Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Wednesday, 24 September 2014

The European Union Times


Posted: 24 Sep 2014 01:00 AM PDT

Remember how blobs of liquid metal morphed into Robert Patrick’s T-1000, the ultimate killing machine in Terminator 2? North Carolina scientists say that sci-fi fantasy is now reality, as a low-voltage current can be used to create morphing electronics.
In the research by a group of scientists at North Carolina State University (NCSU), an alloy of liquid metals was forced to take shapes, driven by a low-voltage electric current. They say that getting control over the surface tension of liquid metals could evolve into morphing and self-healing electronics technology.
The scientists forced an alloy of Gallium and Indium to expand in a designed way, Gizmag reported. The research was first published in the online journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers chose the Gallium/Indium alloy because of its outstanding high surface tension (500 millinewtons per meter (mN/m). This tension enables a blob of such an alloy to form and hold a practically undisturbed spherical ball shape.
Gallium’s melting point is around 29 degrees Celsius, whereas Indium is becoming liquid at much higher temperature of 156 degrees Celsius. But when amalgamated, they make an alloy that melts at room temperature. A mixture of metals with disparate melting points is called a eutectic alloy.
A very small electric current of less than one volt, applied to a Gallium/Indium alloy submerged into water, resulted in significant surface tension reduction, which allowed scientists to spread and flatten the alloy in the desired way. Once the voltage is removed, the alloy reacquires its spherical shape.
Electric current also regulates the extent of the surface tension, making it possible to vary the liquidity of the alloy from the original 500 mN/m down to a mere 2 mN/m, and in any state in between.
“The resulting changes in surface tension are among the largest ever reported, which is remarkable considering it can be manipulated by less than one volt,” said Dr. Michael Dickey, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NCSU who was the lead author of the research. “We can use this technique to control the movement of liquid metals, allowing us to change the shape of antennas and complete or break circuits. It could also be used in microfluidic channels, MEMS, or photonic and optical devices. Many materials form surface oxides, so the work could extend beyond the liquid metals studied here,” he said.
The capability to change shapes at would be highly welcome in radio electronics, as the Gallium/Indium alloy can change, for example, shapes of an antenna, making it highly tunable and capable of transforming its shape to receive or transmit a wide range of different wavelengths while operating the same component.
“If you can change the shape, you can change the function,” Dickey said. “We could develop potentially better antennas for cell phones that can respond to changing conditions.”
Michael Dickey outlined other possible utilizations of the emerging technology.
In medicine “we could see embedded electronics in gloves that a doctor or lab technician might wear, such as feedback sensors or prosthetics, and the doctor wouldn’t even know that they were there,” he told Phys-org.
Among other possible applications, he mentioned wearable devices, such as watches.
Probably the most impressive use of operable liquid metal alloys could be robotics, he said.
“Most robots that work in factories are made out of stiff materials and aren’t good interfacing with humans,” he said. “Taken to the extreme, imagine an octopus with large freedom of motion that could perform delicate tasks.”
Dickey is conducting his research under an NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award, which he received in 2010.
Before the experiments with the Gallium/Indium alloy, the NCSU researchers had tried other versions of shape-shifting antennas, but were using mechanical deformation to alter the shape, later shifting to utilizing electricity as primary form factor.
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Posted: 23 Sep 2014 02:45 PM PDT
Pictures showing an ISIL Command and Control Center in Syria before (L) and after it was struck by bombs dropped by a U.S. F-22 fighter jet are seen in handouts released by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) September 23, 2014.
American jets hit targets in Syria on Tuesday in the US-led fight against Islamic State. Although the US has not declared war since 1942, this is the seventh country that Barack Obama, the holder of the Nobel Peace Prize, has bombed in as many years.
Syria has become the latest country to have been openly targeted by the US, with Washington predictably not seeking the approval of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The US and NATO started a bombing campaign in the north of the country on Tuesday against Islamic State militants, who have taken over parts of the north and east of the country. The death toll from Tuesday’s campaign was put at 70, though this figure could rise, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, who also said that eight civilians had lost their lives.
When the Pentagon says that the conflict in Syria may take years to resolve, it is no joke – just take a look at the number of Washington’s “military engagements” during Obama’s administration.
