Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Friday 1 May 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 01 May 2015 12:49 AM PDT


On Sunday April 19th Russian security forces inflicted a fatal blow to the Caucasus Emirate by eliminating the organization’s leader Aliaskhab Kebekov, also known as “Ali Abu Muhammad al-Daghestani”, Shamil Hasanov Balakhani, leader of the Untsukul Jamaat and Omar Magomedov.
Security forces, coordinated by the FSB and the Ministry of Interior, surrounded the group inside a house in the village of Gerei-Avlak, in the Buynaksk area in Daghestan. The jihadists refused to surrender and shot towards the agents who were forced to return fire. The gang’s hideout was demolished and the agents seized a great amount of weapons including 8 grenade launchers, several AK-47 rifles, explosives, ammunitions and seven cars.
A Caucasus Emirate-linked website confirmed the death of Kebekov on April 21st, defining the event as “martyrdom” and the following day the website published a message of condolences on behalf of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
There are two interesting points in the message that are worth mentioning:
“He carried on despite the difficult situation and the small number of those who helped him, with patience, hoping for a reward from Allah, firmly adhering to the truth and not afraid of anything, leaving all sorts of excuses on procrastination from jihad by those whose hearts are covered by humiliation and who do not feel envy to honour and to the shrines of Islam”.
In this paragraph, “the small number of those who helped him” is an obvious reference to the recent split inside the organization, as several jamaats left the Emirate in order to join ISIS. According to local sources, by the end of 2014 six out of eleven jamaat leaders swore allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Among them Sultan Zaynalabidov (head of the Aukhovsky jamaat), Rustam Aselderov (head of Vilayat Daghestan), Arslan-Ali Kambulatov (head of Shamil’kalinsky sector) and Makhran Saidov (head of the Chechen Vedeno sector).
In February 2015 a young jihadist who claimed to be “Amir of Ingushetia” and who was later identified as “Amir Muhammad” declared support to ISIS and cited Islam Atabiev “Abu Jihad” and Umar al-Shishani”, but without taking any oath of allegiance.
On December 28th 2014, Aliaskhab Kebekov released a video where he warned his militants from siding with ISIS and expanding the “fitna” inside the Emirate, defining it an “act of treachery”. A problem that has reached north-Caucasian militants even in Syria, as explained by Chechensinsyria website:
“Rivalry between North Caucasian factions of IS in Syria and the CE began as far back as late summer 2013 when Umar Shishani and his faction in Jaish alMuhajireen wal-Ansar grew closer to then-ISIS, with Umar being appointed ISIS’s military emir in northern Syria. Umar and his faction broke away from JMA in December 2013 and went over to ISIS, with JMA openly aligning itself as the Syrian branch of the CE. Since then, the rivalry between the two groups in Syria has continued to develop, based in the main on a power struggle for control of North Caucasian militants in Syria but also partly based on ideology: some IS North Caucasians have accused the CE of nationalism and asserted that, with the establishment of the “Caliphate”, all jihadis should fight with IS”.
It is obvious that the Caucasus Emirate was seriously weakened by the departure of many north-Caucasian jihadists who decided to join the ranks of Islamist groups in Syria and later by the flow of jamaats and sub-groups which fled for ISIS.
In another paragraph AQIM claims: “If Abu Muhammad fell and was unable to expel Russia from the lands of the Caucasus, it is enough that he expelled them from the heart….”
This sentence almost sounds as an admission of defeat; the awareness that Aliaskhab Kebekov’s organization, already weakened by a difficult endogenous situation, did not manage in any way to hit Russia and if we take a look at the last 24 months of activity of the Caucasus Emirate we will realize how the organization went through the worst phase of its history.
In 2013 former Emirate leader Doku Umarov released a video where he threatened to attack the Sochi Winter Olympics, scheduled for February 2014; however things did not go as he had planned. Umarov was killed in September 2013 and the jihadists did not manage to get anywhere near Sochi. The only actions that the terrorists managed to carry out were the odious attacks in Volgograd in October and December 2013 against two buses and the train station, killing 40 people. A move that only manage to make things worse for the Emirate on both local and international level.
Starting in January 2014, Russian security forces conducted continuous counter-terror operations in the Caucasus region and especially in Daghestan, where many jamaat were eradicated and many gang leaders either arrested or eliminated.
In 2014, the number of terror-related incidents in Daghestan decreased by 20% as approximately 180 jihadists were killed and more than 200 arrested. The Emirate’s operational capabilities were seriously undermined to the point that its leadership did not manage to control its jamaats anymore. The impression was that many of the Daghestani gangs progressively loosened ties with the Caucasus Emirate central command and focused mostly on local criminal activities and obviously did not follow the new leadership’s directives to “avoid civilian casualties”, as part of a new strategy implemented by Kebekov in a desperate attempt to unlikely earn the sympathy of a population that never supported the infiltration of Wahhabism in the area.
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Posted: 01 May 2015 12:40 AM PDT
Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, second left, and Vice Premier of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China Wang Yang, second right, meet in Hangzhou, China.
Moscow may team up with Beijing to create a scientific station on the Moon. The challenge for Russia is to build its own space station by 2024 to achieve its lunar exploration goals.
According to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who supervises defense-related policies, the question on “bringing China in as the main partner in creating a lunar scientific station,” is currently being discussed with Roscosmos.
“We have told China of our plans about the possibility of creating a Russian national orbital station,” Rogozin told journalists after a meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang in China on Tuesday.
Rogozin said that both parties share “deep mutual understanding and mutual interests” in space-related projects.
China’s Vice Foreign Minister Cheng Guoping said previously that Beijing plans to boost its cooperation with Russia in a number of areas, including space.
Roscosmos is looking at opportunities to study the Moon, using robotic equipment over the next decade, with the goal of sending manned missions to the moon by 2030, TASS cited the Roscosmos Science and Technology board as saying in February.
The proposed space station would give Russia’s space agency a platform to further its goals to explore the Moon.
Roscosmos head Igor Komarov said last week that Russia expects to carry out a manned mission to orbit the Moon in 2025. Russian cosmonauts should be ready to conduct a manned landing on the surface of the Moon in 2029, he added.
Russia has had its own space station in the past. The Mir space station was deorbited in 2001, splashing down into the Pacific Ocean after spending more than 5,500 days in space. Russia cited the age of the station and the high operational costs as the reasons for the decision.
China is currently burning the midnight oil working on its Long March-9 rocket. It has “unprecedented lift capability” and will be the country’s first manned lunar mission. Its payload will be 130 tons, which coincides with the lift capability of the Space Launch System being developed by NASA, the China Daily reports. The first launch of the rocket is planned for 2028.
The Chinese government is also planning to launch its own orbiting station by 2020 and to send men to the Moon. In 2013, China sent the first lunar rover, the Jade Rabbit, to scour the Moon. In November last year, the Chinese also presented a prototype of their Mars rover.
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Posted: 30 Apr 2015 02:43 AM PDT



