Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Sunday, 2 November 2014

The European Union Times


Posted: 01 Nov 2014 07:28 AM PDT


Most Europeans have no idea how much they pay the EU in taxes and are unable to correctly place Baroness Catherine Ashton within the bureaucratic system, a poll performed by RT in 10 European capitals has revealed.
RT correspondents interviewed nearly 200 people on the streets of Barcelona, Lisbon, Rome, Prague, Paris, Bratislava, Warsaw, Athens, London, and Berlin.
Those surveyed were asked to answer four questions about the European Union in which they live – including the whereabouts of the European Commission’s home, its top officials, and the contribution made by their country to the bloc’s budget.
The first question – Where is the European Commission headquarters located? – was the easiest and caused few problems to the respondents.


The correct answer was given by 117 people, who stated that the executive body of the European Union is located in Brussels, Belgium.
The second question turned out to be a bit tougher; only half of those interviewed were able to recognize Jose Manuel Barroso – who at the moment of the poll still occupied the position of EC President – after a picture was shown to them.


However, it turned out that it’s even harder for Europeans to name the EU’s foreign policy chief.
Only 30 people were able to name Baroness Catherine Ashton correctly, with many mispronouncing her name as “Ashcroft” or “Asworth.” Many confused the EU foreign policy chief with Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and a number of local female politicians.


As for the final question – How much does your country pay to the EU budget? – the survey managed to collect just 11 right answers.
The majority of the respondents tried to guess the sum, with their speculations ranging from “20,000 euros” to “200 billion euros.”


Ironically, the EU’s leading economic and political power, Germany, produced the worst result in the poll. The amount of wrong answers given by Berliners exceeded the number of the right ones for all questions.
The biggest contributor to the EU budget in 2014 is the UK, which was asked to contribute 2.1 billion euros. Italy, Latvia, Greece, Ireland, Cyprus the Netherlands, and Malta will pay one billion.
Germany and France will pay just 500,000 euros each for their membership, while the rest of the union will be freed from taxation this year.
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Posted: 01 Nov 2014 07:17 AM PDT


Argentina’s President Cristina Kirchner has warned the United States against the serious consequences of what she called US officials’ slandering Buenos Aires over its debts.
In a harsh five-page letter on Friday, the Argentina president criticized US President Barack Obama’s choice of hire for a high-level advisory position in his administration.
“Could this be a case of namesakes?” Fernandez asks her American counterpart, referring to Nancy Soderberg, a politician who Obama appointed as head of a board at the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB), while also holding co-chair position at the American Task Force Argentina (ATFA), the most prominent well-funded lobby group in opposition to Argentina’s debt refinancing efforts.
According to the letter, the ATFA, which has spent millions of dollars lobbying against Argentina, is “an entity specifically created to attack and slander the Argentine Republic and its President.”
The Argentina president said it is a conflict of interest for Soderberg to give sound advice to the president and other US officials because Soderberg’s organization has received payments from one of the vulture funds.
“If confirmed by you, [this] would have grave implications for relations between our two countries,” Kirchner wrote in her letter.
“As you are certainly aware, the functions of the PIDB encompass sensitive issues of national security and include giving advice to the president and to other US executive branch officials,” she added.
Argentina is currently contesting its disputed debts in US courts.
The Argentinean Congress on September 11 unanimously voted in favor of a new debt restructuring plan enabling Buenos Aires to pay back the country’s debts to US creditors, sidestepping an earlier US court ruling in favor of the bondholders.
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Posted: 01 Nov 2014 07:08 AM PDT


The Conference of European Rabbis are starting to panic as anti-Semitic sentiment is allegedly sweeping through Europe. European rabbis are now calling for the entire continent to pass laws against what they call “hate speech” against Jews, the Times of Israel reports. That is, they want to ban criticism of Jews throughout the entire continent by placing any such criticism under this Orwellian heading of speech which is banned because it could potentially hurt someone’s feelings.
These demands were formalized in a resolution passed Thursday the standing committee of the Conference of European Rabbis (CER), which met this week in Tbilisi, Georgia.
“We call on additional countries to follow the example set by France and Germany, and devise legislation that targets hate speech against Jews specifically,” CER President Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt said Friday. They are literally trying to make it illegal to mention them, as if they don’t even exist. It’s isn’t called hate-speech or whatever when the Germans or the French get lashed in the media. In a world where one must restrict its mouth and think twice before saying something, you can no longer pretend to have freedom of speech and to live in a free and democratic country. You know for sure that a tyranny of some sort is in power.
They have apparently succeeded in this, for the time being, in the UK, where a man named Garron Helm presently rots in prison just for having dared to identify UK MP Luciana Berger as being Jewish. But that is right now in the process of backfiring as thousands are protesting on Twitter for this injustice.
French philosopher Voltaire put it right 200 years ago with his legendary conclusion on how to find a tyrant: “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”
        