Afghanistan (2001-present day)
It was only a matter of time following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on US soil that Afghanistan would become the first country America would bomb in the 21st century, after the Taliban refused to hand over Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.
Starting with the country’s largest cities – Kabul, Kandahar and Jalalabad, the US and its allies have become involved in a protracted conflict, which has seen tens of thousands of casualties inflicted. Although there has been a large-scale troop withdrawal, which started in June 2011 and will finish by the end of 2014, as the US looks to pass the baton of policing and providing security in Afghanistan to local forces. Yet airstrikes are still taking place.
The US has spent more than $100 billion on aid in Afghanistan since 2001 to train and equip the country’s security forces and upgrade its infrastructure, while 2,200 American troops have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001, while around 20,000 have been wounded, according to AP.
US bombing campaigns have been a contentious issue with Afghanistan’s leadership, which has said that too many civilians have died as a result of American bombing missions. Just last week, American missiles killed 11 civilians in the east of the country.
“If America and Pakistan really want it, peace will come to Afghanistan,” the country’s outgoing president, Hamid Karzai, said on September 23 as he was stepping down. “War in Afghanistan is based on the aims of foreigners. The war in Afghanistan is to the benefit of foreigners. But Afghans on both sides are the sacrificial lambs and victims of this war.”
Yemen (2002-present day)
The death of 17 US navy personnel in October 2000, who were killed when the USS Cole was attacked in the port of Aden, Yemen, by Al-Qaeda, already put the country firmly on Washington’s radar. In November 2002, America needed no extra incentive to carry out its first bombing raid on Yemeni soil, with the country’s government giving the US the green light.
The target was Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, who Washington believed was al-Qaeda’s chief operative in Yemen and was also a suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole. He was killed when a hellfire missile, guided from a pilotless aircraft hit the car he was traveling in. The US Deputy Defense Secretary at the time, Paul Wolfowitz, stated that it had been “a very successful tactical operation” and that such strikes were useful not only in killing terrorists, but in forcing Al-Qaeda to change its tactics.
While there were sporadic bombing campaigns carried out by the US, under President George W. Bush’s administration, there has been a significant escalation since Barack Obama came to power. US cables published by WikiLeaks showed that the Yemeni government has allowed US airstrikes to continue against suspected Al-Qaeda militants in the country.
US bombing raids in Yemen are almost solely carried out by drones and they have been increasing in intensity in recent years. However rights groups are becoming concerned that far too many civilian casualties are occurring as a result of America’s so-called “War on Terror.” A report by Human Rights Watch in 2013 analyzed six airstrikes in Yemen carried out since 2009. The organization found that out of the 82 people who died in the airstrikes, 57 were civilians.
Iraq (2003-2011)
The date is February 5, 2003 – the location, the United Nations in New York. The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has just delivered a speech to the UN, saying that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction – a pretext for Washington to get involved in yet another military conflict, as if having thousands of troops tied down in Afghanistan was not enough.
The first airstrikes on Iraq would take place on March 20, 2003, and within three weeks the Iraqi government had been toppled. However, just as in Afghanistan, gaining overall control of the country would not prove to be as easy, as the US and its allies came up against fierce resistance – at first from supporters of ousted President Saddam Hussein, later from various Sunni and Shiite resistance groups, and still later Al-Qaeda and its supporters.
The conflict and the US bombing campaigns proved to be disastrous for the Iraqi civilian population. An article published by AFP in October 2013, citing a study in the US, put the death toll at around half a million. Researchers stated that around 70 percent of Iraq deaths from 2003-11 were violent in nature, with most caused by gunshots, with the next most common cause of death car bombs and other explosions.
It also added that coalition forces were responsible for 35 percent of these violent deaths, or approximately 125,000 deaths.
Pakistan (2004-present day)
While drone attacks in Pakistan may have started under George W. Bush, the Obama administration has increased their frequency to unprecedented levels. According to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a website, there have been 390 drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004, of which a staggering 339 have been conducted since Obama came to power. This has led to almost 4,000 deaths, of which around one-quarter have been civilians.
Not surprisingly, the US-led drone strikes have led to plenty of friction with the Pakistani government.
“The use of drones is not only a violation of our territorial integrity but they are also detrimental to our efforts to eliminate terrorism from our country,” Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said in a meeting with Obama in October 2013, adding that the issue has become a “major irritant” in Pakistani-US relations.
