Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Thursday 2 July 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 30 Jun 2015 02:48 AM PDT
09/01/1992 A Coca Cola shop.
The head of Russia’s Party of Pensioners is urging sanctions against the Coca-Cola and PepsiCo claiming the soda giants are major sponsors of anti-Russian politicians in US and that the move would boost domestic producers of soft drinks.
“In support of the president’s and government’s actions regarding the countersanctions we suggest restricting imports of products made by the Coca-Cola and PepsiCo companies that are the main sponsors of respectively the Republican and Democratic parties of the United States, the active supporters of prolonged sanctions against the Russian Federation,” Igor Zotov wrote in a letter to the Russian prime minister, quoted by the Izvestia daily.
Zotov, an MP in the State Duma representing the Fair Russia Party, noted that according to the information received from open sources the US soda is extremely harmful for human health and therefore its imports are very damaging for the health of the Russian nation.
He added that under the ongoing import-replacement program it would be logical to legislatively oblige all soft drink producers selling their products within Russia to use only Russian-made ingredients certified by Russian state agencies. Under this condition, the US soda makers could continue their presence on the Russian markets, Zotov wrote in the letter.
The last suggestion drew bewildered comment from the head of the Union of Soft Drink Producers, Dmitry Petrov, who told Izvestia that Coke and Pepsi sold in Russia were made from Russian water and sugar, but the main flavor came from imported concentrates with a secret composition.
Petrov added that the ban could lead to a deficit of soft drinks in Russia because Coke and Pepsi together sold about 40 percent of products on this market. Another negative effect would be a decrease in tax revenue and a hike in unemployment, the lobbyist said.
06/01/1974 Novorossiisky beer plant. Production line of Pepsi-cola.
According to Russian commercial database SPARK the overall revenue of Coca-Cola’s Russian branch was 67 billion rubles in 2013 and the company paid 404 million rubles in income tax from this sum ($1.2 billion and 7.34 million respectively at current rate). The figures for PepsiCo’s Russian branch are 80 billion and 158 million rubles ($1.45 billion and $2.87 million at current rate). Coca-Cola employs 11,000 workers in Russia and PepsiCo employs 23,000.
PepsiCo entered the Russian markets much earlier than Coca-Cola – in 1971, back in Soviet times. The drinks produced by this company were scarce at first, but gained more popularity as production was increased ahead of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. After the fall of Communism, PepsiCo’s advertising slogan ‘Generation Pepsi’ became so well-known it became eponymous with young people who had not got the taste for the Socialist lifestyle.
Coca-Cola first came to Russia before the 1980 Olympics but only produced and sold its orange drink Fanta until the Perestroika years under Gorbachev in the late-80s.
This is not the first time foreign soda producers have been the target of Russian politicians. Last August the Communist Party asked the government to impose sanctions on tobacco, alcohol and carbonated drinks from all countries that support sanctions against Russia, saying that such move would be in the interests of national security. Before that the Communists had sought an additional tax on sugar-containing drinks quoting concern over national health.
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Posted: 30 Jun 2015 02:39 AM PDT

In the aftermath of calls to ban the Confederate flag following the Charleston shooting, some Americans signed a petition to ban the stars and stripes itself.
Media analyst Mark Dice’s latest stunt illustrates the stunning level of ignorance surrounding the issue and how easily led Americans are when told to support anything in the name of putting a stop to racism.
Although some refused to sign, when told that Old Glory has a history of “imperialism and racism,” numerous San Diegans agreed, with one man commenting, “It sounds like a great idea.”
“A lot of people are offended by the American flag,” says Dice, to which another individual enthusiastically responds, “I’ll sign this shit man!”
“Support issuing a new American flag for the new world order,” Dice tells the man, to which he agrees, “F**k yeah man!”
“Basically ban the American flag, we’re gonna put up a new American flag over the capital to signify the new world order,” Dice tells another man who signs the petition.
When a woman asks what the new flag will look like, Dice tells her it will include a pyramid and a rainbow for gay pride and to “signify the unity in the new world order.”
“Interesting,” she responds as she signs the petition.
In signing the petition, these individuals sided with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who last week called for the American flag to be banned due to its links with racism.
“I don’t know what the hell the fight is about over the Confederate flag! We need to put the American flag down because we’ve caught as much hell under that as the Confederate flag!” said Farrakhan.
Radio host Laura Ingraham also expressed fears that the American flag would be the next symbol to be targeted by liberals, stating, “[They’re] moving on from the flag to statues, memorials, perhaps Civil War reenactments, until what else? What else becomes an untouchable or unshowable in our society?”
The hashtag #LiberalsNextBan also began trending on Twitter last week, suggesting innumerable other examples of “offensive” symbols of America that leftists will try to censor next.
As Infowars reported last week, students at the University of Texas signed a petition to remove a statue of George Washington and memorials to other founding fathers in another illustration of the politically correct insanity that has emerged in the wake of the Charleston massacre.

