Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Saturday 1 November 2014

The European Union Times


Posted: 31 Oct 2014 09:37 AM PDT


Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman lamented Sweden’s decision to recognize Palestinian statehood, saying the Scandinavian country was getting involved in an issue more complex that IKEA furniture.
“The Swedish government should understand that Middle East relations are more complex than a piece of self-assembled IKEA furniture, and the matter should be handled with responsibility and sensitivity,” Lieberman wrote in a Facebook post.
It is doubtful whether this less-than-diplomatic comment will help Israel and its top diplomat change Stockholm’s decision. Commenting on the remark on Thursday, Lieberman’s Swedish counterpart Margot Wallstrom said:
“I will be happy to send Israel FM Lieberman an IKEA flat pack to assemble. He’ll see it requires a partner, cooperation and a good manual.”
Israel recalled its ambassador to Sweden after the country formally recognized Palestine as a sovereign state on Thursday. The Scandinavian country is the first member of the EU to do so after becoming part of the European Union, and the third after Malta and Cyprus.
Under the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s relations with its long-time allies in the US and Europe have been damaged. The country continues to pursue controversial policies like developing its illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. The EU is mounting pressure on Israel by denying funding and cooperation to Israeli companies operating in the settlements.
Washington despite its differences with Tel Aviv disagreed with Sweden.
“We believe international recognition of a Palestinian state is premature,” State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki told reporters. “We certainly support Palestinian statehood, but it can only come through a negotiated outcome, a resolution of final status issues and mutual recognitions by both parties.”
Support for Palestinians is growing as they make their case with international organizations like the United Nations and individual countries, as Sweden’s move indicates.
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Posted: 31 Oct 2014 09:08 AM PDT


Researchers suggest that those people who do regular physical activity can benefit fewer depressive symptoms.
Doing exercise three times a week decreases the odds of being depressed by approximately 16%, says the study conducted by the researchers of University College London.
They illustrated a two-way relationship between depression and physical activity, indicating lower depression risk for people with higher activity and more depressive symptoms for those who are less active.
The team achieved the results after analyzing 11,135 people born in 1958 up until the age of 50.
Study researchers monitored the participants’ depressive symptoms and levels of physical activity at regular intervals in adulthood.
They found that each additional activity session per week reduced odds of depression by 6%, according to the paper published in JAMA Psychiatry.
To assess depressive symptoms, the researchers looked at participants’ responses to the Malaise Inventory, a questionnaire designed to assess psychological distress at ages 23, 33, 42, and 50
“Assuming the association is causal, leisure time physical activity has a protective effect against depression,” said the study leader Dr Snehal Pinto Pereira of the UCL Institute of Child Health.
“If an adult between their twenties and forties who isn’t physically active became active 3 times per week, they would reduce their risk of depression by approximately 16%,” Pinto Pereira reiterated.
“This large longitudinal study suggests that exercise has an important role to play for mental health.”
Scientists had earlier found that various forms of exercise training in twenties could preserve brain and protect memory skill in middle age.
An earlier study carried out at the researchers at Karolinska Institute in Sweden had achieved similar results.
The study had indicated that physical activity could induce alteration in skeletal muscle that led to remove the blood of a substance which would accumulate during stress, and through this way harm the brain.
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Posted: 31 Oct 2014 08:44 AM PDT



Numerous students at the University of Texas in Austin signed a petition in support of killing “babies” up to 5 years old, underscoring how many so-called progressives are actually vehement proponents of infanticide.
Following a College Fix article which highlighted how more and more college students are expressing support for post-birth abortion, Infowars reporter Joe Biggs visited UT to canvass the opinion of students attending the nation’s fifth largest University.
The petition that students were asked to sign stated that, “Killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. This post-birth abortion can take place until a newborn is self-aware or reaches 5 years old.”
Some students signed the petition without even reading it, while others freely did so having read it or after it was explained to them.
One female student acknowledged that the petition was “freaking ridiculous….who would sign that?” before becoming visibly upset at the fact that several of her fellow students had signed it.
Another young woman who is a nursing student signed the petition having been told that it was in support of “post-birth abortion,” while another student who is studying to become a politician also signed the petition.
One young man who signed the petition thought the weirdest thing about it was not the fact that it advocated infanticide but that the previous signatory had the same surname as him.
Biggs was able to collect over a dozen signatures in support of the petition in just 45 minutes.
“A little piece inside of me died today with this, it broke my heart,” said Biggs during a subsequent appearance on the Alex Jones Show.

