Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Friday 20 March 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 19 Mar 2015 03:45 AM PDT


A new report circulating in the Kremlin today prepared by the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) for the Ministry of Defense (MoD) states that President Barack Obama’s nuclear war communication commander has been arrested and relieved of her command after failing to transmit launch codes authorizing an atomic weapons first-strike attack upon the Federation in coordination with a similar “surprise” attack planned by the United Kingdom.
According to the SVR, US Navy Captain Heather E. Cole [photo 1st right] was the commander of the US Navy’sStrategic Communications Wing 1 located at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma whose E-6B Mercury aircraftprovide the communications links allowing President Obama and US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter to directly contact the submarines, bombers and land-based missiles that comprise the United States strategic nuclear force.
On Monday, 16 March, this report states, Captain Cole received from the Pentagon a launch order authorizing a “limited” nuclear strike against the Federation, but which failed due to a critical Permissive Action Link (PAL) failure thus causing her to abort this planned attack.
As a PAL is a security device for nuclear weapons whose purpose is to prevent unauthorized arming or detonation of the nuclear weapons, SVR experts in this report explain, the critical failure in this instance was an added security measure ordered by the former US Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, prior to his being forced out of office last month over his refusal to have any part in this attack against Russia.
This report further explains that Secretary Carter was not aware of Secretary Hagel’s PAL security changes thus allowing Captain Cole to abort this planned nuclear attack.
For her failure to communicate the launch authorization to US nuclear forces, this report continues, Captain Cole was arrested on Tuesday, 17 March, relieved of her command and then taken by armed guard to US Naval Air Station (NAS) Miramar in San Diego (California) where she remains incommunicado.
The SVR in their report on Captain Cole’s refusal to start World War III further states that her actions mirrors those of Soviet Naval Captain Vasili Arkhipov, who during the Cuban Missile Crisis, in 1962, also refused to obey orders to launch nuclear weapons against the United States.
Upon Captain Cole being arrested, a MoD appendix to this SVR report says, President Putin ordered the Federationsstrategic nuclear bomber forces to their “fail-safe” locations in the Arctic (the fastest air route to the US from Russia), an expansion of the Northern Fleet’s combat operations into the Norwegian Sea, and continued combat air operations against NATO forces on the northern border.
Important to note, and as we had stated in our 14 March report, Russia Warns “State Of War” Exists As UK Nukes Prepare First Strike, President Putin and the MoD had been made aware of the planned nuclear attack against the Federation weeks ago thus allowing the Federation to move its own nuclear forces to the NATO border.
Likewise, and as we had reported on 15 March, Obama Meets With Top Russian Spy, Warns He Can’t Stop War, neither President Putin or the MoD have any confidence that President Obama is even in control his military forces anymore, thus necessitating the Federations greatest defensive war moves since World War II, and as we reported on in our 17 March report, Moscow Bomb Shelters Begin To Fill As Russia Prepares For War.
And, perhaps, most appalling…as President Putin, after greeting over 100,000 cheering citizen-supporters in Red Square earlier today, meets with close aide to Chinese President Xi Jinping to update China on the Federations war preparations, there remains no evidence that the West, particularly the United States, are preparing their own people for the horrific catastrophe soon to come.
The fate of Captain Cole, however, is much more known as it will be exactly like Captain Arkhipov’s…a relegation to the dustbin of history as a failed officer, at best, or her early suicide/death to prevent her from telling what she knows.
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Posted: 19 Mar 2015 03:07 AM PDT



Slovak company AeroMobil has been developing a futuristic vision of real flying cars. Now, for the first time, its CEO put a proper timeline on the idea: the expensive toys are to hit the super-rich market by 2017, but quickly improve on specs and price.
The company itself has been around for five years, and past prototypes have existed, all getting ever closer to the technological requirements. This time around, at the Austin, Texas, annual South by Southwest (SXSW) conference on music, film and all things interactive, CEO Juraj Vaculik said he hopes to have a working model for “wealthy supercar buyers” in just two years, according to CBC News.
And that’s not all. Next up, the flying cars will be auto-piloting you through city traffic, which is probably a lesser stretch of the imagination than the first news, given how self-driving technology has taken off recently.
