Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Sunday, 10 January 2016

The European Union Times


Posted: 10 Jan 2016 09:50 AM PST

Back in October I told you that Hillary Clinton’s email troubles were anything but over, and that the scandal over her misuse of communications while she was Secretary of State was sure to get worse.
Sure enough, EmailGate continues to be a thorn in the side of Hillary’s presidential campaign and may have just entered a new, potentially explosive phase with grave ramifications, both political and legal.
The latest court-ordered dump of her email, just placed online by the State Department, brings more troubles for Team Hillary. This release of over 3,000 pages includes 66 “Unclassified” messages that the State Department subsequently determined actually were classified; however, all but one of those 66 were deemed Confidential, the lowest classification level, while one was found to be Secret, bringing the total of Secret messages discovered so far to seven. In all, 1,340 Hillary emails at State have been reassessed as classified.
There are gems here. It’s hard to miss the irony of Hillary expressing surprise about a State Department staffer using personal email for work, which the Secretary of State noted in her own personal email. More consequential was Hillary’s ordering a staffer to send classified talking points for a coming meeting via a non-secure fax machine, stripped of their classification markings. This appears to be a clear violation of Federal law and the sort of thing that is a career-ender, or worse, for normals. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee termed that July 2011 incident “disturbing,” and so it is to anyone acquainted with U.S. Government laws and regulations regarding the handling of classified material.
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Posted: 10 Jan 2016 08:41 AM PST
Official figures show inflation in Brazil last year hit the highest level since 2002.
Official figures show that Brazil’s inflation hit the highest level in 13 years in 2015 over what many believe has been a result of economic mismanagement that has been worsened by a political crisis in Latin America’s biggest economy.
The government announced on Friday that annual inflation reached 10.67 percent in 2015. The figure was the highest since 2002 and more than double the government’s 4.5 percent target, AFP reported.
In recession since the second quarter of last year, Brazil is suffering from rising unemployment and a drop in investor confidence. Both have been fueled by a deteriorating political crisis involving President Dilma Rousseff who has been caught in a scandal related to the state oil firm Petrobras.
The country’s inflation has specifically gained steam in recent months in light of the proceedings for the impeachment of President Rousseff.
Food prices have also picked up amid sharp currency devaluation in the country as well as impacts of severe weather conditions in the south.
Brazilian Rousseff has promised to control public spending to quell inflation, which has weighed on business and consumer confidence.
Current inflation is much milder than in previous episodes, but it has been accompanied by the worst recession in decades. Analysts forecast an economic contraction of more than 3 percent this year and more than 1 million jobs lost.
The price spikes have fueled popular discontent against President Rousseff as Brazilians recall several bouts of hyperinflation in the past century.
The IMF expects Brazil will stay in recession in 2016. The World Bank on Wednesday forecast a 2.5 percent contraction this year.
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Posted: 10 Jan 2016 08:35 AM PST

Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) Lassina Zerbo stated that CTBTO monitoring stations picked up an “unusual seismic event” in the DPRK’s nuclear test site area and experts are currently conducting tests to establish the nature of the recent explosion.
“North Korea: the explosion was not sufficiently powerful to call it a hydrogen bomb, but the hypothesis that the fission was doped by hydrogen isotopes is plausible,” Zerbo wrote in his official Twitter account.
​North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un said Sunday that Pyongyang ‘s alleged hydrogen bomb test was an act of self-defense carried out in a defining year for the North Korean ideology’s revolutionary cause.
On Wednesday, Zerbo confirmed that CTBTO monitoring stations picked up an “unusual seismic event” in the DPRK’s nuclear test site area. CTBTO experts are currently conducting tests to establish the nature of the recent explosion.
North Korea declared itself a nuclear power in 2005 and conducted nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013, having earlier withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
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Posted: 10 Jan 2016 08:31 AM PST