Posted: 01 Nov 2014 03:09 AM PDT


US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has called the new world order an era with endless wars saying America should prepare for this epoch.
“We are seeing a new world order, post-World War II, post-Soviet Union implosion, being built,” Hagel said in Ekaterina, Blinova on Thursday.
He said certain issues are currently posing serious threats to the United States and that the US would have to continue to deal with these issues in the “foreseeable future”.
“Tyranny, terrorism” and other threats are “going to be with us,” he said, adding, “I see these things continuing to stay out of there.”
He described the US as the global leader which will “continue to grapple with overseas threat for the foreseeable future”.
Hagel also said US-led campaign against the ISIL terrorist group in the Middle East is “a steady, long-term effort. It’s going to require coalitions of common interest.”
Since late September, the US and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out airstrikes against ISIL inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate.
The Syria air campaign is an extension of airstrikes on ISIL positions in neighboring Iraq, launched by the US and some of its NATO allies since early August.
The ISIL terrorists, some of whom were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, now control large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria.
US intelligence estimates that as many as 300 Americans are fighting alongside the terrorists in Iraq and Syria, prompting widespread concern that they may threaten their homeland upon their return.
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Posted: 01 Nov 2014 02:56 AM PDT


UK gas prices plunged to a record low on Friday following a newly signed deal between Russia, Ukraine and the European Commission. However, fuel poverty remains rife in Britain, with 2 million households unable to afford adequate heating.
The newly brokered gas agreement, signed on Thursday, will cover gas supply and transit conditions between Russia, Ukraine and the EU until March 2015.
The signing was witnessed by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, and the EC’s new vice president in charge of energy, Marosh Shefchovich.
At 07.58 GMT, November’s contract for the delivery of gas to Britain was trading at 52.10 pence per therm (a unit of heat energy equal to 100,000 British thermal units), down 1.7 percent since the former month’s contract.
But it had earlier dropped to 52.00 pence per therm, its lowest level since the contract was floated on the markets.
The December gas contract traded at a higher price of 54.60 pence per therm, also having dropped 1.7 percent. Earlier it had fallen to an all-time low hitting 54.40 pence.
Britain’s electricity supplies, however, pose a more precarious situation for the coalition.
The nation’s aging electricity network is approaching a tipping point, having plunged the UK’s capacity to produce extra power to its lowest level since 2007. The eroding energy safety net has forced the government to adopt emergency policies to combat blackout risks.
Thursday’s meeting in Brussels marked progress in settling a long-running gas dispute between Russian and Ukrainian authorities.
Both governments have been struggling to agree on a final gas price and payment schedule. The agreement has paved the way for the resumption of Russia’s gas supplies to Ukraine, following several tenuous months of delay arising from the conflict.
The EU stepped in as an official guarantor for the Ukrainian government, with sanctions against Moscow remaining in place as the conflict in Ukraine prevails.
Commenting on the deal, Barroso said it signaled “an important step for shared energy security” in Europe. There is “no reason now for people in Europe to stay cold this winter,” he added.
But despite the recent decline in Britain’s gas prices, fuel poverty continues to plague the nation.
The Department for Energy and Climate Change’s (DECC) Annual Fuel Poverty Report, published in June, reveals an inability to afford energy bills resulted in the deaths of 10,000 Britons in 2013.
It also found over 2million UK households are simply unable to afford adequate heating. This means 10.4 percent of the population.
On Monday, the Energy Bill of Rights was launched in the House of Commons, advocating both fair pricing and sustainable energy sources. The campaign, pioneered by Fuel Poverty Action, aims to make energy “fairer, affordable” and “sustainable.”
Following the event, former Environment Secretary Owen Paterson voiced concerns that committing to more environmentally friendly forms of energy will constitute an unsustainable level of investment.
But anti-fracking and renewable energy advocacy group, No Dash for Gas, countered his perspective, saying the Energy Bill of Rights “unites what politicians have tried so hard to pull apart – the need for affordable energy and the environmental concerns surrounding fossil fuels.”
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 19:25