Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Sunday 25 January 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 24 Jan 2015 05:02 AM PST
Britain’s Prince Charles, wearing a traditional Saudi attire, attends the traditional Saudi dance, known as ‘Arda’, which was performed during Janadriya culture festival at Der’iya in Riyadh, February 18, 2014.
Critics are taking Western leaders to task for singing the praises of King Abdullah, the recently deceased 90-year-old monarch of Saudi Arabia, whose regime they claim was marred by countless human rights abuses, warmongering and corruption.
US Secretary of State John Kerry described the late king as “a brave partner in fighting violent extremism who proved just as important as a proponent of peace.”
However, prior to a 2013 law which banned terrorist financing, Saudi Arabia had been described as “the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide,” according to US diplomatic cable leaked by WikiLeaks.
Former US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called Abdullah “a powerful voice for tolerance, moderation, and peace,” and lauded his dedication to “advancing the lives of his people at home as well as his country’s leadership abroad.”
Another leaked cable revealed that Saudi King had urged the US to strike Iran in order to destroy its nuclear program. Abdullah was recorded telling America to “cut off the head of the snake,” in a 2008 meeting with General David Petraeus.
The British establishment, meanwhile, remembers the King warmly, going so far as to request that flags around the country be flown at half-mast all day in honor of Abdullah. A government website notes that “local authorities are not bound by this request but may wish to follow it for guidance.”

Prince Charles has also flown to Saudi Arabia to pay his last respects to the late monarch. The Prince of Wales has made frequent visits to the oil-rich kingdom, even participating in a ritual sword dance alongside members of the royal family last year. He is believed to have been a close friend of Abdullah.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said, “I knew him well and admired him greatly. Despite the turmoil of events in the region around him, he remained a stable and sound ally, was a patient and skillful modernizer of his country leading it step by step into the future.”
Critics note that the monarch repeatedly moved to engineer further conflict in the Middle East. For instance, Abdullah had called on the US to provide more backing to the Sunni rebels fighting to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria.
In an Elysee Palace statement, France also lauded King Abdullah’s “vision of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.”
Despite limited efforts, characterized by Human Rights Watch (HRW) as “marginal advances that failed to secure the fundamental rights of Saudi citizens to free expression, association, and assembly,” Abdullah was unable to curtail his kingdom’s routine rights’ violations, including public floggings of dissidents and executions for sorcery.
And yet, US Vice President Joe Biden expressed admiration for Abdullah’s “efforts to move his country forward.”
Chancellor Angela Merkel, though more measured in her praise, also voiced appreciation for the absolute monarch’s “cautious modernization of his country.”
Abdullah was widely praised in the West for sponsoring an eponymous coeducational graduate-level university, a breach of the taboo in the only country in the world where women are forbidden from driving.
Standing up for basic human rights can be challenging, if not dangerous in the ultraconservative kingdom. King Abdullah’s four daughters, for example, have been kept locked up by their father for some 13 years for speaking out against the country’s oppression of women.
“What is the crime of 99 percent of women in this country, who are basically suffering under male guardianship? A male guardian can do whatever he wants; he can cut off everything and she is left with nothing,” they told RT in an interview last year.
Despite all this, head of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde went so far as to praise Abdullah as a “strong advocate for women.”
“In a very discreet way, he was a strong advocate of women. It was very gradual, appropriately so probably for the country. I discussed that issue with him several times and he was a strong believer,” she said.
Last summer, HRW noted a surge in executions in the kingdom. Between August 4 and August 21, the country executed at least 19 people, eight for nonviolent offense, like drug smuggling and sorcery. Convicted criminals are usually beheaded, though those convicted of crimes of morality such as adultery can be stoned to death.
In recent weeks, thousands gathered at Saudi embassies around the globe to protest the ruling against Raif Badawi, a Saudi blogger who was sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for setting up a website that undermined general security and mocked religious figures. The blogger had originally been charged with apostasy, or abandonment of religion, a crime that is punishable with the death penalty.
In spite of this seemingly appalling human rights record and sketchy foreign policy peppered with warmongering, Western leaders are putting up a united front of support for the late monarch.
Many have taken to Twitter to lambast the apparent hypocrisy of these venerating eulogies. Some have even coined the #JeSuisAbdullah hashtag, expressing wry scorn for what they believe to be a tyrant glowingly misremembered because of his country’s strategic importance to its Western allies.
How low can we go in Europe? Someone should remind all these so-called “EU leaders” (buffoons) that Christian Churches are illegal in Saudi Arabia, women aren’t allowed to drive cars and Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda was born in Saudi Arabia and had close ties to the Saudi royal family.
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Posted: 24 Jan 2015 03:38 AM PST


