Tuesday, 23 December 2014

The European Union Times

Second Jihadist Runs Another Car into French Christmas Shoppers

Posted: 22 Dec 2014 01:30 PM PST

At least ten people were injured, two gravely, as a minivan crashed into a Christmas market in Nantes. The driver attempted to stab himself to death following the crash, a second such incident in the country over the last two days.
Reports on the number of injured were conflicting with Le Figaro suggesting there are 17 casualties, while Focusur.fr reports at least 12 were injured and five are in serious condition.
A 37-year-old man deliberately drove the van into the market crowded with families and kids as Muslim hatred against European Christian people is rising more than ever amid soaring uncontrolled illegal immigration from the third world. After that he attempted to take his life, stabbing himself in the chest several times. A source close to the investigation told AFP that the man was seriously injured but alive. He was taken to hospital.
Witnesses told L’Express the man was shouting “Allahu Akbar”. Despite some media reports called the incident a “jihadist attack”, this has not been confirmed by officials for fear of Christian retaliation against Muslim invaders. Since the the governments are the ones who allow and promote this immigration mess, they are now trying to hide serious terrorist attacks such as these so that the people won’t retaliate.
Local prosecutor Brigitte Lamy told journalists it was an “isolated case” and “not a terrorist act,” even though these so-called isolated cases are on the rise more than ever.
Lamy said the driver was born in the western French city of Saintes, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) south of Nantes, but did not disclose the man‘s identity.
The market was closed following the attack and the area was cordoned off.
The incident comes a day after a mentally unstable driver also shouting “Allahu Akbar” ran into crowds of pedestrians in several separate locations in the French city of Dijon. At least 11 people were injured at that time, two of them seriously.
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US-Cuba deal ‘new front for Russia war’

Posted: 22 Dec 2014 01:10 PM PST

The United States sees the restoring of relations with Cuba as a “new front in its war against Russia” and upsetting the Russian interests, a political analyst says.
“I think what has gone under the radar as far as the Cuba-America agreement is concerned, a lot of people are taken by surprise, but in fact this is one of the few possibilities that the United States has to actually upset the new Russian order,” Daniel Estulin, author and presenter from Madrid, told Press TV in an interview on Sunday.
Speaking from the White House on Wednesday, President Barack Obama announced the end of what he acknowledged was a decades-long “rigid” policy of isolation of Cuba.
According to Estulin, everything the Western “oligarchy” has thrown at Russia in the last decade and a half has failed.
The West has tried and failed to contain Russia through color revolutions, massacres of children, inflation, putting drugs throughout the country, embargos, wars, regime change attempts, NATO build-up around Russia, oil deflation and currency speculation, the analyst said. “All of that has failed.”
“And again what we are seeing is the only opportunity the United States has for this asymmetrical warfare against Russia that still might win and get the upper hand through Cuba, get at the whole Latin America,” Estulin continued.
“The whole idea of the agreement between Cuba and the United States has very little to do with bringing down this blockade [of Cuba]. It has to do with pragmatism on the part of America’s ruling class, and the idea is to take over what Russia did not take over in its time such as Cuba… and use it as a spear point to destroy Russia’s interests in Latin America.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin is “selling Russian oil and gas only for physical gold and this is called check-mate, ladies and gentlemen, the game is over,” Estulin said.
“This is something that the Americans understand, and that’s why the decision to reach the agreement is coming right now.
“For example, in the third quarter alone, Russia has purchased 55 out of the 93 tones of physical gold purchased by the central banks of all countries in the world. In other words, more than half of all the gold purchased was purchased by Russia.”
The “twist of Putin’s game,” according to Estulin, is that the mechanism for the sale of Russian energy to the West only for gold works regardless of whether the West agrees to pay for Russian oil and gas.”
“The suppression of gold prices by the special department of the United States government, called the Exchange Stabilization Fund, with the aim of stabilizing the dollar has been made into law in the United States and that’s something that Russia has flaunted and has found a way around it again by using their natural resources in exchange for gold.
“This is again the key reason why the United States right now decided it needed to open up a new front against Russia and this is the whole United States-Cuba agreement.”
Estulin noted that “the global market for physical gold is extremely small” compared to the market for paper gold; “$360 billion per month are traded in paper gold and only $280 million a month are traded in physical gold.”
“The West has spent as much of its efforts and resources to artificially increase the purchasing power of the dollar and lower oil prices and artificially lower the purchasing power of gold but the problem for the West is that the stocks of physical gold in possession of the West are not unlimited,” he said.
“Russia poses a real threat to the American model of petro-dollar world domination,” he added.
“The question that remains is how long will the West be able to buy oil and gas from Russia in exchange for physical gold and what will happen to the United States’ petrodollar after the West runs out of physical gold to pay for Russian oil, gas and uranium.
“The answer to this question is the key element of this United States-Cuba agreement. It has nothing to do with openness. It has to do with typical American cynicism, opening up a new front in its war against Russia for the American model of survival,” Estulin concluded.
Source

U.S. Takes Down North Korea’s Internet

Posted: 22 Dec 2014 01:00 PM PST

North Korea is suffering a complete internet outage.