AeroMobil’s new concept is the third stab at the project, and it looks quite spectacular.
“We believe that 2017 we’ll be able to launch this to market,” Vaculik, Aeromobil’s co-founder, said of the flying roadster at his Sunday presentation.
The two-seater with wings will start off on the road and then be able to take off into the sky like a light sports aircraft.
The limited edition vehicle will be able to fly almost 400 miles or so and use regular car fuel. Vaculik predicts that when the technology really takes off, we’ll have “layers” of the things flying around, as in the flying cars in blockbuster films such as ‘The Fifth Element’ and the ‘Star Wars’ series. The altitude is forecast to be set to two miles.
All that’s needed to land is a grass patch of a couple of hundred feet. Vaculik predicts landing strips to be in close proximity to gas stations.


While the upcoming third model (a concept that debuted in October 2014) will put you in the driver’s seat, it also boasts a partial auto-pilot and even a parachute. This might seem funny to some, but you probably don’t want to get a crippling stomach ache in mid-air, so the chute will deploy and land the vehicle safely, without you having to “jump out,” Vaculik said.
The machine, while expensive, may not be unreasonable for a flying car, given that it will still cost you less than some existing supercars. Final pricing is still being worked out.
When AeroMobil releases its miracle to the wider public, it expects to have developed a fully autonomous flying capability.
Until then, however, there is sad news: only qualified pilots will be able to fly this half-car, half-aircraft.
But the vision does not stop at autopilots – we’ll also be getting ride-sharing services and taxis. As Vaculik believes that “If something like a flying Uber and flying Lyft will be on the market… many users will find this a very efficient way to move.”


The technology is predicted to impact our daily lives very significantly within the next decade – getting people to hard-to-reach places, or those with no infrastructure, as just one example. Reducing traffic congestion is also practically a given, though details will be worked out on the regulations.
A lot of talk lately has focused on a need for more high-tech roads as well, something a flying car could also in theory reduce the need for.
The new model has actually been shown as a concept in the past, and is also an evolution of the model 2.5, but progress has been made in great strides on improving the technology.
Vaculik and co. already gave the world working prototypes, so we know the invention works. The first of such proper working prototypes was unveiled at the 2013 Montreal Aerotech Congress.
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Posted: 19 Mar 2015 02:58 AM PDT


With a week to go before Independence Day, as Greek interior minister Nikos Voutsis ruled during today’s Parliamentary bunfight, the new Poverty Relief Bill “doesn’t violate the agreement” signed with the Eurogroup, and so it will pass into Law.
But both Channel 4’s Paul Mason Greek site News 247 declare that Declan Costello specifically confirmed this evening that the Bill(s) vetoed were to do with tax arrears installment relief and other humanitarian aid.
The situation is currently extremely confused, and several of us are trying to work out what amendments have been added/changed, what consequences Costella is threatening, and which of the total legislation since March 3rd he has ruled out.The translated 247 piece nevertheless expressly quotes the EC as follows:
‘Commissioner Declan Costello orders the Greek government to stop the bill from being enacted in the Greek parliament’
Indeed, it’s not even certain that the Bill currently vetoed by the EC Commissioner is to be put to the vote at 12 noon tomorrow on schedule: tomorrow was still being mentioned in the debate a few minutes (21.30 CET) ago but this could be delayed since 84 MPs are still due to speak, and so far only two have been heard.
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Posted: 19 Mar 2015 02:36 AM PDT


Whether taking a car for a spin on a Sunday or focusing on getting from A to B after a stressful day, driving can be fun and therapeutic.
But Tesla CEO Elon Musk believes humans could be banned from driving in years to come and all cars will, instead, be controlled by robots.
The entrepreneur claims that computers will one day do a much better job of driving and that humans are simply ‘too dangerous’ behind the wheel.
‘It would be like an elevator. They used to have elevator operators, and then we developed some simple circuitry to have elevators just automatically come to the floor that you’re at … the car is going to be just like that,’ he told NVidia’s CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang at the company’s annual developers conference.
Musk said that the obvious answer to keeping humans safe on the road is to ban us from driving, because ‘it’s too dangerous…you can’t have a two-ton death machine,’ The Verge reported.