Demonstrations against the use of drones by the US have been common in Pakistan. In December 2013, around 5,000 demonstrators called on the US to immediately stop the drone assaults on the country, which was organized by the Defense of Pakistan Council, which is comprised of 40 religious and political groups, AFP reported. Protesters chanted slogans and tried to block NATO supplies being transported to Afghanistan through Pakistan.
Meanwhile, a month earlier, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), led by the country’s cricket star Imran Khan, dropped the name of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative to police in a letter in which the party demanded that the agent face up to the “gross offence” of the drone strike.
The letter was released to the media. However, the name could not be independently verified.
“I would like to nominate the US clandestine agency CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) Station Chief in Islamabad … and CIA Director John O. Brennan for committing the gross offences of committing murder and waging war against Pakistan,” PTI information secretary Shireen Mazarisaid wrote in the letter.
“CIA station chief is not a diplomatic post, therefore he does not enjoy any diplomatic immunity and is within the bounds of domestic laws of Pakistan,” the letter added. The complaint was lodged with Tal police station in Hangu district, northwestern Pakistan.
Somalia (2007-present day)
In January 2007, the US launched airstrikes against suspected Al-Qaeda leaders in Somalia, who Washington believed were guilty of bombing attacks on US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200 people. The US airstrikes had the full backing of the Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed.
US involvement in Somalia has largely slipped under the radar, with significantly less international attention given to Washington’s “War on Terror” in the horn of Africa.
However, in early September, Somali jihadists in the group Al-Shabaab, which has links to Al-Qaeda, confirmed that their leader Ahmed Godane had been killed by US airstrikes, before warning of revenge attacks. US forces struck Godane’s encampment in south-central Somalia with Hellfire missiles and laser-guided munitions, Reuters reported. This drone attack was the first in Somalia for seven months.
What of Libya?
Libya is perhaps the exception to the rule where European and NATO forces carried out most of the bombing campaigns. However, it was the US who was instrumental in drumming up support to try and topple former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in March 2011. Barack Obama had given Gaddafi an ultimatum which alluded to: ‘Step down, or we will bomb you.’ When he refused to listen to Washington’s demands, military action was soon forthcoming.
The civil war was over within eight months, though chaos and fighting between rival factions in the country still continues while thousands of Libyans died on both sides during the original conflict, many of them civilians.
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Posted: 23 Sep 2014 02:36 PM PDT

At least 28 people have been killed in landslides and flash floods triggered by two days of heavy rain in northeastern India.
Indian authorities said on Tuesday that at least 14 deaths were reported in the northeastern state of Meghalaya while another 14 people lost their lives in neighboring Assam state, where several districts, including the capital Gauhati, were flooded.
According to district official Pritam Saikia, 90 villages have been inundated and over 150,000 people have been urged to leave their homes for higher ground in Assam’s worst-hit district of Goalpara.
Thousands of people who left were camped on a highway as local authorities made efforts to set up relief shelters for them.
Officials also said that in Gauhati army troops and federal workers were seeking to save those trapped and army helicopters were on standby.
Although the rain stopped for several hours on Tuesday, more rain is expected for the next 36 hours. Flooding is common in the area during the June-to-September monsoon season.
Heavy flooding claimed at least 11 lives in Gauhati in June.
Earlier in September, over 270 people died in Indian-administered Kashmir when monsoon floods inundated the Himalayan region which is claimed by both India and Pakistan in full. However, each only has control over a section of the territory.
An Iranian delegation has visited the flood-hit area to assess the situation and provide support to the people in the disaster zone.
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Posted: 23 Sep 2014 02:22 PM PDT

Winston Churchill was a ‘racist and white supremacist’, a Labour candidate in next year’s general election has claimed.
The war leader’s grandson Sir Nicholas Soames today slammed the ‘deeply insulting’ views expressed by Benjamin Whittingham, who is standing for Parliament in the Wyre and Preston North seat.
The Labour candidate made the outburst on Twitter, after it was announced that Churchill would feature on the new £5 note.
The damning revelation comes after Labour was forced to suspend a candidate for claiming Adolf Hitler was Israel’s ‘Zionist God’.
Vicky Kirby, Labour’s candidate for Woking, Surrey, she would ‘never forget’ and make sure her kids knew ‘how evil Israel is’.
