Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Wednesday, 30 July 2014

The European Union Times


Posted: 29 Jul 2014 09:32 AM PDT

A grim report issued by The Strategic Missile Forces (SMF), which is the main component of Russia’s Strategic Nuclear Forces (SNF), states that President Putin earlier today issued a feared “Dead Hand” order not used since 26 September 1983 when the nuclear early warning system of the Soviet Union twice reported the launch of American Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) from bases in the United States.
The issuance of the 1983 “Dead Hand” order, this report says, was in response to a five-day North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) command post exercise called Able Archer 83 that Soviet military officials feared was a “ruse to war”.
A “Dead Hand” order, it should be remembered, is a Cold-War-era nuclear-control system developed by the Soviet Union and remains in use today and is controlled from the massive and highly secretive underground military city at Mount Yamantau located in the Republic of Bashkortostan.
“Dead Hand” is an example of fail-deadly deterrence as it can automatically trigger the launch of the Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) if a nuclear strike is detected by seismic, light, radioactivity and overpressure sensors. By most accounts, it is normally switched off and is supposed to be activated during dangerous crises only; however, it is said to remain fully functional and able to serve its purpose whenever needed, such as today.
To Putin’s ordering the “Dead Hand” protocols today, this report continues, is in “direct response” to President Obama’s plan to send US military forces into Ukraine, a hostile war move Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Titov warned last month would lead to an immediate Russian response by his stating:
“We cannot see such a build-up of the alliance’s [NATO’s] military power near the border with Russia as anything else but a demonstration of hostile intentions. It would be hard to see additional deployment of substantial NATO military forces in central-eastern Europe, even if on a rotational basis, as anything else but a direct violation of provisions of the 1997 Founding Act on relations between Russia and NATO. We will be forced to undertake all necessary political and military measures to reliably safeguard our security.”