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Posted: 30 Jun 2015 02:09 AM PDT


The Australian parliament has issued a harsh verdict on the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal currently being negotiated, calling it an “attack [on] internet freedoms” and seriously lacking in oversight, in a report released Monday.
The “Blind Agreement” report by the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee, criticized the secrecy of the negotiations crafting the deal, which would bind 12 Pacific Rim countries.
The report denounces the “all-or-nothing choice” that Parliament is given to approve or reject a deal, the detail of which they can’t examine until after the deal is passed.
“This does not provide an adequate level of oversight and scrutiny,” the report reads. “Parliament should play a constructive role during negotiations and not merely rubber-stamp agreements that have been negotiated behind closed doors.”
The only parts of the TPP drafts that have been made public so far have come to light via WikiLeaks, which published leaked partial drafts — including a chapter on intellectual property rights.
That chapter alone has the power to “attack internet freedoms and criminalise downloading,” said Greens Senator Scott Ludlam, a member of the committee that wrote the Blind Agreement report and an outspoken critic of the TPP.
“We know from other leaks the TPP covers everything from giving America the right to put Australian Internet users under surveillance, to giving multinational companies the rights to sue governments for the laws they make,” said Senator Ludlam.
The provisions that outline “investor state dispute settlement” (ISDS) — in which a corporation can sue a foreign government over their democratically enacted regulations (labor or environmental protections, for example) — form the basis of some of the strongest outcry over the TPP.
Ludlam called the ISDS provisions a “trojan horse” and cited an example of the abuse of these types of disputes from Australia’s own history.
“The tobacco company Philip Morris is currently using ISDS clauses in an obscure Hong Kong — Australia investment agreement to sue the Australian government for millions of dollars in ‘damages’ cause by our plain packaging legislation,” Ludlam’s website explains. “Our government has spent who knows how many millions of tax dollars fighting the company in an international court for the last four years.”
Big Pharma, Biological Patents Boosted by TPP
There are also concerns that the TPP will do damage to Australia’s public health system.
Deborah Gleeson of LaTrobe University and Dr. Ruth Lopert of the George Washington University, writing in the Brisbane Times, argue that both IP regulations and ISDS could harm Australians’ health care. The US, for example, is seeking a 12-year period of “data protection” under the TPP for biologic products derived from living organisms.
“Patents for minor variations of existing medicines, extensions of patents beyond the 20-year norm, and requirements to link marketing approval to patent status are all elements of the US system that drives massive pharmaceutical expenditure,” and which could be forced on TPP signatory nations, Gleeson and Lopert argue.
“Under proposed Investor State Dispute Settlement provisions litigious US corporations could sue over for example, policies designed to promote affordable access to healthcare or protect public health.”
Fast-Tracking TPP Paves Way for Deal Approval in US
Americans have also mounted a vocal opposition to the “fast-tracking” of the trade deal of the type the Australian report takes issue with — a process that would allow Congress an up or down vote on a final draft of the TPP, but would not allow them to amend any parts of it.
US Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, however, has expressed her disbelief over the level of secrecy, even for the Congress members supposedly tasked with approving or rejecting the deal.
“Follow this:” Boxer recently told the Senate, “You can only take a few of your staffers who happen to have a security clearance, because, God knows why, this is secure, this is classified,” she said.
“The guard says…’You can take notes, but you have to give them back to me, and I’ll put them in a file.’ So I said: ‘Wait a minute. I’m going to take notes and then you’re going to take my notes away from me and then you’re going to have them in a file, and you can read my notes? Not on your life.'”
Congress passed that fast track authority, and the president signed it into law, last week. For the contentious vote to go through, Obama relied on Republican support — alienating elements of the Democratic base that support robust labor and environmental protections.
Bernie Sanders — running for the Democratic nomination to be the party’s 2016 presidential candidate — is hoping to scoop up some of those disaffected Democratic voters with his opposition to the TPP and similar deals.
“In my view, US trade policies for the last 35, 40 years have been a disaster,” Sanders told the Guardian during a campaign stop. “They have resulted, and I think it has been objectively documented, in the loss of millions of decent paying jobs, and a race to the bottom which is lowering wages.”
The approval of the trade promotion authority mean the deal — which would cover an estimated 40% of global trade — has taken a significant step forwards.
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Posted: 30 Jun 2015 02:01 AM PDT