Ms Kirby was told of her suspension while on her way to the Labour party conference in Manchester.
Churchill’s grandson Sir Nicholas today called for Labour leader Ed Miliband to similarly take action against Mr Whittingham.
He told MailOnline: ‘The fact that these views are expressed within the Labour Party is deeply insulting to the memory of our greatest Prime Minister.’
He added: ‘Ed Miliband must take action against those in his party who hold abhorrent views. If he can’t do that he can never be up to the job of being Prime Minister.’
Mr Whittingham’s remarks are also in stark contrast to the esteem in which the two-time Prime Minister is held among the general public.
In a 2002 BBC poll Sir Winston was voted the Greatest Briton in history for his role defeating Germany.
Sir Winston led Britain between 1940 and 1945 – and again from 1951 to 1955. He also served in the British Army in India, Sudan and South Africa – while commanding a battalion in the First World War after resigning from the Cabinet.
Churchill is also the only British Prime Minister to have won the Nobel Prize in Literature and was granted the rare honour of a state funeral after his death in 1965.
But Labour’s Mr Whittingham, who describes his politics as ‘far left’, dismissed the statesman as a ‘racist’ who did not deserve to be honoured on the £5 note.
Mr Whittingham has also expressed his desire to renationalise the major utilities – including electricity, water and rail.
Churchill’s critics point to several of his caustic remarks and his handling of the 1943-44 Bengal famine when between one and three million Indians died of starvation.
He derided India’s independence leader Mahatma Gandhi as a ‘half-naked holy man’ and once said: ‘I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.’
On April 26 he wrote: ‘Bit disappointed Churchill is on the new £5 given he was a racist and white supremacist. Can’t go into the future with a foot in the past.’
But Mr Whittingham’s remarks are not his only controversial interventions online. He has also called for wage caps – claiming that it is ‘disgusting’ for people to be paid £100,000 when others are ‘on the breadline’.
His Facebook account also lists him as a member of the ‘Socialist Workers Party Edinburgh’ group, raising concerns about his links to the fringe militant group.
Labour’s own rule book states that ‘A member of the party who joins and or supports a political organisation other than an official Labour group or other unit of the party…shall automatically be ineligible to be or remain a party member’.
Mr Whittingham is not the first prominent Labour figure to criticise Churchill.
Former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell was accused of insulting the war leader after suggesting he told worse lies about D-Day than Tony Blair had about the Iraq War.
Mr Blair’s former director of communications, said Churchill used what the Second World War leader called a ‘bodyguard of lies’ to trick Hitler before the Normandy landings in June 1944 – and ‘lied’ to MPs afterwards to ‘keep various deceptions going’.
Campbell argued: ‘If the pollsters were to do a survey, who had a greater commitment to wartime truth, Churchill in the Second World War or Tony Blair in Iraq, I think we know what the answer would be . . . it just wouldn’t be true.’
But his assertion was challenged by Tory MP Colonel Bob Stewart, who led British forces in Bosnia.
‘For Campbell to suggest that Churchill was a bigger liar than Blair is deeply insulting to the memory of our greatest Prime Minister,’ said the Beckenham MP.
‘It is absurd to compare the disinformation used by Churchill to enhance our chance of victory in the Second World War to Tony Blair’s dodgy dossiers before the Iraq War.
‘Churchill exposed the truth about German rearmament. Blair, aided by the likes of Campbell, exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam’s weapons.
‘Britain went to war with Germany legally to defend Poland and Churchill used misinformation as part of British strategy and tactics.
‘The Blair Government used misinformation to drum up public support for a war that was probably illegal.’
Campbell was deeply involved in Blair’s notorious ‘45 minutes from doom’ dossier on the Iraq War in September 2002.
A few months later, the spin doctor was also associated with a separate so-called ‘dodgy dossier’ about Saddam Hussein’s weapons, which turned out to be a crude copy of out-of-date research.
A Labour Party spokesman said: ‘This comment does not represent the view of the Labour Party.’
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Posted: 23 Sep 2014 02:02 PM PDT

Former CIA contractor Steven Kelley has said Russia has a “much larger” potential to attack the United States first than China.
Kelley made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Sunday when asked about a warning given by a top US Navy commander about a potential attack by Russian and Chinese submarines on the US.