Critical to note about Putin’s issuing a “Dead Hand” order today was that nearly immediately after it had been issued, Vladislav Surkov, one of the most powerful men in the Kremlin, and the Russian leaders top aide, in essence, confirmed its existence when during a private interview with the Financial Times News Service on the sham US$50 billion ruling against Russia in a European arbitration proceeding (called The Fine That Rang Out Across The World) relating to the Yukos case stated why the Kremlin wasn’t responding by simply stating: “There is a war coming in Europe. Do you really think this matters.”
While the barrage of trade sanctions Washington and its allies have imposed on Russia is in fact an act of economic warfare, and which they had likewise imposed on Japan in 1941 that led Tokyo to attack the Western powers, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has nevertheless stated that Russia will not respond in kind by stating: “We cannot ignore it. But to fall into hysterics and respond to a blow with a blow is not worthy of a major country.”
And with the US War Party’s desire to punish Putin for pushing back against American interventionism in Syria, Iran, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East, which has left these nations devastated… in just 800 words, even the American old-guard Cold War warrior Pat Buchanan exposes the sheer juvenile delinquency embodied in Washington’s current Ukrainian fiasco.
He accomplishes this by reminding us of the sober restraint that governed the actions of American Presidents from FDR to Eisenhower, Reagan and Bush I with respect to Eastern Europe during far more perilous times and by stating of today’s events:
“What has Putin done to rival the forced famine in Ukraine that starved to death millions, the slaughter of the Hungarian rebels or the Warsaw Pact’s crushing of Czechoslovakia?
In Ukraine, Putin responded to a U.S.-backed coup, which ousted a democratically elected political ally of Russia, with a bloodless seizure of the pro-Russian Crimea where Moscow has berthed its Black Sea fleet since the 18th century. This is routine Big Power geopolitics.
And though Putin put an army on Ukraine’s border, he did not order it to invade or occupy Luhansk or Donetsk. Does this really look like a drive to reassemble either the Russian Empire of the Romanovs or the Soviet Empire of Stalin that reached to the Elbe?
As for the downing of the Malaysian airliner, Putin did not order that. Sen. John Cornyn says U.S. intelligence has not yet provided any “smoking gun” that ties the missile-firing to Russia.”
And with a source from one of the Ukrainian defense departments now stating that a “system mix up” during a Ukrainian air defense units’ rocket launch exercise (and which we had previously reported on) could be the cause of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash in southeast Ukraine, the Obama regime backed Ukrainian military continues to wage war in this area in their bid to cover up the evidence to such an extent that Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has called on them to halt hostilities.
Not to be forgotten, it should be further noted, is that with nearly 500,000 Russian-speaking refugees having poured over Russia’s borders fleeing from the Ukraine Civil War, the 13,000 troops of NATO’s Response Force (NRF) would pose no obstacle to Russia’s 845,000 active-duty troops. In fact, by one estimate, Russia’s military could take over the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia in an afternoon as sizeable portions of their populations are ethnic Russians to begin with.
As to the US military’s 1.4 million active duty troops and 850,000 reservists, it can’t just throw all of them at Russia — somebody has to maintain those 900 bases around the world in 130 nations, as well as defend the US homeland…a situation perhaps best summed up by Frederick the Great, the renowned Prussian warrior-king, who once warned: “He who tries to defend everything, defends nothing.”
So to Putin’s issuance of this “Dead Hand” order today, since 1999, Russia has believed it could win a nuclear war against the United States… and with Obama believing he too can win a nuclear war against Russia… sadly the world may see, very soon, who is right.
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Posted: 29 Jul 2014 07:51 AM PDT
Sheik Umar Khan, head doctor fighting the deadly tropical virus Ebola in Sierra Leone.
Sheik Umar Khan, the doctor who was leading Sierra Leone’s battle against the worst Ebola outbreak on record, has died from the virus.
The West African country’s chief medical officer Brima Kargbo said the 39-year-old Khan passed away on Tuesday.
Khan, who treated over 100 patients, died after dozens of local health workers and the infection of two American medics in neighboring Liberia.
Khan, hailed as a “national hero” by Sierra Leone’s Health Ministry, had been moved to a treatment ward run by the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres in the far north of the country.
He lost his life less than a week after his diagnosis was announced.
“It is a big and irreparable loss to Sierra Leone as he was the only specialist the country had in viral hemorrhagic fevers,” Kargbo said.
On Sunday, American physician, Dr. Kent Brantly, and his fellow countrywoman Nancy Writebol, who is an aid worker, were diagnosed with Ebola a day after Liberian physician, Dr. Samuel Brisbane, died of the disease.
Ebola is believed to have claimed 672 lives in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since the epidemic began in February, according to the World Health Organization.
There is currently no known cure for Ebola, a form of hemorrhagic fever whose symptoms are diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding.
The virus spreads through direct contact with infected blood, feces or sweat. It can also be spread through sexual contact or the unprotected handling of contaminated corpses.
Ebola remains one of the world’s most virulent diseases, which kills between 25 to 90 percent of those who fall sick.
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Posted: 29 Jul 2014 07:45 AM PDT

The Australian government is pushing to implement a ”surveillance tax” on the people of the country in order to pay for a mandate that would see communications companies retaining data on customers for two years.
In a disturbing development that should serve as a warning to Americans, the Australian Attorney-General admitted that the surveillance system is ”under active consideration by the government”.
The Age reports that communications companies believe the compulsory scheme will cost between $500 million to $700 million a year, a cost that will be passed on to the people.
”We’re concerned about the lack of oversight on how this scheme might operate and there are also significant privacy concerns,” said Teresa Corbin, CEO of Australian Consumer Communications Action Network.
Other telco officials estimate that the “surveillance tax” will mean a rise in costs of $5 to $10 extra a month.
Steve Dalby, chief regulatory officer at iiNet testified at a Senate hearing this week that the Attorney-General’s Department considers the ”metadata” that is to be retained to include not only telephone records, but also internet access, email and internet telephony.
The communication data is said to encompass indicators of time, location, sender and receiver, as well as URLs and IP addresses.
It’s essentially the same information that the NSA has been siphoning from Americans’ communications for years, as revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
”iiNet does not agree that it should accept the role proposed by those calling for an onerous data retention regime,” Mr Dalby said. ”If we are ultimately compelled by law to collect such data, the government must be responsible for its storage and protection.”
”iiNet has no use for surveillance data, so there is no commercial driver to collect a massive volume of data, indexed to individuals, that we’ll never use.” Dalby added.
The government, of course, argues that it must implement mass data retention because of the threat of terrorism. ASIO, the Australian counterpart to the NSA, says that privacy concerns should not be paramount because, essentially, privacy is already dead.
”For the life of me I cannot understand why it is correct for all your privacy to be invaded for a commercial purpose, and not for me to do so to save your life,” ASIO head David Irvine told the Senate hearing, adding ”the public should not be concerned that there’s going to be gross misuse”.
One so called Liberal senator, Ian MacDonald, agreed, saying that he would ”rather be alive and lack privacy than dead with my privacy intact”.
The Australian government has also brought in former NSA officials to back the push for data retention, with Former NSA chief legal adviser Stewart Baker arguing that ”an unholy alliance of business and privacy activists” are hampering counter-terrorism operations.
Whistleblower Thomas Drake, one of the scores that have been indicted by the Obama administration, told the Australian Senate that the government’s scheme is really about shifting accountability onto private companies and away from itself, and creating laws to justify mass spying.
”Metadata is extremely rich information – it can give you an index on a person’s entire life,” he said. ”This would let the government off the hook by forcing the telcos to hold on to the data.”
As we have noted, the NSA and the Obama administration have continued to push a similar scenario in the US, where NSA’s bulk data collection of phone calls and other communications and the storage of the data would be outsourced to telcos, shifting accountability away from the government.
“This shifting of records would not solve the problem — it would just shift it,” Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice has noted. “In the case of telephone companies, it would turn them into agents of the surveillance community” Goitein has urged.
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Posted: 29 Jul 2014 07:38 AM PDT

