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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 11/4/2014 10:27:39 AM
	The reason remains a mystery France Just Fired The Guy In Charge Of Selling Warships To Russia TOMAS HIRST NOV. 3, 2014, 5:58 PM Reuters/Stephane MaheThe Mistral-class helicopter carrier Vladivostok is seen at the STX Les Chantiers de l'Atlantique shipyard site in Saint-Nazaire, September 4, 2014. On Christmas Eve 2010, then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called his French counterpart Nicholas Sarkozy with some big news: Russia was prepared to purchase two Mistral class helicopter carriers from France for a total of €1.2 billion ($1.5 billion). Almost four years later, the first of these ships, the Vladivostok, sits idle in the port of Saint-Nazaire, its future clouded by the stand-off between Russia and the West over the crisis in Ukraine. Last week, the ongoing stalemate resulted in the French project director responsible for delivering the ships being fired. So what's going on? There's conflicting information from both sides. What we do know is that back in March of this year, Russia completed its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. This occurred in the aftermath of protests that had seen the collapse of the Kiev government with Russian President Vladimir Putin accusing the West of stoking unrest and Russophobia in the country. The response of France was swift. Laurent Fabius, the French Foreign Minister, told the press:"If Putin continues doing what he is doing we could envisage cancelling the sales [of the warships]". And the threats were apparently backed up. By July, the US and the European Union had announced a tough package of economic sanctions against Russia targeting the country's financial, energy, and defence sectors, along with a number of prominent individuals. It seemed to most observers outside the negotiations that the Mistral contracts would end up as yet another casualty of the chaos in Ukraine. Even if a cancellation of the order was considered at the time, it was swiftly dismissed. Despite lobbying efforts from other European partners, French President François Hollande remained resolute in his determination to meet his country's commitment to deliver the ships and ultimately won the concession from his European partners to exempt existing contracts. He told reporters in July: “The Russians have paid. We would have to repay €1.1 billion [if they were not delivered]...at this stage, there are no sanctions imposed that would oblige us to renounce [the contract].” Although it may have seemed bizarre to outsiders that a country would sell military hardware to a country that it was simultaneously imposing defence sanctions on, the ships were back on track, with the Vladivostok due for delivery in October. To round off the perverseness of the whole situation, the second ship, the Sevastopol, was scheduled to join up with the Russian Black Sea Fleet based in Crimea when finished in 2015. However, with the deadline for the handover looming and international pressure to hold off or cancel the sale growing, Hollande decided to set 11th-hour conditions. First, there had to be a genuine ceasefire in Ukraine and second, there had to be an agreement that paved the way for a resolution to the crisis in Ukraine. The Minsk agreement signed on 20 September by both sides in the Ukraine conflict offered some hope that these conditions might be met in time for the exchange. The nine-point deal set up a 30-kilometre buffer zone between pro-Russian rebels and government forces, a ban on military aircraft flying over certain areas in the east of the country, and a commitment to withdraw "foreign mercenaries". Few on the ground bought into the optimism. Within days of the treaty signing, fresh violence erupted in the rebel-held city of Donetsk. Elections in the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk that have been condemned as illegitimate and unlawful by the government in Kiev, the US, and the EU the situation have also complicated the situation. Twitter/Rogozin So all of this brings us to the present. Last week, Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's deputy prime minister in charge of the defence industry and prominent nationalist, released a letter on Twitter purportedly from French arms industry company DCNS regarding the sale of the Mistral class ships. The letter states that the handover ceremony of the Vladivostok would take place on 14 November in Saint-Nazaire and includes: Signing of the transfer of ownership and delivery act. Hoisting of the Russian Federation colours. A military ceremony on the flight deck. You might have thought that this would be the end of the saga. The invitation to the ceremony had gone out, and been made public. Yves Destefanis, a project director responsible for delivering the Mistral helicopter carrier to Russia, may even have had similar thoughts. Instead, Destefanis lost his job after Michel Sapin, the French Finance Minister, reasserted that the "c onditions today have not been met to deliver the Mistral". So where are we now? Frankly, we have no idea. The EU and the US are going to continue to pressure France to hold onto the ships. France is going to continue to claim that it's allowed to sell them but do nothing about it. Russia is going to get increasingly angry that they've paid for them, are technically allowed to receive them and yet are having to view their ship from afar. And the Vladivostok is going to extend its quiet stay in Saint-Nazaire. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/france-just-fired-the-guy-in-charge-of-selling-warships-to-russia-2014-11#ixzz3I5tfdQ8F
