Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Thursday 12 February 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 11 Feb 2015 01:52 PM PST


A new Ministry of Defense (MoD) report circulating in the Kremlin today ahead of the “last chance” peace talks on the Ukrainian crisis, scheduled later today in the Belarusian capitol of Minsk, states that President Putin has ordered the 45th Detached Reconnaissance Regiment and the 5th Tank Brigade to immediately deploy on the border as Ukraine forces are nearing a “catastrophic defeat” at the hands of separatist rebel forces.
The 5th Tank Brigade of the 36th Army of the Eastern Military Command, military unit 46108, this report notes, was permanently transferred from Eastern Siberia and the Far East to the Ukrainian border this past November, while about 2,000 Russian reconnaissance troops have, likewise, began large-scale exercises in the same area.
This report further notes that these military forces, in preparation and during conducting of combined-arms operations (combat actions), have been ordered to perform the following tasks:
• disclosure of the enemy’s intention, its immediate preparations for aggression, and its surprise attack prevention;
• identifying the troops (forces) of the enemy and its control system’s combat structure, position, grouping, status and capabilities;
• disclosure of the objects (targets) for defeating and determination of their location (coordinates);
• disclosure of the elements of the war theatre’s operational equipment, the terrains’ engineering equipment and the system of barriers;
• determination of the degree of terrain’s passability, the state of communications, the nature of water barriers, the boundaries and the dimensions of areas of destruction, fires and floods, contamination areas, possible ways of overcoming them and turning movement around them;
• identifying the enemy’s new weapons and methods of warfare, as well as its activities to ensure full operation (battle);
• determination of the morale of the enemy’s troops and the local population, the economic status of the operation’s area, etc.


The need for the immediate deployment of these forces, this report continues, is due to the catastrophic defeat looming for the vast majority of what’s left of the Ukrainian army that has been surrounded by rebel forces in the city of Debaltseve, described as the most vital railhead in eastern Ukraine.
To how grave the situation is, this report says, was articulated yesterday by Semen Semenchenko, a Ukrainian legislator and field commander, and who wrote on Facebook that rebel forces had cut off the road between the railroad junction of Debaltseve and the Ukrainian-controlled town of Artemivsk.
“Strategists, damn it!” Semenchenko fumed at Ukrainian military commanders while this news meant that several thousand Ukrainian troops were effectively trapped near Debaltseve, creating the potential for a major Ukrainian defeat. Semenchenko further called the defense ministry spokesmen disputing this fact “fairy tale writers in shoulder straps.”
Michael Kofman, a Russia specialist at the Kennan Institute and a consultant to the Pentagon, this report continues, also warned the Obama regime this week that Ukraine’s army is so weak and poorly trained that an injection of US weapons is unlikely to reverse its battlefield fortunes.
To prove his point, he reminded American warmongers that US weapons did little to prevent the collapse of the Iraqi Army at the hands of ISIS. “What the recommendation really is doing is slow-walking the United States into a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine,” he said. “And this fundamentally will prove disastrous for Ukraine, as it proved for Afghanistan, as it proved for every single country that hosted a proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.”


