Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Saturday, 19 September 2015

The European Union Times



Posted: 18 Sep 2015 02:26 PM PDT

Former Secretary of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee Geir Lundestad reportedly notes in his new book that the body “didn’t achieve what it had hoped for” when it gave Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt and conferred the prestigious award on him in 2009.
While it is quite rare for Nobel officials to openly discuss the nuts and bolts of their secretive committee, the former director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute has apparently owned up in his memoir ‘Secretary of Peace’, to be released on Thursday, that the panel had expected the award to somewhat challenge Obama, who received the Nobel Peace Prize during his first term.
The Norwegian historian told AP that the committee “thought it would strengthen Obama and it didn’t have this effect.” The five members of the Nobel Committee, often former politicians, are appointed by the Norwegian parliament. The coveted award was met with an avalanche of criticism instead. An army of opponents noted that Obama had made no foreign policy achievements worthy of the prize in less than nine months in office. On top of this, he received the award while the US was engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Even many of Obama’s supporters believed that the prize was a mistake,” Lundestad wrote in excerpts of the book, read by AP.
“In that sense the committee didn’t achieve what it had hoped for,” Lundestad, who stepped down last year after 25 years as the non-voting secretary of the secretive committee, added.
Lundestad has also reportedly noted that Obama was taken aback by the award and that his staff investigated whether other winners had skipped the prize ceremony in Oslo.
“In the White House they quickly realized that they needed to travel to Oslo,” Lundestad wrote.
At that point “his cabinet had already asked whether anyone had previously refused to travel to Oslo to receive the prize,” Lundestad wrote, according to AFP.
“In broad strokes, the answer was no.
“No Nobel Peace Prize ever elicited more attention than the 2009 prize to Barack Obama,” Lundestad wrote, AFP reported.
He reportedly recalled that then-Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store tried the following year to dissuade the panel from awarding the prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo for fear it would sour Norway’s relations with Beijing.
“During my 25 years [on the committee], I don’t ever recall seeing anything like that,” Lundestad said.
Ignoring the minister’s warnings, the Nobel committee honored the human rights activist in 2010, leaving Oslo’s ties with Beijing frozen ever since.
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Posted: 18 Sep 2015 02:18 PM PDT
US banks might have rigged another huge market, Bloomberg reports.
Dealers including top American banks which control the $12.8 trillion US Treasury market rigged bond auctions for years, Bloomberg reports.
Citing a federal antitrust lawsuit, the financial data and news provider says the giant Jewish owned banks such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley coordinated to manipulate Treasury auctions.
The 115-page lawsuit has been filed in Manhattan federal court by a number of law firms against 22 primary dealers “who serve as the backbone of Treasury trading”, Bloomberg said.
It comes as the US Justice Department probes whether information in the Treasury auction market is being shared improperly by financial institutions.
The US Treasury market helps set interest rates on everything from home mortgages to credit cards and is often described as the largest, most-liquid market in the world.
Earlier this year, Bloomberg revealed that US Treasury traders at some banks learned of customer demand hours before auctions, and were communicating with their counterparts at other firms via chat rooms as recently as last year.
A similar lawsuit has been filed against Wall Street dealers.
The US Treasury initially sells bonds to primary dealers like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley who in turn sell them to clients, creating a secondary market for trading.
A probe into their practices found that more than two-thirds of a certain type of Treasury auction have been rigged from 2009 to 2015 while there were issues with other auctions, too.
“The only plausible explanation is that Defendants coordinated artificially to influence the results of the auctions in the primary market,” according to the lawsuit.
The dealers artificially boosted yields while lowering prices when auctions were initially issued before selling them at higher prices and correspondingly lower yields in the secondary markets, an analysis of their dealings found.
The analysis has been conducted by a New York University adjunct associate professor whose technique helped uncover rigging of the London interbank offer rate, or Libor which resulted in about $20 billion of fines.
According to Bloomberg, a similar lawsuit has been filed against Wall Street dealers who are accused of colluding to push prices artificially low at auctions, and to drive prices for when-issued securities to artificially high levels.
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Posted: 18 Sep 2015 01:35 PM PDT


