The European Union Times |
- East Europe requests US army equipment to counter Russia
- EU extends sanctions on Russia
- U.S. May Position for a War Against Russia
- CIA broke own limits on human experimentation
- Greece likely to exit euro and EU without deal with creditors
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Posted: 17 Jun 2015 10:17 AM PDT
 Warsaw and Vilnius are in talks with Washington about the permanent stationing of US army equipment warehouses, officials from the two countries said. Heavy weapons may be stored in the Baltic States, Romania, Bulgaria and possibly Hungary. The Polish Defense Ministry tweeted that during his recent visit to Washington Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak was given assurances that a final decision on stationing the warehouses would be taken shortly. Citing US and allied officials, the New York Times reported on Saturday that heavy equipment would be stored in each of the three Baltic nations: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, plus some Eastern European countries – Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and possibly Hungary. The Pentagon’s far-reaching proposal requires approval from Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and the White House. Should the move be given the go-ahead, it would be the first deployment of military hardware in Europe since the end of the Cold War 25 years ago. The plan falls short of a permanent boots-on-the-ground presence. When NATO initially expanded into the Baltic States in 2004, permanent stationing of equipment and troops in these countries wasn’t undertaken – a mark of respect to Russia’s interests. But with the unfolding Ukraine crisis, NATO and Washington began to bolster forces in the region, openly sending a message to Moscow that NATO will defend its alliance members. “This is a very meaningful shift in policy. It provides a reasonable level of reassurance to jittery allies, although nothing is as good as troops stationed full-time on the ground, of course,” James G. Stavridis, a retired admiral and the former supreme allied commander of NATO, now dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, told the New York Times. According to the newspaper, the Pentagon is “poised to store” battle tanks, infantry vehicles and other heavy weapons for 5,000 American troops in the Baltic and Eastern European states. The stocks, planned to be stored on allied bases, would be reportedly the same as the Pentagon kept in Kuwait for over a decade after the 1990 US invasion of Iraq. Lithuanian Defense Minister Juozas Olekas also told Reuters on Sunday that Vilnius is getting ready to host heavy US military equipment. Talks are underway with Washington on a permanent location for the arms. “We think that at least part of it [Abrams and Bradleys] will be in Lithuania and we are in the process of preparing our military infrastructure, so it can be used for such pre-positioning. It is almost ready,” Olekas said. “We have been in talks with our American allies about locating equipment here on a permanent basis, in order to increase our security and support the soldiers stationed here,” he added. “If the decision is taken, it will be very positive for our security,” Olekas concluded. Estonia’s Defense Minister Sven Mikser has said the US proposal will be discussed with NATO countries on June 24-25, the Delfi news portal reports. Since Crimea’s reunion with Russia, concerns have been growing in Moscow over a sharp increase in the intensity of the training of NATO troops along Russia’s border. Since the outbreak of the military conflict in eastern Ukraine, NATO forces have stepped up military drills in the Baltic States and Eastern Europe. Around 50 vessels from 17 countries, involving some 5,600 troops, are currently taking part in the US-led BALTOPS exercise in the Baltic Sea. NATO member states, such as Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Turkey, the UK and the US have sent naval forces to take part in the drill. They were also joined by three NATO partners – Finland and Sweden, which both have access to the Baltic Sea, and also Georgia. The show-off of anti-submarine warfare, air defense, interception of suspect vessels and amphibious landings runs through June 20. The head of the Main Operation Directorate of General Staff, Lieutenant General Andrey Kartapolov, said in April that the intensity of NATO’s operational and combat training activities grew by as much as 80 percent in 2014, with bombers from the US Air Force performing strategic tasks during their military exercises. Russia has also increased the number of flights of its long-range ‘Bear’ Tupolev-95 bombers near NATO members’ air space, as well as carrying out large-scale drills on its own territory. Source           |
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Posted: 17 Jun 2015 10:13 AM PDT
 Ambassadors from the European Union member states have agreed to prolong until 2016 the bloc’s punitive measures against Russia over its alleged involvement in Ukraine’s crisis. On Wednesday, the EU Committee of Permanent Representatives reached an agreement on extending bloc’s economic sanctions against Moscow by six more months, Russia’s Interfax news agency said, citing EU diplomatic source. Envoys from the 28 EU member states reached a “consensus” on the legal text mandating the extension of the sanctions from July up until the end of January next year, European sources said, according to AFP. The document is expected to be submitted for formal approval by EU foreign ministers next Monday. Russia has been the target of several rounds of sanctions by the US and EU, which accuse Moscow of supporting pro-Russia forces in east Ukraine. Russia has categorically denied the allegation. The two mainly Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine have been the scene of deadly clashes between pro-Russia protesters and the Ukrainian army since Kiev started military operation in the regions in April 2014 in a bid to crush the protests. Violence intensified last May after the two regions held local referendums in which their residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence from Ukraine and joining the Russian Federation. The crisis so far has claimed the lives of at least 6,400 people, according to UN figures. Source      |
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Posted: 17 Jun 2015 10:08 AM PDT
