Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Tuesday, 2 June 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 01 Jun 2015 03:24 PM PDT


Making yourself comfortable on a NY subway train could land you in hot water, especially if you occupy too much space. What appears to be the first ever arrest for so-called manspreading was revealed in a new report.
Two Latino men were allegedly arrested for manspreading, sitting with knees wide open, thus occupying two seats on May 22 at 12:11am, according to a report released by the Police Reform Organizing Project in New York. This is probably the first time manspreading has led to an arrest and court appearance.
Although, according to the report, the judge said that at the time of the arrest there could not have been many passengers on the train, she nevertheless slapped the two men with an ACD, which means that charges against them will be dropped if they don’t get arrested again for a fixed period of time, the report says.
In January, the Metropolitan Transit Authority rolled out an ad campaign reminding men to “mind the gap” and keep knees closer together while seated on public transport.
Entire blogs have been created to document the culprits who don’t comply. Even actor Tom Hanks was publicly shamed, being called the “new face of manspreading.”
Hanks excused himself, saying that the “train was half empty.”
That excuse didn’t work for the two men arrested in May, though.
Robert Gangi, Director of Police Reform Organizing Project (PROP), which compiled the report, says the NYPD is criminalizing a subway etiquette faux pas as an excuse to issue more fines and arrest people, most of whom are poor minorities.
“We think it’s driven by a quota system. There is almost no other rational explanation for why the cops would conduct this kind of arrest unless they are under pressure to meet certain numbers, to meet with their productivity goals,” Gangi told RT’s Maria Portnaya.
The case with the two Latino men allegedly arrested for manspreading is in a PROP’s PDF file, containing 117 vignettes on “disrespect and abuse at the hands of NYPD officers” over a period of several years.
According to reports, the NYPD has allegedly issued more than 1,400 summons for manspreading this year. While police officers are working hard to contain this ‘very serious’ matter, real crime in the city is on the rise. Reports in March said that the homicide rate in NYC spiked 20 percent in the first two months of 2015.
RT reached out to the NYPD asking for confirmation about the manspreading arrests and questioning how many people have been arrested for manspreading. So far, the NYPD has not responded.
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Posted: 01 Jun 2015 03:16 PM PDT


Stocks traditionally show weakness from May through October. Stocks hit their lowest point of the year on October 27th. Moreover, the Dow Jones Industrial Average began plunging right at this time of the year just prior to the financial crisis of 2008.
Most people do remember the huge stock crash that happened in the fall of that year, but the market actually started to slide in May. Throughout the first four and a half months of 2008, stocks moved up and down in a fairly narrow range, and the Dow closed at a short-term peak of 13,028.16 on May 19th. From there it was all downhill for the rest of the year. So will a similar thing happen in 2015 as we approach the next great financial crisis? Since March 20th, the Dow Jones Transportation Average has already fallen by almost 800 points. So will the Dow Jones Industrial Average soon follow? Well, only time will tell, but the Dow was down 190 points on Tuesday. Signs of trouble are popping up all over the place, and the “smart money” is getting out while the getting is good.
Red flags and warning signs are starting to pop up all over the place. The U.S. dollar index is surging again. We have recently witnessed the largest seven day rise in the U.S. dollar index since the collapse of Lehman Brothers. This is another indication that big trouble is ahead.
The euro has been declining steadily because of the economic crisis in Greece. The European financial crisis intensifies, and the euro has all chances to continue sliding.
In the US, orders for durable goods have been decreasing for several months, which is a sign of a recession.
Oil prices are going down again along with prices on other goods. These are just a few warnings that indicate a deflationary economic slowdown.
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Posted: 01 Jun 2015 03:12 PM PDT
A new study raises hopes for patients with severe amnesia.
Memories lost as a result of amnesia can be retrieved by activating certain brain cells with light, a new study says.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have managed to recover lost memories of a group of laboratory mice, hit by amnesia, through using a technology known as optogenetics, or the use of light to prompt action in certain nerve cells of the brain.
The findings of the study were published in the journal Science on Friday.
Lost memories had been stored within the brain cells even though the mice were seemingly unable to retrieve them, the researchers say, putting the results at odds with the long-held theory that the memory loss in amnesia is a result of problems with the storage of memory rather than the inability to recall it.
“The majority of researchers have favored the storage theory, but we have shown in this study that this majority theory is probably wrong. Amnesia is a problem of retrieval impairment,” said Susumu Tonegawa, a professor at MIT’s Department of Biology and the director of the research.
The results of the research mean that “past memories may not be erased, but could simply be lost and inaccessible for recall,” the Nobel Prize-winning scientist added.
The findings reveal that memories are stored through building new connections, or synapses, among specific nerve cells, known as “memory engram cells”, in the brain and thus, the ability to recall the memory involves the augmenting of these connections, a process that can be blocked when the brain is damaged by traumatic injury or diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
Through employing optogenetics “we were able to demonstrate for the first time that these specific cells had undergone this augmentation of synaptic strength,” and thus helped mice to recall their lost memories, Tonegawa noted.
He expressed hope that the findings of the research would stimulate future studies on the biology of memory and its clinical restoration.
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Posted: 01 Jun 2015 03:01 PM PDT


