Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Wednesday 28 May 2014

The European Union Times


Posted: 27 May 2014 04:34 AM PDT

The US military announced Friday it was closing down 21 military facilities in half a dozen countries across Europe, a move the Pentagon said would trim $60 million in fat annually.
The closures, however, will not affect US troop strength on the continent because they are comprised mostly of recreational and housing facilities at American and NATO military bases across Europe.
According to the Defense Department, the facilities heading for closure include “a skeet shooting range, a hotel and a golf course,” as well as “some munitions storage facilities.”
“This is about making sure we have the right footprint, the right posture, and frankly that we’re spending taxpayer dollars the right way in Europe,” Pentagon Press Secretary Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby said at a press briefing Friday.
The shutdowns are scheduled to occur in Germany, Italy, Denmark, Greece, the United Kingdom, and Belgium, Kirby said, adding that “more would follow.”
“It’s all part of a larger process of consolidating our posture there in Europe, and putting our people and our facilities in the most efficient places in the most efficient manner,” he said.
The announcement comes at a particularly difficult time for Pentagon planners, who are pulled on the one hand by the need to trim fat from their bloated budgets, while, on the other hand, responding to the heated rhetoric of some politicians who view US power in Europe – and even more so now with tensions in Ukraine flaring – as the Holy Grail of American foreign policy.
An example of the handwringing over US military power in Europe was reflected in recent comments by Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte who criticized the Pentagon’s wave of closures, even pointing to the situation around Crimea.
“We need to look at our posture in Europe and take that into consideration in terms of the threats we face… with regard to the foreign base posture, not just in Europe, but I think throughout the world,” Ayotte told reporters in March. “Certainly that is something we need to hear from DoD, but obviously we need to take into account the threats that we’re facing, whether it’s the Russian invasion of Crimea or other threats that we could face.”
The Pentagon is attempting to this type of political hysteria, which forever pits Democrat against Republican, not to mention the powerful defense lobbyists, who are always vying for lucrative government contracts.
“US dedication to our NATO security responsibilities is beyond doubt; ongoing infrastructure adjustments simply ensure that we are best-positioned to fulfill those responsibilities given changing circumstances,” the DoD said in its statement.
“None of these adjustments affects existing force structure or military capabilities, and the efficiencies will further enable US European Command to resource high priority missions,” Kirby said in an earlier statement.
In 2013, the United States spent on its global military machine $640 billion, which surpasses that of the next eight military powers (China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, India).
Defense spending accounts for about 20 percent of all federal spending, which is about as much as Social Security, or the combined spending for Medicare and Medicaid.
“The sheer size of the defense budget suggests that it should be part of any serious effort to address America’s long-term fiscal challenges,” advises the Peter G. Petersen Foundation, which whose mission is to “increase public awareness of the nature and urgency of key fiscal challenges threatening America’s future.”
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Posted: 27 May 2014 04:22 AM PDT

Nigeria’s military says the hideout of Boko Haram Takfiri militants who kidnapped nearly 300 schoolgirls last month has been located.
“The good news for the parents is that we know where they are, but we cannot tell you,” Nigeria’s Chief of Defense Staff Air Marshal Alex Badeh said on Monday.
“We can’t kill our girls in the name of trying to get them back,” Badeh added.
On April 14, Boko Haram abducted 276 students from their secondary school in the northeastern town of Chibok, later threatening to “sell” the girls.
According to security forces, 53 of the girls managed to escape but 223 are still being held.
The Nigerian government has been under intense pressure by many people around the globe especially the girls’ families to secure their release.
Meanwhile, suspected Boko Haram militants have stormed a village in northeastern Nigeria, killing 20 residents.
On Sunday, the heavily armed militants also set fire to several houses during the attack on the village of Waga in the state of Adamawa.
Officials said another attack by the group on a nearby village was repelled by army soldiers.
The states of Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe have been under emergency law since a string of deadly Boko Haram attacks in May 2013.
One of the incidents, in the village of Kumuta in Borno, left 24 people dead.
Boko Haram whose name means “Western education is forbidden” says its goal is to overthrow the Nigerian government.
It has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly gun and bomb attacks in various parts of Nigeria since 2009.
Over the past four years, violence in the north of Africa’s most populous country has claimed the lives of more than 3,600 people.
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Posted: 27 May 2014 04:16 AM PDT

