Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Thursday, 10 March 2016

The European Union Times


Posted: 09 Mar 2016 06:38 AM PST

A sobering new report circulating in the Kremlin today prepared by the Minister of Defense (MoD) says that President Putin has ordered an immediate deployment to “combat status” of “all currently operational” RS-26 intercontinental ballistic missile systems ahead of what is described to be a “terror spectacular” Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/Daesh) attack upon the European Union and/or United States.
The RS-26, this report explains, is categorized as a “doomsday weapon” packing a frightening 1,2 megatons into its four 300 kiloton warheads, is able to hit targets throughout the US with its 11,000 kilometer (6,835 mile) range, the US missile defense system is “absolutely useless” against it, and whose booster stage is down to under five minutes that means NATO radars in Europe will have no time to register the launch, thus making the Federation “100% safe” unlike any other nation in the world.
President Putin’s order to deploy this fearsome “doomsday weapon”, this report continues, is due to the “erratic/puzzlingly” Obama regime response to secret Islamic State documents turned over last week to both the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND).
These secret Islamic State documents, this report details, were seized by the BND in Berlin on 3 March after the arrest of [изгладить его имя] who is the 33-year-old physician son of an Arab father and German mother—and which were found after BND officers searched his four properties in Berlin and Mannheim, his home city.
Particularly alarming about these secret Islamic State documents seized by the BND, this report notes, were the detailed plans, including personal names and the “experience of jihad” of these terrorists, describing a number of mass terror attacks to be launched simultaneously in the style of those that struck New York City and Washington D.C. on 11 September 2001.
Upon the CIA’s receipt of these secret Islamic State documents from the BND, this report continues, they immediately shared them with Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS/MI6) who, in turn, prepared a synopsis of them for London’s Metropolitan Police whose spokesman, and Britain’s most senior anti-terrorism officer, Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, immediately issued a warning that Islamic State fighters want to carry out “enormous and spectacular” attacks against Britain and the Western lifestyle in general.
The Obama regimes response to this “dire and looming” Islamic State “terror spectacular” threat to America and its people though, unlike Britain’s, this report says, was “completely astounding”, because, instead of preparing their citizens for what is to come, they announced they were sending to Europe more tanks and helicopters to “counter Russia” and were further preparing to sends thousands of troops against Russian borders too.
With the Obama regime losing, or arguably has lost, the protracted proxy war with Russia over Syria, this report concludes, its actions in regards to this Islamic State “terror spectacular” warning is not only puzzling, but actually “borders on the insane” for which there are currently no answers to explain.
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Posted: 09 Mar 2016 05:35 AM PST