For the first time ever, scientists have slowed down the speed of light, particles known as photons, as it traveled through free space, a study says.
Scientists successfully reduced the speed of photon particles as they traveled in free space after passing through a special mask, researchers from the University of Glasgow and Heriot-Watt University, both in Scotland, said in a paper published in Science Express on Friday.
The effect was achieved by applying the mask to a beam of light to give photons a spatial structure, the researchers said.
They discovered that the mask placed a limit on the top speed at which the photons can travel once they pass through the mask.
The effect of passing the light through the mask is very different to the slowing effect of passing light through a medium like glass or water, whereby the particle returns to the speed of light once it exits the medium, the scientists explained.
“This finding shows unambiguously that the propagation of light can be slowed below the commonly accepted figure of 299,792,458 meters per second (186,282 miles per second), even when travelling in air or vacuum,” said one of the lead authors of the paper, Jacquiline Romero.
The principle can be applied to essentially any wave theory, including sound waves, the paper said.
“The results give us a new way to think about the properties of light and we’re keen to continue exploring the potential of this discovery in future applications,” concluded Professor Miles Padgett, team lead from the University of Glasgow’s Optics Group.
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Posted: 24 Jan 2015 03:35 AM PST


Scheme would allow government to confiscate money at will.
Bill Gates is now promoting “digital currency” in third-world countries, which will make the poor even more dependent on central banks while also turning them into guinea pigs for the development of a “cashless society” in the U.S. and Europe.
Gates outlined his plan for a cashless society in a letter published Thursday in which he proposed the poor have better access to mobile phones so they can store their financial assets digitally instead of keeping hard currency at home.
“The key to this will be mobile phones,” he wrote. “Already, in the developing countries with the right regulatory framework, people are storing money digitally on their phones and using their phones to make purchases, as if they were debit cards.”
“By 2030, two billion people who don’t have a bank account today will be storing money and making payment with their phones.”
But this will only enslave the poor into an electronic monetary system they don’t control, allowing central banks and the government unparalleled ability to confiscate money at will through taxes and “bail-ins.”
For example, after Cyprus’s largest bank was sunk from exposure to debt-crippled Greece, the Cypriot government looted people’s bank accounts in 2013 as part of a “bail-in” program with the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.
“If you can do this once, you can do it again,” financial analyst Lars Seier Christensen wrote, who called the “bail-in” full-blown socialism. “If you can confiscate 10% of a bank customer’s money, you can confiscate 25, 50 or even 100%.”
A third-world government wouldn’t even need to wait for an economic crisis to loot digital bank accounts, however, with the cashless scheme Gates proposes, officials could simply impose a tax and confiscate money automatically.
And there’s no reason to believe this scheme will only be limited to the third-world; the United Kingdom has already tested digital-only payments earlier this year.
“While the whole idea is being marketed as an inevitable consequence of the decline in cash payments and the rise of credit cards and contact-less payment technology, many in the privacy community see the elimination of cash as another means of abolishing anonymity,” Paul Joseph Watson wrote. “Alternatives to cash that could still provide anonymity, such as crypto-currencies like Bitcoin, are slowly being adopted by more stores and chains, but at nowhere near the rate required to provide a viable competitor to the likes of Google Wallet and Paypal.”
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Posted: 24 Jan 2015 03:29 AM PST
A rare translucent pink fish, surprisingly alive in an extreme condition beneath Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.
Researchers have discovered fish, crustaceans and jellyfish, safe and sound deep beneath Antarctic ice shelf.
The stunning discovery came on January 15, when a team of researchers found live fish and other aquatic animals inhabiting one of the world’s most extreme ecosystems under a 740-meter roof of thick ice in the largest ice shelf of Antarctica.
The Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling (WISSARD) team from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (U.N.L.) had begun ice drilling in Ross Ice Shelf, roughly 850 kilometers (530 miles) from the open ocean, in early January.
According to a WISSARD update on January 21, the “National Science Foundation-funded team of researchers has become the first ever to reach and sample the ‘grounding zone’, where Antarctic ice, land and sea all converge.”
The surprising discovery of marine life in extremely cold and perpetually dark conditions “poses questions about how to thrive in extreme environments,” read WISSARD’s report.
Ross Powell, a chief scientist with the WISSARD project and a researcher at Northern Illinois University said, “I have been investigating these types of environments for much of my career, and although I knew it would be difficult, I had been wanting to access this system for years because of its scientific importance.”
WISSARD scientists managed to drill through 740 meters (nearly 2,500 feet) of the Ross Ice Shelf on January 8.
Afterwards, they deployed a submersible camera to explore about 400 square meters (4,300 square feet) of the marine cavity around the drilled site. The remotely operated camera managed to record pictures and videos of the rare translucent pink fish and other curious marine animals.
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Posted: 24 Jan 2015 03:13 AM PST