Of particularly grave concern to Putin in ordering this troop deployment, MoD experts in this report state, were reports that Ukraine’s Azov volunteer regiment — a unit run, and partly staffed, with extreme right activists and sporting the Nazi Wolfsangel on its insignia — reported, also on Facebook, that it had attacked the pro-Russian rebel forces near the port city of Mariupol, seizing control of several villages. The government in Kiev, in shamelessly backing these Nazi forces backed up the report enthusiastically.
Most critical of Putin’s worries regarding Ukraine, however, this report says, was Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko earlier today vowing to impose martial law should the Minsk talks fail.
MoD experts in this report note that the establishment of martial law in Ukraine is intended as a “diabolical measure” to force the Ukrainian people to fight in this war, and who have by the hundreds of thousands been fleeing their country so as not to have to kill their fellow countrymen.
As reported by various media sources, this report continues, almost no one is coming voluntarily to the military recruitment offices in this fourth, latest round of conscription is causing panic in the government and top army command of Ukraine.
Men of conscription age are fleeing in the thousands, crossing Ukraine’s borders in all directions, or taking cover internally, to escape the clutches of the military recruiters. President Poroshenko has been obliged to order that, henceforth, only those men of military age with papers confirming they are duly registered with their military registration office will be permitted to leave the country.
The plain truth is, these media reports further document, is that the Ukrainian people don’t want to die for the current government which they view as composed of extreme nationalists and neoliberals. They are, also, unwilling to be cannon fodder dying for the interests of Ukrainian oligarchs whose only apparent interest is to pursue a civil war, siphon Western financial aid and suppress opposition to their rule.
Even more grimly for these Ukrainian people, MoD experts in this report say, are new laws passed in Ukraine allowing their military to shoot deserters, the jailing of all journalists opposed to war who are then being charged with treason, and the paying of bounties to kill rebel forces and destroy equipment.
And, this report grimly warns, as one of President Putin’s top advisors, Dmitry Kiselev, has alreadywarned the west that Russia’s military doctrine allows nuclear strikes when the state is under threat, even in a conflict where only conventional weapons are in use, the statement today by Ukrainian President Poroshenko that the situation will go “out of control” if there is no de-escalation or ceasefire deal reached in Minsk means “total war” is now a viable option to end this crisis.
As French President Hollande warned today that the Minsk talks are the last chance to avoid “total war”, and Russia has previously warned the US that delivery of arms to Ukraine would be viewed as an act of war against the Federation, this report concludes, President Obama called Putin yesterday to threaten American action against Russia over Ukraine and then gave an interview where he stated “We have to twist arms when countries don’t do what we need them to.”
To if the lunatics running America, and who are backing the equally insane government of Ukraine, remember that Putin pointedly noted last August that Russia was a leading nuclear power and advised potential enemies “it’s best not to mess with us” this report doesn’t note, but to if he was telling the truth we’re all about to see for real….and, also, what “total war” really looks like.
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Posted: 11 Feb 2015 06:22 AM PST


Ukraine’s government has announced its readiness to impose martial law in case the crisis escalates in the country’s east.
“The government and parliament are ready to introduce martial law throughout Ukraine,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
The statement came ahead of a new round of peace negotiations between Kiev and pro-Russia forces in the Belarusian capital of Minsk, with Poroshenko describing the talks as “the most important meeting” of his career as the president.
He added that the Minsk summit would determine whether the conflict could be resolved via “diplomatic channels” or the Ukrainian government should “switch to a completely different mode.”
Martial law, which is indicative of the aggravation of the crisis in the east, would lead to freeing up of military resources for the battle. However, it could also prompt cutting foreign investments in Ukraine amid its economic woes.


The summit for peace
The leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany are set to hold peace talks on Wednesday in an attempt to put an end to a 10-month conflict in eastern Ukraine which has taken a heavy toll on thousands of people.
Federica Mogherini, the head of the European Union’s foreign affairs, has said the Minsk summit would be a turning point in the conflict.
“It is something (that) is going to be a turning point for good or for bad…if tonight in Minsk we manage to reach an agreement,” Mogherini said in an interview.
Ukraine’s eastern parts, particularly the mainly Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, have been the scene of deadly clashes between pro-Russia forces and the Ukrainian army since mid-April 2014, when the army launched operations against the forces.
According to the latest figures released by the United Nations, more than 5,500 people have been killed and over 12,900 people have been injured in the fighting.
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Posted: 11 Feb 2015 06:14 AM PST