Erdogan’s Turkey this week diversified its rogue-state conduct from terror sponsorship to international bribery. The proceeds? Not bad earning, with $6.6 billion in “aid” extracted from the European Union.
It’s supposed to be part of a groundbreaking deal to end the refugee crisis in Europe. But while EU politicians and bureaucrats throw billions of dollars to their Turkish “partner”, the simple question remains unanswered: who created this crisis in the first place?
It’s also bitterly hilarious that while EU governments order their citizens to endure economic austerity and cuts to workers’ rights, the same authorities can suddenly find, with ease, endless cash to pander Turkey’s authoritarian regime with.
Four months ago, the Ankara regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan squeezed the EU for a promise of $3.3 billion in financial aid, allegedly to slow down the flow of refugees from Turkey to Europe. Over that period, the influx of refugees has only become much worse, with numbers for the first three months of this year set to overwhelm last year’s record high of one million migrants reaching European shores.
Yet in spite of Ankara’s abysmal failure to curb the human trafficking from its territory, Erdogan’s regime is now to get double the money paid out by Brussels – courtesy of hard-pressed EU taxpayers. The $6.6 billion that Ankara is to receive over the next two years is purportedly for helping to accommodate refugees on the Anatolian mainland.
As part of the “deal” hatched this week in Brussels between EU leaders and Ankara, all “irregular migrants” currently languishing in Greece – some 30,000 – are to be forcibly returned to Turkey.
NATO warships have been called in to facilitate the “processing”. Britain this week announced that it is sending a large amphibious landing ship for the unspoken but obvious purpose of relocating people en masse.
Ostensibly, the EU is committed to eventually take back an equal number of Syrian refugees for asylum. But don’t count on that. Out of 160,000 refugees that the EU vowed to domicile last year, so far only 700 individuals have been distributed among the 28-nation bloc. Don’t be surprised if the camps in Turkey become permanent features like refugee centers in Lebanon and Jordan.
What we have here is a sordid bargain. The EU establishment gets to “ship back” migrants to Turkey, and to stop the flow of refugees. That influx was straining the very fabric of the EU, not because of the absolute numbers of migrants involved, but because of the bickering between the various member states.
So to the immense relief of the Eurocrats, the problem is solved, at least on the short term. Violating its own lofty “principles”, the EU is to dump the migrants into camps in Turkey. And the Ankara authorities not only stand to collect $6.6 billion from the EU, this week Erdogan’s sidekick prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu also extracted other concessions: visa-free travel for 75 million Turks to Europe to take effect within four months, and a promise from Brussels to speed up Turkey’s accession to the EU.
The strong-arming of the EU by Erdogan was no doubt emboldened by Brussels’ weak-kneed response to his brutal crackdown last weekend on independent news media. The violent seizure by riot police of Turkey’s biggest opposition newspaper, Zaman, was met with cowardly silence from the EU.
Pusillanimous platitudes of “concern” for “free speech” and European “core values” issued by the likes of French President Francois Hollande and the EU’s foreign affairs chief Federica Morgherini would have only caused Erdogan and Davutoglu to snigger with derision at the “protestations”.
Erdogan knows that the EU is a paper tiger. European governments and its parliament have known for months about his creeping despotism, and they have done noting about it. Journalists have been locked up, media outlets forced to close, and Brussels just mouths a few trite cautions.
Erdogan’s regime has stepped up bloody repression of ethnic Kurds in the country’s southeast, and again Brussels hardly squeaks.
The Turkish military has been bombarding northern Syria for weeks, in what is plainly an act of aggression towards a sovereign state, and Brussels says nothing. Erdogan’s rogue regime is documented to be supplying weapons across Syria’s border to illegally armed groups trying to topple the government in Damascus, and again Brussels goes mute.
So Ankara knows full well that the EU establishment has no principles despite its lofty proclamations on human rights and avowed respect for international law. He knows that his roguery will be given a blind eye because when it comes to Syria the EU itself has been one giant rogue entity. Its governments, Britain and France in particular, have been part of the covert war on Syria for regime change, along with Washington of course.
The EU maintains economic sanctions on Syria while complaining about the humanitarian conditions in the country. How’s that for criminal double-think?
From the outset of the war in March 2011, Turkey and Saudi Arabia financed the sectarian mobilization of Syrian communities who were readily recruited to the project of regime change against President Assad. An important element in this mobilization was the creation of refugee camps in Turkey, from where “jihadists” could be trained, weaponized and filed back into Syria. Turkey provided the terrain and logistics, while Saudi Arabia furnished the money, and the US and other NATO powers orchestrated the whole project.
By way of substantiating the nefarious role of Turkey, a senior source in the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) told this author that Ankara has always insisted on controlling the refugee camps in its territory. Normally in an international refugee crisis, the UNHCR is the lead body for registering and administrating relief facilities. Why Turkey has refused this international input is no doubt because Ankara has been using refugee camps for its own political and covert military ends.
Ironically, Turkey and other NATO powers have accused Russia of “weaponizing the refugee problem” with the alleged intention of undermining the EU. It is a contemptible, baseless contention.
Nonetheless, the concept and practice of weaponizing refugees finds reality when the role of Turkey in the war on Syria is examined.
Erdogan’s regime has not only played a prominent part in fomenting the displacement of nearly 12 million Syrians for the state-sponsored terror war on Syria, Ankara has also evidently orchestrated the refugee crisis for extortion of the EU.
But the EU mis-leaders are so compromised in the whole sordid affair they cannot deal effectively with the problem. Because that would mean admitting that the war on Syria has been a criminal enterprise from the get-go, which they have willingly colluded in.
What the EU plutocrats then do is this: shunt the refugees off to camps outsourced to Turkey regardless of international law; pay off Erdogan and his autocratic cronies with $6.6 billion and other concessions; and, in the best bumbling Eurocrat-style, hope that the problem will just go away.
The EU establishment will find, however, that the crimes of Erdogan, as with their own, cannot be buried in this way. Brussels may think it has found a quick-fix for now. But the corruption that it is entertaining with Ankara is a fatal, terminal disease.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do notnecessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.
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Posted: 09 Mar 2016 05:08 AM PST