 On Saturday, June 13th, The New York Times bannered, “U.S. Is Poised to Put Heavy Weaponry in Eastern Europe,” and Russia’s response to the announcement wasn’t long in coming. The Russian equivalent of America’s Wall Street Journal and Britain’s Financial Times, which is Kommersant (or Businessperson), headlined on June 15th, “US may redeploy heavy weapons to the borders of the Russian Federation,” and reported that, “According to sources in the Russian Government, the implementation of this plan will force Moscow to post on the border with the Baltic countries Russia’s own offensive military capability that can destroy US facilities in the event of a hypothetical conflict.” The report in the Times had noted that, “The proposal, if approved, would represent the first time since the end of the Cold War that the United States has stationed heavy military equipment in the newer NATO member nations in Eastern Europe that had once been part of the Soviet sphere of influence.” The Soviet Union (and its communism, which the U.S. always said was the basis for the Cold War) ended in 1991. That was the same year when the Warsaw Pact — Russia’s equivalent of NATO — also ended. In Russia, the expectation was that that would be that — there would be no more hostility between the governments of the U.S.A. and Russia. Russian leaders had assumed this, but it turned out not to be the case. (Perhaps this explains part of the reason why it turned out not to be so: Dick Cheney’s Halliburton Corporation in the 1990s estimated that Russia has enormous oil deposits.) The U.S. has thus been expanding NATO right up to the very borders of Russia, after the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact ended in 1991. (Russia did no such thing to the United States; Russia hasn’t been trying to surround the U.S. with enemy nations.) The NATO expansion started in 1999, when U.S. President Bill Clinton brought into NATO the former Warsaw Pact member-nations of Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary. Then, this threatening (if not aggressive) U.S. move, expanded even further in 2004, when U.S. President George W. Bush brought into NATO other former Warsaw Pact members: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Next, in 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama brought into NATO two more former Warsaw Pact nations, Albania and Croatia. Finally, President Obama, in a 2014 very bloody coup d’etat, overthrew the neutralist government of Ukraine, and replaced it with a government which is filled with politicians whose political heritage goes back to the pro-Hitler and rabidly anti-Russian political movements in Ukraine during World War II, and these fascist U.S.-client politicians have many times spoken of their aim being to join NATO and — with NATO’s help — to destroy Russia. America’s threat to Russia is very real. Russian intelligence had, even earlier than Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision on 20 November 2013 to decline membership in the EU, gotten wind of the Obama Administration’s preparations ever since the Spring of 2013, to overthrow the neutralist Yanukovych and replace him with a racist-fascist anti-Russian regime in next-door Ukraine: a bunch of nazis who are Russian-hating fascists even more than they are Jew-hating fascists. They hate the Russian people. What nation wants a rabidly hostile regime like that on its doorstep? Consequently, within even less than a month after the American coup, Russia prevented America’s planned follow-on takeover of Russia’s main naval base, which is on the then-Ukrainian island of Crimea. The Soviet dictator Nikita Khruschev had donated Crimea to Ukraine in 1954, though Crimea had always been part of Russia; and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin provided, immediately after the coup, Russian protection to Crimeans, so that they could hold their own vote on whether to rejoin with Russia. Even the hard-like anti-Russian Forbes magazine commentator, Kenneth Rapoza, headlined on 20 March 2015, “One Year After Russia Annexed Crimea, Locals Prefer Moscow To Kiev,” and he reviewed several polls, some taken by U.S.-owned polling organizations, all showing almost 100% support among Crimeans for the switch back to being Russians again and no longer being subject to rule from Kiev — especially not this Russia-hating Kiev regime. Rapoza concluded simply, “At some point, the West will have to recognize Crimea’s right to self rule.” But U.S. President Obama, and his followers within the European Union, still refuse to do that. The people of Scotland are allowed to vote on whether to secede from the UK, but the people of Crimea (who never self-identified as Ukrainians nearly to the extent they self-identified as Russians) cannot do likewise? That’s what the West’s hypocritical leaders are saying — and now a World War III could result from it. So, Obama and the EU slapped economic sanctions on Russia (for what are actually the consequences of America’s coup); and, when the new Ukrainian Government started a bombing campaign toeliminate the inhabitants in the Donbass region of Ukraine, which had voted over 90% for Viktor Yanukovych (which is the only way to get Obama’s regime-change in Ukraine to survive future elections — i.e., to get rid of the voters there) the West then blamed Russia for assisting the residents in the Donbass region to defend themselves against the exterminationist invasion from Kiev. And President Obama still insists that Ukraine seize back both Donbass and Crimea. And this brings us to today, and, perhaps, to the brink of a U.S.-Russian war. Source      |
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Posted: 17 Jun 2015 09:36 AM PDT
