Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Thursday, 28 May 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 27 May 2015 03:29 PM PDT


Israel is hoping to receive $4.2-$4.5 billion a year in military aid from the United States for ten years, to counter the threat from Iran and oil-rich Middle East states that have been re-arming rapidly, a senior Israeli source has told Defense News
Under a 10-year deal signed in 2007, Israel receives just over $3 billion a year in American aid, with stipulations that over 70 percent of that aid has to be spent buying US military hardware. An extension of that agreement, running to 2028, was principally agreed on by Barack Obama during a visit to Israel in 2013, but according to Haaretz, talks on its terms have been “preliminary and unofficial.”
Among the purchases to be covered by the new deal are supplies of the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, which the US has refused to export to any other country, as well as up to 75 fifth-generation F-35 joint strike fighters, whenever they overcome their teething troubles. The US also provides technology, parts and rockets for Israel’s missile defense systems such as the Iron Dome and Arrow 3.
Up to 25 percent of Israel’s defense budget is already being funded by Washington under the current agreement, with the figure likely to grow. Israel is already one of the top three recipients of US military aid, vying for the top spot with countries locked in open warfare, like Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Israel has always fought its own battles and has never asked American troops to fight on its behalf. Instead, it has requested US assistance to supplement the tremendous resources Israel already invests in its defense budget,” Howard Kohr of pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC told the House Appropriations Committee last month.
“The new realities of the rapidly changing Middle East have also led to many unexpected costs for Israel, including the need to build a $360 million barrier along Israel’s southern border with Egypt and a similar, more modern one at its northern border with Syria.”
Kohr also accused the Gulf States, many of which are also US allies and clients, of ramping up the arms race in the region, and said that Israel may have to spend $160 billion on its defense budget in the period covered by the next funding agreement.
The US is currently legally committed to maintaining Qualitative Military Edge, a doctrine that ensures Israel’s superiority over its neighbors, purportedly in the name of maintaining stability in the volatile region.
The X-factor remains Iran, which is in the process of concluding a deal with the world’s leading powers that will allow it to continue its nuclear program, in exchange for greater openness and assurances it does not plan to acquire nuclear missiles.
Israel, which is suspected to maintain its own undeclared nuclear arsenal, has consistently disbelieved Tehran’s assurances.
“I see no reason to rush to a deal and certainly not a bad deal that paves Iran’s path to the bomb, but also fills Iran’s coffers with tens of billions of dollars to pursue its aggression throughout the Middle East and around Israel’s borders,” recently re-elected prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a US Senator on Tuesday.
“As horrific as ISIS is, once Iran acquires nuclear weapons, it will be a hundred times more dangerous and more destructive than ISIS.”
Senior Israeli official Amos Gilad, who is negotiating the new deal with Washington, said last weeks that any aid increases “are not vis-a-vis the coming agreement” with Iran, but that it remains a factor in Israel’s future spending.
In fact, Jerusalem officials have said that any increase in belligerence from Iran, as well as provisions for the creation of an independent Palestinian state, will entail separate, additional demands for military support from the Pentagon.
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Posted: 27 May 2015 03:21 PM PDT