At least nine people were killed and up to 20 injured in a shelling in Donetsk on Thursday morning. In the wake of the attack, conflicting reports emerged over the arrests of what local authorities call a ‘covert group.’
Residents of Donetsk’s Leninsky district heard shelling at about 08:30 local time, media report. Windows in the buildings near a tram stop were blown out. Locals say they believed their district to be “a quiet place” and were shocked by the “tragedy that happened when people were heading to work.”
A trolleybus was also hit, and eye-witnesses said there were victims inside, as well as bodies lying at the stop, local news outlets said. Conflicting reports, citing medical sources, indicate there may have been up to 13 deaths.
“A covert group has been operating, they have been arrested now. No more comments,” the defense minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic Vladimir Kononov told Gazeta.Ru newspaper.
The authorities of the self-proclaimed republic also say the shelling was carried with mortars, RIA-Novosti reported.
“Our officers were at the scene, according to the preliminary information, the shelling was conducted with mortars from one of the nearby districts. It appears that two bombs fell on the stop,” said a spokesperson for the DPR Security Ministry.
“The self-defense forces shortly thereafter arrested a covert group of Ukrainian security forces not far from the scene, at the moment it is being verified whether they were involved in the shelling,” the spokesperson added.
The deputy speaker of the DPR parliament, Denis Pushilin, told RIA-Novosti that the investigation is ongoing and that “the shelling was supposedly conducted from a minibus or a dustbin lorry.”


Later on Thursday, local authorities denied previous reports of a “covert team” having been arrested in connection with the attack.
“I want to rebut reports that have been widely published in the media that a covert group has been allegedly detained in connection with the Donetsk tragedy… the defense ministry has not said that. I can confirm what he [the minister] did say: that covert forces multiply, are being eliminated and neutralized. But I did not say that it was that particular group that had conducted it [the Thursday shelling],” Eduard Basurin, of local anti-government forces told journalists, as quoted by RIA Novosti news agency.
The self-proclaimed republic’s authorities also blamed Kiev’s forces for over a dozen violations of cease-fire agreements over the course of the day, Interfax reported. 19 violations were committed across Thursday, Basurin said, adding that civilian facilities, such as a kindergarten and a hospital have come under attack.
The OSCE has sent a group of its experts to the scene of the shelling in Donetsk to collect information, spokesman for the organization’s special monitoring mission to Ukraine Michael Bociurkiw told RIA-Novosti.
“Yes, we are aware [of what happened]. We have sent our patrol group to evaluate the situation. Taking into consideration the security situation, we are to present our assessment in the nearest future,” Bociurkiw said.
The OSCE special mission to Ukraine has called for an immediate ceasefire in the Donbas region and military disengagement after the Donetsk tragedy, a spokesperson for the mission told RIA-Novosti.


DPR’s Emergency Ministry told RIA-Novosti: “As the shelling hit the “Kuprina street” stop, nine people were killed, including a driver of a car that was parked nearby. The car caught fire… Another ten people were injured and taken to hospitals.”


Russia will raise the issue of the deadly Donetsk shelling on Thursday at a session of the OSCE Permanent Council, the country’s permanent representative said, as cited by RIA-Novosti.
“We are stunned by a new monstrous offence in Donetsk … that we regard as a crime against humanity, a barbaric provocation, aimed at disruption of the efforts to regulate the Ukrainian crisis peacefully,” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a statement. “It becomes evident that ‘the party of war’ in Kiev and its foreign patrons won’t be stopped by loss of life.”
Lavrov also called for an immediate investigation into the incident, which would involve the OSCE mission. “Everything has to be done to stop Kiev’s shelling of cities of south-eastern Ukraine,” he said.








Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said that Russia bears responsibility for the tragedy, blaming rebels for the deaths of civilians in Donetsk, Reuters reported.
“Today Russian terrorists again committed a terrible act against humanity. Russia bears responsibility for this,” he said at a ceremony to mark Unity Day in Kiev.
The shelling comes shortly after the meeting on Wednesday of the foreign ministers of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France in Berlin, where they tried to progress with a solution to the Ukrainian crisis.
On January 13, twelve people died and 13 more were injured as a bus was shelled in the eastern Donetsk region, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said. Denis Pushilin, Donetsk People’s Republic representative at Minsk talks, said the attack may have been staged by Kiev.
The incident took place near a Ukrainian military checkpoint near the town of Volnovakha, the spokesman for the Interior Ministry in the Donetsk region, Vyacheslav Ambroskin, said.
Initially, 10 people were killed in the shelling. A woman reportedly died in hospital later in the day, according to the Donetsk regional administration which cited health officials. The regional administration also reported that 18 people had been injured.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 10:30