The UKIP boss reckons it would be good news for Britain if the Republican frontrunner landed the top job.
Mr Farage said critics who judged Mr Trump on his “big shouty” rants were “underestimating his ability”.
He reckons the tycoon’s skills as a top businessman would put him in good steed to boost the US and its economy.
And he said if he took control of the world superpower he would be “more pro-British than Obama”.
Wannabe president Trump surprised critics after he shot ahead in the race to be the Republican candidate.
He raced ahead of his rivals despite saying he would ban Muslims from America if he clinched the top job.
Mr Farage today likened the loudmouth to late President Ronald Reagan – whose critics hated him in the White House.
He said: “They all said Ronnie Reagan was a cretin, but he was a great president, and maybe they are underestimating Trump.
“I think that a man that has run a business, and made a fortune, maybe we are underestimating his ability.
“Maybe the big shouty stuff he has said so far is going to start to die down and we will see that.
“Whatever Trump’s faults, he would be more pro-British than Obama, who was the most anti-British president America ever had.”
Brexit supporters and the Stay camp are slugging it out to win over voters in the run up to the EU referendum.
A Ladbrokes betting barometer today put the chances the pro-Europe camp would win at 73% with just 27% for Leave.
But the UKIP boss shrugged off the polls and believed the push by groups for Britain to ditch the EU had a fighting chance.
Mr Farage said: “I see a lot of complacency from the establishment, they underestimate just how p***** off people are with the whole political establishment, it’s not making them happier, it’s not working.”
He added: “This campaign has barely begun.
“Can we win? You bet your life we can.”
He also tipped his hat to pro-Europe camp boss Lord Rose who this week said Brits would see higher wages if we quit the EU.
Mr Farage said: “He’s absolutely bang on the money with that.
“It’s great, I’m going to buy him lunch next week.
“He is the perfect leader for the Remain camp. I am delighted and hope he stays.”
And the UKIP boss said if anti-Europe groups won in the ballot box on June 23, Brits would take to the streets to toast the victory.
He said: “It would be the biggest booze up since VE day.”
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Posted: 09 Mar 2016 04:54 AM PST