Sounding supportive of an international probe into FIFA corruption, Russia accuses the US of applying its laws “beyond its borders.”
Moscow reacted to the detention of a number of FIFA officials over corruption after its reports swept the media earlier on Wednesday.
Alexander Lukashevich, a spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, wrote a commentary on the official website in which he suggested that the US intervention in the matter was way beyond its legal power.
Lukashevich (pictured below) said Washington should “stop attempts to administer justice far beyond its borders under its statutory regulations, and to follow the generally acknowledged international-law procedures.”
“A group of individuals representing various countries are charged with about half a hundred counts of all sorts of financial machination,” he wrote. “Without delving into the detail of the presented charges, we point out that we are seeing yet another case of illegal extra-territorial application of the US laws.”
“We hope this will by no means be used to cast a shadow on the international football organization as a whole and the decisions that it makes, including human-resources ones,” he further said.
Earlier, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch accused the officials of “hijacking” international football to run a World Cup of “fraud”, whose next round is set to be held in Russia in 2018.
Lynch argued that FIFA should consider whether the 2018 World Cup should be held in Russia, also questioning the credibility of the 2022 one in Qatar.
FIFA spokesperson Walter de Gregorio said, however, that the two world cups will go ahead as planned.
The arrest of the FIFA officials over the way Russia and Qatar had been selected as host countries followed a criminal inquiry by the Swiss Justice Ministry.
Money laundering is among the charges the officials are facing.
Investigate all cups
FIFA President Sepp Blatter, who is expecting to win a fifth four-year term at the helm on Friday, also responded to the arrests.
“This is a difficult time for football, the fans and for FIFA as an organization,” Blatter said in a statement. “We understand the disappointment that many have expressed and I know that the events of today will impact the way in which many people view us.”
“We will continue to work with the relevant authorities and we will work vigorously within FIFA in order to root out any misconduct, to regain your trust and ensure that football worldwide is free from wrongdoing,” Blatter (seen above) said in reaction to the most serious crisis in FIFA’s 111-year history.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff also backed the probe, calling for an investigation into “all cups, (and) all activities” at FIFA.
“I think all inquiries into this issue are very important. I think this can only benefit Brazil,” she said during her official visit to Mexico.
More FIFA officials, more states engaged
Lynch announced the charges at a press conference in New York, where senior officials from the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) criminal investigations unit were also present.
“This is really the World Cup of fraud and today we are issuing FIFA a red card,” said Richard Weber, the chief investigator of the IRS criminal investigations unit.
According to Kelly Curries, the acting US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, this was just the “beginning of our effort, not the end”.
“We are looking into individuals and entities in a variety of countries,” Curries said.
She was referring to the 25 unnamed co-conspirators mentioned in the indictment, which includes some members of the bid committee for the South Africa 2010 World Cup.
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Posted: 27 May 2015 03:05 PM PDT


Economist Martin Armstrong claims there is a “secret meeting to end cash” set to take place in London before the end of the month involving representatives from the ECB and the Federal Reserve.
Armstrong, who is known for successfully predicting the 1987 Black Monday crash as well as the 1998 Russian financial collapse, expressed his shock that no news outlet has reported on this upcoming conference.
“I find it extremely perplexing that I have been the only one to report of the secret meeting in London. Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University, and Willem Buiter, the Chief Economist at Citigroup, will address the central banks to advocate the elimination of all cash to bring to fruition the day when you cannot buy or sell anything without government approval,” writes Armstrong.
“When I googled the issue to see who else has picked it up, to my surprise, Armstrong Economics comes up first. Others are quoting me, and I even find it spreading as far as the Central Bank of Nigeria, but I have yet to find any reports on the meeting taking place in London, when my sources are direct.”
Armstrong first brought attention to the alleged meeting earlier this month when he revealed that representatives from the Federal Reserve, the ECB as well as participants from the Swiss and Danish central banks would all be attending a “major conference in London” at which Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University, and Willem Buiter, the Chief Economist at Citigroup, would give presentations.
“We better keep one eye open at night for this birth of a cashless society that is coming in much faster than expected. Why the secret meeting? Something does not smell right here,” concludes Armstrong.
Discussions and moves towards banning cash have repeatedly cropped up in recent weeks.
Willem Buiter, who Armstrong claims is speaking at the secret meeting, recently advocated abolishing cash altogether in order to “solve the world’s central banks’ problem with negative interest rates.”
Last year, Kenneth Rogoff also called for “abolishing physical currency” in order to stop “tax evasion and illegal activity” as well as preventing people from withdrawing money when interest rates are close to zero.
Striking a similar tone, former Bank of England economist Jim Leaviss penned an article for the London Telegraph earlier this month in which he said a cashless society would only be achieved by “forcing everyone to spend only by electronic means from an account held at a government-run bank,” which would be, “monitored, or even directly controlled by the government.”
Big banks in both the United Kingdom and the U.S. are already treating the withdrawal or depositing of moderately large amounts of cash as a suspicious activity. Reports emerged in March of how the Justice Department is ordering bank employees to consider calling the cops on customers who withdraw $5,000 dollars or more.
Meanwhile in France, new measures are set to come into force in September which will restrict French citizens from making cash payments over €1,000 euros. Armstrong suggests that “financial police” could enforce this new law by, “searching people on trains just passing through France to see if they are transporting cash, which they will now seize.”
As Armstrong notes, banning cash in order to eviscerate what little economic freedoms people have left to avoid disastrous Keynesian central bank policy is nothing short of economic totalitarianism.
“In the mind of an economic tyrant, banning cash represents the holy grail,” writes Michael Krieger. “Forcing the plebs onto a system of digital fiat currency transactions offers total control via a seamless tracking of all transactions in the economy, and the ability to block payments if an uppity citizen dares get out of line.”
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Posted: 27 May 2015 02:49 PM PDT


