Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Saturday, 25 April 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 25 Apr 2015 12:59 AM PDT


US car maker Ford is cutting 700 jobs at its Michigan plant to compensate for declining of sales.
It was said in the statement of the carmaker issued on Thursday. First 200 workers will fired in June at the Michigan Assembly Plant, in the Detroit suburb of Wayne, other 200 at the end of July and the remainder at the end of September.
Low gasoline prices have hurt the sales of the plant, which produces small cars and hybrids. Ford officials said consumers are not buying what the plant is producing.
The automaker hopes it can find new jobs for all laid-off workers within a year.
In January, President Barack Obama visited the Michigan Assembly Plant to hail the “resurgent” US auto industry. But the plant was briefly shut down even during his visit to prevent overproduction of the slow-selling cars.
In July 2013, Detroit, the birthplace of the US auto industry, became the largest American city to ever file for bankruptcy protection.
In December 2013, a federal judge ruled that Detroit was eligible for bankruptcy in what has become the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history. The city is $18.5 billion in debt.
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Posted: 24 Apr 2015 04:33 AM PDT
April 23, 2015. Russian President Vladimir Putin and President of Argentina Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner during a meeting in the Kremlin.
There are no reasons why Russia and Argentina shouldn’t have bilateral ties, Argentinian President Cristina Kirchner said, stressing that it is “absurd” to deem Russia a threat. Kirchner spoke to RT in her first interview to a foreign media in five years.
“I believe that Russia is a player of a global, worldwide scale, its participation is investable; this is why I don’t see reasons why there should be no bilateral relations [between Argentina and Russia],” Kirchner said when she was asked to comment on Britain’s intention to boost its military presence in the region, citing warming Russian-Argentinian relations.
Last month, UK Defense Secretary Michael Fallon announced a $271 million plan to strengthen its military presence in the Falklands to respond to “a very live threat”.
“I think that, despite all assertions that the Cold War and confrontations are in the past, that we live in more global world, there are many who still follow double standards, when for existence or supremacy they need an enemy,” Kirchner replied referring to Britain.
As the Argentinian leader spoke about Russian-Argentinian relations, she stressed that not Russia, but the US remains “the most important investor” for the Latin American state.
“Then we should be worried about such amount of Americans in our country, especially given the current events in the world,” Kirchner stressed. “It is an absurd to really think that Russia is a threat.”
On Thursday, Russia and Argentina sealed energy package as well as $3 billion in deals.
Thus, Russia plans to invest $2 billion in Argentinian nuclear power plants, and Russia’s Gazprom has signed a deal to explore oil and gas fields in Argentina, a project worth another $1 billion.
“In my opinion, this double ‘friend-foe’ logic should cease to exist in the world, because besides many other things, it leads to some really intolerable situations. This is why today [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and I signed a joined agreement about dialogue, politics, diplomacy and multilateral cooperation and about UN’s role as the only possible factor of stopping and, eventually, resolving conflicts,” Kirchner said.
There are no conflicts in Disneyland
The Argentinian president, whose second term will end in 2016, believes that being a woman does influence the attitude to her and triggers criticism from the “ruling circles.”
“It is obvious that there is still an element of female discrimination in politics,” she said. “If, being a woman, I would do everything what powerful structures want to, I am sure I that case they would really praise me and call me smart and talented. But, besides that I am a woman, I also act not the way they want me to, and this is a double sin.”
Yet, citing Margaret Thatcher as an example, she said that being a female leader “is not a necessary condition for a constant criticism.”
“If a person becomes a head of Disneyland, of course he will be loved; because everybody likes Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck…There are no conflicts in Disneyland. So if you are a president of Disneyland, of course you will be loved because what would you be doing there? Walking in forest, gardens and give out candies,” Kirchner joked.
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Posted: 24 Apr 2015 04:23 AM PDT


For the first three months of this year Mcdonald’s closed 350 stores and is planning to close other 350 by the end of the year.