Instead of taking the wheel, drivers and passengers could read a book or watch a film while their cars tackle the roads for them.
However, Musk said that such a vision could take over 20 years to become a reality.
Tesla is among many firms that have added self-driving features to its cars and joins the likes of BMW, Volvo and Google, which are developing cars that could drive themselves completely.
Tesla’s Model S features an ‘autopilot’ mode, which uses sensors to stop drivers drifting accidentally between motorway lanes, as well as moderate speed and brake when necessary.
Tesla’s Model S (pictured) will feature an ‘autopilot’ mode, which uses sensors to stop drivers drifting accidentally between motorway lanes, as well as moderate speed and brake when necessary.
Last October, Musk said the Palo Alto-based firm is working on a model that will be 90 per cent in control.
He noted that driving conditions between 15 and 50mph are the most challenging because this is when most unexpected events occur, such as children running out into a road, cyclists swerving or road closures.
Visual computing company, NVidia, which is based in Santa Clara, California, has developed a technology called Drive, which could advance autonomous systems, beacuse it can identify objects including people and road signs using sensors and up to a dozen cameras on a car.
It’s releasing a $10,000 (£6,815) developers kit so people can hone the technology for car manufacturers.
As well as developments in on-board sensors and computers, Musk said security concerns must be addressed before fully-functioning autonomous vehicles become a reality on roads.
Tesla is working on a way to stop people hacking into its cars and believes that frequent software updates will help.
Musk teased that Tesla would ‘end range anxiety’ in a tweet, which could mean that a software update could increase the car’s mileage.
Tesla is competing with the likes of Volvo, which recently announced that it will put 100 of its autonomous vehicles on roads as soon as 2017 and members of the public will be able to try its Drive Me system (illustrated), which the company claims can cope with ‘even the most complicated scenarios.
Despite a recent survey by eBay Motors revealing that 84 per cent of Americans want to continue driving their cars and not rely on autonomous technology, many companies are pushing ahead with self-driving projects.
For example, Uber recently said it would be partnering with roboticists at Carnegie Mellon University and is said to have opened a research facility in Pittsburgh with the intention of creating a self-driving car.
Such a move would see it going head-to-head with Google’s efforts, among others’.
Days ago, a nondescript garage in Sunnyvale, California, was pinpointed as being where Apple is believed to be building its self-driving ‘Titan’ cars.
While it may be early days, an industry expert said that Apple could have an electric car ready to go on sale by 2020, putting it in direct competition with rivals Tesla Motors and General Motors.
Despite a recent survey by eBay Motors revealing that 84 per cent of Americans want to continue driving their cars and not rely on autonomous technology, many companies are pushing ahead with self-driving projects. Google’s cute self-driving car is pictured.
Days ago, a nondescript garage (pictured) in Sunnyvale, California, was pinpointed as being where Apple is believed to be building its self-driving ‘Titan’ cars.
In an interview last year, Apple board member Mickey Drexler said that before his death in 2011 Steve Jobs had considered building a car.
He told Paul Goldberger: ‘Steve Jobs was gonna design an iCar. I think cars have an extraordinary opportunity for cool design.’
Volvo is the latest European manufacturer to announce big developments in self-driving technologies.
It said last month that it will put 100 of its autonomous vehicles on roads as soon as 2017 and members of the public will be able to try its Drive Me system, which the company claims can cope with ‘even the most complicated scenarios’.
The trial is set to take place on selected roads in Gothenburg, Sweden and is a collaboration between the auto manufacturer, transport authorities and critically, legislators.
Volvo’s Drive Me cars rely on 28 cameras, sensors and lasers as well as software rules to drive itself on busy roads.
Dr Mertens of Volvo said: ‘Autonomous driving will fundamentally change the way we look at driving. In the future, you will be able to choose between autonomous and active driving.
‘This transforms everyday commuting from lost time to quality time, opening up new opportunities for work and pleasure.’
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Posted: 19 Mar 2015 02:18 AM PDT
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (C) addresses leaders during an emergency meeting of the Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, on March 17, 2015.