The US software giant Microsoft has announced plans to slash 18,000 jobs from its global workforce in 2015, the largest cuts in the company’s 39-year history.
In a statement on Thursday, the company described the shakeup as part of its strategy to streamline business under new CEO Satya Nadella.
Layoffs represent about 14 percent of the company’s workforce and will be completed by next June.
Nadella, who replaced Steve Ballmer in February, promised the layoff process to be fair.
“My promise to you is that we will go through this process in the most thoughtful and transparent way possible,” he said in a memo to the company’s 125,000 employees worldwide.
Most of the layoffs are expected to be from the integration of the Nokia unit that was acquired earlier this year.
Microsoft says the move is part of a restructuring plan to simplify its operations and align Nokia with its overall strategy.
“Under the Ballmer era, there were many layers of management and a plethora of expensive initiatives being funded that has thus hurt the strategic and financial position the company is in, especially in light of digesting the Nokia acquisition,” said Daniel Ives, an analyst with FBR Capital Markets & Co., adding, “Nadella is using today as an opportunity to make sure that Microsoft is ready and well positioned to embark on its next chapter of growth around mobile and cloud.”
Back in 2009, the company underwent a restructuring plan, and cut 5,800 jobs, which was about 5 percent of its workforce at the time.
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Posted: 29 Jul 2014 07:25 AM PDT