Anti-EU revolution, Ukraine crisis threaten to derail global government.
The 2014 Bilderberg meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark is taking place amidst a climate of panic for many of the 120 globalists set to attend the secretive confab, with Russia’s intransigence on the crisis in Ukraine and the anti-EU revolution sweeping Europe posing a serious threat to the unipolar world order Bilderberg spent over 60 years helping to build.
Inside sources confirm to Infowars that the elite conference, which will take place from Thursday onwards at the five star Marriott Hotel, will center around how to derail a global political awakening that threatens to hinder Bilderberg’s long standing agenda to centralize power into a one world political federation, a goal set to be advanced with the passage of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which will undoubtedly be a central topic of discussion at this year’s meeting.
The TTIP represents an integral component of Bilderberg’s attempt to rescue the unipolar world by creating a “world company,” initially a free trade area, which would connect the United States with Europe. Just as the European Union started as a mere free trade area and was eventually transformed into a political federation which controls upwards of 50 per cent of its member states’ laws and regulations with total contempt for national sovereignty and democracy, TTIP is designed to accomplish the same goal, only on a bigger scale.
The deal is being spearheaded by Obama’s U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, a Wall Street insider and a CFR member, Bilderberg’s sister organization. Froman is simultaneously helping to build another block of this global government, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is a similar project involving Asian countries.
Given that Bilderberg schemed to create the Euro single currency as far back as 1955 (Bilderberg chairman Étienne Davignon bragged about how the Euro single currency was a brainchild of the Bilderberg in 2009 interview), the results of the European elections are sure to have stirred outright alarm amongst Bilderberg globalists who are aghast that their planned EU superstate is being eroded as a result of a populist resistance mainly centered around animosity towards uncontrolled immigration policies.
In Denmark itself, the buzz is centered around Morten Messerschmidt and the Danish People’s party, which won 27% of the vote in the Euro elections and doubled its number of MEPs. Although some are wary of Messerschmidt’s far right inclinations, his success reflects a general resentment not only in Denmark but across Europe towards immigration and the welfare state, concerns that the EU has only exasperated.
Meanwhile in France, Marine Le Pen is carving out a role as the face of a conservative movement that threatens “to break up one united Europe,” with her European election win being described as an “earthquake” that has rattled the political heart of Europe.
Voters in the United Kingdom also delivered a thumping rejection of the EU and in turn Bilderberg with the success of Nigel Farage and UKIP, a Euroskeptic triumph some are labeling the “most extraordinary” election result for 100 years.
As well as TTIP and the fallout from the European election disaster, Bilderberg will be tackling a number of other key issues, most of which will revolve around the continued effort to centralize economic power under several different guises, including a carbon tax paid directly to the United Nations, with the financial hit being taken by individuals as big companies are granted special “waivers” that will allow them to continue to pollute.
The rumbling crisis in Ukraine and the relationship between Russia and NATO will also be a focal point of Bilderberg 2014. Globalists now consider Vladimir Putin to have ostracized Russia from the new world order because he dared to “challenge the international system,” as John Kerry put it.
Bilderberg will discuss fears that Putin is intent on constructing an alternative world order based around the BRICS countries, a “multi-polar” system that would devastate the dollar as the world reserve currency and also heavily dilute the current US-EU-NATO power axis.
Infowars reporters will be on the ground all this week to cover the 2014 Bilderberg Group conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.
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Posted: 27 May 2014 04:07 AM PDT