The US Senate is poised to pass the USA Freedom Act now that major surveillance powers vested in the USA Patriot Act have expired. The House-passed bill, representing a slightly less intrusive spying law, will come to a vote on Tuesday.
The Senate let certain parts of the USA Patriot Act lapse, failing to extend then by the June 1 deadline. Among them is the notorious Section 215, authorizing bulk collection of Americans’ telephone data, which a federal court ruled illegal earlier this month. According to government officials, it has been used almost 200 times per year. Other provisions that expired enable the government to conduct “roving wiretaps” of suspects who switch communication devices, or spy on “lone wolf” individuals who are not affiliated with an international terrorism organization.
The National Security Agency used Section 215 of the Patriot Act as the basis for collecting vast troves of phone records of Americans, who weren’t necessarily under official investigation. It was also used to track financial data and to obtain companies’ internet business records. The extent of the mass surveillance program was revealed nearly two years ago by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Now, the Senate will address a so-called reform bill pushed by opponents of the expiring Patriot Act provisions. The USA Freedom Act, passed by the House in a 338-88 vote on May 13.
Supporters of the USA Freedom Act in the Senate say they are hopeful that the bill will pass this week.
“This is a good day for the American people,” said Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican sponsor of the USA Freedom Act. “I do believe we have the votes. The question is not whether we will get this passed, but when.”
The bill, however, would require phone companies to maintain phone records that the government could later search. The legislation also includes provisions for “roving wiretaps” and “lone wolf” surveillance demanded by the FBI and the US Department of Justice.
“This is the only realistic way forward,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday of the USA Freedom Act. McConnell had fought to revive the expiring Patriot Act provisions but was thwarted, in part, by opposition led by Sen. Rand Paul.
The “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism” (USA PATRIOT) Act was adopted in October 2001, six weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks. Its most recent extension was in 2011.
The law allowed US intelligence agencies to amass bulk collections of various business records that were deemed “relevant” to a national security investigation. Yet, a US Department of Justice Inspector General report released in late May revealed that the FBI “did not identify any major case developments that resulted from use of the records obtained in response to Section 215 orders.” That finding was echoed by both the Obama administration’s own Presidential Review Group and the independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.
The law’s critics, such as Senator Paul, say the Patriot Act’s surveillance powers amounted to a deep government intrusion into the lives of innocent Americans.
The USA Freedom Act would move the responsibility of holding phone records to private companies. Intelligence agencies like the NSA would then ask the companies for specific data on an individual allegedly connected to a terror group or foreign nation.
The Act also requires heightened transparency measures associated with government data searches, and it would allow tech companies to be more forthcoming regarding how many times they are tapped for data by government agencies. The bill also offers more access to case opinions made by judges of the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has oversight over surveillance of suspects overseas.
The bill was first introduced in 2013 after whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leaks revealed the Section 215-fueled bulk phone metadata collection program.
Many in opposition to the Patriot Act say the USA Freedom Act is not a meaningful check on government spying capabilities. A leading critic of government surveillance in the US House, Rep.Justin Amash (R-Mich.) described the Freedom Act as a “step in the wrong direction by specifically authorizing such collection in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”
Others have pointed out that the USA Freedom Act will not address other surveillance powers the government can employ. Should the Senate approve the reform bill, “it’ll be suspicionless spying as usual until the next big surveillance provision, section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act sunsets at the end of 2017,” said Jennifer Granick, director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society.
Edward Snowden revealed the government uses Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act to authorize digital surveillance on foreign persons, which, tech experts say has involved exploiting security weaknesses on behalf of the government and, as a result, secretly undermining the protocols meant to protect online activity.
“Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act conceals some of the worst mass surveillance operations,” he said recently. “In basic terms, the government here prefers to ignore that the 4th Amendment prohibits not just the unwarranted search of private records, but also the initial seizure of them as well. I suspect that’s likely to haunt not only them, but all of us as well.”
Snowden also pointed to Executive Order 12333, signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, which requires government agencies to comply with data requests made by the CIA. He said the order, which has been used to justify the collection of unencrypted material, is a “skeleton in the closet,” but that changing it will be difficult “because the White House argues these operations are simply above the law and cannot be regulated by congress or the courts.”
Several civil liberties advocates are strictly opposing the USA Freedom Act because it does not go far enough in curbing unchecked surveillance.
“The sacrifices made by the USA FREEDOM Act of 2015 are unacceptable,” wrote several groups and intelligence community whistleblowers in a letter urging a vote against the reform bill.
“The modest changes within this bill, in turn, fail to reform mass surveillance, of Americans and others, conducted under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 and Executive Order 12333. Given intelligence agencies’ eagerness to subvert any attempts by Congress to rein in massive surveillance programs by changing the legal authorities under which they operate, the modest, proposed changes are no reform at all.”
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Posted: 01 Jun 2015 10:50 AM PDT