As eccentric billionaire Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump continues to rack up primary victories, the party’s establishment is beginning to wonder whether the political outsider can be stopped. Alarmed, neoconservative pundit Anne Applebaum goes so far as to suggest that a Trump presidency would mark “the end of the West as we know it.”
On Saturday, real estate mogul Donald Trump racked up two more primary victories, winning in Louisiana and Kentucky, and thus securing a total of 373 delegates, with establishment candidates Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich trailing with 291, 122 and 33 delegates, respectively.
With some pundits now openly asking whether the Republican establishment really has a chance to derail Trump, others, including neocon Jewish journalist Anne Applebaum, have resorted to scaremongering.
In a recent op-ed for The Washington Post, Applebaum, an American-Polish journalist known for her hawkish, stridently anti-Russian attitudes, laid out a worst-case scenario for the Euro-Atlanticist empire, warning that “right now, we are two or three bad elections away from the end of NATO, the end of the European Union and maybe the end of the liberal world order as we know it.”
“In the United States, we are faced with the real possibility of Republican Party presidential nominee Donald Trump, which means we have to take seriously the possibility of a President Trump. Hillary Clinton’s campaign might implode for any number of reasons, too obvious to rehash here; elections are funny things, and electorates are fickle.”
“That means,” Applebaum warns, “that next January we could have, in the White House, a man who is totally uninterested in what presidents Obama, Bush, Clinton, Reagan – as well as Johnson, Nixon and Truman – would all have called ‘our shared values.'”
Blowing through Trump’s domestic policy proposals in one sentence, what seems to interest the journalist more is his approach to foreign policy, particularly as it relates to Russia and Eastern Europe, of course.
“[Trump] brags that he ‘would not care much’ whether Ukraine was admitted to NATO; he has no interest in NATO and its security guarantees. Of Europe, he has written that ‘their conflicts are not worth American lives. Pulling back from Europe would save this country millions of dollars annually’. In any case, he prefers the company of dictators to that of other democrats. ‘You can make deals with those people,’ he has said of Russia. ‘I would have a great relationship with [Vladimir] Putin.'”
The journalist goes on to suggest that “not only is Trump uninterested in America’s alliances, he would be incapable of sustaining them. In practice, both military and economic unions require not the skills of a shady property magnate who ‘makes deals’ but boring negotiations, unsatisfying compromises and, sometimes, the sacrifice of one’s own national preferences for the greater good.”
Moreover, “in an era when foreign policy debate has in most Western countries disappeared altogether, replaced by the reality TV of political entertainment, all of these things are much hard to explain and justify to a public that isn’t remotely interested,” Applebaum laments.
If by ‘all of these things’ she means endless wars and Washington’s fumbling attempt to preserve its shaky global hegemony, perhaps there’s a little more thought behind American voters’ logic toward anti-establishment candidates than she gives them credit for.
Europe Too Faces the ‘Threat’ of the Anti-Globalists
In Europe too, Applebaum warns, things aren’t looking good for the Euro-Atlanticists.
“Americans aren’t the only ones who find their alliances burdensome. A year from now, France also holds a presidential election. One of the frontrunners, Marine Le Pen of the National Front, has promised to leave both NATO and the EU, to nationalize French companies and to restrict foreign investors.”
“Like Trump,” the neocon writes, “[Le Pen] foresees a special relationship with Russia, whose banks are funding her election campaign. French friends assure me that if she makes it to the final round, the center-left and center-right will band together, as they did two decades ago against her father. But elections are funny things, and electorates are fickle. What if Le Pen’s opponent suddenly falls victim to a scandal? What if another Islamic State attack jolts Paris?”
In other words, Applebaum seems to imply, ‘what if, as a result of an attack by the Islamic caliphate which the US-led invasion of Iraq created and US Persian gulf allies have bankrolled, the French people were to vote for a politician opposed to foreign control of French affairs and to the policy of endless imperial adventures around the world?’
As for her jab suggesting that Russia is bankrolling the National Front’s campaign, Le Pen has been very open in her explanation, noting that she took a loan from a private Russian bank because no French bank would give her one. In fact, she has since said, she would cancel the loan with the Russian bank if a French bank were to make a counter-proposition, but she is yet to receive one.
But Applebaum isn’t done yet. By the time French elections come around, she notes, “Britain may also be halfway out the door. In June, the British vote in a referendum to leave the EU. Right now, the vote is too close to call –and if the ‘leave vote’ prevails, then, as I’ve written, all bets are off. Copycat referendums may follow in other EU countries too. Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, sometimes speaks of leaving the West in favor of a strategic alliance with Istanbul or Moscow.”
And for the journalist, “it’s not hard at all to imagine a Britain unmoored from Europe drifting away from the transatlantic alliance as well.”
To make things even worse, in Applebaum’s mind, “if the economic turmoil that could follow a British exit from the EU were sufficiently severe, perhaps the British public would vote out its conservative government in favor of the Labour Party, whose leadership is now radically anti-American. Everyone discounts Jeremy Corbyn, the far-left Labour leader, but they also discounted Trump. Corbyn is the only viable alternative if the public wants a change. Elections are funny things, and electorates are fickle.”
Ultimately, the journalist anxiously notes, “without France, Europe’s single market will cease to exist. Without Britain, it’s hard to see how NATO lasts long either. Not everyone will be sorry. As Trump’s appealing rhetoric makes clear, the cost of alliances (‘millions of dollars annually’) are easier to see than the longer-term gains.”
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Posted: 09 Mar 2016 03:46 AM PST

Nearly 1/3 of GOP voters said they were now more likely to support Donald Trump after he was condemned by Mitt Romney, according to a new poll.
Thirty-one percent of GOP voters said Romney speaking out against Trump last week propelled them to support the GOP frontrunner, which is the complete opposite of what Romney intended.
The Morning Consult poll also found that 30% of those who voted for Romney in 2012 were also , 20% were less likely and 48% said the Romney speech denouncing Trump didn’t affect their decision either way.

Even more damning, only 5% of Trump supporters said there were less likely to back the GOP frontrunner based on what Romney said.
In other words, Romney’s condemnation of Trump was effectively an endorsement.
As we’ve pointed out last week, every time the mainstream media, Barack Obama, Pope Francis, the Chinese government, the Clintons, Vicente Fox, Miley Cyrus, Marco Rubio, etc. attack Trump, his popularity surges, so it’s expected that Romney’s disapproval would only help the maverick candidate.
“The Romney who refused to defend himself against Democrat attacks because he wanted to take the ‘high’ road?” One voter commented on a CBS article. “The same guy who refused to attack Obama while running against him is now concerned and needs to smear another member of his own party?”
“Go f*ck yourself you hypocrite!”
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 03:02