The New York Times reports the network failure or probable take down is one of the worst in years.
North Korea’s internet is managed by Star Joint Venture, a state-run company that routes much of its traffic through China Unicom, China’s state-owned telecommunications company.
According analysts, North Korea began experiencing problems on Friday after Obama pledged a response to the unsubstantiated claim the government of Kim Jong-un was responsible for a hack at Sony Pictures after the movie studio produced a film portraying the murder of Jong-un.
“Their networks are under duress,” said Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research. “This is consistent with a DDoS attack on their routers.”
“The situation now is they are totally offline,” Madory told Bloomberg. “I don’t know that someone is launching a cyber-attack against North Korea, but this isn’t normal for them.”
“I haven’t seen such a steady beat of routing instability and outages in KP before. Usually there are isolated blips, not continuous connectivity problems. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are absorbing some sort of attack presently.”
Source

1 million naturally mummified bodies found in Egypt cemetery

Posted: 22 Dec 2014 12:40 PM PST

A cemetery with a million mummified bodies has been found in Egypt, a research team director says.

The director of a US research team says it has found a cemetery in Egypt containing around a million naturally mummified bodies.
“We are fairly certain we have over a million burials within this cemetery. It’s large and it’s dense,” Project manager, Kerry Muhlestein, an associate professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University in Utah, US, said in a paper he presented at the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities Scholars Colloquium, which was held in Toronto.
Muhlestein also said the internal organs of the deceased were scarcely removed and it was the arid natural environment that mummified the dead bodies.
“I don’t think you would term what happens to these burials as true mummification,” Muhlestein noted, adding, “If we want to use the term loosely, then they were mummified.”
While the buried corpses were of low social status, the team of archaeologists found some beautiful items, including linen, glass and even colorful booties designed for a child.
“A lot of their wealth, as little as they had, was poured into these burials,” Muhlestein said.
According to the team, the cemetery is now called Fag el-Gamous, which means “Way of the Water Buffalo,” a title originating from the name of a nearby road.
The people buried in the cemetery were not kings or queens and often laid to rest without coffins, the researchers said.
Many of the bodies belong to the time when the Roman or Byzantine Empire controlled Egypt, from the 1st century to the 7th century A.D. At least one body was reported to be more than 7 feet tall.
Source

Israel owes Lebanon $850 milion for oil spill – UN

Posted: 22 Dec 2014 12:24 PM PST

Oil from the bombed power plant of Jieh contaminating the beaches of Beirut.

The UN General Assembly has nearly unanimously approved a resolution urging Israel to pay Lebanon some $850mn compensation to cover the clean-up cost of an oil spill caused in 2006 by the IDF jets attack on oil storage tanks during the war with Hezbollah.
The UNGA assembly voted 170-6 in favor of the non-binding resolution. Israel, the United States, Canada, Australia, Micronesia and Marshall Islands voted against the motion.
Taking into account the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, which in principle requires the polluter to pay environmental damage costs, the assembly found Israel guilty of the July 15, 2006 environmental disaster.
The disaster was caused by the Israeli Air Force strike on the oil storage tanks in the direct vicinity of the Jiyeh electric power plant in Lebanon. As a result an oil slick covered the Lebanese coastline entirely, stretching all the way to the Syrian coastline.
The assembly decision follows the assessment report by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon which stipulates the value of damage to be $856.4 million. Now the Assembly is asking Israel to provide “prompt and adequate compensation.”

A crab covered in oil struggles towards the sea polluted with heavy fuel oil in Beirut 29 July 2006.

In addition, the assembly wants the UN and other institutions to conduct a further study to identify the full extent of the sustained environmental damage suffered by neighboring countries.
The resolution notes that the UN chief expressed “grave concern at the lack of any acknowledgment on the part of the government of Israel of its responsibilities vis-a-vis reparations and compensation” to Lebanon and Syria for the oil spill.
Israel’s UN Mission claimed that the resolution is biased against Israel.
“This resolution has long outlived the effects of the oil slick, and serves no purpose other than to contribute to institutionalizing an anti-Israel agenda at the UN,” Israel said, adding that at the time they “immediately responded to the oil slick incident by cooperating closely with the United Nations.”
Lebanon’s Ambassador Nawaf Salam meanwhile called the resolution a “major progress.”
“We affirm that Lebanon will continue to mobilize all resources and resort to all legal means to see that this resolution is fully implemented, and that the specified compensation is paid promptly,” Salam said.
Source