Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Monday 12 January 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 11 Jan 2015 01:26 PM PST


Madrid wants to see changes made to the treaty governing the visa-free Schengen area, which would allow Spain to introduce border controls to stem the tide of Islamic militants returning from the Middle East, the country’s interior minister has said.
“We are going to back border controls and it is possible that as a consequence it will be necessary to modify the Schengen treaty,” Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz told the daily El Pais in an interview on Saturday.
“The existing mobility in the European Union is facilitating the movements (of jihadists) to any country and also to our country,” he continued.
The minister and his European counterparts are set to discuss the future of Schengen during a meeting in Paris on Sunday.
Diaz is not the first European politician to consider revamping or altogether suspending the Schengen zone in response to the deadly attacks in and around Paris this week, which left 20 dead, including three attackers.
On Friday, The leader of France’s rightwing Front National (FN), Marine Le Pen, told French President Francois Hollande that the country should “immediately suspend Schengen to be able to control our borders” in what she called an “essential element in the fight against terrorism.”
The Schengen Area consists of 26 European countries that have abolished passport and any other type of border controls. The agreement allows for both freedom of movement for both European citizens, Schengen visa holders and those who can travel in the area visa-free. Freedom of movement is considered “a fundamental right” guaranteed by the EU to its citizens.
Diaz further called for the establishment of a Europe-wide passenger name record data base, which would aid in sharing passenger information between member states.
“We are convinced of the need for such a tool, to follow those who travel to terrorist operating theaters or who return from there,” he said.
He further said that the hate speech, particularly anti-Semitic messages and attempts to recruit young people to militant organizations, needed to be tackled online in a way that did not stop the internet from being a venue of free expression.
“We need to work more closely with Internet companies to guarantee the reporting and if possible removal of all content that amounts to an apology for terrorism or calls for violence and hatred,” he said.
Fears of another terror attack in Europe are running high following the recent shootings in France. On Sunday, a report in the Germany daily Bild, citing intelligence from the US National Security Agency, warned that the events in France may be the first in a wave of attacks to strike Europe.
The intelligence, reportedly citing conversations between Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) leaders, said a series of European cities could be attacked, including Rome.
The article, however, didn’t furnish details of a concrete terror plot.
EU and US security ministers also met at France’s interior ministry on Sunday to discuss a joint response to terrorism in the wake of the Paris assault. The meeting was held just hours before a massive parade through Paris, where hundreds of thousands of people, along with dozens of world leaders, came in a show of solidarity and remembrance for those who lost their lives.
Following the meeting, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said European interior ministers had agreed to ratchet up cooperation in an effort to halt future terrorist attacks.
The White House further announced it had incited its allied to Washington for a February 18 security summit in Washington to try and stem the tide of violent extremism.
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Posted: 11 Jan 2015 01:14 PM PST
A new study says married couples are happier than singles especially those who are best friends.
A new study suggests that married couples are happier than single people, especially those who marry their “best friend.”
A recent research published by John F. Helliwell and Shawn Grover from the National Bureau of Economic Research in Canada suggests that there is a causal relationship between marriage and happiness, and the friendship between the partners explains it.
The authors used data from the British Household Panel Survey, the United Kingdom’s Annual Population, and the Gallup World Poll to analyze the link between well-being and marriage and found that for people who regard their partner as their best friend, the well-being effects of marriage are doubled, even when factors like age, gender, income, health, and pre-marriage life satisfaction are controlled.
“We do think it’s more about that social relationship than the legal status,” Grover said. “Marriage, in a sense, is a super friendship,’ he added.The authors state that the protective effect of marriage extends to even the 40s and 50s, a time people usually suffer from mid-life crisis and happiness is at its lowest level.
“We find that the married have a less deep U-shape in life satisfaction across age groups than do the unmarried, indicating that marriage may help ease the causes of the mid-life dip in life satisfaction and that the benefits of marriage are unlikely to be short-lived,” Helliwell and Grover concluded.
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Posted: 11 Jan 2015 12:54 PM PST


