Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Tuesday 18 August 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 17 Aug 2015 03:36 PM PDT

Donbass is at the threshold of renewal of full-scale warfare, as Kiev violates every single term of the Minsk ceasefire protocol on daily basis, bombing both residential and public areas on the east of Ukraine, says American journalist Stephen Lendman.
Special troops from the US and the UK are actively preparing Ukrainian forces for the escalation of conflict in the Donbass region, Lendman wrote in his column.
Eduard Basurin, the spokesperson for the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, said that the Ukrainian military had attacked the territory of DPR, using tanks and heavy armament in violation of Minsk agreements on August 10.
“They knew that we had lived up to our commitment to withdraw all heavy weapons, including with a caliber under 100mm (from the disengagement line), and decided to take advantage of the situation to move deep into the DPR’s territory,” Basurin said as quoted by CounterPunch.
The ceasefire agreement has never been observed since its establishment in February and “dozens of shellings” occur in Donbass every day, Lendman said, citing LPR’s special envoy Vladislav Deinego.
“Obama wants war, not peace – using Kiev proxies to do his dirty work,” Lendman wrote.
According to Deinego, peace was never an aim for Kiev as well. Despite the collapse of Ukraine’s economy, state authorities reserved another $250 million for expanding military might in Donbass. And at the same time the country badly lacks money for “constructive purposes,” Lendman added.
Meanwhile, British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon announced the UK would train twice as many soldiers for Ukraine’s army by the end of 2015. So far, UK coaches prepared over a thousand Ukrainian troops for active warfare.
With help from the US and the UK in preparing the Ukraine’s military forces, Kiev may start full-scale aggression any day now, Lendman concluded.
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Posted: 17 Aug 2015 03:31 PM PDT

A billionaire hedge fund manager linked to George Soros bought up gold shares after multiple financial experts warned a stock market crash is coming.
Stanley Druckenmiller, who runs Duquesne Capital after previously working for Soros, now owns 2.88 million shares of SPDR Gold Trust, making it his largest single holding and long position.
That means if the price of gold goes up, Druckenmiller profits tremendously.
“Druckenmiller’s [SPDR Gold Trust] stake had a value of $300.3 million at the end of the quarter based on the June 30 closing share price of $104.27,” Business Insider reported. “Druckenmiller has previously said that when he sees something that really excites him he will ‘bet the ranch on it.’”
Multiple financial experts, including Dr. Ron Paul and Peter Schiff, have warned of a coming economic collapse, and Schiff in particular said gold will rise in response to the Fed’s non-stop creation of money called “quantitative easing” which devalues the dollar.
“We’ll always have to do [quantitative easing] to offset the damage from the previous QE,” Schiff told MarketWatch. “It’s like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. That’s all the Fed has—gasoline, and everyone expects the fire to go out. It can’t go out.”
“You need to be long gold and there is going to be a huge payday.”
And that’s exactly what Druckenmiller has done.
Druckenmiller rose to prominence in 1988 when Soros hired him to run the Quantum Group of Funds, which became famous for “breaking the Bank of England” by shorting the British pound sterling in 1992.
And now it appears the entire global economy is breaking apart.
“Right now we’re starting to see the whole thing coming apart; I mean we look at Detroit as an example, we see what’s happening in Greece, they’re worrying about what’s going to happen after Greece is actually recognized as totally bankrupt and there will be other countries,” Dr. Paul said onthe Alex Jones Show.
The former congressman also echoed Schiff’s prediction that the Fed would keep trying to delay an inevitable collapse through QE.
“But that’s coming to an end,” Dr. Paul said. “The day of reckoning is at hand.”
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Posted: 17 Aug 2015 03:10 PM PDT