Pravda.Ru had an interview with first deputy head of United Russia faction at the Russian Parliament, leader of the Russian Union of Afghan Veterans, Franz Klintsevich. We spoke about US plans in Ukraine, the situation in the Donbass, perspective of a new coup in Ukraine and Pentagon’s plans for a nuclear attack on Russia.
“There is a theory saying that during the Caribbean crisis, there were two minutes left before a nuclear war. Now they say that the doomsday clock was moved two minutes forward. A lot has been said recently about the danger of a global nuclear war. How dangerous is the current situation?”
“Two young bulls are resting under a tree, chewing grass. One of them says: “Is it true that people feed us for meat?” The other one, a lazy and fat one, replies: “Come on, enough with your conspiracy theories!” In fact, the current state of affairs is very complicated. Of course, our liberal part that loves the West remains very skeptical about the danger. Yet, the West is serious and it is not going to give up.
“Those people, who started the mess, can only care less about Ukraine. After all, the anti-Russian hysteria did not come out of nowhere. If it wasn’t for the Crimea, they would have found something else. All the recent events and destructive processes are connected with Russia this way or another. Russia is related to everything that is associated with the development of NATO.
“It was agreed that NATO would not expand. Now, they do not even consider it necessary to explain anything. The USA is quietly doing its job, having clearly declared Russia the prime enemy. Obama’s recent speeches about national exceptionalism, superiority, mission and might, in fact, became the declaration of US totalitarianism. It was a declaration of superiority of the nation and the country over the rest of the world.
“There are a few countries left that can somehow demonstrate their independence. The Americans control the Arab world and Europe. When the Americans say something, they do it as well. The USA is indeed a superpower, the dollar is indeed a world currency. Naturally, the abilities of the American nation are enormous. Global processes for them are like an open book.
“However, the Americans fatally miscalculated, as far as Russia is concerned. I am talking about Russia’s economic potential, its resistance to crises, its moral and psychological situation, the spirit of the people. This can be seen even in Ukraine, because there are a lot of Russian people there in Ukraine. For any European country, the situation that we can eyewitness in Ukraine today would be worse than a nuclear attack. Yet, in the southeast of Ukraine, people live and survive. The Ukrainians, in their majority, dislike Russia, to put it mildly. Yet, the situation is changing now. Of course, people are zombified there. Many of them believe that there are Russian soldiers and tanks in the Donbass.”
“Almost a year has passed. So much has been said about the presence of Russian troops in the southeast of Ukraine. Yet, there is not even one photograph of one single tank. Do people really believe that there are Russian troops in Ukraine?”
“Yes, they do, unfortunately, although they do not even realize what our modern tanks are like. One does not have to say much about the morale of the Ukrainian army. For the Russian army today, Ukraine and the Ukrainian army is not a serious enemy. Thank God, we have people here, who understand that a military conflict is inadmissible. Yet, more than 6,000 people have been killed in the country in the military conflict in Ukraine, according to official statistics from Kiev.”
“We know that this figure is a lot larger.”
“It is, but this is not the point, as 6,000 deaths is already a terrible number. This situation is not incidental – everything had been planned. As they say, if you want to defeat Russia, cut Ukraine from it first. They cut Ukraine away and now they are working against Russia. However, Russia has not swallowed the bait. The goal of Russia’s opponents was to get Russia involved in a war. Russia does not walk that path, so they now want to make Russia stop helping people. This would cause another very big and serious problem connected with the people, who live in Russia. They do not accept it that Russia can dump its people, who are fighting against fascism.
They failed to drag Russia into the war. Russia has not dumped the people of Novorossiya either. There is no regular Russian army there, but there are volunteers. Russia provides humanitarian and financial assistance. Russia accommodates refugees from Ukraine and so on. I predict mass exodus of the population of Ukraine to the Russian Federation – about 7 million people will move to Russia in the near future. The process has already begun. People were forced to leave their homeland, their homes and go to Russia to save their lives from all that horror.
“It is not only Russia that they try to escape to, although they are not welcome in other countries either.”
“Of course, but Russia is their main destination. Poland has not given one single permission, not even to one refugee. In Russia, the number of refugees from Ukraine is already about one million. About 300,000 of them have officially received refugees status. There are as many as 3 million Ukrainians living in Russia. Seven more million may come. Some of them will ask for the refugee status, others will try to stay with their relatives to stay afloat at least somehow.
“Such a large number of refugees is a very large burden for the country. They are all Russian people, who need help in their time of need. In Ukraine, though, people already express their dissatisfaction with the sitting government. Soldiers of Aidar battalion have already tried to storm the building of the Defense Ministry of Ukraine, and the latter met their requirements. However, sooner or later, people will no longer be able to deal with all these problems. Today’s leaders of Ukraine do not talk to people – they listen to commands from the USA instead.
“Time will come when American masters no longer need them. The West will soon tell us – this is your brotherly nation, so deal with it, help them all.
“Europe has so many problems with the 11-million-strong Greece, so no one can feed 43 million Ukrainians today. It will be up to Russia to deal with this problem. The plan is to destabilize and weaken Russia. I am against just giving. One should try to find constructive solutions. Russia will have to face a plethora of new problems soon. This is a part of a sophisticated concept.
“The Americans have the so-called Prompt Global Strike and rapid deployment forces. Today, all these forces have taken effect. They started forming plans and moving forces. We obtain this information from special services. As part of the global strike concept of the Pentagon, the Americans plan to strike up to 4,000 missile blows on Russia within one hour. The missiles will strike various objects – military, civilian, management, communication – to disable control centers and prevent a retaliatory nuclear strike.
“However, Russia is strong enough. Russia is capable enough not to give the USA an opportunity to destroy our country. This is ridiculous, when someone says that the balance of forces has changed, that the United States of America can destroy Russia 36 times, and Russia can destroy the USA 18 times. Striking the territory of the United States of America with six modern nuclear warheads will demoralize the Americans immediately. If a problem like this occurs, there will be not six, but six hundred missiles falling on America, even if they intercept some of them.
The Americans are forced to play the game of saber-rattling, and they are doing it seriously. At the same time, they conduct undercover activities. For example, more than a thousand professionals of private companies, affiliated by intelligence services of the United States, now work on the territory of Ukraine.
Americans work at the Ministry of Defense and the Security Service of Ukraine, at the Ministry of Internal Affairs too. Those specialists have prepared subversive groups, reconnaissance and special forces.
I am convinced that Russia needs this cold shower. This will make us take a sober look at the situation. We do not want war with anyone, we are not going to attack anyone, we do not need anyone else’s territories. It had not occurred to anyone to take the Crimea. The Russians living in the Crimea had foreseen the events and voted at the referendum. Those people have never been Ukrainians. As soon as they got such an opportunity, they voted to return home to Russia. Otherwise, the Crimea would have been a lot worse than the Donbass is today.”
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Posted: 11 Feb 2015 05:52 AM PST