Members of a regional bloc of Latin American and Caribbean nations have slammed the United States for its decision to label Venezuela as a security threat and impose sanctions against a number of its officials.
The 11-nation Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) held an extraordinary summit in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, on Tuesday to show its support for the country amid rising tensions between Washington and Caracas.
On March 9, US President Barack Obama signed an executive order, labeling Venezuela an “extraordinary threat to national security.” Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro reacted by calling the US an “imperialist threat.”
Under Obama’s order, the US property and bank accounts of seven Venezuelan officials, including former national guard chief Antonio Benavides, intelligence chief Gustavo Gonzales and national police chief Manuel Perez, will be frozen and they will be denied US visas.
Washington accuses the officials of rights violations in relation to last year’s protests in Venezuela.
On Tuesday, Cuban President Raul Castro strongly defended Venezuela even as his country is in talks with the US for the re-establishment of diplomatic ties after over half a century.
“The US needs to understand once and for all that it can’t seduce or buy Cuba, just as it can’t intimidate Venezuela. Our unity is indestructible,” Castro said.
Ecuadoran Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino also said, “Declaring a country a threat is a prelude to an invasion,” adding that it was “fundamental” for the region to unite against “what could be an intervention in Venezuela.”
Earlier this week, the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) also urged Obama to revoke his executive order against Venezuela.
Caracas and Washington have been at odds since late Hugo Chavez became Venezuela’s president in 1999. Both sides have refused to exchange ambassadors since 2010.
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Posted: 19 Mar 2015 02:04 AM PDT


Despite the predictions, the Israeli left has been soundly beaten in Tuesday’s elections by its more honest ‘right wing’, whose commitment to the total eradication of the Palestinians as any kind of political entity is openly stated.
The defeat of the Zionist Union, ostensibly committed to negotiations and a two-state solution, should not, therefore, be read as the defeat of any genuine desire for peace, but as an increasing desire amongst Israelis to abandon the pretence that they seek anything other than permanent violent colonial domination of the indigenous Arabs.
The traditional means of justifying the ongoing “incremental genocide”’ of the Palestinians, to use Ilan Pappe’s apt phrase, has been to sporadically initiate fraudulent “peace talks”, the inevitable collapse of which serves to justify the next round of bloodletting. These talks, such as those culminating in Barak’s so-called “generous offer” in 2000 – of which more below – are thus embarked on not to resolve the conflict but to justify its escalation, and in a way that simultaneously brings Israel’s international partners on board and salves the consciences of Israeli ‘liberals’. The rejection, then, of the Zionist Union and its commitment to “peace talks”’ represents an end to any perceived necessity to do either.
The differences between the two parties were always, then, more a matter of presentation than of policies or goals. Indeed, the list of policies which were not up for negotiation was predictably long.
On Iran, there is little difference between the two main parties, with Isaac Herzog, leader of the opposition Zionist Union declaring that “No Israeli leader will accept a nuclear Iran”- followed, naturally, by that classic war-cry, “All options are on the table.”
On Gaza, both sides supported last summer’s aerial bombardment, with Herzog giving his full support to Netanyahu’s slaughter. Of the seven week ‘campaign’ – which killed or maimed over 12,000 men, women and children and left over 100,000 homeless – Herzog said that he backed “the decisions of the political and military leadership, which were reasonable and sensible throughout the operation” Al Monitor even commented that: “Given all the critical barbs that Netanyahu faced throughout the war not only from his coalition partners, but even from senior members of his own party, he could not have hoped for a more supportive and statesmanlike opposition leader.”
And on Syria, both have consistently (and unsurprisingly) supported the armed insurgency against the Assad government. Most recently both Herzog and his ZU partner Tzipi Livni declared their support for the January 18th airstrike on Syria which wiped out six leading Hezbollah commanders – that is to say, six of the most effective military leaders in Syria’s war against ISIS – but this comes on the back of years of support for the Syrian ‘rebels’ who, Herzog (correctly) noted in 2012, “want peace with Israel after Assad falls” and “wish to ‘be friends’ with the Jewish state.” Elsewhere Herzog is reported as having “built close ties with figures in the Syrian opposition” and called for a US war against Syria – a move which would very likely have led to a full ISIS takeover of the country.
