Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Wednesday, 17 June 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 16 Jun 2015 03:20 AM PDT

The Bilderberg conference, which bills itself as a “forum for informal discussions” held by the world’s top brass, has drawn fire from protesters gathered near the Interalpen-Hotel Tyrol in Austria, accusing the attendees of corruption and elitism.
After a rally on Friday, anti-Bilderberg activists re-emerged on Saturday afternoon to protest what many of them refer to as a gathering of criminals. Thousands of protesters are expected to assemble outside the hotel where the Bilderberg group meeting is taking place.
“What we have seen is a very tight police cordon. It has been very difficult for many people to get to this area. Some journalists have been subject to rather humiliating police tactics,” RT’s Peter Oliver reported.
Some like it hot, but those gathered for the Bilderberg meeting in Austria seem to prefer it “top secret.” According to the published agenda, a total of around 140 participants from 22 countries have confirmed their attendance this year, including German Defense Minister Ursula van der Leyen, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, UK Chancellor George Osborne and former President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso, just to name a few. One of its past participants is the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss Kahn, accused of sexual assault by a New York hotel maid in 2011.
The key rule of participation is the so-called “Chatham House Rule”, which states that while attendees are free to use the information received, “neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s) nor of any other participant may be revealed.”
A 50-kilometer safety zone has been created and two checkpoints set up around the event to ensure the safety of the influential guests. Up to 2,100 officers from all over Austria will be on duty, along with 300 German police officers, should an emergency occur during the four-day conference.
American journalist Rob Dew, news director at Infowars, told RT his crew suffered from what he called “police brutality.”
“At the beginning they were very brutal and rude to us. They saw we’re from Texas, pulled us out of the car and searched us. So the next time we go to the checkpoint we start video taping because that’s what we do in America – when we’re feeling tyranny, we start video taping. And we actually went to the police station live on Skype during the Alex Jones show and confronted them because they were calling our hotel manager asking where we were, when we’re going to be back. We were fed up with it because we’d already shown them our papers and we have nothing to hide, but we’re not going to take humiliation.”
According to the published agenda, the Bilderberg conference will discuss a range of issues – from artificial intelligence and chemical weapons threats to the US elections and European strategy regarding Iran, Russia and NATO.
Investigative journalist Tony Gosling told RT the Bilderberg conference tries to “make sure it’s as difficult as possible to cover the meetings.” He says the mainstream media are actually part of the group.
“We’re given the minimum information and it’s very high security. There are thousands of police and security services in Austria keeping journalists away. The reason journalists don’t often go is because their bosses are there and want the secrecy. You’re not going to upset your boss by trying to break their vow of silence,” Gosling said. “We’ve got around about 20-22 media barrens in there. These are generally controlled private media corporations, senior editors, managers or owners of the big media corporations and they are actually the fourth-largest contingent at Bilderbergs. They are not far behind the bankers and the politicians and the owners of big industry. Essentially, media has become something so you can buy and sell,” he added.
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Posted: 16 Jun 2015 02:58 AM PDT


South Korea has reported three more fatalities from the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), bringing the death toll to 19 in an outbreak that began in May.
South Korea’s Health Ministry on Tuesday also confirmed four new cases, bringing to 154 the total number of confirmed cases.
According to the ministry, 17 of the 154 people have also been cured and released from hospital.
Meanwhile, 16 of the 118 being treated are also listed in unstable condition.
Despite reports of new fatalities, health officials have expressed optimism that the outbreak might be showing signs of easing as the number of new cases has been gradually falling from 12 on Friday to four on Tuesday.
“What is noteworthy is the fact that the number of new cases has been falling over the past few days,” a senior Health Ministry official told journalists. “More cases are expected to occur sporadically but we don’t expect to see new cases occur in groups,” he added.
All of the infections have taken place in South Korea’s hospitals or medical centers.
On Sunday, the Samsung Medical Center, one of the two epicenters of the outbreak, temporarily suspended most of its services after being identified as the source of almost half of the cases.
Meanwhile, the Seoul city government also on Tuesday launched a massive disinfection campaign.
There are more than 5,500 people in quarantine while some 3,500 others have been released in the Asian country, which has the largest outbreak outside the Middle East.
MERS was first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012. The disease is part of the corona virus family of viruses, which includes the common cold and SARS. It can cause symptoms including fever, breathing problems, pneumonia and kidney failure.
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Posted: 16 Jun 2015 02:44 AM PDT



