Tuesday, 5 January 2016

The European Union Times

US Army Ill-Equipped to Face Growing Threats

Posted: 04 Jan 2016 02:47 PM PST

The US Army has continued to shrink in size in recent years, leaving it poorly equipped to respond to international threats that have only grown, the president of the Association of the US Army said.
In an editorial published Monday by Breaking Defense, retired General Gordon Sullivan said the Army is “confronted by turmoil abroad and hindered at home by politicians unable or unwilling to agree on core American needs.”
According to Sullivan, who also served as Army Chief of Staff, American leaders “have developed a mindset that avoids reality,” one in which the United States will defeat global terrorism and other threats through “the snap of fingers by a new commander in chief, rather than by rebuilding a battle-worn and underfunded military.”
The Army is reeling from more than a decade of war and budgetary cuts, but international threats will not wait as the service recovers, Sullivan writes. Similarly, decisions on national security priorities and defense spending cannot be put off until after the 2016 presidential election, he said.
The number of combined active Army Guard and Army Reserve soldiers is expected to drop by 27,000 this year to a little more than 1 million soldiers. Those diminished numbers are somewhat hidden by special forces that carry out missions once assigned to regular soldiers.
The presence of those elite forces in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, do not “eliminate the need for the Army to be prepared to redeploy a sizable force if that is what is required to blunt Daesh advances,” Sullivan writes.
“I wouldn’t label our under-resourced Army as weak, as it remains the world’s premier land force even now, but we are showing timidity by responding with tough talk but little action to situations where quick, decisive use of force is needed,” Sullivan writes.
“Our inaction and hesitation feed an emerging view that the US is unlikely to do anything and if we act, will do only the minimum in terms of showing the flag without going all-in for the victory.”
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Chinese stock markets halted after tumbling 7% in 1st 2016 session, dragging Europe down

Posted: 04 Jan 2016 02:29 PM PST

Trading was suspended on Chinese markets after stocks tumbled 7 percent in the first trading of the year, triggering the new “circuit breaker” system limiting volatility, which was introduced in December. The fall from Asia led to a slump in European stocks as well.
The 15-minute suspension happened about 90 minutes before market’s regular closure and followed a brief 15-minute halt early in the afternoon, when the main indexes had shed 5 percent.
The blue-chip CSI300 index ended down 7 percent by the time the trading was stopped early, while the Shanghai Composite Index lost 6.9 percent. The technology-driven Shenzhen Composite was the worst performer, falling by more than 8 percent.
The market plunge comes after the publication on Friday of an official manufacturing survey focusing on larger, state-owned Chinese companies. The survey showed a fifth month of contraction, spelling bad news for the country’s economy. A similar private survey focusing on smaller firms came on Monday, indicating a 10th consecutive month of shrinking manufacturing.
Another factor is the imminent removal of a ban on major shareholders from selling stakes, which was put in place during the summer stock crash and is expected to be lifted Friday. The ban was put in place in July as Chinese stocks were falling fast. They have since rebounded 20 percent.
“The slump apparently triggered intensified selling, while the triggering of the circuit breaker seems to have heightened panic, as liquidity was suddenly gone and this is something no one has experienced before,” said Gu Yongtao, a strategist at Cinda Securities, told Reuters.
“It was a stampede,” he added.
The Chinese tumble and the accelerated depreciation of the yuan drove markets elsewhere in Asia into the red. Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average fell 3.1 percent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell 2.7 percent and South Korea’s Kospi lost 2.2 percent.
Australia weathered the session better, offsetting the Asian turmoil with a jump in oil prices caused by the brewing conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which boosted Australia’s energy sector. The S&P/ASX 200 index closed down 0.5 percent.
European markets slumped Monday, with the pan-European STOXX 600 down over 2.4 percent and Germany’s down over 4 percent. London’s FTSE 100 performed better, losing 2.4 percent while France’s CAC 40 was down over 2.6 percent.
Brent crude was up as much as 3 percent to $38.40 a barrel earlier Monday amid the sectarian standoff caused by the execution of prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr by Saudi Arabia.
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Jeb Bush can't shame an already shameful family - US writer to Trump