In the past two days Kiev’s forces have launched several short-range ballistic missiles into areas in east Ukraine controlled by self-defense forces, CNN reports, citing US government sources.
The move “marks a major escalation” in the Ukrainian crisis, CNN said.
“Three US officials confirmed to me a short time ago that US intelligence over the last 48 hours has monitored the firing of several short-range ballistic missiles from territory controlled by Ukraine government forces into areas controlled by the pro-Russian separatists,” Barbara Starr, CNN’s Pentagon correspondent, said in a live report.
Short-range ballistic missiles can carry warheads of up to 1,000 pounds (450 kg) and are capable of killing dozens of people at a time, Starr said.
A Moscow correspondent for another American television network, ABC, tweeted Tuesday that the Kiev forces fired three ballistic missiles at self-defense forces near the town of Snezhnoe (Snizhne in Ukrainian) in the Donetsk Region. According to Kirit Radia, this is what a US official told ABC’s Pentagon digital journalist Luis Martinez.
The CNN gave no details regarding the exact missiles’ launch and impact point.
“In fact, the US is holding this information right now fairly tightly, officials say, because they are in an awkward position: these are, you know, the so-called ‘good guys’ firing ballistic missiles, Ukraine government forces,” Starr said on air.
So far, there has been no official reaction from Kiev and Moscow. The question now is how Washington – which has strongly backed the Kiev government – will comment on the revelations, CNN’s correspondent said.
Earlier this week, the US State Department released satellite images via email which it said act as “evidence” that Russia was firing rockets at Ukrainian troops across the border. Russia’s Defense Ministry stated in response that the “fake” images were created by American advisers “with close links to Ukraine’s Security Council.”
“Will we see the satellite imagery of the Ukrainians firing against the separatists? That may be a very tricky political question for the US intelligence community today,” CNN’s Starr said.
However, CNN’s correspondent in Donetsk, Nick Paton Walsh, said he had heard nothing of ballistic launches in the area and nothing of that kind has been openly discussed. He added, though, that it is no secret that both sides of the conflict were using “very heavy weaponry” against each other.
Russian military experts say that if the Ukrainian military did use ballistic missiles, most likely they would be Tochka-U (NATO Designation SS-21 Scarab).
Viktor Murakhovsky told RT that the military possibly used the missile against a fixed target, such as the militia’s staff headquarters.
“I’m talking about the Tochka-U tactical ballistic missile on a wheeled chassis, which the Ukrainian army has in its arsenal. It’s a Soviet-designed and produced missile. It may have a high-explosive fragmentation warhead or a disintegrating warhead,” Murakhovsky said.
Anatoly Tsyganok, the head of the Military Forecasting Center in Moscow, agreed that the Ukrainian army could have used the Tochka-U missile.
The news broke amid growing tensions between Washington and Moscow over the ongoing violent confrontation in Ukraine.
The US, giving strong backing to the Kiev government, has repeatedly accused Russia of supporting anti-government separatist forces in east Ukraine and supplying them with arms – an accusation Russia has strongly denied. Last week, US government officials claimed that Russia was firing artillery across the border into Ukrainian territory, but refused to provide any hard evidence besides some pictures captured by a civilian satellite, which were rebuffed by Russia’s Defense Ministry.
So far the US has failed to back its statements with any trustworthy proof, mainly referring to some images, “commons sense” and social media.
Charges and counter charges between the two powers have been boiling following the tragic accident with Malaysian Airlines Boeing-777 that crashed in Ukraine on July 17. The very next day after the incident, long before experts arrived at the scene and a probe was launched, President Barack Obama said that America had “increasing confidence” that the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile that was launched from militia-controlled territory. US intelligence said later that it found no direct link between Russia and the plane disaster. But, still, the blame-game continued with Russia being accused of “creating conditions” that led to the incident.
A fresh bunch of accusations were thrown at Moscow on Tuesday, with Obama stating that Russia was not cooperating with the international investigation of the plane crash.
Chief of the Air Force General Staff Igor Makushev and Head of the Main Operations Directorate of the HQ of Russia’s Armed Forces Andrei Kartapolov (from right to left) at the news conference on the crash of the Boeing 777 passenger airliner in Ukraine.
Russia on the contrary has been calling for a transparent and impartial investigation of the tragedy from the very beginning. Russia’s Defense Ministry presented its own evidence on the movements of Ukrainian military before and after the tragedy, including surface-to-air missile systems, and a fighter jet that had been tracking the civilian aircraft. During the press conference, Russian military posed a number of questions to Kiev and Washington answers to which could shed light on what really happened on that day and help the international investigation. Those questions however were left unanswered with western media and politicians instead blaming Russia of not willing to use its “influence” on anti-Kiev forces whom they accused of hampering the investigation despite the fact that it was Kiev’s forces who intensified the military operation in the direct vicinity of the crash site.
On Tuesday however, Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko finally said that Kiev is ready for a cease-fire at the MH17 crash site, as was demanded by the UN Security Council resolution on July 21. The local militia in the meantime confirmed they were ready to further cooperate with international experts investigating the crash.
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Posted: 28 Jul 2014 04:11 AM PDT