Telecom giant AT&T Inc has played a bigger than previously thought role in helping the National Security Agency (NSA) spy on swathes of internet traffic, which included wiretapping all UN headquarters’ communications, The New York Times has revealed.
The report is based on leaked documents, which date from 2003 to 2013 and were provided by whistleblower and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The files describe the NSA’s relationship with the telecommunications company as “highly collaborative,” citing AT&T’s “extreme willingness to help.”
A decades-long partnership has helped the NSA to accomplish a whole range of classified activities, including providing technical assistance to carry out a secret court order that enabled wiretapping of all internet communications at the headquarters of the United Nations, which is an AT&T customer.
AT&T also gave the spy agency access to billions of emails that landed in the domestic networks.
The documents explain that the telecom giant was able to deliver under various legal loopholes international and foreign-to-foreign internet communications even if they passed through networks located in the US.
To show the extent of AT&T’s involvement, the files revealed that the company installed surveillance equipment in at least 17 of its major US internet hubs, thought to be a lot more than Verizon installed. AT&T’s engineers were also the first ones to get their hands on this new surveillance technologies created by the NSA, the newspaper reported.
Further proving a unique relationship is the NSA’s top-secret budget from 2013, which doubled the funding of any other cooperation of similar size, according to the documents.
“This is a partnership, not a contractual relationship,” one document said, warning NSA officials to be polite and professional. “[AT&T’s] corporate relationships provide unique accesses to other telecoms and ISPs [Internet service providers],” said another.
In 2011 AT&T began to supply NSA with over 1.1 billion domestic cellphone calling records per day in 2011, which was “a push to get this flow operational prior to the 10th anniversary of 9/11,” the Times reported.
The company also gave access to foreign-to-foreign internet traffic, which was especially valuable to NSA. This was possible because a massive amount of the world’s network communications pass through US cables.
AT&T spokesman Brad Burns told Reuters that the company does not “voluntarily provide information to any investigating authorities other than if a person’s life is in danger and time is of the essence. For example, in a kidnapping situation we could provide help tracking down called numbers to assist law enforcement.”
In June 2013, Snowden, a former NSA contractor, blew the whistle on the agency’s mass surveillance of Americans, handing over an archive of documents to journalist Glenn Greenwald and selected media organizations around the world. After the US government revoked his passport, he was stranded in a Moscow airport, reportedly on his way to Latin America. Snowden then applied for temporary asylum in Russia, where he has been living and working since.
The US government continues to pursue Snowden, insisting that he stole classified information, and betrayed the nation, claiming that his “dangerous” decision had “severe consequences” for the security of the United States.
Others, however, have hailed Snowden as a “hero” who has disclosed unconstitutional activities by the US government.
The latest telephone survey by Morning Consult, which asked 2,000 Americans, showed 33 percent of respondents speaking out in support of a pardon for Snowden, 43 percent speaking out against such a move, and 24 percent abstaining. Meanwhile, 53 percent of those asked said they would support the government’s position on prosecuting the whistleblower.
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Posted: 17 Aug 2015 03:04 PM PDT
This handout photo made available by public broadcaster ZDF television channel shows German Chancellor Angela Merkel (L) during recording of the “Summer Interview” with ZDF’s Bettina Schausten in a studio in Berlin on August 16, 2015.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel says the issue of migrants coming to Europe could become a bigger challenge for the European Union than the Greek debt crisis.
Speaking to German public broadcaster ZDF on Sunday, Merkel warned that waves of refugees would “preoccupy Europe much, much more than the issue of Greece and the stability of the euro.”
“The asylum issue could be the next grand European project, in which we will see if we are really able to take concerted action,” Merkel said, adding that this challenge could not be met “if we operate in standard mode”.
The German chancellor also said that she had already spoken to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker about the need for the EU to develop a common policy on asylum seekers who are marching towards Europe.
She also condemned a recent spate of attacks on shelters and tents used by migrants in Germany, saying “this is unworthy of our country. There is no justification for this.”
The German Interior Ministry has estimated that a total of 450,000 people will apply for asylum by the end of 2015.
Merkel also called for the EU to compile a list of “safe countries of origin”, where citizens are not under threat of violence or persecution.
The UN figures show that in 2015 alone, about 2,300 migrants lost their lives taking the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean to EU shores in smuggler boats. Most of these migrants are fleeing hardships inflicted on them and their families in conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, blamed by many on the US-led military interventions in countries like Iraq, Libya, and Syria.
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Posted: 17 Aug 2015 02:35 PM PDT

The death toll in a series of explosions in the Chinese city of Tianjin has increased to 112.
The death toll in a series of explosions that have occurred in the warehouse of hazardous substances in the Chinese city of Tianjin has increased to 112, with the identity of only twenty-four people known so far, Chinese Central Television (CCTV) reported on Sunday.
Earlier, it was reported that the death toll from Wednesday’s massive blasts in the Chinese port of Tianjin had reached 104 people.
“The death toll has risen to 112 people, 24 people were identified,” the CCTV reported.
On Saturday, new smaller explosions were heard in Tianjin, which prompted the Chinese authorities to start an evacuation of the citizens within an at least 1.1-mile range of the explosion site. The police confirmed the highly toxic chemical sodium cyanide had been found near the site.
On Wednesday, two blasts occurred in a warehouse in the Chinese city of Tianjin, a key port and petrochemical hub northeast of Beijing. The powerful explosions and a following fire were triggered by flammable goods stored at the warehouse along with hazardous chemicals such as sodium cyanide.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 20:44