Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Monday, 24 March 2014

The European Union Times


Posted: 23 Mar 2014 04:19 AM PDT
Thousands of people celebrate with Kosovo and Albanian flags in Pristina on February 17, 2009 (L). Sevastopol residents at a celebratory show held after the referendum on Crimea’s status (R).
The West has so far refused to legitimize Crimea’s decision to secede from Ukraine. Yet Kosovo, which was a part of Serbia, also broke away from its parent country, but has been recognized by the US and most of the EU.
But what makes one breakaway more justifiable than another, in the eyes of the world community?

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Posted: 23 Mar 2014 04:10 AM PDT

Chileans have held a demonstration in the capital, Santiago, to demand constitutional reform.
Protesters marched through Santiago streets on Saturday to urge the administration of President Michelle Bachelet to follow pledges to address constitutional reform in issues such as social inequality through an overhaul of education and healthcare systems.
The “march of all marches” demonstration called for changes to the constitution by also addressing the issue of autonomy for indigenous territories and free and good quality education.
Some protesters said the march was not against or in support of Bachelet and that it just intended to warn the officials that Chileans will stick to their demands and expectations from the government.
The Saturday demonstration is the first protest against Bachelet, who took office less than two weeks ago. It is also the biggest political protest in the country since massive student protests against the previous center-right government in 2011.
Organizers said the protest has attracted some 100,000 people, but police say the number is some 25,000.
Student protesters said they would not take part in the demonstration as they have been working with Bachelet on an education reform package that will soon be sent to congress.
Bachelet succeeded conservative Sebastian Pinera in the elections of December 2013, following a campaign of promises to finance education reform with higher corporate taxes, improve health care, and fight inequality.
Bachelet is serving a second term as Chile’s president.
The 62-year-old moderate socialist previously held office from 2006 to 2010 as Chile’s first female president.
Bachelet enjoyed an 84-percent approval rating when she left office, thanks to using government reserves to help the poor in Chile.
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Posted: 23 Mar 2014 04:06 AM PDT


Libertarian Kentucky Senator Rand Paul warns in a speech today that he believes US spooks and shadow government agencies are ” drunk with power”, and that elected representatives are privately afraid of those operating behind the curtain.
In a scheduled appearance at the University of California-Berkeley, Paul will address the continuing domestic spying controversy.
In prepared comments Paul notes “I am honestly worried, concerned about who is truly in charge of our government. Most of you have read the dystopian nightmares and maybe, like me, you doubted that it could ever happen in America.”
“If the CIA is spying on Congress, who exactly can or will stop them?” the comments also state. “I look into the eyes of senators and I think I see real fear. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but I think I perceive FEAR of an intelligence community drunk with power, unrepentant, and uninclined to relinquish power.”
The Senator is set to continue on the track that saw him win CPAC’s GOP presidential nomination straw poll recently. During his CPAC speech, Paul slammed the NSA, urging “If you have a cell phone, you are under surveillance… I believe what you do on your cell phone is none of their damn business.”
The Berkeley speech, which takes place at 3:30 p.m. Pacific Time, comes in the wake of the latest revelation that the NSA recorded 100% of phone calls in an unnamed foreign country, using a program dubbed MYSTIC, and a tool called RETRO — for “retrospective retrieval”.
The Washington Post reported the findings yesterday, garnered from leaks by Edward Snowden. NSA documents state that the program is essentially a “time machine” that opens a door “into the past,” allowing a replay of the voices on any given call, without the need for prior identification of the person on the line.
The NSA continues to argue that it is within the law for it to operate such programs in foreign countries, however, MYSTIC did not exempt US citizens living there.
“Ubiquitous voice surveillance, even overseas, pulls in a great deal of content from Americans who telephone, visit, and work in the target country,” The Post reports. “Present and former U.S. officials … acknowledged that large numbers of conversations involving Americans would be gathered from the country where RETRO operates.”
The report also states that the NSA has previously considered expanding the program to other countries, and may already have done so.
Appearing remotely during a recent TED event, Edward Snowden declared that even bigger revelations regarding the NSA are on the way. Snowden acknowledged that every NSA spying program we are learning about now was planned before the 9/11 attacks, and that the event only served to provide justification to expand and implement more surveillance programs.
Snowden said that he is concerned with exposing “one of the dangerous legacies we’ve seen in the post 9/11 era,” adding “They’re making the Internet fundamentally less safe for Americans. Is it really terrorism we’re stopping? Do these programs have any value at all? I say no. Three branches of the American government say no.”
“The bottom line is terrorism has always been a cover for action—it provokes an emotional response,” he added. “The NSA asked for these authorities back in the 1990s. But Congress and the American people said no, said it’s not worth the risk to our economy. But in the post 9/11 era, they used secrecy and the justification of terrorism to start these programs in secret.”