Shocking footage filmed in the French port town of Calais shows desperate migrants attempting to break into delivery trucks heading to the United Kingdom in another illustration of how the country’s generous welfare system acts as a beacon for illegal aliens.
The clip shows huge gangs of migrants roaming around on a highway attempting to attack vehicles.
Police or immigration authorities are nowhere to be seen as migrants rip open the back door of a truck before attempting to pull down its contents to make their way inside, while others try to pull off an underside panel.
A tour guide on the bus from where the footage is being filmed tells passengers, “Don’t panic guys, we have locked all of the doors. Try not to panic guys.”
Passengers are heard gasping in shock, with one commenting, “This is what we’ve seen on TV.”
The migrants are keen to reach the UK because they can exploit the country’s generous welfare system and obtain a much higher standard of living than in France, where they are forced to reside in a makeshift tent village in Calais known as “the jungle”.
Around 2,500 migrants live in the tent village, with most of them coming from Sudan, Eritrea, Libya and Syria.
The situation is so dire that a leading haulage group warned earlier this month that freight carriers could suspend supplies going through Calais altogether, causing food shortages and massive price hikes.
Donald Armour, International Affairs Manager at the Freight Transport Association, told the Daily Express that the UK supply chain is “in danger of collapsing” as a result of drivers refusing to go through Calais.
Last month, Maru International haulage company announced that they were boycotting Calais over fears that “somebody will be killed” by migrants attempting to enter the UK.
However, Goldman Sachs Chairman Lloyd Blankfein and UN Special Representative for Migration Peter Sutherland said yesterday that Britain should take in more migrants in order to avoid creating an environment of “xenophobia and racism”.
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Posted: 16 Jun 2015 02:09 AM PDT


Potential US military buildup near Russia’s borders may force the Russian military to respond in kind by reinforcing its frontier presence, says a Russian military official.
Army General Yury Yakubov, a coordinator from the Russian Defense Ministry’s general inspectors directorate, was responding to reports that the United States Department of Defense is planning to concentrate US heavy military hardware near Russian borders.
“If US heavy hardware including tanks, artillery systems, or other fighting vehicles does appear in some Eastern European and Baltic countries, this would mark the Pentagon and NATO’s most aggressive step since the Cold War time of the past century,” he said on Monday.
“And Russia won’t have anything else to do but bolster its forces and resources on the Western strategic theater of operations,” the official noted.
Yakubov said the response would be initialized by the reinforcement the forces along Russia’s western border.
The comments came amid continued high tensions between Russia and the US-led Western military alliance of NATO over the crisis in Ukraine, which the West accuses Moscow of having a hand in. Russia denies the allegations.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that the Pentagon was ready to store heavy military equipment in East Europe to face a possible “Russian aggression” in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine.
The weaponry, which includes battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, was enough for as many as 5,000 American troops, the daily wrote.
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Posted: 16 Jun 2015 01:52 AM PDT


New statistics released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that American women are heavier than they have ever been before.
Both men and women have gained weight over the last 50 years, with each gaining roughly 30 pounds, according to the CDC. But one statistic is jarring: the average American woman today weighs 166.2 pounds, or 18.5 percent more than in the 1960s and just a hair below the average American man’s weight of 166.3 pounds at that time. American men have risen from that number to 195.5 pounds today, an increase of 17.6 percent.
A small amount of this weight gain can be attributed to men and women becoming taller – men and women have both grown about an inch on average since the 1960s.
But the study concludes that the bulk of the weight gain is due to lifestyle changes. Americans are exercising less, choosing to eat unhealthier food and eating more of it. But why is this happening?
More than half Americans’ food budget is spent on restaurant foods or processed, easy-to-make meals, which are more likely to be calorie-heavy food choices, reported Vox. The average American’s caloric intake grew from 2,109 calories in 1970 to 2,568 calories in 2010, which is “the equivalent to an extra steak sandwich every day,” according to Pew Research.
Comparing these numbers against other nation’s citizens, average Americans are 33 pounds heavier than their French counterparts and 40 pounds heavier than someone from Japan. This is a stark difference, especially considering that these countries have highly developed economies with similar standards of living to the United States.
Americans are only surpassed in weight by the peoples of the developing Pacific Island nations of Tonga and Micronesia, according to a study by BMC Public Health.
The BMC study states that solving the obesity epidemic “may be critical to world food security and ecological sustainability.”
The CDC reports that more than one-third of American adults over the age of 20 are obese, and one-fifth of children between six and 19 fall into this category.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 08:51