Posted: 04 Jan 2016 02:16 PM PST

Someone needs to explain the history of the Bush family to Donald Trump, says American writer and political analyst Mickey Z.
The author of Occupy This Book and Occupy These Photos made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Sunday, after US presidential candidate Donald Trump denounced his Republican rival Jeb Bush as “a total embarrassment to both himself and his family.”
In a series of tweets on Saturday, Trump slammed Bush’s lackluster presidential campaign which he said has brought shame to his family.
Bush’s brother, George W. Bush, and his father, George H.W. Bush, both were presidents.
“So, Donald J. Trump called Jeb Bush ‘a total embarrassment to both himself and his family’? I’m going to skip all the obvious punchlines and instead, take a brief look at the poor, embarrassed Bushes,” said Mickey Z.
“Jeb’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, worked in the late 1930s and early 1940s to financially support Nazi Germany and had to hire fellow Hitler fan, Allen Dulles, to defend him when he was indicted under the ‘Trading with the Enemy’ Act.
“Jeb’s father, George H.W. Bush, was director of the CIA and later president. His lengthy list of domestic and foreign crimes includes the lethal sanctions against Iraq that ultimately killed a half-million children under the age of five.
“Jeb’s brother, George W. Bush, well…do I really have to detail his rap sheet?
“Finally, Jeb’s mother, Barbara Bush, once opined: ‘I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.’
“When asked, in 2003, about the ‘strain’ her son George W. was under for launching an invasion of Iraq, Barbara famously replied: ‘Why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it’s gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it’s, it’s not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that? And watch him suffer.’
“This decidedly incomplete examination of the Bushes leaves me with one essential question for Trump: Is it really possible to embarrass this family?”
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US Congressman says Obama’s immigration policy is race-based

Posted: 04 Jan 2016 02:01 PM PST

Alabama congressman, Mo Brooks, was responsible for the “War on Whites” meme which stormed the web in 2014.
Recently, he went on the Matt Murphy radio show and said that Obama “wants to change the way America looks.”
About Obama’s immigration policy, he said “a lot of it has to do with skin pigmentation” and “religious values.”
“[President Obama] is hell-bent on doing this kind of damage to his country because he doesn’t think the Judeo-Christian people who made America the greatest nation in world history are deserving of the role that they have played in making America great.”
“Immigration is far and away the most important problem facing America because it changes the voter pool, thereby controlling the outcome of every single public policy challenge America faces,” he said.
Brooks’ argument would explain why Middle Easterners have, in the space of a few years, become the fastest growing immigrant group in America.

