The European Union Times |
- Feeding homeless banned in Florida town
- US & Israel begin large military exercise
- Cheney says Hillary Clinton responsible for Benghazi Attack
- Tens of thousands of Australians protest against budget cuts
- Russians raise funds for anti-GMO research
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Posted: 18 May 2014 03:57 PM PDT
 Authorities in Daytona Beach, Florida have increased efforts to dissuade unofficial organizations from feeding the city’s homeless, threatening trespassing fines to longtime Good Samaritans should they counter the city’s official social services plan. A group of volunteers who have prepared food for the Daytona Beach homeless population – or anyone who is hungry, the organizers say – for the past year were given citations and trespass warnings by law enforcement this week. The city, like dozens of local municipalities across the United States, is attempting to discourage groups outside the approved channels from offering assistance, in hopes of funneling charity to centralized homeless services in the area, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported. “The ordinance is there, so if we catch you, we’re going to cite you,” Police Chief Mike Chitwood said. “If you want to feed people, and you want to do a good, Christian act, we encourage you to coordinate with the social service agencies.” Chico and Debbie Jimenez, founders of Spreading the Word Without Saying a Word, and their volunteers were targeted this week at Manatee Island Park despite their reportedly responsible, respected efforts to feed the hungry. Their citations amounted to threats of a $273 fine for trespassing and $100 fine for facility use without a permit. “We feed anybody that’s hungry,” Chico Jimenez said. “Even if you’re not homeless,” Debbie Jimenez added. “We don’t care. If you’re hungry, eat. We’re not here to change any laws or anything. We just want to help. These people have become our friends. They depend on us. It’s not like they’re just ‘some people,’” she told the News-Journal. The pair said they would challenge the citations. The city maintains that a no-feeding law has long been on the books, though Chief Chitwood admitted that the city’s efforts to steer social services to its preferred system has boosted police vigilance. “We’ve always done it,” Chitwood said of enforcing the law. “But clearly we’re hoping we’re on the threshold here of making this Safe Harbor project come through. There’s plenty of places and plenty of ways you can do acts of charity without violating an ordinance.” Daytona Beach recently hired a “nationally known consultant,” Robert Marbut, to develop its plans for Volusia Safe Harbor, a transitional shelter still at the proposal level. The shelter would become the city’s centralized outlet for homeless to depend on for food and other services. Marbut, the News-Journal reported, has told city officials that charity groups feeding or offering supplies to homeless in parks is not the kind of long-term assistance needed to improve the lives of the homeless. The Jimenezes both quit their jobs to begin their ministry. Their operation seeks to gather donations to assist those in need with hotel stays, power bills, bicycles, and other equipment. They argue that their food is far better and nutritious than what the area homeless get from the local government. Plus, they say that city and county agencies don’t want competition from groups like theirs, as their efforts take patrons away from local municipalities’ programs, meaning less funding. “If we were criminals, it’d be one thing,” said Diane Clester, one of the ministry’s volunteers who was cited by police this week. “But we’re not…When we leave, there isn’t a scrap of paper on the ground, nothing. Within an hour and a half, they’re done and gone.” Source           |
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Posted: 18 May 2014 03:41 PM PDT
 US and Israeli soldiers pose for a photo during a military drill held in 2012.Some 1,000 US troops from the United States European Command are now in Israel to take part in the biennial sdrill, Xinhua quoted Israeli radio as reporting. Tel Aviv claims the five-day drill is aimed at preparing Israel for military responses to missile attacks against it. Israeli missile systems of Iron Dome (short-range missile interceptor), David’s Sling (medium range) and the Arrow (long range) are to be tested in the exercise. The three missile systems have been either jointly developed or financed by the United States. Israeli daily Haaretz reported that two US warships, stationed at the Mediterranean Sea, will also take part in the military maneuver. The ships are equipped with technology used to intercept missiles. The drill is held a week after the US Secretary of Defense visited Israel. During the two-day trip Chuck Hagel reviewed preparations for the maneuver. “The exercise will employ Israel’s entire rocket and ballistic missile architecture, including Iron Dome, Arrow, and David’s Sling: assets that the United States is proud to have helped Israel finance and develop,” Hagel said. He also described the exercise as the largest drill for US troops under the European Command. Source      |
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Posted: 18 May 2014 03:25 PM PDT
 Dick Cheney, the former vice president and Darth Vader of the Bush regime, says former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should be held accountable for the incident in Benghazi. “She was secretary of state at the time that it happened,” Cheney told Fox’s Chris Wallace. “She was one of the first in Washington to know about it. I think she clearly bears responsibility for whatever the State Department did or didn’t do with respect to that crisis.” “I do think it’s a major issue,” he added. “I don’t think we’ve heard the last of it yet, and I expect that she will be held accountable during the course of the campaign.” The attack in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, killed ambassador Christopher Stevens, a Foreign Service Information Management Officer and two CIA operatives. Cheney’s remarks are extraordinary considering the role he played in the invasion and occupation of Iraq which ultimately led to the death of over a million Iraqis. In October, Cheney rationalized the invasion by telling Fox News the war prevented Saddam Hussein from gaining weapons of mass destruction. “What we gain and my concern was then and it remains today is that the biggest threat we face is the possibility of terrorist groups like al Qaeda equipped with weapons of mass destruction, with nukes, bugs or gas. That was the threat after 9/11 and when we took down Saddam Hussein we eliminated Iraq as a potential source of that,” Cheney told Bill O’Reilly. O’Reilly did not challenge Cheney’s historical distortion. No weapons of mass destruction