In a landmark gun control case, a federal judge in Washington DC has overturned the city’s total ban on carrying handguns outside the home, saying it is unconstitutional.
“There is no longer any basis on which this Court can conclude that the District of Columbia’s total ban on the public carrying of ready-to-use handguns outside the home is constitutional under any level of scrutiny,” Judge Frederick Scullin said.
“Therefore, the Court finds that the District of Columbia’s complete ban on the carrying of handguns in public is unconstitutional,” Scullin added in his 19-page ruling.
The ruling was made in the PALMER et al v. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA et al case.
The court order now allows both city residents and non-residents to carry handguns outside their homes.
The case has been dragging on for five years, with the lead attorney for the Second Amendment Foundation, Alan Gura, asking the federal appeals court twice to force Judge Scullin to issue a decision.
“I’m very pleased with the decision that the city can’t forbid the exercise of a fundamental constitutional right,” Gura told Fox News. He added, however, that he expects the District to appeal the decision.
The Supreme Court struck down DC’s ban on the possession of handguns in the home in the 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller, under the basis that it violated the right to bear arms guaranteed by the US Constitution’s Second Amendment. Following the ruling, the DC Council approved regulations that permitted residents to register certain handguns.
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Posted: 28 Jul 2014 04:09 AM PDT
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects the tactical rocket firing drill of the units of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) Strategic Force on July 10, 2014.
A senior North Korean official says his country will wage nuclear war on the United States if the autonomy of his country is threatened, the Korea Times reported.
“If the U.S. ever threatens our autonomy or existence, our military will launch nuclear warheads toward the headquarters of evil: the White House, the Pentagon, military bases in the Pacific Ocean and major U.S. cities,” said Hwang Byung-suh, director of the military’s General Political Bureau, during an address to a large military rally in Pyongyang on Sunday.
He added that recent joint military drills between the US and South Korea have increased tensions in the Korean peninsula.
Washington and Seoul launched joint five-day war games in South Korean waters on July 16 which involved the USS George Washington carrier strike group. The 88,000-ton nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was loaded with about 70 aircraft.
Also, Lt. Gen. Kim Sang-ryong said, “We are fully prepared to give a taste of real war to South Korea and the imperialist US forces that dream of domination and assimilation. We are just waiting for the orders.”
Meanwhile, Strategic Commander Kim Rak-kyum said, if North Korea is threatened, the army will “fire warheads at not only the stronghold of imperialism itself, but also at US military bases around the world.”
South Korea claims that the navy drills are humanitarian in nature, while North Korea dubs them as a prelude to invasion.
The two countries remain technically at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace deal.
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Posted: 28 Jul 2014 04:04 AM PDT

Should a hurricane or other life-threatening, catastrophic weather event impact South Texas, illegal aliens occupying various shelters will be first in line to get “to safer ground,” a National Weather Service coordinator says.
At a meeting last week, emergency managers in the Rio Grande Valley region addressed the reality that, in addition to picking up the tab for putting the immigrants up, they have also accepted responsibility for their safety. That means ensuring illegal aliens have a safe evacuation from temporary and permanent shelters during an emergency.
“You have extra sheltering areas and detention centers right here,” NWS Coordinator Barry Goldsmith toldKRGV News. “And are they able to withstand the wind, are they able to withstand flood waters nearby to get humanitarian relief.”
Goldsmith is worried that if a hurricane or other emergency hits, the evacuation of some 4,000 illegal aliens could be impeded by citizens also trying to reach safety.
One way to ensure the illegals remain safe is to evacuate them before the general population receives evacuation orders, Valley city leaders have concluded.
“The entire Valley detention areas will be evacuated first,” says Goldsmith. “In other words, before the public gets their mandatory evacuation, the plan is to get all these unaccompanied women and children out of the Valley and to safer ground.”
The city and federal officials say by getting unaccompanied alien women and children out first, they are trying to avoid a Hurricane Rita-type situation, where more than 100 people died during the mass exodus of 2.5 million people from the Houston area.
The decision, which appears to have been made sans public input, illustrates how the establishment is seemingly taking better care of people in the country illegally, while military veterans and destitute American citizens continue to be cast by the wayside.
“In 2009, for example, former Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki and President Obama announced a goal to end Veteran homelessness by the end of 2015, giving the administration a little over six years to shelter the nearly 75,000 vets who were homeless in 2009,” explains Infowars’ Kit Daniels.
“But it only took the White House a month to shelter thousands of illegal immigrant youth, showing what the administration can do when it’s politically motivated.”
Facilities which could be repurposed to house homeless vets, such as the compound being used to house nearly 2,000 minors at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, for instance, operate at a tax payer cost of over $250 per child daily, or half a million per day.
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Posted: 28 Jul 2014 03:29 AM PDT