A new German police report has described the situation during the mass assaults on women in Cologne on NYE as “chaotic and shameful.” It outlined the highly inappropriate behavior of perpetrators, described as migrants, who demanded respect from police.
Groups of men bombarded police with fireworks and pelted people with glass bottles while officers unsuccessfully attempted to prevent mass assaults against women in Cologne on NYE, a new police report revealed.
The new police report outlined by Der Spiegel and Bild newspapers on Thursday described the situation in Cologne on New Year’s Eve as “chaotic and shameful” as the police became too overwhelmed to prevent the “fights, thefts, sexual assaults against women.”
The author of the report said that at some point police feared there could be fatalities.
Masses of “heavily intoxicated men” which were described by witnesses as migrants bombarded police with fireworks and pelted with glass bottles, the report said.
“When we arrived, our vehicles were pelted with firecrackers,” the author of the report said. “In the forecourt and on the cathedral steps were a thousand people, mostly males of an immigrant background who were indiscriminately throwing fireworks and bottles into the crowd.”
The perpetrators reportedly tore up residence permits in front of police saying: “You can’t touch me. I’ll just go back tomorrow and get a new one.”
The author of the report also cited one of the men engaged in the unrest as saying: “I’m a Syrian! You have to treat me kindly! [Chancellor Angela] Merkel invited me.”
The German Interior Ministry stated on Friday that 18 of the 29 men were asylum seekers, Reuters reported.
A police officer anonymously told The Express newspaper that his squad had detained several people who had “only been in Germany for a few weeks.”
“14 were from Syria and one was from Afghanistan,” he said.
The level of disrespect towards police was “like I have never experienced in my 29 years of public service,” the author concluded.
The author of the report said that police officers who had been trying to reach people calling out for help were prevented from pushing their way through. Orders to leave the premises of the train station were ignored as well.
A lack of resources prevented security representatives from taking repeated offenders into custody as well as promptly registering all of the complaints at the scene, the report says. Witnesses were reportedly threatened when they tried to help identify the perpetrators.
Cologne police were not prepared to deal with the mass sexual assaults, the city’s police chief told RT on Wednesday.
“Eventually we had a situation where a large group of men were going after women. We did intervene and help. But I’ll admit that we were totally bewildered by it all. We have never encountered incidents like this before and we weren’t prepared for it,” Cologne Chief of Police, Wolfgang Albers, said.
German media said that police were “frustrated at their inability to help.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in turn, announced on Thursday that she would consider increasing police numbers and amending relevant laws.
“What happened at New Year is completely unacceptable,” Merkel told a news conference in Berlin. “The feeling women had in this case of being completely defenseless and at mercy is for me personally intolerable and so it is important that everything that happened must come out into the open.”
Merkel stressed the necessity to continue reviewing deportation policies and “send a clear signal to people who do not want to stick to our legal framework.”
The initial police report following the attacks in Cologne described the situation as “relaxed.” Local authorities later admitted the report was incorrect.
Police said in a statement on Thursday that about 121 criminal cases have been reported, including two cases of rape, while 16 suspects have been detained.
Merkel has been criticized for her open-armed migrant policy; in 2015 Germany was the EU country to welcome the highest number of refugees. In her New Year’s address, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for unity and solidarity across generations, social and ethnic backgrounds, and termed the ongoing refugee crisis an opportunity for the country.
European Studies professor, Laslo Maracs, told RT that the incident in Cologne stems from the fact that authorities couldn’t be further from tackling the refugee crisis.
“We see often in such cases that the victims are blamed: the victims should follow a code of conduct, and not the people who have been committing crimes taken responsible for the things they have been doing!”
“It shows me that we are very far from solving integration puzzles, from building a society where more cultures could be accommodated or adopted. It shows that there is a lot of panic among city and regional governors. The situation is not under control,” he said.
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Posted: 10 Jan 2016 05:26 AM PST

A stunning new Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) report circulating in the Kremlin today states that one of the United States Navy’s top commanders was relieved of his command a few hours ago after he sent out an “email/posting” revealing that President Barack Obama was in the process of purchasing a multi-million dollar seaside luxury villa in the United Arab Emirates city (UAE) of Dubai.
According to this report, the Commander of the US Navy’s Carrier Strike Group 15, Rear Admiral Rick Williams, posted a “pointed” query on 8 January [since deleted] to the US Naval Institute’s “Readiness Kill Chain” “recipients/responders” list as to why Navy security and intelligence personal had been dispatched from Naval Support Facility Thurmont(aka Camp David) to Dubai on what he termed an “Obama house hunting mission”.
Within 18 hours of Admiral Williams posting this query, this report continues, the US Navy’s Third Fleet Commander, Vice Admiral Nora Tyson, acting on direct orders from her Commander-In-Chief, President Barack Obama, fired Admiral Williams stating her action was “due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command” because of “allegations of his misuse of government computer equipment”.
When further questioned by Russian Today journalists via email to provide more details about Admiral Williams firing, this report notes, the Pentagon failed to reply—but then began releasing “anonymous” stories to the US press that Admiral Williams had been viewing pornography on his computer.
To such an absurd claim that Admiral Williams (or any US Navy officer or seaman in fact) could view pornography on their computers, SVR analysts in this report note, is an impossibility due to the US Navy/Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI), which not only blocks such sites, but also requires each single user to log in with their own unique password and username and whose records are meticulously kept and reviewed on a daily basis (thanks to Edward Snowden)—and which one would logically think one of the highest ranking officers in the US Navy would surely be aware of.
Luxury seaside mansion in Dubai purchased this week for President Obama.
As to the “Obama house hunting mission” Admiral Williams was making his query about before being fired, this report continues, SVR intelligence “assests” in the UAE identified it as being a luxury seaside villa located in the Palm Jumeirah development of Dubai being offered for sale at the price of $4.9 million (18 million United Arab Emirates Dirham), and which a deposit on it was made this past week by the Washington D.C. based global public affairs company Podesta Group.
Important to note about the Podesta Group, this report notes, is that its leader is Tony Podesta, who aside from being one of the most powerful oligarchs in the US, is a close personal friend of President Obama too.
Equally important to note about the Podesta Group’s purchasing of this Dubai luxury seaside mansion for President Obama, this report says, is that is being legally represented in this purchase by the equally powerful Washington D.C. based global law firm DLA Piper—both of whom have long been identified as being the nexus power brokers behind Saudi Arabia’s massive multi-million dollar “PR machine” operating behind the scenes corrupting the entire United States political establishment.
To if Saudi Arabia itself is behind the purchase of this luxury seaside villa in Dubai for President Obama this report doesn’t state—but to the cost of it being to high after it cost the job of one of America’s top Naval Commanders is beyond dispute.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 19:36