A new Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) report circulating in the Kremlin today says that US Secretary of John Kerry was “gravely wounded” yesterday (31 May) after a secret meeting he was holding with a top Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS/ISIL) commander erupted in gunfire in what Federation intelligence analysts are calling an “obvious assassination attempt”.
According to this report, Secretary Kerry was in Geneva, Switzerland, this past weekend for meetings with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, trying to overcome obstacles to a final nuclear agreement, a month ahead of a deadline for a deal between Tehran and six world powers.
Yesterday morning, however, this report continues, Secretary Kerry and his security entourage left Geneva with “certain military officials” of France’s 1er Régiment d’Hélicoptères de Combat (1e RHC) and traveled to the formerPhalsbourg-Bourscheid US Air Base located in the Moselle department, which is now a French military base.


The purpose of Secretary Kerry’s secret travel to this French military air base, this report explains, was to meet with a top ISIS commander for a “strategy session” prior to tomorrow’s (2 June) international conference in Paris where over 60 nations will begin meeting in an attempt to find a “final solution” to this terrorist group that is currently destabilizing the entire Middle East, and which Kerry was scheduled to attend.
Most astounding in this SVR report is its confirming that the top ISIS commander Secretary Kerry was meeting yesterday was Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov, who up until this past April when he “defected to ISIS”, commanded Tajikistan’s OMON special forces which were trained and funded by the American military.
Even worse this report notes, Colonel Khalimov was not only supported by the American military, he was directly trained and funded by Secretary Kerry’s own US State Department, and which his spokesman, Pooja Jhunjhunwala, was forced to confirm last week and who stated: “From 2003-2014 Colonel Khalimov participated in five counterterrorism training courses in the United States and in Tajikistan, through the Department of State’s Diplomatic Security/Anti-Terrorism Assistance program.”


SVR experts writing in this report further confirm the findings of the American nonpartisan government watchdog group Judicial Watch who this past week released US intelligence documents confirming the suspicions that the United States and some of its so-called coalition partners had actually facilitated the rise of ISIS as an effective adversary against the government of the Syrian leader President Bashar al-Assad. In addition, these US intelligence documents show, ISIS members were initially trained by members and contractors of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at facilities in Jordan in 2012.
As to the gun battle that “gravely wounded” Secretary Kerry yesterday, this report continues, other leaked US cables to Wikileaks confirm that Colonel Khalimov was well aware of US State Department security procedures due to his being allowed to run a security drill in 2009 at the US embassy in Tajikistan, which allowed one or more of his entourage to enter this secret meeting with Kerry armed and with the intention of assassinating him.
Though no specifics currently exist within the SVR to exactly detail this gun battle, this report states, Federation electronic intercepts of French, Swiss and American communications show that besides Secretary Kerry, at least 2 other participants in this secret meeting were shot, one fatally.
As to Secretary Kerry’s wounds, this report says, these electronic intercepts further show a “panicked response” to a “top level gravely wounded US official” who needed to be “immediately evacuated” to Geneva for “emergency surgery” after which the US military was ordered to dispatch a medical evacuation flight for the “immediate evacuation after surgery” of this “gravely wounded top level US official” back to the United States.