An American author and columnist says the United States wants to start a third world war because most of its big banks are insolvent.
Dean Henderson with the Veterans Today made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Monday as he commented on recent remarks made by White House Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes who said “stronger” European sanctions “are on the table” against Russia.
“That is just more aggression from the United States and from Anglo-Israeli-US bankers alliance which seems to be just trying every angle to provoke Russians to the World War III because all the big banks are insolvent,” Henderson told Press TV.
Washington and Moscow have been at loggerheads over the crisis in Ukraine. The United States accuses Russia of supporting and arming pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, a claim which is rejected by the Kremlin.
Meanwhile, the United States claims at least part of the blame for the downing of a Malaysian passenger plane in Ukraine, which left all 298 people onboard dead, lies with Russia.
Henderson says these accusations are just “a pretext” for the US to save its insolvent bankers by going to war as Washington “has done this before in World War II.”
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Posted: 28 Jul 2014 03:09 AM PDT

Hopes for an imminent end to the Gaza conflict are fading, with renewed violence bringing new casualties. Israel and Hamas blame each other after eight children were killed and 46 others injured by a missile that landed in a Gaza refugee camp playground.
Monday was marred by renewed violence in war-torn Gaza, where the Israeli operation against Hamas has been ongoing for three weeks. The violence came as Muslims around the globe celebrated one of their religion’s biggest holidays, Eid-ul-Fitr, the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
A massive explosion rocked a public garden in northern Gaza, killing eight children and two adults and injuring 46 others, according to Palestinian medics. A health official at nearby Shifa Hospital said the children were playing on a swing when the strike hit the park in the beachfront Shati refugee camp on the edge of Gaza City, AP reported.
“The children were playing and were happy, enjoying Eid, and they got hit. Some lost their heads, others their legs and hands,” eyewitness Nidal Aljerbi said.
The refugee camp park was attacked just minutes after Shifa Hospital’s outpatient clinic was hit by another strike, causing more casualties.
The World Health Organization said in a statement that it was “appalled by the continuing trend for health-care facilities, staff and vehicles to come under direct fire in Gaza” since the escalation of violence on July 8.”
“The Organization calls on all parties and individuals to respect and protect the integrity of health systems, and assure the safety of patients, health workers and health-care facilities,” it said.
Local residents have blamed the Israeli military for the airstrikes. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), however, denied involvement, saying that “Al-Shifa Hospital and Al-Shati Refugee Camp were struck by failed rocket attacks launched by Gaza terrorists.”

With at least 44 Palestinians killed and 12 earlier victims’ bodies recovered from the rubble on Monday, the overall death toll of the Israeli military offensive has increased to at least 1,088, Ma’an news agency reported. Meanwhile, the Israeli death toll has exceeded 50, with five more IDF troops killed in combat and Hamas cross-border mortar fire.
Also on Monday, gunfire broke out after Palestinian fighters slipped into Israel via a tunnel near Nahal Oz, a kibbutz collective village east of Gaza City. There have been conflicting reports on the incident. While the IDF said it thwarted the attack and “killed one of the terrorists,” Hamas claimed it had killed 10 Israeli soldiers and returned home safely.
Following the infiltration, the Israeli army advised Palestinians to flee their homes in areas around Gaza City, which is normally done in preparation for strikes.
“Phone calls were made and text messages were sent out to the civilian population of Shuja’iyya, Zeitoun and eastern Jabalia, calling them to evacuate themselves immediately towards central Gaza city,” the IDF said.
In a televised address to the nation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country has to be prepared for a “prolonged” campaign.
“We will continue to act with force and discretion until our mission is accomplished,” Netanyahu said, adding that Israeli troops will not leave Gaza until they have destroyed Hamas’ tunnel network.
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Posted: 27 Jul 2014 12:52 PM PDT