Pamela Geller: UK is being “subsumed by Islam”.
A grieving family may have to exhume their grandfather and move his body to a different location after a Muslim family who owned a plot next to the burial site complained that the man was a non-believer.
After more than 400 people showed up to pay their respects to 89-year-old Shadrack Smith, who was buried on January 30, the family were told that Smith’s grave may have to be moved despite them paying £2,500 pounds for three plots in a “multi-faith” cemetery.
The Muslim family is demanding that Smith’s body be moved and the local council will meet tomorrow to make a final decision on the matter. Smith’s body was buried facing his home in the gipsy tradition, a community in which he was a popular figure.
After the funeral, the principal officer of the council wrote to Smith’s family asking if they would consider moving his body to a different plot. The family were also asked if their third plot could be used to plant a hedge to separate it from the plot owned by the Muslim family.
“This whole thing has devastated our family,” Smith’s daughter-in-law, Tracey Smith, told the Telegraph.
“We were told when we bought the plots that it was a multi-faith cemetery and it is, but the council has been so unsupportive,” she added, noting how, “the council has tried to bend over backwards to please the Muslim family.”
The family has promised to fight tooth and nail to prevent Smith from being exhumed.
Author and commentator Pamela Geller, who was banned from entering the UK in 2013 over her vehement criticism of radical Islam, says the story highlights how the United Kingdom is being subsumed by the creeping imposition of Sharia law.
“The cemetery should have kicked these vicious ghouls out — but instead, a beloved figure faces exhumation. Death apartheid,” comments Geller, who notes that the rules for the cemetery make no mention of segregation based on religion.
“The UK is gone. My banning pales next to what we are witnessing in that once-great nation,” she wrote.”Either they will just go quietly, subsumed by Islam, or there will be a civil war. I suspect the former.”
“It’s like the world is under some sort of evil spell,” notes Geller, asking if “seventh-century apartheid and sharia” is about to be imposed in the UK.
“Of course, the proper solution is to tell the Muslims that if they don’t want to have their loved ones buried in a public, non-denominational cemetery then they should move their dead relative and shut the hell up about it,” writes Warner Todd Huston.
“This is yet another example of the arrogance, hate, and incivility of Islam. Worse, it is another example of a spineless western government wringing hands over antisocial Muslim intransigence.”
The story highlights concerns about Muslims being treated as a superior class of citizen over fears of local authorities being labeled racist.
In the aftermath of the Rotherham rape scandal, it emerged that the Labour government council in the town had covered-up the systematic sexual abuse and trafficking of mainly young white girls by Muslim rape gangs due to concerns of being seen as “politically incorrect”.
Last year, Paul Weston, chairman of Liberty GB, was arrested after he gave a speech which quoted remarks made by Winston Churchill about Islam. Weston was arrested on charges of “religious or racial harassment” after a member of the public complained.