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 11/4/2014 10:32:49 AM
	Putin’s Response to EU Sanctions: See You in Court By Carol Matlack November 03, 2014 Photograph by Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images Russian President Vladimir Putin at a weekly meeting with ministers of the government on Oct. 29 The fight over Russian sanctions is heading to court. Since early October at least six Russian companies—including state oil group Rosneft (ROSN:RM) and the country’s two biggest banks—have filed complaints at the Luxembourg-based European General Court. So has President Vladimir Putin’s oligarch friend Arkady Rotenberg. All of them are seeking to overturn European Union sanctions. They have some reason for optimism. The EU court has previously thrown out sanctions against several Iranian entities and individuals. In those cases, the court found European authorities didn’t provide sufficient evidence linking the sanctioned entities to Tehran’s nuclear program and didn’t give them an adequate chance to respond before imposing asset freezes and other punishment. Sarosh Zaiwalla, a London lawyer who has helped Iran’s Bank Mellat challenge sanctions, said in an interview that he’s now representing some of the targeted Russian entities. He declined to name them or discuss details of the Russian complaints, which haven’t been made public. STORY: Has Putin Already Won in Ukraine? Sure Looks That Way Besides Rosneft, the Russian complainants at the Luxembourg court are an oil-production subsidiary of government gas company Gazprom (GAZP:RM) and four state-controlled banks: Sberbank (SBER:RM) and VTB Bank (VTBR:RM), the country’s first- and second-largest banks, respectively, as well as economic-development bank Vnesheconombank and its Ukrainian subsidiary, Prominvestbank. All have been barred from raising long-term financing in European capital markets. The energy companies also face restrictions on technology imports. Rotenberg, a billionaire businessman who was hit by an EU asset freeze, has filed two separate challenges in Luxembourg. Sanctions challenges are more likely to be filed in Europe than in the U.S. because European courts rarely allow governments to present classified evidence under seal, which can make it difficult to explain the rationale for sanctions, says Mark Dubowitz of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Dubowitz, whose group has lobbied for tough sanctions against Iran, says he knows of no case in which Iranian sanctions have been successfully challenged in the U.S. By contrast, he says, European courts have annulled sanctions in nine Iranian cases so far. In most instances the EU has said it plans to reimpose the sanctions, backing them with stronger justifications. If sanctions remain in place during lengthy court appeals, the Iranians—and possibly the Russians, too—might not get much satisfaction from initial court victories unless they ultimately win substantial financial damages. A key test case in that regard could be Iran’s Bank Mellat, which has won a ruling from the U.K. Supreme Court and now is trying to recover $4 billion from the British government, which barred the bank from doing business in Britain in 2009. Britain’s high court, which reviewed some classified evidence in the case that was not released publicly,ruled last year that the sanctions against the bank were based on “misconceptions about the facts.” STORY: China Embraces a Russia Cut off From Western Capital Bank Mellat also won an initial ruling from the Luxembourg court that’s now being appealed to the European Court of Justice, which is also based in Luxembourg and is the EU’s highest court. Zaiwalla, the bank’s lawyer, says European governments falsely claimed that the bank, which is private, was “an arm of the state of Iran.” Proving links between the Kremlin and the sanctioned Russian companies might be easier, since the government holds controlling stakes in all of them. What’s less clear is how the EU would link the companies to Russia’s actions in Ukraine, which triggered the sanctions earlier this year. The EU says the sanctions are intended to punish Russia for its “illegal annexation of Crimea and deliberate destabilization” of Ukraine. (Businessweek)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 11/4/2014 10:38:18 AM
	Japan Creates World's Biggest Bond Bubble BATTLING DEFLATION. PHOTOGRAPHER: BLOOMBERG NOV 4, 2014 4:25 AM EST By William Pesek Ten years from now, will Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kurodabe regarded as a genius or a madman? Kuroda's shock-and-awe stimulus move on Oct. 31 delighted markets and won him plaudits as a monetary virtuoso. Japan, the conventional wisdom tells us, has finally gotten serious about ending deflation, and isn't it wonderful. But what happens when a central bank buys up an entire bond market? We're about to find out as Kuroda, like some feverish hedge fund manager, corners Japan's. Neglected in all the celebrating: To reach a 2 percent inflation goal that's both arbitrary and meaningless, the BOJ is destroying Japan's standing as a market economy. In announcing that it will boost purchases of government bonds to arecord annual pace of $709 billion, the central bank has just added further fuel to the most obvious bond bubble in modern history -- and helped create a fresh one on stocks. Once the laws of finance, and gravity, reassert themselves, Japan's