were discovered in Iraq and Congress found that “members of the Bush Administration misstated, overstated, and manipulated intelligence with regards to linkages between Iraq and Al Qaeda; the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iraq; the acquisition of aluminum tubes to be used as uranium centrifuges; and the acquisition of uranium from Niger.” Moreover, the congressional report found that “[b]eyond making false and misleading statements about Iraq’s attempt to acquire nuclear weapons, the record shows the Bush Administration must have known these statements conflicted with known international and domestic intelligence at the time.” Despite evidence to contrary, prior to the invasion Cheney stated Saddam Hussein “aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda.” In addition, he fear-mongered a vastly exaggerated threat by Iraq, a country decimated by a previous invasion and more than a decade of hard medieval economic sanctions that resulted in the death of more than 500,000 Iraqi children. Several months before the invasion, Cheney insisted Saddam Hussein represented a serious threat. “Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror and seated atop 10 percent of the world’s oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world’s energy supplies, directly threaten America’s friends throughout the region and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail,” he said. The Bush administration mindset, shaped largely by a coterie of warmongering neocons, was summed up by their leader, George W. Bush, when he said: “Fuck Saddam. We’re taking him out.” Hillary Clinton undoubtedly bears responsibility as Secretary of State for the incident in Benghazi. On the other hand, Dick Cheney and the neocons ensconced in the Pentagon at the time of the Iraq invasion and occupation should be tried and convicted of war crimes. The Iraq invasion with its immense toll in human life and the destruction of what was considered an advanced Arab country prior to Bush Senior’s invasion makes the Benghazi incident pale by way of comparison. Source      |
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Posted: 18 May 2014 03:13 PM PDT
 Tens of thousands of Australians are out on the streets nationwide to condemn the government’s envisaged budget cuts in the education sector. On Sunday, tens of thousands of Australians hit the streets in several cities to show their anger at the government’s economic and social policies. The protest rallies were held in Sydney, Adeline, Brisbane and Melbourne. They slammed the government of Prime Minister Tony Abbott for its recent cost-cutting measures. The ralliers say the cuts will only affect the middle-class people and widen the gap between the poor and the rich. The protesters denounced the recent government plans to slash healthcare and education budgets which are expected to have an impact on a large portion of the country’s population. They are also angry at a government decision to slash the budget for the education sector by 80 billion dollars within the next ten years. The developments also come after Australia’s Commission of Audit submitted a set of proposals, detailing deep cuts to government payments and services. The plan recommends that the coalition government slash family payments, and cut spending on core public programs such as healthcare and education by requiring patients and students to pay more. Last February, hundreds of Australians took part in another Sydney protest against a potential move by the Liberal-National government to introduce an upfront “co-payment” for a visit to a doctor. General practitioner consultations are currently covered by the Medicare public health scheme, and any shift toward a “user pays” model will pave the way to the outright abolition of the country’s so-called Medicare program, which covers those that can least afford costly medical expenses. Source      |
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Posted: 18 May 2014 02:44 PM PDT
 As Russian MPs ponder over a draft bill that could see GMOs outlawed, the country’s chief genetic safety activist tells RT she is skeptical about the legislative initiative and urges ‘long-overdue’ independent international research. GMO production and distribution is likened to terrorism by the authors of a draft bill submitted to the Russian parliament earlier this week. It’s not the first comparison of the kind, according to Elena Sharoykina, director of the Genetic Safety Public Association (GSPA), a 10-year-old NGO in Moscow, Russia’s major campaigner for GM-free food and agriculture. In an interview to RT, Sharoykina recalled a statement made by the NATO Committee on the Challenges to Modern Society in the Belgian city of Liege in 2004, in which it warned that GMOs may be used as a genetic weapon. “If serious international experts on security who have close ties with the scientific community say this is possible then there’s no smoke without fire,” Sharoykina said. The GSPA director is still skeptical about the draft bill, as she sees no way in which the legislation could be enforced in practice, as it would be hard to prove a direct link between certain GMOs and health or environmental problems. The activist however cites some disturbing experiment results, like the one GSPA conducted with the help of the A.N. Severtsev Institute of Ecology and Evolution in 2010. “We conducted an experiment on hamsters taken from the natural environment,” Sharoykina said. “We had a group that was given standard feed-stuff plus pure soy and another group which had their standard feed-stuff combined with GM soy. The animals which were eating GMO did not have their third generation born.”  Elena Sharoykina, director of the Genetic Safety Public Association (GSPA).The GSPA is raising funds from as many sources as possible for the experiment to come up to the group’s claims – the first-ever independent international research on GMO. Until results of this kind of experiment become available, Russia should abstain from opening its market to GMOs, despite economic losses the step might incur, the expert says. “How can we think about money when we’re talking about the health of our close ones?” Sharoykina asks. “Russia has huge territories and doesn’t need GM foods. Moreover, we have all the chances of dominating the clean, unmodified food market.” After entering the World Trade Organization, Russia was expected to allow GM foods production and distribution. However, in March Russia’s president said the country was able stay GM-free without violating its obligations to the WTO. In April, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told MPs that Russia will not plant GM seeds for at least three more years due to delays in creating the necessary infrastructure. Earlier Russia had expected to allow planting such seeds from June 2014. Source     |
