Jade Helm Beginning - Texans Organize 'Operation Counter Jade Helm'

Texans organize 'Operation Counter Jade Helm' to keep an eye on the federal troops - Houston Chronicle

The U.S. Military will bring over a thousand troops as well as aircraft and heavy vehicles to Texas and six other southwestern states for Operation Jade Helm--an unprecedented special operations training exercise. A civilian group has organized to monitor the training, including companies in Texas that plan to post up at each drill site in the Lone Star State. 

When the troops land in Texas for Operation Jade Helm next week, someone will be waiting for them.

Hundreds of people have organized a "Counter Jade Helm" surveillance operation across the Southwestern states and in an effort to keep an eye on the contentious military drill that's sparked many suspicious of Uncle Sam's intentions.

Eric Johnston, a 51-year-old retired firefighter and sheriff's deputy who lives in Kerrville, is a surveillance team leader in Texas. He'll coordinate three groups of volunteers, about 20 folks in total, who hope to monitor the SEALs, Green Berets and Air Force Special Ops in Bastrop, Big Spring and Junction when Jade Helm kicks off on July 15. With media prohibited at the drills, the volunteers could be a main source of information for the highly-anticipate seven-state exercise.

But locations more precise than the towns around which troops will drill remain unknown. For the citizens' surveillance operation, therein lies the first challenge.

"If a team member sees two Humvees full of soldiers driving through town, they're going to follow them," Johnston said. "And they're going to radio back their ultimate location."

They aren't worried about martial law, he said, but feel like they can't trust the government, and want to make sure the Military isn't under orders to pull anything funny. 

The Texas volunteers are just one regiment of a national effort, organized by 44-year-old former Marine Pete Lanteri, a New Yorker living in Arizona with plenty of experience on civilian border patrols. He founded the Counter Jade Helm Facebook page, with six thousand members, and he made the webpage and forum to which field reports will be uploaded.

"We're going to be watching what they do in the public," he said. "Obviously on a military base they can do whatever they want. But if they're going to train on public land we have a right as American citizens to watch what they're doing."

He said the volunteer force includes about 200 people, with the largest group in Arizona. Many former military and law enforcement, as well as lifelong civilians have joined the cause.

Lanteri will coordinate the whole seven-state operation from his home in Phoenix, Ariz., where each field report will be received. Other individuals, like Johnston, will lead the efforts in each state, and others still will oversee the operations in each town where Jade Helm will take place.

There, volunteers will locate the drill sites and observe. Johnston said there's a strict no-camouflage policy to avoid the appearance of a more radical group, and they'll all be unarmed. With binoculars and spotting scopes, they'll record troop numbers, uniforms and activities.

One of Johnston's men, a licensed pilot, even plans on making surveillance flights with his personal aircraft.

They'll relay all reports to the headquarters in Arizona. There, Lateri said an intelligence staff, some whom are former Army intelligence workers, will review and verify information before posting it publicly on their website.

"We just want to see what they're doing and make that information public," Johnston said.

That work seems similar to the task Texas Gov. Greg Abbott gave the Texas State Guard—one of three branches of the state-owned Texas Military—in April when he ordered them to "monitor" the federal troops in Jade Helm. However the Texas Military won't share the details of their orders. In response to a query, a spokesperson said "we are unable to speak about ongoing operations."

Both Johnston and Lanteri think the military is up to something. As far back as November, Johnston heard rumblings of an unprecedented multi-state military drill on web forums he visits for law enforcement training and former military. That was months before the public learned of Jade Helm in March through a military slideshow document with a map that labeled Texas as a "hostile" territory.The uproar that followed pushed the U.S. Army Special Operations Command to send a spokesperson to Bastrop to address the fears of concerned citizens. The crowded town hall meeting did little to ease tensions. Johnston was there. He said it made him suspicious, though he doesn't think Jade Helm is a front for martial law.

The first crew is heading out to Bastrop this weekend. Two volunteers took their summer vacations next week, and will take their trailer homes to the piney town and wait for the Humvees to roll by.

Army Special Operations didn't address questions about the civilian surveillance operation, but said in a statement, "This training exercise will go mostly unnoticed; not interfere with private citizens and not violate their privacy and rights. It will not disrupt their economies or livelihoods. State and local officials will receive updates as the exercise progresses and they are equally committed to ensuring the training occurs smoothly."

Experts: Plutonium levels 10,000,000 times normal in water below Fukushima reactors — Plutonium hit record high off coast in 2014 — “Has been transported relatively long distances” – Every sample taken from rivers flowing into Pacific had Pu-239, Pu-240, Pu-241,and Pu-242 from plant

Scientists from Japan’s National Institute of Radiological Sciences, Hirosaki University, and Peking University (pdf), May 2015 (emphasis added): Pu Distribution in Seawater in the Near Coastal Area off Fukushima… the amount of Pu isotopes directly released into the marine environment remains unknown. In the high level radioactive accumulated water collected at the FDNPP after the accident, high level radioactivities of Pu isotopes (ca. 10-3 Bq/mL) were detected. These values were 6 to 7 orders of magnitudes [1,000,000 – 10,000,000 times] higher than that of the seawater in the western North Pacific. In addition, a new study on Pu isotopes… 

In addition, a new study on Pu isotopes… suggested there was a potential sediment-borne Pu supply from Fukushima coastal rivers to the PacificOcean. Thus more attention should be paid to the contamination situation of Pu isotopes in the marine environment off Fukushima since the FDNPP accident… Pu isotopes in seawater… needs to be routinely investigated… There are two sampling sites close to the FDNP… 239+240Pu concentrations in seawater were reported in 2012-2014 and the range was from detection limit to 14 mBq/m3 except 31 mBq/m3 observed at T-2-1 site on 10 April 2014.

