Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Wednesday 20 May 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 19 May 2015 03:58 PM PDT


Countering the threat of Russia’s intercontinental ballistic missiles is too hard and too costly for the United States, Vice Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral James Winnefeld stated on Tuesday.
The top of the list of threats to the survival of the United States itself is “a massive nuclear attack from Russia, or some other high-end adversary or potential adversary like China,” Winnefeld noted.
“We have stated that missile defense against these high end threats is too hard, and too expensive, and too strategically destabilizing to even try,” Winnefeld said of the threat of a Russian or Chinese nuclear attack in a speech at the Center for Strategic International Studies.
US missile defense is intended for situations where “it has the highest probability of being most effective,” Winnefeld explained.
Military and top civilian leadership have alleged that US homeland and regional European missile defense systems are intended to counter long-range missile threats from North Korea and Iran.
The primary US deterrent against Russia, Winnefeld added, is the nuclear triad.
“We will use the cost imposition piece to deter Russia by keeping all three legs of our nuclear deterrent strong and our nuclear command and control system robust.”
By the end of 2015, the United States will install the Aegis Ashore Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system in Romania, completing Phase 2 of the European Phased Adaptive Approach, Winnefeld said.
Moscow has repeatedly raised opposition to US proliferation of missile defense systems near its border, claiming it represents a threat to Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrent.
The BMD systems were previously limited under the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty between the US and Russia to avoid a strategic imbalance. The United States backed out of that treaty in 2001.
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Posted: 19 May 2015 03:47 PM PDT
Mars at the boundary between darkness and daylight, with an area including Gale Crater beginning to catch morning light.
NASA mulls using bacteria and algae to produce oxygen on Mars, as a 2030 deadline for sending humans to the red planet looms.
“This is a possible way to support a human mission to Mars, producing oxygen without having to send heavy gas canisters,” chief Techshot scientist, Eugene Boland, was quoted in the Science Times as saying on Saturday.
Techshot has been commissioned by NASA to solve one of the Mars mission’s most critical issues, the production of oxygen.
The two basic organisms could be tasked with removing nitrogen from the Martian soil and converting it into oxygen, said the company which has designed X-ray systems for the International Space Station and deep-sea chambers for submersible vehicles.
In order to test their theory, Techshot has constructed the “Mars Room” which is a special laboratory designed to precisely emulate the atmosphere and soil chemistry of Mars.
According to the company, some of their experiments have proven successful so far.
NASA intendeds to send canisters filled with microorganisms to be implanted in Mars’s soil, hoping they would start producing oxygen.
Between 70 and 80 percent of our planet’s oxygen is produced by cyanobacteria and photosynthetic algae, which can be found in soil, trees, rocks as well as salt and fresh water.
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Posted: 19 May 2015 03:22 PM PDT


Robert Chardon reportedly committed to psychiatric ward after Twitter outburst.
If this story turns out to be accurate, it appears as though the spirit of “Je Suis Charlie” is very much dead in France.
A French Mayor was reportedly committed to a mental institution against his will after he posted ‘Islamophobic’ comments on Twitter.
The story began when Robert Chardon, mayor of the southern French town of Venelles, became embroiled in a Twitter debate with former French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
Chardon insisted that France “ban the Muslim faith in France” and instead “promote the practice of the Christian faith.”
While Chardon’s remarks may be seen as bigoted and offensive to many, what reportedly happened next was infinitely more shocking.
A translated version of an AFP story states that Chardon was “forcibly hospitalized” as a result of “incoherent statements” made on Twitter.
Press reports about Chardon’s comments in English-language media contained no details of Chardon being detained in a psychiatric ward.
Local officials subsequently denied the AFP report and claimed that Chardon had been hospitalized for cancer treatment, although the mayor had been undergoing such treatment for months.
The AFP story said that Chardon had been committed to the mental institution “by someone close to him for reasons of incoherent statements.”
Selwyn Duke sums up the chilling prospect of Chardon being forcibly detained over his political beliefs.
“One tactic Soviet-bloc countries would use to stifle dissidents was involuntary confinement to mental institutions. After all, you have to be crazy to oppose state ideology, right? Now, though, 26 years after the Berlin Wall’s fall comes a similar shocking story — from well west of where the wall stood.”
While those who disparage or merely criticize the religion of Islam are finding themselves under increasing scrutiny in Europe, some countries are extending political correctness to the point of directly aiding ISIS jihadists.
At least 32 Danish citizens who are fighting alongside Islamic State terrorists in Syria have received welfare unemployment benefits of around 378,000 kroner (US$57,000) each.
Meanwhile, in Sweden, some politicians are calling for ISIS terrorists to be reintegrated into society and given jobs – at taxpayer expense – upon their return from Iraq and Syria.