Head of the US Air Force Gen. Mark Welsh has warned about the rising air power of Russia and China, saying the two countries’ gap with the US military has closed.
“China and Russia are two good examples of countries who will be fielding capability in the next three to five years; if they stay on track, that is better than what we currently have in many areas,” Welsh told Fox News on Monday.
“Fighter aircraft in the next three to five years that have more capability than what we currently have sitting on the ramp. The F-35 will stay a generation ahead of them. F-22 will, too. Everything else we have will not stay ahead. The gap has closed,” he added.
The general made the comments during a three-day visit to Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.
Welsh also said dozens of countries around the world would use Russian and Chinese top-end fighters in the future.
American officials have expressed their concerns about the military power of China and Russia during the past years.
This is while figures compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute showed that the United States spends more on its military than the next seven top-spending countries combined.
The US spends nearly three times as much as China and its military budget is more than seven times as much as Russia.
Washington’s relations have been icy with China and Russia over Beijing’s construction projects in the South China Sea and the Ukraine crisis respectively.
The US accuses China of undergoing a massive “land reclamation” program in the Spratly archipelago of the South China Sea, and says China’s territorial claims of the man-made islands could further militarize the region.
A Chinese state-owned newspaper warned Monday a war between the two superpowers is “inevitable” unless Washington stops demanding Beijing halt its construction projects.
“If the United States’ bottom line is that China has to halt its activities, then a US-China war is inevitable in the South China Sea,” The Global Times, an influential newspaper owned by the ruling Communist Party’s official newspaper the People’s Daily, said in an editorial.
“The intensity of the conflict will be higher than what people usually think of as ‘friction’,” it warned.
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Posted: 27 May 2015 02:39 PM PDT


The US Senate passed a controversial “fast-track” trade bill in a 62-37 vote on Friday. It is a key part of President Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia, which aims to counter China’s rising economic and diplomatic power via the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
The bill will now head to the House of Representatives for a vote early next month, where it is expected to face a tougher showdown.
If passed by the House, the fast-track bill will give Obama the power to negotiate trade pacts with other countries and submit them to Congress without lawmakers being able to introduce amendments to them.
But some House Democrats have expressed worry about the bill’s impact on jobs and the environment, while some conservatives oppose giving the White House more power.
In a close 51-48 vote Friday, senators rejected an amendment that would’ve mandated any future trade bills to feature penalties against countries that manipulate the value of their currency in order to sell products overseas at lower prices.
The chamber also rejected an amendment by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that would have prevented approval of the TPP if it included an Investor-State Dispute Settlement system, which gives multinational corporations the ability to fight regulations in other countries. Liberals have railed against the ISDS, arguing that it would allow companies to undermine US laws.
Meanwhile, another amendment that would’ve required Congress to approve of any additional country that wants to join the TPP in the future.
The main aim of fast-track, which would initially have a three-year term, is to implement the Trans-Pacific Partnership – a trade deal that would link 40 percent of the world’s economy.
Along with the United States, 11 other countries have taken part in TPP negotiations: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. The deal would exclude China and serve to counter its growing economic and diplomatic influence in the Asia-Pacific region.
The proposed partnership has been a source of intense debate in Washington and throughout the United States – and Obama’s Democrats are divided on the matter.
Those in favor of the partnership include big businesses, Congressional Republicans, and President Obama himself.
“TPP is good for American businesses and American workers…we will make the case on the merits as to why it will open up markets for American goods, American exports, and create American jobs,” Obama said in a statement on April 28.
But those against TPP – including labor unions and the Tea Party – say the deal would put American manufacturing jobs at risk.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 10:49