The American “cover story” for Secretary Kerry’s grave injuries suffered at the hands of an ISIS fanatic, this report notes, states that he was seriously injured in a bicycle accident in the French town of Scionzier (40 kilometers southeast of Geneva), which was needed to explain away why Kerry was transported to the Geneva hospital in a French military medical helicopter.
As to the complicity of Colonel Khalimov in the attempted assassination of Secretary Kerry yesterday, this report concludes, SVR experts remain “highly doubtful” attributing this action, instead, to one or more of his entourage brought to this secret meeting. After all, why would Colonel Khalimov kill his “master” anyway?
Then again, and though not mentioned in this SVR report, last week prior to his meeting yesterday with Secretary Kerry, the US State Department trained Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov did release a video to the Obama regime wherein he stated about his new “masters”:
“Listen, you dogs, the president and ministers, if only you knew how many boys, our brothers are here, waiting and yearning to return to reestablish sharia law there. Listen, you American pigs, I’ve been three times to America, and I saw how you train fighters to kill Muslims. God willing, I will come with this weapon to your cities, your homes, and we will kill you.”
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Posted: 31 May 2015 03:28 PM PDT
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin (right) touring the exhibition “Industrial Potential of the Vladimir Region” at the third-annual Vladimir Regional Economic Forum.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin has stated that Russia’s future depends on its rebirth as a major industrial power, noting that Russian manufacturers must recapture the domestic market, and that reindustrialization is necessary in order to put the country back on a ‘sovereign national footing’.
Speaking at the third-annual Vladimir Region Economic Forum on Friday, Rogozin emphasized that prior to creating grandiose goals aimed at advancing Russian industrial goods abroad, manufacturers must first regain the domestic market.
“Russia needs to see an industrial Reconquista, which must be based on the principle of reasonable national egoism among our industrialists, who must recapture the domestic market,” the deputy prime minister said.
Rogozin explained that “the Russian-language synonym for the phrase ‘import substitution’ is ‘industrialization’. This is a strategy for the country’s transition, particularly the sensitive sectors of the economy, to a sovereign national footing.”
Rogozin noted that over the past 20 years, Russia has opened itself up to foreign producers and lost much of the local market, even in areas where Russian designs had been competitive. The deputy PM cited the example of the aircraft industry: “Up to 80 percent of long-haul flights are now carried out by Airbus and Boeing-made planes. [Domestic planes] hold 37 percent among the regional lines; everything else has also been filled by foreign aircraft. Now we will need to fight to win everything back,” he noted.
Commenting on the conflict in Ukraine and its impact in disrupting the provision of Ukrainian components for the defense sector, Rogozin noted that at the height of the crisis, Russia drafted a plan to substitute the production of Ukrainian industrial goods. Rogozin emphasized that 70 percent of production of military industry components has already been localized, including everything from rocketry components to parts for fighter planes, helicopters and ships.
The deputy prime minister explained that Russia now has plans to replace Ukrainian gas turbine engines for navy ships with Russian-made analogues by 2018, emphasizing that the new components will be qualitatively new, and not simply a rehash of Soviet-era designs.
“The most difficult part is the machine tool industry, which had served as the symbol of Ukraine within the USSR –aircraft, helicopters, and the production of gas turbine engine components for shipbuilding. We have already mastered the production of sophisticated equipment and weaponry on Russian territory, and by 2018 will adjust production in our interests.”
Commenting on foreign participation in the civilian sector of the economy, Rogozin emphasized that he was not against foreign producers’ involvement in the Russian market, but noted that foreign manufacturers must be made to do more to carry out a genuine localization of their production in exchange for market access, which over the long term would allow Russian producers to “gain our own competency.”
Noting that sanctions have closed off access to roughly 640 Western-made products and components, Rogozin explained that by 2018, 70 percent of them are set to be produced domestically.
Rogozin emphasized that the Russian government’s industrial policy must be based on supporting the principle of competition between manufacturers, along with transparency in pricing and the continual improvement of legislative regulation.
The deputy prime minister explained that reindustrialization will allow Russia to break out of its dependence on the sale of natural resources, noting that “Russia can exist only as an industrial power. We have no alternative.”
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Posted: 31 May 2015 03:09 PM PDT