Top 10 Soros targets in 2016

Posted: 04 Jan 2016 01:40 PM PST

George Soros has a list and he’s checking it twice. The list is where he will concentrate the efforts of his Central Intelligence Agency-connected non-governmental organization (NGO) assets in 2016. While supporting the CIA’s agenda, Soros always manages to maximize his profits from the chaotic situations he and his operations engineer around the world.
1. Soros will continue to facilitate the arrival of hundreds of thousands of additional, mainly Muslim migrants from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia to Europe. The political and border destabilization of Europe and the resulting introduction of draconian security measures by the European Union are high on Soros’s agenda.
2. Soros is backing a themed revolution for the Srpska Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Republic of Serbia, itself. The Srpska Republic president, Milorad Dodik, is threatening to declare independence from the Bosnia-Herzegovina federation and join Serbia. Dodik has the backing of the Serbian government as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin. Soros has decided to pull out all the stops to overthrow the Serbian government in Belgrade and the Srpska Republic government in Banja Luka and thus ensure compliant and anti-Russian governments take over power in both republics.
3. Soros will martial his resources in Haiti to ensure that banana company mogul Jovenel Moise wins the presidential run-off in Haiti’s postponed election. Moise is the hand-picked successor of current president Michel Martelly, a singer by profession. Soros’s election engineers succeeded in knocking out of a first- or second-place finish the candidate representing former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who is despised by Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as Soros, for his leftist populist policies.
4. Soros’s Open Society Institute and other NGO contrivances will continue to back the failed state of Ukraine. Soros will especially shore up Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the American Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, and Odessa regional governor Mikheil Saakashvili, the former Soros-installed president of Georgia who is now a wanted criminal by the government in Tbilisi. Soros will continue to see to it that Ukrainian regular and irregular military forces continue to cause border problems for the Russian autonomous republics of Lugansk and Donetsk in the east and that sanctions against officials of Lugansk, Donetsk, and Crimea are not only maintained but strengthened.
5. Soros will press the opposition-controlled National Assembly of Venezuela to rescind Venezuela’s diplomatic recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two republics that broke way from Georgia.
6. Soros’s operatives in China will continue to stir up political problems for Beijing in the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao with increased street demonstrations. Soros will also step up his financial and political support for secessionists in Tibet, East Turkestan (Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Republic), and Inner Mongolia.
7. With the Argentine presidency and the Venezuelan National Assembly falling under the control of right-wing fascist-oriented political parties, Soros will mobilize his Latin American assets to force Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff from the presidency. She has been battling an attempt by the Brazilian Congress to impeach her. Soros despises Rousseff for a number of reasons but chiefly they are her commitment to the BRICS alliance of Brazil, Russia, China, India, and South Africa; her family links to Bulgaria during its communist past; her rejection of Soros’s “Third Way” politics; Rousseff’s opposition to privatization of state-owned enterprises — industries into which Soros wants to invest heavily; and Rousseff’s opposition to Brazilian public schools being used to promote homosexual life styles. Soros’s main goal is to have Rousseff replaced with a right-winger who will pull Brazil out of the BRICS bloc.
8. Another BRICS leader Soros sees as vulnerable is Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa. Soros’s goal is to destroy the BRICS by peeling away South Africa and Brazil from the alliance, leaving only China and Russia as members after India can be persuaded the alliance is dead. Zuma and his African National Congress are also Soros targets because of their opposition to Israeli policies in Palestine and same-sex marriage. Soros backs the Democratic Alliance party, which receives much of its financial support from South African Zionists and the Jewish-dominated diamond industry.
9. Whoever the Republican U.S. presidential candidate turns out to be, Soros will throw his money and the backing of his NGOs to Hillary Clinton, a personal friend. Soros can be expected to finance intense opposition research and a massive 527 political action committee ad campaign against the GOP presidential candidate.
10. In the various presidential elections scheduled for 2016, Soros forces will back the most anti-Christian and pro-Muslim presidential candidates in the Central African Republic; Antonio Vitorino, a noted “Eurocrat,” for president of Portugal; the pro-West Benin Prime Minster Lionel Zinsou for president of Benin; hedge fund manager Pedro Kuczynski for president of Peru; Juan Cohen for president of the Dominican Republic; all the anti-Putin candidates in the Russian election for the State Duma; pro-Saakashvili candidates in the Georgian parliamentary election; pro-NATO/EU parties in the Montenegro parliamentary election; and pro-EU/NATO parties in the Romanian parliamentary election.
Soros will work to defeat the Bolivian constitutional amendment referendum that will permit President Evo Morales to run for another term. They will also work against the re-election of Robert Fico as Prime Minister of Slovakia and the election of Samia Nkrumah, the daughter of Ghana’s founding president Kwame Nkrumah as president of Ghana. In the Tanzanian constitutional referendum, the Soros forces will seek to protect the present union status quo and defeat any attempt by Zanzibar to secede and go its own way.
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