Scientists from Japan, Belgium, and French gov’t (pdf), 2015: Tracing the dispersion of contaminated sediment with plutonium isotope measurements in coastal catchments of Fukushima Prefecture — The Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) accident led to important releases of radionuclides into the environment, and trace levels of plutonium (Pu) were detected in northeastern Japan… In this study, we measured Pu isotopic ratios in recently deposited sediments along rivers draining the most contaminated part of the inland radioactive plume… Results showed that the entire range ofmeasured Pu isotopes (i.e. 239Pu, 240Pu, 241Pu, and 242Pu) were detected in all samples, although in extremely low concentrations. The 241Pu/239Pu atom ratios measured in sediment deposits (0.0017 – 0.0884) were significantly higher than the corresponding values attributed to the global fallout (0.00113 – 0.00008 on average in the Northern Hemisphere between 31-71 N)… These results demonstrate that this radionuclide has been transported relatively long distances… and deposited in rivers representing a potential source of Pu to the ocean.

Isis's female Gestapo wreaking terror on their own sex | Daily Mail Online

The loud knock on the family’s farmhouse door was at midnight as they got ready for bed. Outside, five Islamic State fighters, Kalashnikovs hung on their shoulders and faces hidden by black scarves, were searching for girls to kidnap.

‘We opened the door and they saw my wife’s teenage sisters Sabiha and Sajida. The fighters told us they were going to steal them because they were beautiful,’ says Kafi Osman, anger still burning in his eyes at the memory.

‘We cried and the girls wept as they were led outside and driven away in an open truck. We have heard nothing of them since.’

The girls’ kidnap in the northern Iraqi town of Makhmur came as jihadis from Islamic State (also known as IS and Isis) took control of it street by street. They beheaded men, raped women and then captured their trophies of war — virgins to be sex slaves or jihadi brides.

The Osman family now believe that Sabiha, 18, and Sajida, 16, are prostitutes in Raqqa, a seven-hour drive across the Iraqi border in Syria and the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed capital, awash with jihadi fighters.

It is a place of medieval barbarism, terror, torture, abuse and odious controls over the 100,000 women who live there. Some women are trapped in the city against their will. 

They did not escape before IS marched in two years ago, building a Sharia court on the football pitch and imposing a regime where grisly public executions take place by stoning and crucifixion in the main square after mosque prayers on a Friday.

Others are radicalised jihadi brides from the West, including three pupils from Bethnal Green, East London, who were pictured last week walking in the town with a woman minder in a burka holding a Kalashnikov.

The third group of women are the unfortunates kidnapped in enemy territory by IS fighters, taken to Raqqa, and imprisoned in a life of sex slavery.

Whatever the reason for living in this hellish place, all women are prohibited from going outside or travelling without a male relative. Islamic State imposes a strict dress code demanding all females from puberty upwards wear two gowns to hide their body shape, black gloves to cover their hands, and three veils so their faces cannot be seen, even in direct sunlight.

Women have been publicly buried alive in sand for breaking the code. One former Syrian schoolteacher trapped in the city told Channel 4 in a documentary, Escape From Isis, to be aired next week: ‘We have no freedom. We cannot go out on the balcony or look through the window. They will arrest a woman if she wears perfume or raises her voice. A woman’s voice cannot be heard.’

The teacher told of her horrifying capture by the city’s ruthless all-women police unit, the Al-Khansa brigade, created to enforce IS rules. ‘They said my eyes were visible through my veil. I was tortured. They lashed me. Now some of them punish women by biting. They give you the option between getting bitten or lashed.’

As many as 60 British women, including Aqsa Mahmood, the 20-year-old Glaswegian woman who left her family to become an Islamic State apparatchik last year, are thought to be members of the brigade. They are paid up to £100 a month, a fortune in the Islamic State bad-lands.

One former Al-Khansa enforcer, a young Syrian woman called Umm Abaid, told the filmmakers how she had led a normal life until the arrival of IS and the imposition of Sharia law in Raqqa, once a cosmopolitan city where the sexes mixed freely.

‘I went to school, to coffee shops,’ she said, ‘but slowly, slowly my husband [a Saudi Arabian IS fighter killed in a suicide bomb attack] convinced me about Islamic State and its ideas. I joined the brigade and was responsible for enforcing the clothing regulations.

‘Anyone who broke the rules, we would lash. Then we would take her male guardian, her brother, father or husband, and lash him, too.

‘Even when I was off duty, if I was with my husband in the car and we saw a woman dressed wrong, he would stop and tell me to deal with her. 

'I remember one woman walking with her husband wearing a robe with images on it. We arrested her and took her to the Al-Khansa base. I lashed her with my own hands.’

Umm fled to Turkey after IS tried to force her to remarry within weeks of her husband blowing himself up.

The terrifying brigade even stops buses to check women passengers. If one is found breaking the code, all the passengers are forced to get off and the bus is refused permission to proceed. The driver can be lashed because he let the woman on board.

Some of the Al-Khansa members operate undercover, posing as housewives, mingling in the crowds to listen for any dissent. 

They also run brothels where kidnapped girls, like Sabiha and Sajida, are expected to satisfy fighters returning from battle. Those who have escaped, by a miracle, say they have slept with 100 different fighters in a few weeks.

Even girls who have gone willingly to Raqqa, thinking they were going to marry one fighter, have found they are expected to spend a week with their new ‘spouse’ before they are ‘divorced’ by an Islamic cleric and married to another fighter for a week. 

And so the marriage merry-go-round goes on.

Yet, incredibly, still more Muslim girls and women from Europe, and notably the UK, are arriving in Raqqa to join IS. What can possibly induce them to run away to join its ranks?