debt market could crash in ways that make the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers look like a warm-up. Worse, because Japan's interest-rate environment is so warped, investors won't have the usual warning signs of market distress. Even before Friday's bond-buying move, Japan had lost its last honest tool of price discovery. When a nation that needs 16 digits in yen terms to express its national debt (it reached 1,000,000,000,000,000 yen in August 2013) sees benchmark yields falling, you've entered the financial Twilight Zone. Good luck fairly pricing corporate, asset-backed or mortgage-backed securities. Considered in relation to gross domestic product, Kuroda's purchases make the U.S. Federal Reserve's quantitative-easing program look quaint. The Fed, of course, is already ending its QE experiment, while Japan is doubling down on one that dates back to 2001. Kuroda's latest move means Japan's QE scheme could last forever. The BOJ has willingly become the Ministry of Finance's ATM; reversing the arrangement will be no small task. All this liquidity has made for surreal events in Tokyo. Take the news that Japan's $1.2 trillion Government Pension Investment Fund will dramatically rebalance its portfolio away from bonds. Japan has enormous public debt and a fast-aging population, and now the world's biggest pension pool is shifting to stocks. Yet somehow, 10-year yields are just 0.43 percent. The explanation, of course, is that the parts of the market the BOJ doesn't already own are sedated by its overwhelming liquidity. The BOJ is now on a financial treadmill that's bound to accelerate, demanding ever more multi-trillion-dollar infusions to keep the market in line. To Japan bulls, the end justifies the means. If Kuroda changes thedeflationary mindset that's stalked Japan for 17 years now, then his gambit was worth it. One problem with this argument is that deflation isn't the cause of Japan's malaise, but a side-effect. Consumer prices rising at 2 percent or more will be a big problem if Prime Minister Shinzo Abe doesn’t push ahead with plans to deregulate the economy and prod companies to raise wages. That's doubly true as Tokyo mulls another growth-denting rise in the consumption tax. Another problem is that Kuroda is turning the BOJ into the world's biggest asset-management company. The BOJ won't admit it, but it's monetizingJapan's debt on a massive scale, and probably even retiring large blocks of it -- just as the government did in the 1930s. What happens when the BOJ decides Japan needs a credible and functioning bond market in the years ahead? Kuroda's successors face terrible odds disengaging from a market he's effectively nationalized. Perhaps history will vindicate Kuroda's genius. That depends on whether Abe musters the courage to attack structural impediments to growth in employment, industry, trade and energy. More likely, Kuroda is demonstrating that it's one thing to go long on a market, and quite another if you have to stick with that bet forever. To avoid being remembered as a madman, Kuroda had better devise an exit strategy from history's most audacious bond trade. To contact the author of this article: William Pesek atwpesek@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this article: Mary Duenwald at mduenwald@bloomberg.net. (Bloomberg)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 11/4/2014 10:42:23 AM
	Ukraine leaders meet to 're-examine' peace plan By Sebastian Smith2 hours ago An elderly woman pulls а cart with firewood near Donetsk airport, in eastern Ukraine on November 3, 2014 (AFP Photo/Dimitar Dilkoff) View Gallery Kiev (AFP) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was to meet security chiefs Tuesday to "re-examine" an already teetering peace accord with pro-Russian separatists after they defiantly staged elections banned by Kiev. Related Stories Ukraine to 're-examine' peace plan with rebels AFP Russia angers West by backing rebel polls as EU uphold sanctions AFP Ukraine rattled by Russia troop movements as separatists vote AFP Ukraine separatists vote in controversial election AFP US condemns eastern Ukraine separatist vote AFP The elections of leaders in two unrecognised statelets in eastern Ukraine were backed by Russia but condemned vociferously by Ukraine, the United States and EU powers. Poroshenko, speaking late Monday, said "these pseudo elections are a gross violation" of the September 5 truce deal. That accord was meant to pave the way for an end to the seven month separatist conflict with a ceasefire and an offer of autonomy, but not independence, for the pro-Russian insurgents. Fighting, including frequent violations of the ceasefire, has already cost more than 4,000 lives and sparked the biggest crisis between Russia and the West since the Cold War. A meeting of the National Security and Defence Council would consider "abolition" of the key law offering autonomy, Poroshenko said. "The pseudo-election torpedoed the law and sharply aggravated the situation," he said, vowing only to deal with "legitimately elected local self-government bodies, but not... bandits who crown themselves." View gallery Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko delivers an address to the nation on October 25, 2014 (AFP Phot … The winners of the two controversial elections in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions were expected to be inaugurated Tuesday. The separatist figures were quoted late Monday by Russian news agency Interfax as saying that they were ready for "dialogue," but only