A single Canadian woman, who sought in vitro fertilization in the only local clinic in Calgary, has been prohibited from using donors of a different ethnicity to avoid “creating rainbow families.”
The 38-year old woman, who requested to use only her first name, Catherine, told the Calgary Herald that “everything went downhill” when last March she learned that she could only use sperm, eggs or embryos from donors who were white, like her.
“I was absolutely floored,” she told the newspaper as if having a baby of her own race was something horrible.
When asked why she did not want to choose somebody of her own “cultural background,” Catherine said there were many reasons why, probably the main reason being almost 100 years of mass media brainwashing with “we are all the same” propaganda.
One of the main reasons was that after she picked out donors who met required standards, had a good health history and a compatible blood type, a list of potential biological fathers for her child was narrowed-down to about 20 Caucasian donors. Moreover, many of them had already been used by several other patients in the area.
“Frankly, it’s appalling how many people have the same donors, probably because of this policy,” she said. “A friend of mine just went through this process and used the donor that I would have picked.”
Despite that, Dr. Calvin Greene The Regional Fertility Program (RFP), where Catherine went to undergo in vitro fertilization, is firm on his position.
Greene stressed that the RFP would deny couples or singles who insist on using donors of a different ethnicity under a policy in operation since the center was opened in the 1980’s.
“I’m not sure that we should be creating rainbow families just because some single woman decides that that’s what she wants,” Dr. Calvin Greene, the clinic’s administrative director told the Herald. “That’s her prerogative, but that’s not her prerogative in our clinic.”
Indeed, the statement on the RFP’s webpage says:

Also, doctors at the clinic, Greene said, feel “a child of an ethnic background should have the ability to be able to identify with their ethnic roots.” He added patients should have a cultural connection to their donors.
To support his argument, Greene said that the rules at the RFP follow the spirit of Canada’s Assisted Human Reproduction Act, under which doctors should place priority on the well being of potential children and refrain from producing “designer” babies.
“She needs to look harder, because I can tell you, reasonable people can easily find a suitable donor,” Greene argued and added that there are lots of quality Caucasian donors available.
Greene insists that given today’s multicultural society and demographic predictions that Caucasian people will soon be the minority in many Canadian cities, “there is no way to dictate what a given family should look like.”
As for Catherine, unlike many patients, she says she is not all that concerned about the color of her potential child’s skin. More important is the personality and health history, her child might inherit from its biological father. Considering other ethnicities significantly increased her options, she told the Herald. Multiracial children also have severe problems finding compatible donor organs if they would ever need a transplant. Designing a multiracial baby either naturally or artificially is probably the most stupid things parents can do these days.
The Regional Fertility Program (RFP), where Catherine went to have in vitro fertilization, is the only fertility clinic in Calgary. This means that Catherine must drive to Edmonton or fly to Vancouver to seek alternative solutions.
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Posted: 27 Jul 2014 12:28 PM PDT
Egyptian soldiers use bulldozers to destroy tunnels on the border with Egypt and the Gaza Strip.
Egypt has demolished 13 more tunnels between the country and the Gaza Strip, which has been under an Israeli blockade for the past seven years.
The army said on Sunday that it had destroyed the tunnels in the Sinai Peninsula, but did not say when they were demolished.
The tunnels are the only lifeline for Palestinians living under the Israeli siege and Egypt has so far laid waste to 1,639 of them.
Since the ouster of Egypt’s former president Mohamed Morsi last July, the Egyptian military has launched a campaign to destroy the tunnels, preventing the people in Gaza from bringing in most of their basic goods like construction materials, food, and fuel into the coastal enclave, which has been hit by Israeli airstrikes since July 8.
Thousands of Israeli soldiers launched a ground incursion into the densely-populated strip on July 17.
More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed so far in the Israeli aggression and at least 6,000 others have been injured in the onslaught.
Israel says 43 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the war, but Hamas sources put the number at about 90.
Gaza has been blockaded by the Israeli regime since June 2007, a situation that has caused a decline in the standards of living, unprecedented levels of unemployment, and unrelenting poverty.
The apartheid regime of Israel denies about 1.7 million people in Gaza their basic rights, such as freedom of movement, jobs that pay proper wages, and adequate healthcare and education.
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Posted: 27 Jul 2014 07:34 AM PDT