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Posted: 11 Feb 2015 05:40 AM PST


More than 3,000 Americans renounced their US citizenship or long-term residency in 2014, a new record, according to the US Department of Treasury.
The number of US citizens who gave up their citizenship last year reached 3,415, a 14 percent increase from the 3,000, who did so in the previous year, which was also a record.
Many experts believe the trend is accelerating due to the US government’s enforcement of a tax law that requires American citizens living abroad to file tax applications and pay taxes on overseas income.
“Many Americans abroad are finding that retaining their ties is not worth the cost and hassle of complying with the US tax laws,” Andrew Mitchel, a lawyer in Centerbrook, Conn. who tallies the lists of names released quarterly by the Treasury Department, told the Wall Street Journal.
The recent surge is tied to a 2010 law that gives the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) unprecedented access to US citizens’ foreign bank accounts. For decades tax laws were rarely enforced, but scrutiny of Americans abroad is intensifying because of the country’s budget deficit that spiked after the Great Recession.
The campaign was intended to target American taxpayers who hide assets in secret foreign accounts in order to pay less taxes, but it also complicated the financial lives of an estimated 7 million US citizens living abroad.
The US is one of the very few countries that taxes its citizens wherever they live in the world.
More than 10,000 Americans living abroad have given up their passports during the last five years.
“If they have no real desire to work or live here, then the question for them is: What’s the point?” said Stephen Flott, a tax attorney in Arlington, Virginia. “For those who feel no real affinity to the US, it’s a no-brainer.”
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Posted: 11 Feb 2015 05:35 AM PST


Norwegian scientists say global warming will lead to more wildfires in the forests surrounding the site of the 1986 nuclear accident, leaving Europeans exposed to radioactive elements still present in the exclusion zone around the plant.
“A large amount of Caesium-137 still remains in the Chernobyl forests, which could be remobilized along with a large number of other dangerous, long-lived, refractory radionuclides. We predict that an expanding flammable area associated with climate change will lead to a high risk of radioactive contamination with characteristic fire peaks in the future,” said the abstract of a study published in Ecological Monographs magazine by the respected Norwegian Institute for Air Research.
The US Environmental Protection Agency describes Caesium-137 as a “highly radioactive” material that “increases the risk of cancer” and can cause death through severe exposure.
Of the 85 petabecquerels (a measure of radioactivity) released following the accident at the plant, between two and eight still remain in the soil.
The Norwegian team studied satellite images of the patterns of large-scale fires that originated in the 4800 sq. km exclusion zone – located on either side of Ukraine’s border with Belarus – in 2002, 2008, and 2010. The impacts of those fires, which spewed nearly a tenth as much radiation as the original fallout, were detected as far away as Scandinavia, Turkey, and Italy.
The scientists then used projections from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – which says the area will become even drier and more prone to fires – to make future predictions of even more severe radiation clouds spreading across the continent.
Furthermore, the scientists found that organic debris in the forest – key fuel for any potential fire – has been building up at twice the rate since 1986, as dead leaves in the area appear to decay at half the pace, due to radiation inhibiting natural biological processes.
The situation is made worse by the surprisingly slow decay of Caesium-137 itself. In lab conditions, its half-life is 30 years, meaning that by next year, it should be half as potent as at the time of the contamination. But in the dense vegetation that has sprung up in the exclusion zone, the element is cycled continuously between the soil and the leaves of the trees above.
The study, which notes that “current fire-fighting infrastructure in the region is inadequate due to understaffing and lack of funding,” predicts that the most potent combination of Caesium concentrations and wildfires will strike between 2023 and 2036, and realistic dangers will remain until 2060.
And what are the dangers of being exposed to these elements for humans?
The study estimates that during a wildfire fallout, an inhabitant of Kiev – located less than 100 km from Chernobyl – would be exposed to an average of 10 microsieverts of radiation, a relatively trivial dose which constitutes one percent of the prescribed annual radiation limit.
Unfortunately, the radiation is spread very unevenly in any cloud, and tends to concentrate in certain foods like mushrooms – meaning many are likely to receive a much higher, potentially life-changing exposure.
“The internal dose from ingestion can be significant. A growing body of information supports the idea that there is no threshold below which they have no effect,” Tim Mousseau of the University of South Carolina at Columbia, one of the co-authors of the study, told New Scientist.
A particular problem will be screening those who have been disproportionately affected, with the poisonings unnoticeable in the general population but “very significant for those who experience them.”
The impact of the problem may stretch beyond Europe, also to Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which released about a fifth to a quarter of Chernobyl’s Caesium-137 fallout during the nuclear meltdown in 2011.
“This is clearly an important problem and one that applies also to Fukushima, where a significant amount of forest land has been contaminated. The scientists have a very valid point. The lack of management of forests, the apparently slower decay of vegetation exposed to radiation, climate change leading to drought and the expansion of forested areas all contribute to increasing the risk of forest fire and therefore further dispersal of long-lived radioactive nuclides,” said Keith Baverstock of the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 11:56