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Posted: 19 May 2015 03:23 AM PDT


A prominent campaigning group has criticized soccer’s international governing body FIFA for its inaction over the plight of migrant construction workers in Qatar who are busy preparing venues for the 2022 World Cup in the Persian Gulf state.
The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the world’s largest trade union federation, urged FIFA sponsors, including Coca-Cola, Visa and McDonald’s, to use their position and address the maltreatment of hundreds of thousands of migrant laborers at the hands of their Qatari employers.
The FIFA sponsors have the power to pressure both FIFA and Qatar into improving the horrific working conditions in the Arab country.
“Qatar is a slave state,” said Sharan Burrow, the ITCU secretary general, on Monday, adding, “FIFA knows Qatar is a slave state. Qatar could fix it. It is not about poverty. It is about greed. If FIFA were serious, they could turn it around. But they choose not to.”
Burrow detailed harsh working conditions, poor standards of accommodation and abusive treatment by employers, accusing the football’s governing body of refusing to speak out about the human rights criteria set by international sports bodies, including the Olympic Committee.
“[World Cup workers’ rules] are probably in the realm of 60,000 to 80,000 rooms,” Burrow said.
“FIFA knows it has the ultimate power. All it has to do is say yes to workers’ rights, to the introduction of International Labor standards. If it did that then it would be respected,” she added.
This came as Qatari official recently detained a news team while reporting on the plight of migrant workers building stadiums for the 2022 World Cup.
FIFA said that it has launched an investigation into the detention of the four media staff with the BBC, who had been invited by the Qatari prime minister’s office on an official tour of new accommodation for construction workers.
Doha is also under criticism over its controversial “kafala” system, which has widely been censured as modern-day slavery. Under the kafala system, employers in the US-backed kingdom can prevent its mostly foreign-based labor force from changing jobs or even leaving the country.
Human rights organizations have repeatedly accused Qatar of dragging its feet on its labor law reforms, insisting that not enough is being done to investigate the effect of working long hours in temperatures that often exceed 50C.
Last year, it was reported that Nepalese migrants building Qatar’s infrastructure to host the 2022 World Cup had died at a rate of one every two days in 2014 – despite the kingdom’s promises to improve their working conditions.
According to the report by the Guardian, the figure excludes deaths of Indian, Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi workers, raising fears that if fatalities among all migrants were taken into account, the toll would almost certainly be more than one a day.
The report further underlined that there are nearly 400,000 Nepalese workers in Qatar among the 1.4 million migrants working on a £137 billion (USD 214) construction spree in the tiny Persian Gulf state.
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Posted: 19 May 2015 02:14 AM PDT


Leader of France’s National Front party, Marine Le Pen, has launched a month-long blitz against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – a proposed EU-US treaty, which has been criticized for secretiveness and lack of accountability.
“It is vital that the French people know about TTIP’s content and its motivations in order to be able to fight it. Because our fellow countrymen must have the choice of their future, because they should impose a model for society that suits them, and not forced by multinational companies eager for profits, Brussels technocrats sold to the lobbies, politicians from the UMP [party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy], who are subservient to these technocrats,” Le Pen said during a press conference in Paris.
Since 2013, open-ended negotiations between Washington and Brussels have drawn up the framework for the agreement, intended to standardize legislation and bring down trade barriers between them.
As per US practice, the contents of all economic treaties are classified. The EU has recently set up reading rooms throughout Europe for officials with clearance – but only a few thousand people have had access to the working documents.
Le Pen hit out at the secrecy of the negotiations, which have featured mostly bureaucrats from the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, and nebulous “stakeholders” from businesses and public organizations. As a member of the European parliament, she forwarded a motion for greater transparency in negotiations last year. Le Pen’s motion was defeated.
She is now hoping for grassroots support.
“I am convinced that we can push back the TTIP if the peoples are informed of its content, and if they decide themselves to join us in order to express their disagreement concerning this treaty,” Le Pen told journalists.
Both of France’s leading parties have endorsed the treaty, but Le Pen is relying on strong the anti-European sentiment that propelled her party to first place in last year’s elections for the European parliament.
While TTIP’s authors promise that the treaty will bring an extra 0.5 percent GDP to Europe and the US, figures across the political spectrum have expressed concern.
US President Barack Obama, who is also negotiating a similar treaty with Asia, was defeated by his own party in the Senate last week when he asked for fast-track approval to handle negotiations. Additional votes will be required if the proposed legislation is not to be bogged down in the US chambers of Congress.
Meanwhile, European legislators have raised a host of issues, in particular concerning the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism outlined in the treaty. The controversy centers on the proposed special economic tribunal, which would operate outside the traditional legal system and allow corporations to challenge governments. In April, thousands took to the streets of Brussels, Madrid, Berlin and Helsinki to protest against the secretive deal.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 08:32