Whistleblower website WikiLeaks says the US National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdropped on two successive French finance ministers and the country’s high-stakes export contracts, trade and budget talks over a decade.
According to new documents released by the transparency website on Monday, the NSA wiretapped the communications of two finance ministers Francois Baroin and Pierre Moscovici and three other senior officials between 2004 and 2012.
It added that the agency called intelligence services from Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand to collect information on France’s export bids worth more than $200 million from 2002-2012 in sectors including oil, gas, telecommunications, electricity, nuclear energy, transport and health.
The WikiLeaks documents say the NSA spying targeted information about France’s budget and trade policy as well as French companies’ role in the oil-for-food program in Iraq in the 1990s.
Neither France nor the US made an immediate reaction to the leaked documents in French publications Mediapart and Liberation.
The Wikileaks documents did not name a specific French company.
The new documents came a week after Wikileaks reported that the NSA had spied on the last three French presidents from 2006 to 2012.
The NSA wiretapped the former French presidents, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, as well the current leader, Francois Hollande, WikiLeaks said in a press statement published on June 23, citing top secret intelligence reports and technical documents.
WikiLeaks said the NSA surveillance targeted the communications of Hollande (2012–present), Sarkozy (2007–2012) and Chirac (1995–2007), as well as French cabinet ministers and the French ambassador to the US.
Hollande reacted to the news by calling an emergency defense council meeting on June 24.
After last week’s revelations, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls also called for an intelligence “code of conduct” between allies.
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Posted: 30 Jun 2015 01:49 AM PDT


The market value of European banks has shrunk by more than €50 billion after Greece shut down its banks until July, 6, the day after the referendum on the bailout deal is held.
The Stoxx 600 Banks Index fell by 4.4 percent, the biggest daily decline since November 2011, Bloomberg reports. Among the biggest losers is Portugues Banco Comercial down 9.1 percent, and Italy’s Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena which slumped 7.2 percent. Spain’s Banco Popular Espanol has lost 6.5 percent and Banco de Sabadell was down 5.4 percent.
“In the short term we should see a very negative mood on markets…Sovereign bonds, banks of peripheral countries, will be the most affected by uncertainty,” the CEO of Milan-based brokerage Marzotto SIM Jacopo Ceccatelli told Bloomberg.
On Monday global stocks suffered their sharpest decline in about six months.
DAX of Germany has suffered the most, falling 4.17 percent this morning. In Asia, where trading finished by the time of publication Shanghai Composite showed the worst result, closing at 3.34 percent lower.
The Euro is also losing momentum against the US dollar, having gone down 0.74 percent on Monday as of 10:42 am MSK. By 06:59 GMT the euro was trading at $1.1089, still down 0.7 percent on the day but well clear of a four-week low at $1.0953 touched in Asian trading.
In Greece, the banks will remain closed for a week and cash withdrawals will be limited at €60 a day, as the government said it would hold a referendum this Sunday to let the people decide what to do with Athens’ multibillion-euro debt.
IMF chief Christine Lagarde told the BBC on Saturday that the planned referendum on the terms of any new bailout plan will be invalid, as on Tuesday the current program expires.
The Greeks would be voting on proposals that no longer exist, she said.
The ECB refused to expand its emergency liquidity assistance (ELA). As of June 23, the ELA program had lent Greek banks about €89 billion.
The EU Tax Commissioner Pierre Moscovici hasn’t lost hope of reaching an eleventh hour deal.
London-based market strategist Michael Ingram at BGC Partners told Bloomberg that a Greek default is almost inevitable.
“Without a complete capitulation from the troika, Greece will default on the IMF tomorrow and emergency liquidity assistance should be withdrawn on Wednesday. I can’t see anyone stepping in before Wednesday ahead of an ELA withdrawal,” he said.
Greece is due to repay €1.6 billion to the IMF by June 30. If it is unable to do so, the country could technically default.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 12:45