Moscow has urged Kiev to halt its military operations in eastern Ukraine amid reports of civilian casualties during a full-scale assault on pro-Russian protesters there.
The Russian Foreign Ministry released a statement urging the Kiev government to stop what Moscow calls Ukraine’s military operations against its own people.
The Russian ministry also called on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to investigate the fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian activists in the eastern city of Donetsk.
Moscow’s comments came after intense fighting broke out in Donetsk, with government air and ground forces attacking pro-Russian activists’ positions. The Ukrainian forces targeted the Sergei Prokofiev Airport with military air assaults after it was seized by armed men who identified themselves as representatives of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic earlier in the day.
During the assault, a truck, marked as an ambulance and carrying injured people, was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, killing at least 35 people. Ukrainian forces also targeted the city’s train station, killing at least one person. In addition, the military attacked residential areas in the city of Slavyansk, using helicopter gunships, killing at least two people.
The government in Kiev has been staging military operations since mid-April in the eastern and southern regions in a bid to root out pro-Moscow demonstrations.
Ukraine’s elected Jewish president Petro Poroshenko pledged on Monday to put an end to the war and bring peace to the former Soviet state. The 48-year-old chocolate tycoon has also ruled out negotiations with pro-Russian activists, vowing to continue military operations in the country’s southeastern provinces.
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Posted: 27 May 2014 03:51 AM PDT

More than 50 self-defense fighters and as many civilians have been killed since Ukrainian troops stepped up their offensive in the region on Monday, according to the PM of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Aleksandr Boroday.
“We’ve lost more than 50 self-defense fighters,” Boroday said, as cited by RIA Novosti. “Many of the casualties are a result of two Kamaz trucks having been shelled by the Ukrainian army. The trucks were driving the wounded from the battlefield near the airport. Around 15 people died there.”
Boroday spoke to journalists next to a morgue in Donestk where identification of the bodies is under way.
“Two of our Kamaz trucks were fired at from the air and from an ambush on the ground. Shooting the wounded runs contrary to all international conventions,” Boroday added.
He said the significant number of casualties could be explained by extensive use of air force by the Ukrainian military on Monday.
Chairman of the Donetsk People’s Republic Supreme council, Denis Pushilin, also estimated that around 100 people might have been killed by Ukrainian troops.
It’s still “impossible to pick up all of the dead bodies as snipers are shooting at anyone who tries to come near them,” Pushilin said.
Footage by LifeNews shows a truck full of dead bodies. Representatives of the self-defense squads say they cannot yet give the names of those killed; the process of identification has only just began.
“They were wounded. The car was driving them from a battlefield,” a masked representative of the self-defense forces in Donetsk told LifeNews. “First snipers shot the driver, then they fired point-blank at the rest from a shoulder-launcher. The survivors were then gunned down by Right Sector militants – no one in the truck survived.”
Also overnight, self-defense forces reported that Ukrainian military opened fire at an ambulance transporting two injured from the Donetsk airport. The doctors inside the ambulance were unharmed, deputy of Donbass’ self-defense forces, Sergey Tsypakov, told RIA Novosti. The two wounded remain in the ambulance and it is not possible to evacuate them at this point, he added.
This comes as the Ukrainian military is broadening its offensive against anti-Kiev forces in the southeast of the country.
The fighting in Donetsk continued throughout the night around the airport, which was on Monday taken under control by Ukrainian troops, after they unleashed fighter jets and helicopters at the armed self-defense forces, who occupied the airport earlier in the day.

Boroday claims the troops also suffered losses.
“They were on the offensive, that’s why their losses have not been that big. We intercept their conversations, they are demoralized and are counting on breaking through from the airport.”
Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, however, denies any casualties on the army side.
“The airport is fully under control. The enemy sustained serious losses, we have none,” Avakov said on Tuesday, as cited by the ministry’s press service.
A video posted on YouTube reportedly shows Ukrainian jets attacking the area around the airport on Monday.
Airstrikes started after the self-defense forces failed to comply with the ultimatum put forward by Kiev’s troops, that is to surrender by 1pm local time, Vladislav Seleznyov, the head of the counter-terror operation said on his Facebook page.
The State Aviation Service halted air traffic through the airport till 9.00am local time Tuesday.
Loud explosions and gunfire were reported from Donetsk throughout the day, with Ukrainian army aircraft occasionally circling around the airport.
Reports of fighting outside the city airport also emerged. RT’s sources in Donetsk said a private housing area was being shelled by mortar fire “for over an hour.”
Also on Monday, at least three civilians were reportedly killed and several wounded when the Ukrainian military launched a mortar attack on the town of Slavyansk in eastern Ukraine.
The clashes in Donetsk began just a few hours after the early results of the elections were announced.
Ukrainian confectionery tycoon Pyotr Poroshenko is winning the presidential election in the first round of voting, having secured more than 50 percent of votes.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 08:55