Support for the crippling, if not total destruction, of Syria, Iran and Palestine – this is all a given in Israeli politics. On these issues, there is nothing to discuss. As Meron Rappoport has noted, “the Palestinian issue was almost totally absent from this campaign.”
Veteran Israeli commentator Gideon Levy elaborated: “The horrible war that took place just a few months ago – which cost Israel 10 billion shekels and dozens of lives, as well as the lives of over 2,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including hundreds of women and children, and which did not achieve anything or bring about change – hasn’t been discussed at all.”
Yet, we are led to believe that there are differences – significant ones – even on these so-called ‘foreign policy’ issues (yes, for European inhabitants of historic Palestine, it seems, even Palestine itself is considered ‘foreign policy’). As Avi Shlaim has written, “the Israeli voter is invited to choose between two starkly contrasting visions. For the Zionist Union, ending the occupation is a long-term strategic goal. It advocates negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, leading to a two-state solution to the conflict… [whereas] Netanyahu is doing everything in his power to prevent the emergence of a viable Palestinian state. His long-standing and unswerving policy is to oppose Palestinian freedom, self-determination, and statehood. He is the unilateralist par excellence. Land confiscation, economic strangulation, and brutal repression are his chief policy instruments for consolidating Israel’s control over the West Bank.”
It seems, then, that there are fundamental differences on the conflict after all: Herzog’s desire for negotiations, leading to a Palestinian state, appears to contrast strongly with Netanyahu’s policy of sabotaging peace talks and making a Palestinian state impossible. Yet the reality is, these seemingly contradictory policies in fact work in tandem.
Is Herzog’s vision really that of the “Palestinian freedom, self-determination, and statehood” so vehemently opposed by Netanyahu? It is revealing that Ehud Barak gave wholehearted public backing to Herzog. Barak, lest we forget, was in 2000 the architect of the so-called “generous offer” of a ‘state’ divided into a series of discontiguous cantons, the abandonment of the right to return, and the forfeiting of much of East Jerusalem – in other words, a state pretty much shorn of all the meaningful attributes of statehood. That Barak now argues that Herzog “can be trusted to deal with the Palestinians,” suggests that he “can be trusted” to make just such an offer in any future negotiations – an offer that is virtually guaranteed to be rejected, but which allows the Israelis to embark on another round of war – and for US and Britain to support it – safe in the delusion that they ‘tried’ to resolve things, but those bloody-minded Palestinians rejected their magnanimity once again.
In other words, even this apparent difference on Palestinian statehood disguises another basic shared commitment to preventing a functioning, stable and genuinely independent Palestinian state. The difference is between offering the Palestinians a state bereft of the key attributes of statehood, or offering them nothing at all. But the relation between these apparently opposing policies has always been cyclical and symbiotic, with Israel alternating between punishing the Palestinians, and offering them a chance to sell out. Once the sell-out is rejected, the next round of bloodletting could then be undertaken with a ‘clean conscience’. The victory of Likud represents the desire for an end to this cycle of fraudulent negotiations followed by sporadic massacres, in favor of a policy which simply gets on with the massacring.
But before those of us in the West get on our high horse of condemnation, we should remember that, just as Israel and Palestine is a microcosm of relations between the West and the Global South as a whole, so is Israeli politics the mirror image of politics in Britain, the US, France and all the other countries who ape their political systems. Just as Israel is divided between those who like their wars openly racist and those who prefer to delude themselves that they only come about after “everything else has been tried,” so the rest of the Western world is divided between those who want to fight their wars openly using high tech weapons fired from battleships proudly waving their own flags, and those who would prefer to lurk in the background, sending over their ‘trainers’ and‘non-lethal’ weaponry whilst waging economic warfare against all those powers who refuse to submit to Western dictate. It is divided between the increasingly overt racism of UKIP, the Front National or the Tea Party, or the respectable racism of those whose immigration quotas, detention centers and police murders come couched in terms of regrettable necessities. What is not being contested in any of these elections is the commitment to a continuation of the war against the third world in some form – not in Israel, not in the US, and certainly not in Britain. And, just as in Israel, the trend is towards doing away with the pretence altogether – and openly embracing fascism.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 21:06