Fast food giant recently announced of closure of 350 poorly performing stores this year and added that 350 stores were already closed this year in the US, Japan and China.
Earlier in its statement Mcdonald’s reported 11% decrease in revenue and 30% drop in profit in the first quarter of this year. It is a continuation of its troubles in the last two years as it has struggled to compete with new U.S. competitors, a tough economy in Europe and a food safety scare in Asia,”
McDonald’s started falling into a steep decline after customers began seeking healthier alternatives, a decline which may prove terminal for the world’s largest fast food chain.
It was definitely a sign of the times when Hillary Clinton stopped to eat at Chipotle while campaigning in Iowa earlier this month, two decades after her husband famously stopped at a McDonald’s while jogging.
“The world is starting to ask what they’re truly eating in their food – and the new conglomerate of natural grocers and restaurants are trailblazing the way into an entirely new economic environment,” Anthony Gucciardi wrote. “In other words: people are simply tired of shoveling garbage into their bodies, and they’re not going to put up with it anymore.”
And price conscious consumers aren’t just limited to McDonald’s nowadays: natural food outlets such as Whole Foods are offering organic foods at the same price as a Big Mac with fries.
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Posted: 24 Apr 2015 04:03 AM PDT




Liberal media elites are threatened by influential celebrities who dare deviate from the cookie cutter political stereotype which compels them to regurgitate “progressive” viewpoints.
That was very much in evidence during an interview with film star Robert Downey Jr. conducted by UK Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy.
Guru-Murthy began by talking about the new Avengers movie and Downey Jr.’s role as Iron Man, but the conversation subsequently veered off into what was clearly an attempt to shame Downey Jr. into admitting – God forbid – that he was not a “liberal”.
Guru-Murthy quoted the following statement that Downey Jr. made to the New York Times in 2009: “I have a really interesting political point of view, and it’s not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You can’t. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics ever since.”
Not wanting to be drawn into a political debate when he was there to promote a movie, Downey Jr. refuses to take the bait, commenting, “I couldn’t even really tell you what a liberal is.”
“Does that mean you’re not a liberal?,” Guru-Murthy demands to know, to which Downey Jr. responds, “are we promoting a movie?” before asserting that he is not a Republican or a Democrat.
Guru-Murthy then gets personal by quizzing the actor on his former drug use and his relationship with his father. Downey Jr. soon walks out.
Downey Jr. has refused to inject politics into his career, but it is generally known that the Iron Man star leans conservative/libertarian. Guru-Murthy, a vehement liberal, obviously considers that to be worthy of a grilling in and of itself.
P.J. Gladnick notes the accusatory tone adopted by Guru-Murthy, as if Downey Jr. deserved to be rhetorically put on trial for his refusal to identify as a liberal.
“This is impermissible. Robert Downey Jr. might, just might be a conservative due to an interpretation of a quote made years ago. His political leanings are vague but there is that possibility that you, Robert Downey Jr., are guilty of a thought crime. How do you plead?”
The fact is that refusing to identify as a liberal in Hollywood can be a career killer. In 2013, conservative actor James Woods said he never expected to work again as a result of his vocal criticism of Barack Obama.
In 2012, Victoria Jackson, a former Saturday Night Live cast member, revealed that there was an “underground” network of Hollywood conservatives who are forced to keep their political views quiet so as not to be discriminated against.
“In LA, there is a secret, underground group of showbiz conservatives. It started with two people in 2000. I was at the fifth or tenth meeting, and now there are over 2,000 people,”Jackson told the Huffington Post. “The only ones out of the closet are Jon Voight and Pat Boone. There are famous people in there, but they don’t want to lose their career — and conservatives are blacklisted.”
Jackson went on to state that being a Scientologist was more acceptable than being a conservative in Hollywood and that there is a “new antagonism to conservatives”.
As Stephen Crowder points out, maintaining control over the political narrative is key for Hollywood because of the vast influence the movie industry has over the minds of millions of Americans.