A video has emerged showing Israeli forces assaulting photojournalists near the West Bank town of Nabi Saleh. Despite being clearly marked as members of the press, the soldiers push the photographers to the ground and proceed to hit them.
One of the troops also throws a stone at a journalist.
The assault begins with soldiers shouting “Get out of here!”
One of the soldiers is then seen pushing one of the photographers to the ground with his helmet. Another soldier knocks the other photographer to the ground and then picks up a stone and hurls it at him.
The attack happened on Friday. Since then the Israeli army has stated that the area was a closed military zone and that dozens of Palestinian protesters gathered there and hurled stones at IDF soldiers prior to the assault of journalists.
However, an IDF spokesman later told Haaretz that “the behavior seen in the video is reprehensible and isn’t in line with the guidelines issued by the commanders in the region.”
“The IDF guidelines allow for free press coverage in the territory under control of the Central Command in general, and specifically during demonstrations,” he added.
The matter will be looked into shortly, the spokesman concluded.
It’s by no means the first time that the IDF has targeted journalists and assaulted them.
Last July, at least seven Palestinian journalists and media workers were killed in during the assault on Gaza and IDF forces directly hit at least four media offices.
During the November 2012 conflict, at least four Israeli attacks on media workers and facilities in Gaza were reported. In those attacks, two Palestinian cameramen were killed and at least 10 other media employees wounded.
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Posted: 30 Apr 2015 02:33 AM PDT