US Navy’s top Atlantic Submarine Force commander Adm. Michael Connor has recently warned that Russian and Chinese naval forces are becoming capable of attacking American bases.
Kelley said he does not think that China is a threat yet, but it possibly will be for the United States.
“I do think that the Russian potential for first strike is certainly much larger, but I would certainly expect that if Russia decided that it was in their best interest to launch a first strike that certainly China would be involved, so that’s certainly a threat,” he added.
The former contractor said the question of the vulnerability of the United States “to attack from the Russian and the Chinese submarines of course has always been there.”
“The Chinese naturally have a much weaker force than the Russians do, but it’s very important to understand that the United States has very advanced technology for defeating ballistic missile systems,” he noted.
“Very much like the situation with 9/11, you can be assured that if a nuclear attack was to be launched against the United States, that the ability for it to be successful would be dependent on the United States allowing it to happen,” he stated.
Kelley also talked about the military capability of China and Russia, saying the US Navy is concerned about the matter.
“The Chinese are working on developing the supersonic torpedoes and cruise missiles similar to the technology that the Russians have developed and now they’re saying that the Chinese are also developing, they’re using a variation of the Russian technology on a much larger scale to develop super-high-speed submarines, naturally this could change things drastically and I’m sure this is something that the US Navy is very concerned about,” he explained.
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Posted: 23 Sep 2014 01:49 PM PDT

Despite campaigning on a platform that endorsed having “a nuclear-free world” in the not so distant future, United States President Barack Obama is overseeing an administration that’s aim has taken another path, the New York Times reported this week.
On Sunday, journalists William Broad and David Sanger wrote for the Times that a half-decade of “political deals and geopolitical crises” have thrown a wrench in the works of Pres. Obama’s pre-White House plans, as a result eviscerating his previously stated intentions of putting America’s and ideally the world’s nuclear programs on ice.
According to the Times report, an effort to ensure that the antiquated nuclear arsenal being held by the US remains secure has since expanded to the point that upwards of $1 trillion dollars is now expected to be spent on various realms of the project during the next three decades, the likes of which are likely to keep the trove of American nukes intact and do little to discourage other nations from doing differently.
“The original idea was that modest rebuilding of the nation’s crumbling nuclear complex would speed arms refurbishment, raising confidence in the arsenal’s reliability and paving the way for new treaties that would significantly cut the number of warheads,” the journalists wrote. “Instead, because of political deals and geopolitical crises, the Obama administration is engaging in extensive atomic rebuilding while getting only modest arms reductions in return.”
Shortly after he first entered the oval office in early 2009, the Nobel Peace Prize commission awarded Pres. Obama with its highest award for, among other factors, taking a strong stance against international nuclear procurement.
“I’m not naïve,” Obama said that year. “This goal will not be reached quickly — perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence.”
After speaking with analysts, however, the Times journalists — both Pulitzer winners in their own right — now raise doubts that the commander-in-chief’s campaign goals will come to fruition anytime soon.
“With Russia on the warpath, China pressing its own territorial claims and Pakistan expanding its arsenal, the overall chances for Mr. Obama’s legacy of disarmament look increasingly dim, analysts say,” they wrote. “Congress has expressed less interest in atomic reductions than looking tough in Washington’s escalating confrontation with Moscow.”
Indeed, international disputes have without a doubt raised concerns in recent years over the nuclear programs of other nations. The Washington Post reported this week that Pakistan is working towards achieving the capability to launch sea-based, short-range nuclear arms, and concurrently the Kremlin confirmed that Russia is set to renew the country’s strategic nuclear forces by 100 percent, not 70 percent as previously announced.
As those countries ramp up their nuclear programs on their own, the Times report cites a recent study from the Washington, DC-based Government Accountability Office to show that the US is making more than just a minor investment with regards to America’s nukes. According to that report, 21 major upgrades to nuclear facilities have already been approved, yet in the five years since Obama took office, “the modernization push” to upgrade the nukes has been “poorly managed and financially unaccountable.”
“It estimated the total cost of the nuclear enterprise over the next three decades at roughly $900 billion to $1.1 trillion,” the journalists noted. “Policy makers, the [GAO] report said, ‘are only now beginning to appreciate the full scope of these procurement costs.’”
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 08:32