“With one single tweet, Robert Downey Jr. could have more influence than all Republican primary contenders combined,” writes Crowder. “Culture is upstream from politics, and liberals know it. They have to protect and maintain their territory in Hollywood. People with dissenting viewpoints must be snuffed out.”
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Posted: 24 Apr 2015 02:41 AM PDT
A picture released by the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute dated 1915 shows the child victims of the massacre of Armenians during World War I.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has downplayed the massacre of Armenians during World War I, saying that Turkish ancestors never committed genocide.
“The Armenian claims on the 1915 events… are all baseless and groundless,” Erdogan said at the Istanbul Peace Summit on Thursday.
“I would like to address the European Union. They have been advising us to open our archives. I have always been saying that we are ready to open our archives,” he said, adding that there are millions of documents.
“We are also ready to open our military archives,” the Turkish president pointed out.
Erdogan said that historical documents about the 1915 events are open to all for analysis, calling on Armenia and other countries to open their archives as well.
On April 20, Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Ankara shares Armenians’ pain over the mass killing of their ancestors in 1915, but stopped well short of recognizing the killings as genocide.
“We once again respectfully remember and share the pain of grandchildren and children of Ottoman Armenians who lost their lives during deportation in 1915,” Davutoglu said.
However, he said, “To reduce everything to a single word, to put responsibility through generalizations on the Turkish nation alone… is legally and morally problematic.”
Armenians claim that up to 1.5 million Armenian Christians were systematically slaughtered in eastern Turkey through mass killing, forced relocations and starvation, a process that began in 1915 and took place over several years during World War I and the breakup of the Ottoman Empire.
Ankara rejects the term “genocide” and says 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians, and at least as many Turks perished between 1915 and 1917, in what the Turkish government sees as the “casualties” of World War I.
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Posted: 24 Apr 2015 02:24 AM PDT


A major earthquake, the Big One, is statistically almost certain in California in the coming decades, and there is even worse news below the ground: it is likely to be followed by a series of similar-sized temblors, according to a leading seismologist.
The current relatively quiet seismic period, in which “far less” energy is being released in earthquakes than it is being stored from tectonic plate motions “cannot last forever,” said University of Southern California earth sciences professor James Dolan while delivering a new paper during the Seismological Society of America conference in Pasadena.
“At some point, we will need to start releasing all of this pent-up energy stored in the rocks in a series of large earthquakes,” Dolan stressed.
The earthquake could spark a “super cycle,” meaning “a flurry of other Big Ones, as stresses related to the original San Andreas fault earthquake are redistributed on other faults throughout Southern California,” he said.
While there would not be a literal cannonade of destruction, the earthquakes could come just decades apart, like, for example, the 7.5 major quake in 1812 on the San Andreas fault, followed by a 7.7 in 1857.
Incidentally, that was the last major earthquake in that system, one of the factors that led the US Geological Survey to conclude last month that there is a 7 percent chance of an earthquake measuring 8.0 or greater on the Richter scale to occur in California in the next 30 years alone.
Scientists behind the March report said that the fault lines in California, which is home to almost 40 million people, are much more interconnected than previously thought, and similarly claimed that “tectonic forces are continually tightening the springs of the San Andreas fault system, making big quakes inevitable.”
Dolan made his discovery while studying the Garlock fault line, state’s second-biggest. He said the Garlock was “switched off” for 3,500 years before creating four major earthquakes from 250 AD to 1550. During that period, the fault lines were moving four times as fast, as during the pause.
“We’re not focused especially on the seismic threat posed by the Garlock,” said Dolan.
“This study focuses on the deeper scientific significance, the more general importance of how faults interact with one another over long time and distance scales, and fundamentally on helping us to understand how faults store and release energy,” he added. “These are issues of absolutely basic importance for our understanding of seismic threats from all faults.”
The most destructive recent earthquake in California was the Northridge in 1994, which caused more than 50 deaths and $20 billion worth of damage despite its modest magnitude of 6.7.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 08:45