The Charlie Hebdo unity march in Paris served as a backdrop on Sunday for interior ministers who demand more internet surveillance.
“We forcefully noted the need for greater cooperation with Internet companies to guarantee the reporting and removal of illegal content, particularly content that makes apologies for terrorism or promotes violence or hate,” said French Interior MinisterBernard Cazeneuve.
US and EU bureaucrats gathered at the French interior ministry to formulate a response to the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups, many supported, trained and financed by the Gulf emirates, Turkey, western intelligence and the U.S. military.
The meeting in France will be followed by a “security summit” to be held in Washington next month.
“We will bring together all of our allies to discuss ways in which we can counteract this violent extremism that exists around the world,” said Attorney General Eric Holder.
The Paris attack will be used to impose new and more draconian legislation over free speech and the right to communicate without interference by the state.
“France’s police state apparatus is one of the continent’s toughest. Article 13 of its 2014-19 defense appropriation legislation permits monitoring, collecting and maintaining Internet user data,” writes Stephen Lendman.
The legislation requires ISPs and web sites to provide government with information on users’ activities and authorizes surveillance by the state.
Britain, often cited as the incubator for police state activity in the West, leads the way.
In 2005 it imposed the Prevention of Terrorism Act which did away with long standing legal protections. The legislation permits arbitrary house arrest, prohibitions against free association, and bans on electronic communication.
In September, the British Home Secretary Theresa May criticized Parliament the “torpedoing” of a so-called snooper’s charter communications data bill that would outlaw speech the state considers “poisonous hatred.” May specifically cited the Islamic State when she argued in favor of the the legislation.
In addition to addressing the purported threat of Islamic speech, the law would also confront “all forms of extremism‚ including neo-Nazism,” according to The Guardian, and focus on the “culture of bullying and intimidation” in British schools.
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Posted: 11 Jan 2015 12:49 PM PST
Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic votes in Croatia’s presidential run-off on January 11, 2015.
Croatia’s opposition conservative Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic has won the country’s presidential run-off following a tight competition with incumbent President Ivo Josipovic, partial results show.
Grabar-Kitarovic, a former foreign minister and an ex-assistant secretary general of NATO, garnered 50.44 percent of the vote on Sunday, showed results based on 80 percent of the ballots counted.
Her rival, center-left candidate Josipovic, won 49.56 percent of the vote, according to the results.
The final results are expected to be released later in the day. If Grabar-Kitarovic’s lead is confirmed, the 46-year-old politician of the center-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party will become Croatia’s first female president.
The presidential post in Croatia is largely ceremonial, however, the president still has a say in foreign policy and intelligence matters and is the head of the country’s armed forces.
The election came at a time when the ruling center-left government is accused of failing to tackle the country’s six-year long recession and is also suffering from a huge public debt. The deficit is close to 80 percent of gross domestic product.
In addition, Croatia is struggling with a high unemployment rate of close to 20 percent and a soaring youth jobless rate, with half of the country’s youth out of work.
Croatia joined the EU in July 2013, becoming the bloc’s 28th member almost two decades after it declared independence from the former Yugoslavia Republic – a move that sparked the bloody civil war of 1991-1995.
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Posted: 11 Jan 2015 12:35 PM PST


The deadly events that unfolded in France over the last week may be the first in a wave of Muslim attacks to strike Europe, a German daily reports, citing NSA intercepts of communications between Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) leaders.
Paris was marked as the first in a series of European cities to be attacked, including Rome, the report in the German tabloid Bild read. However, the article didn’t furnish details of a concrete plan to launch an attack.
The US National Intelligence Agency (NSA) also reportedly had information that Cherif and Said Kouachi, the brothers who carried out the mass shooting at the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, had contacts in the Netherlands.
Police were said to have been put on high alert after intelligence learned that Amedy Coulibaly, the terrorist who killed a policewoman on Thursday in Paris and another four people in a kosher supermarket in Vincennes on Friday, may have activated sleeper cells which aim to attack law enforcement, CNN reported.
In a slickly produced video released online, Coulibaly swears allegiance to “Caliph Ibrahim”, also known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed IS leader.
When asked by an unidentified interviewer if he had any links to Cherif and Said, Coulibaly responded:
“The brothers of our team were split into two groups…I went out a bit against the police.”
Despite Coulibaly’s declared allegiance to IS, Cherif had earlier claimed he was trained and financed by Al-Qaeda in Yemen.
On Saturday, one of the Al-Qaeda leaders in Yemen, Harith al-Nadhari, posted a video online threatening France with vengeance.
“Soldiers who love Allah and are His messengers are amongst you,” he said.
“They do not fear death. They seek martyrdom in the name of Allah.”
Police are still searching for Hayat Boumeddiene, the girlfriend or possibly wife of Coulibaly. Although the 26-year-old had initially been described as being armed and dangerous, security sources later said that she wasn’t in France at the time of the attacks.
Police initially suspected Boumeddiene may have played a role in organizing the Paris attacks. Turkish security sources, however, told AFP that she arrived in Turkey on January 2, and had since likely moved on to Syria.
At least 20 people, including the three attackers, were killed in a spate of attacks in and around Paris this week.
Following the bloody culmination of events on Friday, French President Francois Hollande warned that the threats facing France were not over.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 10:16