Top Iman Sheikh Muhammad Ayed recently gave a speech in which he asserted that Muslims should use the migrant crisis to breed with European citizens and “conquer their countries”.
Speaking at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Ayed stated that European countries were not rolling out the red carpet for migrants because they were compassionate, but because Europe was in dire need of a new source of labor.
“Europe has become old and decrepit and needs human reinforcement….they are not motivated by compassion for the Levant, its people and its refugees,” said Ayed, adding, “Soon, we will trample them underfoot, Allah willing.”
“Throughout Europe, all the hearts are enthused with hatred toward Muslims. They wish that we were dead, but they have lost their fertility, so they look for fertility in our midst,” he added.
“We will give them fertility! We will breed children with them, because we shall conquer their countries!”
Ayed stated that “whether you like it or not,” Americans, Italians, Germans and the French will be forced to take the “refugees”.
“We shall soon collect them in the name of the coming Caliphate. We will say to you: these are our sons. Send them, or we will send our armies to you,” concluded Ayed.
Ayed correctly outlines the fact that Europe is facing demographic disaster because its citizens have stopped having children.
Italy’s current birth rate of 8.4 per 1,000 people is the lowest since 1861 and the picture is much the same across the rest of Europe, where population is only increasing as a result of mass immigration.
Birth rates in the west are far lower than those in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, which is where most of the migrants are coming from.
The notion of using mass migration as a form of stealth jihad is outlined in the Koran, which states, “And whoever emigrates for the cause of Allah will find on the earth many locations and abundance.”
“To emigrate in the cause of Allah – that is, to move to a new land in order to bring Islam there, is considered in Islam to be a highly meritorious act,” writes Robert Spencer.
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Posted: 18 Sep 2015 01:13 PM PDT


Officials in Croatia have announced that the Eastern European country is buckling under the flood of thousands of refugees who have entered the country on their path to reach Western Europe, asking newcomers to go to neighboring Hungary or Slovenia instead.
Speaking at a news conference in the border town of Tovarnik on Friday, Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said that his country could no longer cope with the trend, and that asylum seekers could not stay.
‘Welcome to Croatia! (Make sure you leave, though!)’
“What else can we do? You are welcome in Croatia and you can pass through Croatia. But go on. Not because we don’t like you, but because this is not your final destination,” Milanovic said.
The premier also called upon the 28-member European Union (EU) to step in and help, saying, “We have a heart but we also have a brain.”
Earlier in the day, Zagreb began transporting hundreds of refugees to the border with Hungary.
However, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto slammed Croatia for encouraging the asylum seekers to illegally cross the border to his country.
“Instead of helping people, Croatia is encouraging masses and masses of people to commit a criminal offence – illegal crossing of the border is a criminal offense,” Szijjarto told a news conference.
Meanwhile, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said the first phase of a 41-kilometer (25-mile) barrier on the border with Croatia will be completed on Friday.
He said as many as 1,800 soldiers and 800 police will be being sent to the border with Croatia over the next days to bar refugee entries.
The developments come only two days after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was “shocked” by Hungary’s actions, saying people “fleeing war and persecution… must be treated with human dignity.”
Top refugee spot
The Slovenian Interior Ministry also said on Friday that the nation of 2.05 million has no basis on which it would allow a corridor for refugees en route to Western Europe.
“At the moment, we have no basis on which we could form a corridor,” the ministry’s State Secretary Bostjan Sefic said.
Germany has become the top destination for hundreds of thousands of people fleeing wars and misery in Syria and elsewhere. The country is expecting up to a million refugees in 2015, up from 200,000 last year.
Many of the asylum seekers reach Germany after taking a perilous route through the Balkans and Central Europe.
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Posted: 18 Sep 2015 01:04 PM PDT

Tsunami waves triggered by a massive 8.3 earthquake have reached Chilean shores, flooding the streets and forcing people to seek shelter on higher ground. Authorities have kept a high alert level in place for most of the coastline.
Chile’s coastal city of Coquimbo has been hit by waves measuring up to 4.5 meters above normal sea level, Reuters reported citing the country’s navy.
Videos and photos of flooding on the streets of Chilen coastal cities have surfaced online showing some of the damage caused by the the water flow.
Chile’s national emergency office has suspended tsunami warnings in the Aysen, Los Rios, Los Lagos and Magallanes regions, as well as Isla San Felix and Juan Fernandez islands. However, the rest of the coastline remains under tsunami alert.
There were no immediate reports of any major damage caused by the tsunami waves.
Earlier, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center cautioned that some coastal areas of Chile could see waves reaching more than three meters above the tide level.
A tsunami advisory has also been issued for Hawaii, although no major waves are expected to hit the state. Nonetheless, authorities warned of possible strong currents and sea level changes.
Minor waves were also expected to hit parts of Southern California.
Death toll of the earthquake in Chile has risen to ten, Chilean Interior Minister Jorge Burgos said at a press conference, La Nacion reports. He said that the life in the affected area is going back to normal and called on the population to calm down ruling out fuel and food delivery interruptions. He added that it was one of the 30 most powerful earthquakes in the world history.
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