 The document containing the guidelines was obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and shared with The Guardian newspaper, which published it on Monday. The CIA, however, redacted one of the four subsections on human experimentation. The guidelines–dated 1987, updated over the years and still in effect at the CIA–give the agency’s director the power to “approve, modify, or disapprove all proposals pertaining to human subject research.” Former CIA director George Tenet–who approved abusive interrogation techniques, including waterboarding–instructed the agency’s health staff to oversee the torture of detainees during interrogation sessions. The newly-declassified document raises new questions about the CIA’s torture program, even though the agency’s guidelines apparently rule against “research on human subjects” without their “informed consent,” The Guardian reports. After reviewing the document, experts consulted by The Guardian argued that the CIA deliberately twisted basic definitions of human experimentation to ensure its torture program continued. “Crime one was torture. The second crime was research without consent in order to say it wasn’t torture,” said Nathaniel Raymond, a former war-crimes investigator with Physicians for Human Rights and now a researcher with Harvard University’s Humanitarian Initiative. Experts assessing the document said the CIA violated the limits of its medical research, set by the human-experimentation guidelines, during the agency’s interrogations, detentions and renditions of terrorism suspects after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The presence of medical workers during brutal interrogations of suspects like Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee known to be waterboarded in CIA custody, was difficult to reconcile with the agency’s requirement of “informed consent” on human experimentation subjects, experts told The Guardian. The CIA insists that the presence of the agency’s doctors, known as the Office of Medical Services (OMS), ensured its techniques were in accordance with responsible medical practices. However, the Senate intelligence Committee’s landmark report on CIA torture, partially declassified six months ago, reveals unease among some OMS doctors with their role in the torture program. Zubaydah “seems very resistant to the water board,” an OMS official emailed in August 2002, according to The Guardian. “No useful information so far … He did vomit a couple of times during the water board with some beans and rice. It’s been 10 hours since he ate so this is surprising and disturbing. We plan to only feed Ensure for a while now. I’m head[ing] back for another water board session.” Based on the Senate report, the CIA employed brutal techniques like waterboarding, physical abuse, sleep deprivation, mock executions, and threats of sexual abuse to interrogate terror suspects imprisoned after the 9/11 attacks. Other physicians and human rights experts have gone beyond the findings of the Senate report, accusing the CIA medical staff of facilitating the agency’s human experimentation by blurring the lines between medical aid to detainees and keeping them capable of enduring further torture. In an analysis about the Senate’s torture report, The Nation Magazine concluded last year that human experimentation was a “core feature” of the CIA’s torture program. The Senate report specifically named two psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who were hired by the CIA to lead its experimentation project, the magazine said. The duo designed interrogation and detention protocols that they applied to people held in the CIA’s secret “black sites.” The CIA defended the decision to hire the psychologists at the time. “We believe their expertise was so unique that we would have been derelict had we not sought them out when it became clear that CIA would be heading into the uncharted territory of the program.” Source      |
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Posted: 17 Jun 2015 09:33 AM PDT
 Athens is likely to leave the eurozone and the EU if it fails to reach an agreement to unlock a €7.2 billion bailout installment, said a statement from the Bank of Greece. “Failure to reach an agreement would, …, mark the beginning of a painful course that would lead initially to a Greek default and ultimately to the country’s exit from the euro area and – most likely – from the European Union,” the bank said in a statement Wednesday. The manageable debt crisis Greece is now facing may turn into an uncontrollable and broader crisis, dangerous for the banking system and financial stability, the bank added. An exit from the eurozone would only add to hostility that is already felt, and, as a result, a deep exchange rate crisis would make inflation skyrocket. “All this would imply a deep recession, a dramatic decline in income levels, an exponential rise in unemployment and a collapse of all that the Greek economy has achieved over the years of its EU, and especially its euro area, membership. From its position as a core member of Europe, Greece would see itself relegated to the rank of a poor country in the European South,” the bank said. This is why the bank called a debt deal a “historical imperative” impossible to ignore. The five-months of inconclusive negotiations have led to a high level of uncertainty in Greece, which is hitting the country hard, the bank said. This reflected in higher Greek bond yields and Greek businesses losing financing in the capital markets. “On the domestic front, heightened uncertainty was reflected in the deterioration of economic sentiment and confidence indicators and in bank deposit withdrawals by businesses and households.” Between October 2014 and April 2015 €30 billion was withdrawn from deposits, the bank said. Fears of Greece leaving the euro escalated after the country delayed a €300 million payment to the IMF on June 5, saying it’ll bundle four June payments totaling €1.6 billion together and pay them at the end of the month. So far the negotiations have failed to meet halfway over reforms in Greece which is the main condition for Athens to receive the last €7.2 billion tranche of the second bailout. But the Bank of Greece said a compromise on the main conditions and smaller issues remained to be covered. Greece maintains it won’t accept new deep austerity cuts while the country’s creditors – the IMF, the ECB and the European Commission – insist on more financial responsibility from Athens. Despite some write-offs of Greek debt made by creditors in 2012, its public debt currently stands at €316 billion, about 175 percent of the country’s GDP. The maximum acceptable level for the EU should be not more than 60 percent of GDP, according to the EU’s Stability and Growth Pact. Austerity measures have seen unemployment rise from 12 to 27 percent in three years, GDP has fallen by 26 percent since 2008, Greeks are under a huge tax burden, and the number of people living below the poverty line is increasing every day, said Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras last week. His Syriza party came to power promising to end austerity. Over the last five years, Athens has reduced pensions by up to 44 percent, reduced salaries in the private sector by up to 32 percent, and seen its labor market crushed, he added. Source     |