Also appearing at the TED event was Tim Berners-Lee, one of the pioneers of the internet. Berners-Lee praised Snowden as a “hero”, while Snowden said that he supported Berners-Lee’s recent call for an Internet “Magna Carta.”
“I grew up in the Internet,” Snowden said. “I believe a Magna Carta for the Internet is exactly what we need. We need to encode our values in the structure of the Internet. I invite everyone in the audience to join and participate.”
Other activists seeking to battle the NSA’s domestic spying have recently targeted the new monolithic Utah data center, promoting a campaign to cut off the water supply to the facility. Because this is actually quite a good idea, and it has garnered interest from lawmakers, it has not gone unnoticed by those who are “drunk on power”, as Rand Paul describes them.
The NSA is now actually arguing that its water bill should be declared top secret and that it should not need to declare how much water is being pumped into the Utah facility as a matter of national security.
“By computing the water usage rate, one could ultimately determine the computing power and capabilities of the Utah Data Center,” wrote the NSA’s associate director for policy and records, David Sherman in an undated letter written in response to a request for the information from The Salt Lake Tribune. “Armed with this information, one could then deduce how much intelligence NSA is collecting and maintaining.” Sherman argues.
Documents uncovered by the Tribune have indicated that the NSA facility could use between 1.2 and 1.7 MILLION gallons of water PER DAY.

Meanwhile, the Defense Department’s Inspector General, who is supposed to oversee the NSA’s activities and ensure they are within the law, admitted yesterday that he had no idea that the NSA was collecting bulk metadata on Americans’ communications.
“From my own personal knowledge, those programs, in and of themselves, I was not personally aware,” Anthony C. Thomas said.
Thomas also announced that the Pentagon has no intention to investigate the matter. Thomas said he was “waiting to see the information that the NSA IG (inspector General) brings forward with the investigations that are going on, and what we often do not want to do is conflict.”
That is some valuable oversight from the executive branch!
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Posted: 23 Mar 2014 03:58 AM PDT

As Washington imposed sanctions against Moscow over the Ukrainian crisis, a group of Russian officials arrived in the United States to inspect the US strategic nuclear arsenal.
The surprise inspection earlier this week of the nuclear arsenal in San Francisco was agreed to under the 2010 New START arms control treaty, The Washington Post reports.
Under the treaty, Russia and the United States each agreed to reduce their nuclear warheads to 1,550 by 2018.
Russia strongly objects to US missile plans in Eastern Europe and has repeatedly threatened to withdraw from the treaty which, among other things, allows 18 surprise inspections by both sides each year.
The latest inspection came as the dispute over Crimea intensified and the White House worried that Russia might move to annex more of Ukraine.
Russia’s seizure of the Black Sea peninsula, home to one of its largest naval bases at Sevastopol, has triggered the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War.
The US and Russian presidents subsequently imposed sanctions on each other’s top aides, but officials on both sides emphasize they would like to keep it that way and continue with bilateral cooperation in other areas.
President Barack Obama announced additional sanctions against 20 Russian political and business leaders Thursday and issued a new executive order to authorize penalties against “key sectors of the Russian economy” if necessary.
On Saturday, Russian troops used armored vehicles and automatic gunfire to seize a Ukrainian airbase in Crimea, a day after President Vladimir Putin signed laws completing the annexation of the peninsula.
The White House says intelligence from the field indicates that Moscow might engage in military incursions into more of Ukraine in the coming days, CNN reported.
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Posted: 23 Mar 2014 03:28 AM PDT

A new project of an autonomous airship – a hybrid between a drone and a satellite – has been developed in France. The ‘StratoBus’ dirigible drone will be able to carry out long endurance observation operating at an altitude of about 20 kilometers.
The new breed of autonomous zeppelin has a mission of “observation, security, telecommunications, broadcasting, and navigation,” developers said.
Designed to be between 70 and 100 meters long and 20 to 30 meters in diameter, made of carbon fiber, and equipped with two motors, the StratoBus will be able to operate at an altitude of about 20 kilometers in the lower reaches of the stratosphere – above air traffic and jet streams.
The airship will be able to take higher resolution images and maintain a stronger communications system, as it will roam airspace much lower than actual satellites.

StratoBus has the potential to include a wide range of applications like “border and maritime surveillance, boosting GSM network capacity for public events and GPS augmentation over areas of dense traffic,” Thales Alenia Space – the organization leading the project alongside partners Airbus Defence & Space, Zodiac Marine, and CEA-Liten – said in a press release.
Developers said the airship – equipped with solar panels and an ultra-light reversible fuel cell for energy storage – will be able to endure missions for a year, while its lifespan about five years. The first prototype is scheduled to be rolled out within the next five years.
A similar project was previously developed by Google. Project Loon was designed to connect people in rural and remote areas through a network of balloons traveling on the edge of space.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 18:32