Last year, numerous residents in San Diego signed a similar petition composed by Mark Dice which advocated making post-birth abortions legal under Obamacare.

In another video also shot last year, reporter Dan Joseph convinced numerous students at George Mason University (GMU) to sign a petition demanding lawmakers legalize “fourth trimester” abortions, in other words killing babies that had already been born.

Even more disturbing than these videos is the fact that legalizing post-birth abortion has actually been seriously proposed by the medical establishment.
Last year, the University of Melbourne’s Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva wrote a paper arguing that “after-birth abortion (killing a newborn baby) should be permissible, including in cases where the newborn is not disabled.”
The notion of infanticide was also implicitly backed by MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, who said last year that newborn infants don’t count as being considered “alive”.
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Posted: 31 Oct 2014 08:15 AM PDT


The Spanish Council of State has ruled that a new planned symbolic referendum on independence in the Catalonia region is illegal, saying it backs a veto of the vote.
A spokeswoman for the council said Thursday that the consultative body decided that the government should ask the Constitutional Court to declare the November 9 referendum as unlawful.
The council made the ruling after receiving a request by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to urgently give its opinion on the upcoming vote.
Rajoy announced after the council’s decision that Madrid would take a final decision on how it will respond to the regional Catalan government plans during a weekly cabinet meeting.
The prime minister argues that Catalonia’s independence bid does not respect democratic conditions.
If the symbolic referendum were to be held, a “Yes” for independence referendum would not automatically lead to the secession of the region. The vote would only give the Catalan president the mandate to negotiate independence with the Spanish administration.
The wealthy northeastern region of Spain has a population of 7.6 million people, accounting for nearly one-fifth of the country’s economy, and has been seeking independence for years.
Polls indicate that around half of Catalans want more independence from Spain and a vast majority of them want a referendum to determine the region’s future.
Many Catalans believe their economy would be more prosperous on its own, complaining that a high portion of their taxes goes to the central government in Madrid.
The region is currently paying Madrid around 16 billion euros a year more in taxes than it gets back from the central government.
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Posted: 31 Oct 2014 08:10 AM PDT


A clandestine Home Office experiment in 1982 tested Britain’s capacity to rebuild after a catastrophic nuclear assault. Previously secret files, made public by the National Archives, document proposals to keep order using psychopathic recruits.
The exercise, dubbed ‘Regenerate’, was devised to prepare Britain to cope with a massive nuclear attack. The project aimed to create back-up measures in the event of a World War Three scenario.
Establishment officials imagined a situation where a nuclear exchange had devastated Britain’s major cities, causing millions of casualties and widespread radiation poisoning.
The Cold War experiment’s strategic means of dealing with such a disaster entailed assembling and recruiting a large group of officials, who would report to 12 carefully selected commissioners. Under the project, swathes of police officers, state officials, military officers and fire services were to be stationed beneath them.
All were to be dispatched to underground bunkers, across the state,ready to emerge in the aftermath of the assault to restore law and order and rebuild the nation.
Regenerate was devised to focus specifically on Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire, the National Archive files reveal.
The project’s architects predicted the most likely targets and forecast the immediate and residual damage of such attacks.
At the points of impact there would be “unimaginable” destruction, while further out, broken panes of glass and “debris in the streets” could be expected, the documents suggest.
Scientific advisers, engaged in the project, estimated that 50 percent of Britain’s landmass would remain intact following such strikes. Lingering survivors, however, could be plagued by illness from radiation poisoning, the files predicted.
Central to the planning phase of the Cold War exercise was the consideration of how law and order would be preserved in the aftermath of such an onslaught.
Jane Hogg, a Home Office official cited in the National Archive documents, predicted police officers would be occupied in assisting “inadequate” individuals. Others, therefore, would have to be recruited to preserve law and order, she suggested.
Hogg further claimed that psychopaths would be “very good in crises” as “they have no feelings for others, nor moral code, and tend to be very intelligent and logical.”
Her superiors, however, were unconvinced by the proposal.
“I am not at all sure you convince me. I would regard them as dangerous whether or not recruited into post-attack organization,” one senior wrote.
British historian and author of The Secret State, Lord Hennessy, was bewildered by the defense project and the suggestion that psychopaths could maintain order amid the chaos.
He described Hogg’s suggestion as “extraordinary” and “bizarre.” Hennessy acknowledged, however, the idea was ruled out “pretty quickly.”
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 09:38