At least 22 members of American forces in South Korea may have been exposed to live anthrax spores, which the Pentagon says it accidentally shipped off to a military base there, a report says.
The announcement was made by United States Forces Korea (USFK), which is a sub-unified command of United States Pacific Command (USPACOM), on Thursday, Yonhap News Agency reported.
USFK said in a statement that the bio-weapon sample was destroyed after it was discovered that the deadly bacteria may not be an “inert training sample as expected.”
“Osan Air Base took prudent cautionary measures May 27, 2015, to investigate a potential exposure to a suspected sample of Anthrax,” it said.
It noted that the 22 US troops “may have been exposed during the training event,” but claimed that “none of the personnel have shown any signs of possible exposure and there is no risk to the public.”
On Wednesday, the Pentagon said it inadvertently sent live anthrax spores to as many as nine laboratories across the United States and one anthrax sample to the Joint US Forces Korea Portal and Integrated Threat Recognition Program at Osan Air Base, south of Seoul.
The labs were supposed to receive dead anthrax samples for research use.
Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said the military was working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to retrieve the samples.
According to the Pentagon, samples came from a military lab at Dugway Proving Ground (DPG) Army facility in Utah.
The live anthrax spores were shipped from Utah to labs in Texas, Maryland, Wisconsin, Delaware, New Jersey, Tennessee, New York, California and Virginia.
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Posted: 31 May 2015 02:50 PM PDT


A new survey on British social attitudes shows that the Anglican Church lost 4.5 million followers over the last decade, while people who say they have no religion account for half the population and the number of Muslims now stands at 5 percent.
The findings from NatCen’s British Social Attitudes survey released Sunday show a dramatic shift in religious beliefs in the UK over the past ten years.
While the Church of England has been in decline for the last 30 years, the past decade showed a massive acceleration in this trend and the number of Anglicans in Britain now stands at just 8.5 million or 17 percent of the population. It used to be 40 per cent in 1983.
The former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey voiced concern over the figures.
“These figures are a call to urgent mission. I have no doubt at all that the Archbishops, together with the whole leadership of the Church of England, are doing all they can to reverse this trend,” he said as quoted by UK media.
Islam has seen the biggest growth up from half a percent of the population in 1983 to 5 percent in 2014. Overall the number of people who said they belonged to a religion that was not Christian was up from 2 percent in 1983 to 8 percent in 2014 but the biggest group of the UK population is atheists who account for 49 percent.
However, other Christian religions have remained stable. Catholicism, Methodists and Presbyterians, for example, remain at a similar level to that of 1983. Catholics constitute 8 percent and other Christian religions together constitute 17 percent.
Naomi Jones, Head of Social Attitudes at NatCen Social Research said in statement that the main explanation for the decline was “generational displacement”.
“Each generation is less religious than the next so as older generations die the overall population becomes less religious,” she said.
She pointed out that within Christian denominations, it was only the Anglican Church, which was continuing to decline and that immigration may be part of the explanation for this.
“The numbers of Catholic and non-Christian people in Britain may have been supplemented by migrants with strong religious beliefs,” she said.
She also said that fewer and fewer people see being a Christian as an important component of being British.
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Posted: 31 May 2015 02:33 PM PDT


The US military has set to design killer robots.
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working out drones which will be able to track and kill targets even when out of contact with their handlers.
The robots will be provided with lethal weapon systems.
The scientists are concerned with the threat and call on banning of such systems.
Stuart Russell, Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkley, said the research could breach the Geneva Convention and leave humanity in the hands of amoral machines.
“Autonomous weapons systems select and engage targets without human intervention; they become lethal when those targets include humans,” he said.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 08:37