Silver stockpile of the largest US bank and major provider of financial services JPMorgan Chase has increased drastically for the last three years. In 2012 the amount of physical silver was at 5 million ounces, while for the current year it increased more than tenfold and accounts for 55 million.
Silver has always been regarded as a great investment tool. But the fact that it is estimated at that low as $15.66 an ounce implies that it is accumulated for the possible financial turmoil. Only in this case the stockpile can be paid off.
It can be seen in the letter of JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon in his letter to shareholders. As he stated, “Some things never change – there will be another crisis, and its impact will be felt by the financial market.
The trigger to the next crisis will not be the same as the trigger to the last one – but there will be another crisis. Triggering events could be geopolitical (the 1973 Middle East crisis), a recession where the Fed rapidly increases interest rates (the 1980-1982 recession), a commodities price collapse (oil in the late 1980s), the commercial real estate crisis (in the early 1990s), the Asian crisis (in 1997), so-called “bubbles” (the 2000 Internet bubble and the 2008 mortgage/housing bubble), etc. While the past crises had different roots (you could spend a lot of time arguing the degree to which geopolitical, economic or purely financial factors caused each crisis), they generally had a strong effect across the financial markets.”
The preference to silver instead of gold can be directly explained with the current low price it has.
For the last two weeks, JP Morgan Chase has accumulated more than eight million ounces of physical silver.
In addition to this, JP Morgan Chase restricted the use of cash for selected markets and went so far as restricted its clients from using cash for credit cards payments, mortgages, equity lines and auto loans. There will also be no ability to store the cash in its safe deposit boxes.
The case tips at the anticipation of a new great economic crisis.
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Posted: 30 Apr 2015 02:25 AM PDT
Moody’s rating agency downgrades Greece’s debt to junk.
Moody’s rating agency has downgraded Greece’s credit rating further into junk territory over growing uncertainty about the country’s ability to make its debt payments.
On Thursday, Moody’s slashed Athens’ rating to Caa2 from Caa1 and assigned it a “negative” outlook.
The rating is just two steps away from the level signaling that a default is imminent.
The rating agency said that talks between the debt-ridden country and its international lenders, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), show “no immediate prospect of agreement being reached on a new financing package.”
The rating reflects the agency’s overview of the economic, financial, and political risks in the country.
To meet the challenges caused by its debt, “Greece will need higher medium-term growth and political resolve,” Moody’s said.
“Recent events make both doubtful, raising further concerns over Greece’s ability to sustain financial support from official creditors over the coming years,” the agency said.
Moody’s said that the outcome of the talks would be determined primarily on a political level between the sides.
Debt-ridden Greece is in talks with the European Union (EU), the IMF and the European Central Bank (ECB) to receive the last tranche of its bailout – worth EUR 7.2 billion (USD 7.8 billion) – to help Athens avoid default and a possible exit from the European Union (EU).
The government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, whose leftist Syriza Party stormed to victory in January 25 elections, has tried to renegotiate the terms of the country’s bailout, which Athens had received in return for imposing harsh austerity measures.
Athens received two bailouts in 2010 and 2012 worth a total of EUR 240 billion (USD 272 billion) from the troika of international lenders following Greece’s 2009 economic crisis.
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Posted: 30 Apr 2015 02:10 AM PDT


Riots in Baltimore, Maryland have largely subsided since protests there, in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death, turned violent earlier this week, albeit in the shadows of a massive police presence amplified by the activation of the National Guard.
A week-long nightly curfew went into effect in Baltimore on Tuesday evening, and more 3,000 police officers were on the scene thanks to a collaborative effort between law enforcement from Maryland, New Jersey and Washington, DC, as well as the National Guard.
Clad in riot gear, flanks of police marched through sections of Baltimore late Tuesday evening to clear the city streets pursuant to the curfew.
Efforts to enforce the curfew proved largely successful, and much of the city was comparatively quiet during early Wednesday morning, a sharp contrast to the riots and looting on Monday night after Freddie Gray’s funeral.
Gray, 25, died earlier this month, a week after he suffered critical injuries while in the custody of the Baltimore Police Department. Demonstrations, mostly peaceful, have been waged across the region since Gray’s arrest on April 12, and have become amplified following his death. Thousands attended Gray’s funeral on Monday and went on a peaceful protest after. It turned violent later in the day, prompting Republican Gov. Larry Hogan to activate the National Guard to restore order.
“People have the right to protest and express their frustration, but Baltimore City families deserve peace and safety in their communities and these acts of violence and destruction of property cannot and will not be tolerated,” Hogan said.
On Wednesday, Baltimore Police Capt. Eric Kowalczyk said that the city will be assessing the need to keep the curfew into effect “day by day, hour by hour.”
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Posted: 30 Apr 2015 01:43 AM PDT



The United States government has finally lowered fluoride levels in drinking water for the first time in 50 years following research by Harvard and other institutions that high exposure to fluoride can lower your IQ and wreak havoc on your body.
It was around 3 years ago, after all, that the government actually backed the historic study by Harvard scientists on the subject of fluoride’s devastating effects on cognitive ability. As I detailed in July of 2012, authors published their conclusion online in the July 20th edition of the prominent journal Environmental Health Perspectives: a federal government medical journal stemming from the United States National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
In the research by Harvard, it is made even more explicitly clear just how toxic fluoride can be to the body. In a written statement, researchers state:
“The children in high fluoride areas had significantly lower IQ than those who lived in low fluoride areas.”
Three years later, and we’re now seeing action by the government. As The Guardian reports:
“The government is lowering the recommended amount of fluoride added to drinking water for the first time in more than 50 years…. Since 1962, the government has been advising water systems to add fluoride to a level of 0.7 parts per million for warmer climates, where people drink more water, to 1.2 parts per million in cooler areas. The new standard is 0.7 everywhere.”
While lower, these levels are still concerning. But with a possible ban on the horizon for Monsanto’s cancer-linked herbicides and top corporations being forced to remove dangerous additives from their products, perhaps fluoride may be next.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 08:43