on an equal basis with the government in Kiev. They said any laws passed in Kiev without their consent would have no force. - 'Sham' elections - The United States followed Europe in hammering Sunday's rebel polls, which showed Ukraine's inability to control the eastern region, and were conducted without recognised election observers. Only Moscow endorsed the elections, a move likely to harden Western resolve to maintain punishing economic sanctions against Russia. "These sham elections contravened Ukraine's constitution... and the most basic electoral norms," said the White House, while the State Department warned Moscow that recognising the polls "would only serve to isolate it further". View gallery Pro-Russian militants stand guard at a polling station in Novoazovsk, in the eastern Ukrainian Donet … German Chancellor Angela Merkel's top spokesman described as "incomprehensible" Moscow's approval of the vote -- in which the Kremlin-backed candidates faced no serious competition -- and warned this would "further aggravate the crisis." NATO's supreme allied commander, US General Philip Breedlove, warned of a "revanchist Russia" whose recent ramping up of military flights into European airspace was causing the Western alliance concern. - Russian defiance, sanctions - Russia risks an intensifying of tough EU and US economic sanctions after declaring it "respected" the outcome of the poll. "Those elected have received a mandate to resolve the practical issues of re-establishing normal life in the region," Moscow's foreign ministry said in a statement. View gallery A pro-Russian militant guards a polling station in Novoazovsk, in the eastern Ukrainian Donetsk regi … Its deputy foreign minister piled further pressure on Kiev by demanding it call a definitive end to military operations in the east and talk to the rebels on equal terms. "This work can bring results only on condition of equal dialogue based on mutual respect, with Kiev renouncing military operations and the notorious 'anti-terror operation'," Grigory Karasin told state news agency TASS. In New York, Russia also blocked an attempt in the UN Security Council to criticise the elections. French President Francois Hollande said sanctions against Russia are "essential... but they should not be the sole response. "The objective is to convince Moscow and the separatists to renounce escalation and to return to a dialogue." The separatist uprisings in the pro-Russian corner of Ukraine started shortly after Russia's troops invaded and annexed Crimea, a southern Ukrainian region, in March. Moscow justified that dramatic redrawing of the map by saying it needed to protect ethnic Russians from a surge of Ukrainian nationalism following a pro-Western revolution in the capital Kiev a month earlier. It claims to provide only diplomatic and humanitarian aid to the eastern rebels, despite the heavy firepower boasted by some of the insurgent brigades and the long columns of military trucks frequently seen in the area of the Ukraine-Russia border. Former electrician turned insurgent leader Alexander Zakharchenko won Sunday's election to head the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic. In neighbouring Lugansk region, current insurgent supremo Igor Plotnitsky, a former Soviet army officer, was the winner.
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 11/4/2014 10:44:20 AM
	Islamic State releases 93 Syrian Kurds: monitor 1 hour ago Islamic State billboards are seen along a street in Raqqa, eastern Syria, which is controlled by the Islamic State, October 29, 2014. CREDIT: REUTERS/NOUR FOURAT Related Stories Kurdish convoy heads to Syria to take on Islamic State Reuters Syrian Kurds repulse Islamic State attack on border gate Reuters U.S.-led coalition jets strike Kobani after Islamic State shelling Reuters Kurds' battle for Kobani unites a people divided by borders Reuters Peshmerga fighters enter Syrian borderAssociated Press BEIRUT (Reuters) - The militant Islamic State group has released 93 Syrian Kurds it captured in February as they made their way from northern Syria to neighboring Iraq, a group monitoring the conflict said on Tuesday. Islamic State seized around 100 people, accusing them of being members of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) which has opposed the militants, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. It was not immediately clear why they were released. The al Qaeda offshoot which is the target of U.S.-led air strikes in Syria and Iraq, released all but six of the Kurds in Syria on Monday, the Observatory said. The remaining captives were accused of theft and Islamic State said it would cut off their right hand as a punishment, added the Observatory, which gathers its information from a network of sources. The Kurds were taken captive as they crossed from areas around the Syrian town of Kobani on the Turkish border on a road towards Iraqi Kurdistan. Islamic State has also fought with Kurds in Iraq. Ten of thousands of Syrian Kurds took the route east towards Iraq earlier this year to flee Islamic State's advance in Syria. In recent weeks, Islamic State has intensified its assault on Kobani and surrounding areas. Around 53 of the Kurds released on Monday made their way into Turkey and the location of the 40 others is unknown, the Observatory said. The militants were still holding around 70 more Kurds captive, it added. (Reporting by Sylvia Westall; Edciting by Andrew Heavens)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

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