and wants to be remembered as the leader who destroyed the Iranian nuclear program and solidified Israel's nuclear monopoly in the region."

Lebanon's popular as-Safir newspaper chose to address the political drama from a different perspective. Titled "Israeli recklessness," its editorial explained that the "news (of early elections) turned out to be random fraud but it captured the attention of the entire world and became the focus of analyses and estimates that war is looming."

"The country once described as the only democracy in the Middle East is slowly emerging to be nothing more than a yard-sale, not just because some of its Arab neighbors are trying to establish true democratic models but because its current statesmen are behaving like crime bosses."

YouTuber claims NASA has edited footage of spaceship near Sun out of SOHO footage

By Peter Farquhar

* SOHO camera captures "spaceship" near Sun
* NASA "wipes footage" from video
* Third "spaceship near Sun" seen this year

EITHER we aren't alone, or it's nigh time NASA fixed its dodgy cameras.

For the third time this year, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has returned an image of a giant UFO hovering near, or feeding off the Sun. Maybe.

SOHO was launched in 1995 as a joint effort between NASA and the European Space Agency, with a sole aim to study the Sun. The mission was supposed to last just two years, but it is still plugging away and has approved support from ESA to continue to do so until at least December.

In recent years, SOHO has found an extended role as a predictor of solar weather activity, helping scientists on Earth prepare for radiation bursts sent our way by solar flares.

On the SOHO homepage, fans can access all sorts of Sun-related data, including images that have been built from observations from any of the dozen or so instruments onboard SOHO, and videos.

The same sort of content can be found at NASA's solo project, the Solar Dynamic Observatory. Most popular are videos that feature comet fly-bys or collisions. Others specialises in time lapse rotations of the Sun showing flare activity.

It's these that keep turning up on skywatcher websites and conspiracy theorist blogs in equal measures.

In December, one was the source of hysteria surrounding the appearance of a cloaked alien spaceship near Mercury.

In March, it was a Death Star refuelling on the sun.

And now one YouTuber, rob19791, claims to have found the ultimate proof of alien life feeding off our Sun - a NASA cover-up.

He posted this video, UFO next to the sun, on May 5, of footage taken two days earlier by SOHO. In his eyes, the video clearly shows a massive rectangular object hovering near the Sun's surface.

An object that looks strikingly similar to another massive, rectangular object hovering near the Sun discovered last month.

"Cosmic rays" was the official line from the United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) - streaks of charged particles whizzing through space that get picked up by cameras.

The same killjoy explanation was given for the discovery of "Bio Station Alpha" on Mars last year.

So what's so different about the UFO spotted by rob19791?

A day after the footage was shot, live streaming images from SOHO were disabled - a suspicious coincidence, he says.

The official word from NASA?

"SOHO went into 'Emergency Sun Reacquisition' mode on Friday May 4, 2012, caused by a false trigger of the Coarse Sun Pointing Attitude Anomaly Detector. We are working on the recovery of the spacecraft to normal mode."

Rob19791's version of events?

"Nasa are clearly trying to stop us looking at the sun. The reasons could be anything from the crafts/ships seen recently or an impending solar flare that will wipe out humanity."

He claims NASA have now scrubbed the "UFO" from the footage and are most likely now working to change the way users view the SOHO site.

Either that, or they are sick to death of having to explain their camera glitches...

WATCH VIDEO HERE

Nigel Farage - There Will Be an Attempt to Install a Dictatorship

With escalating fears regarding the stability of the eurozone, today King World News interviewed former LBMA commodities broker and trader and current MEP Nigel Farage to get his take on the situation. Farage told KWN he believes there will be an attempt, within months, to install a dictatorship in Europe. Here is what Farage had to say about the deteriorating situation: “Frankly, the whole thing is falling apart. And in the middle of all of this, Mrs Merkel came out and said, ‘The fiscal treaty cannot be renegotiated, and it must hold.’ So, I suppose, for once, we’ve got the Germans providing the humor, because this thing isn’t going to hold.”

“I now believe the euro and the whole euro system are now in, by far, the deepest crisis that we’ve seen. We are in totally uncharted, chaotic territory. In some ways the ball is very much on the German side of the court. If they are unable to impose the discipline they thought this new Compact Treaty would give them, then maybe it’s the Germans that say, ‘Right, Greece you’ve got to leave.’ We know once Greece leaves, the dominos start to fall.

To say that it’s a total mess is entirely accurate. You cannot have national democracy and this new form of economic and political government. We’ve seen these guys do some terrible things. I mean they’ve gotten rid of elected Prime Ministers in Greece and Italy.

But they cannot at the moment, without imposing a total dictatorship, stop general elections from taking place in countries....

“If you put me up against a wall and ask, ‘What’s really going to happen?’ My guess is, with the whole thing being unmanageable, we face the prospects of the markets just overwhelming this.

(We risk) bond spreads heading to completely crazy levels. And French and German bank shares could be in very real trouble. I am back in Brussels today, and yeah, you can really see the fear in their (politicians) faces. They know that this thing (the EU) has become an absolute monster.

We still don’t have many political voices that have the courage to say, ‘We’re headed for the rocks, and before we hit the rocks, let’s take a different course. Let’s try to break this thing up peaceably, before it ends in disaster.’

It’s always the case in history that the establishment always supports the status quo and says, ‘If what we have today breaks up, the sky will fall.’ But actually, I think the only way we can avoid a depression is to break this (the EU) up.”

Farage also added: “It’s astonishing. I mean the European Parliament meets tomorrow, and there is a debate about the emergency. Would you believe it, that Mr. Barroso, the President of the Commission, and my old mate Herman van Rumpuy, the European President, are both not going to be there because they have previous engagements?

Even if they do have previous engagements, surely nothing could be more important than to come before the one representative assembly for half a billion people here in Europe. It looks as though these guys are hiding in their bunkers, pretending it’s not happening.

What these guys in the EU are going to try to do is, as this crisis gets worse and descends, there will be an attempt at some point in the next few months for them to set up something that will be very like a dictatorship. I’m not sure now, with the public mood, that they will get away with it ... the similarities (to the 30s) are really rather chilling.”

Farage had this to say about gold: “I think the short-term speculative market had gotten itself too long of gold, and I’ve been warning about that for some months on your program. Just too many of the weak longs were there and they need to be flushed out of this marketplace. That process is beginning to happen.

But my goodness me, with everything else I’ve seen over the last 72 hours in Europe, buy gold on dips.”

This is an incredibly powerful and timely interview with Farage. The KWN interview with Nigel Farage is available now and you can listen to it by CLICKING HERE.