During a fundraiser in Seattle this week, President Barack Obama called for a “new order” based around a collectivized system in order to quell people’s concerns about geopolitical strife and the economy.
“People are anxious. Now, some of that has to do with some big challenges overseas,” said Obama, adding, “But whether people see what’s happening in Ukraine, and Russia’s aggression towards its neighbors in the manner in which it’s financing and arming separatists; to what’s happened in Syria … to the failure in Iraq for Sunni and Shia and Kurd to compromise … to what’s happening in Israel and Gaza….”
“Part of people’s concern is just the sense that around the world the old order isn’t holding and we’re not quite yet to where we need to be in terms of a new order that’s based on a different set of principles, that’s based on a sense of common humanity, that’s based on economies that work for all people. … But here in the United States, what people are also concerned about is the fact that although the economy has done well in the aggregate, for the average person it feels as if incomes, wages just haven’t gone up; that people, no matter how hard they work, they feel stuck.”
In a geopolitical context, Obama’s call for a “new order” really doesn’t sound any different from the old unipolar world order that the United States has represented since the end of the Cold War, which is now being challenged by the rise of the BRICS countries.
Developments over the course of the past year have made it clear that the United States no longer considers Russia to be part of this “new order” as a result of its resistance to NATO encirclement.
In terms of the economy, Obama’s insistence on “economies that work for all people” based on “common humanity” is in direct contradiction to his actual policies, which have almost exclusively served to help Wall Street fat cats while the average American sees their household income decline year after year when adjusted for inflation.
This is by no means the first time that Obama has called for a new world order.
During a 2010 West Point speech, the President encouraged the development of a new “international order” to help secure America’s interests.
Obama also urged Europeans and Americans to embrace the idea of “global citizenship” during a 2012 Berlin speech.
Vice-President Joe Biden has also repeatedly called for a “new world order.”
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Posted: 27 Jul 2014 07:34 AM PDT

Newly-released video footage shows the ISIL Takfiri terrorists summarily executing at least 50 Syrian government soldiers in the troubled northern Syria.
The decapitated heads of several soldiers are shown mounted on poles on top of a fence at an army base in the northern province of Raqqa, Daily Mail reported.
Experts say the footage circulating online appears genuine and has been corroborated by other reports.
This comes as the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the troops were seized after ISIL militants took over a base in the troubled region.
“Some of the executed troops were beheaded, and their bodies and severed heads put on display in Raqqa city,” said the Britain-based group’s director, Rami Abdel Rahman.
Al-Qaeda-linked militant groups fighting against the Syrian government have committed numerous mass executions during the ongoing conflict.
Since the outbreak of the Syria crisis in March 2011, several video clips have been released showing the grisly crimes perpetrated by the Takfiri terrorists against innocent civilians in the crisis-torn country.
Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups such as the ISIL have been behind many of the deadly bomb attacks targeting both civilians and government institutions across Syria over the past three years.
According to some sources, more than 160,000 people have so far been killed and millions of others displaced due to the violence fueled by the militants in the Arab country.
The ISIL violence has spilled over to neighboring Iraq. Recently, a similar gruesome video was released, purportedly showing members of the ISIL Takfiri terror group brutally killing Shia Muslims in drive-by shootings in Iraq.
The ISIL and its associated militant groups are blamed for numerous sacrilegious acts. The terrorist groups have links with Saudi intelligence and are believed to be indirectly supported by the Israeli regime.
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Posted: 27 Jul 2014 05:30 AM PDT

McDonald’s restaurants in Japan have stopped selling products that use chicken sourced in China. It comes after a scandal involving a Shanghai factory which supplied expired meat products to global fast food chains.
Over 3,000 food restaurants in Japan have followed McDonald’s example and withdrawn Chinese supplies. The restaurant chain has switched suppliers from the US-owned OSI Group, the parent company of Shanghai Husi which is involved in the scandal, to distributors in Thailand in order “to address the concerns of our customers.”
“We made this decision in view of the growing concern over McDonald’s chicken products made in China,” AFP quotes the Japanese unit’s chief executive Sarah Casanova.
Eight dishes including Chicken McNuggets and Chicken Fillet-O sold in Japan are affected. The fast food chain’s Hong Kong unit said in a statement it suspended all sourcing from the Shanghai firm’s other plants in May.
“There was no product from Shanghai Husi being sold to our customers,” it added.
The investigation started after a Chinese TV channel showed workers at Shanghai Husi Food picking up meat from the factory floor, mixing expired meat with fresh, and then repackaging for use in fast food products.
More than 1,000 tons of meat products from OSI in China as well as 100 tons of meat delivered to a range of customers have been seized by the Shanghai food watchdog.
On Wednesday Chinese police detained five people connected with the food supplier including the head of the company and a quality supervisor.
Among the major customers of Husi Food affected are: Starbucks, Burger King, McDonald’s and Yum Brands, the parent company of KFC and Pizza Hut in China.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 08:45