Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Wednesday 19 August 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 18 Aug 2015 03:58 PM PDT

Almost 2 million people in California and the Midwest live on aquifer sites which have up to 180 times the safe level of uranium, according to a recent study by US researchers.
Some 275,000 groundwater samples were taken for evaluation, and it turns out that many Americans live about a kilometer from wells that are uranium-polluted, scientists from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln discovered.
Seventy-eight percent of the pollution comes from nitrate, the contaminator deriving from chemical fertilizers and animal waste. Nitrates oxidize uranium, making it soluble in groundwater.
The aquifers are under the rich soil layer, which is fertilized by nitrates. That’s when they get to the aquifers.
“It needs to be recognized that uranium is a widespread contaminant. And we are creating this problem by producing a primary contaminant that leads to a secondary one,” co-author Karrie Weber, assistant professor of biological, earth and atmospheric sciences at the UNL, said, as quoted in the official press release.
The concentration in Great Plains (Midwest) measured up to 89 times higher than the standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency, while California aquifers proved to be even more contaminated, with 180 times the safe amount of uranium found there.
Drinking of uranium-polluted water can lead to kidney damage, elevated blood pressure. Food crops used in nutrition could also become contaminated by accumulating uranium from the groundwater.
The High Plains aquifer is the largest in the US, and it gives water to eight states, from South Dakota to Texas. The Central Valley, in its turn, provides for the California’s most fertile agricultural regions.
All in all, the two aquifers in question give water to one sixth of the US cropland.
“When you start thinking about how much water is drawn from these aquifers, it’s substantial relative to anywhere else in the world. These two aquifers are economically important — they play a significant role in feeding the nation — but they’re also important for health. What’s the point of having water if you can’t drink it or use it for irrigation?” researcher Weber said.
The research was published in the August edition of the ‘Environmental Science and Technology Letters’ journal. Part of the funding came from the US Geological Survey.
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Posted: 18 Aug 2015 03:41 PM PDT

Don’t be fooled by the sounds of champagne corks popping, there is nothing to celebrate about the newest F-35 stealth warplane whom defense analyst David Axe calls a “second-rate” fighter “seriously outclassed by even older Russian and Chinese jets” let alone cutting edge aircraft.
The Pentagon’s darling has recently received some positive coverage. Defense contractor Lockheed Martin managed to reduce production and operation costs of the highly controversial and grossly overpriced project. The F-35 also performed better at tests.
Good new, right? Not really. Axe is convinced that this does not matter because the aircraft is flawed at its core.
“The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter – a do-it-all strike jet being designed by Lockheed Martin to evade enemy radars, bomb ground targets and shoot down rival fighters – is as troubled as ever. Any recent tidbits of apparent good news can’t alter a fundamental flaw in the plane’s design with roots going back decades,” the expert asserted.
The main issue with this particular piece of military hardware is that it “is a second-rate fighter where it actually matters – in the air, in life-or-death combat against a determined foe.”
The Pentagon is quite aware of this. A 2008 computer simulation conducted by two analysts at the RAND think tank unveiled the F-35’s inferiority. It was one of the first wake-up calls the Defense Department should have listened to but preferred to ignore.
The RAND analysis showed that the F-35 is doomed when it comes to actual fighting when avoiding detection is no longer an option. Regardless of whether the simulation was 100-percent accurate or not, it exposed a serious flaw which had to be taken seriously.
After all, the F-35 is the future of the US military aircraft fleet. It is meant to replace an array of other planes, including the F-16 and the A-10. And this is where the F-35’s main flaw lies: to do this the new fighter had to be extremely versatile which inevitably led to a series of painful design compromises.
As a result, “the jack-of-all-trades [F-35] has become the master of none,” Axe pointed out, adding that the jet “is neither as quick as an F-16 nor as toughly constructed as an A-10.”
Air superiority, the US relies so much on, is likely in jeopardy if the F-35 becomes the basis of Pentagon’s aircraft fleet. If so, the future will belong to the best fighter jets Russia and China have to offer. And there is no shortage of new models in various stages of development.
“Where once mighty American warplanes soared over all others, giving Washington a distinct strategic advantage against any foe, in coming decades the US air arsenal will likely be totally outclassed on a plane-by-plane basis by any country possessing the latest Russian and Chinese models – one of which, ironically, appears to be an improved copy of the JSF … minus all its worst design elements,” the military expert stated.
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Posted: 18 Aug 2015 03:25 PM PDT



A University of Alabama sorority recruitment video was slammed as being “racially homogenous” and objectifying to women because it features a number of attractive, thin white girls.
The video shows a group of mostly white women partying and dancing to promote Alpha Phi, who are based at the Tuscaloosa campus.
However, the clip set off a firestorm of criticism, with AL.com writer A.L. Bailey asserting that the video was “worse for women than Donald Trump.”
“It’s all so racially and aesthetically homogeneous and forced, so hyper-feminine, so reductive and objectifying, so Stepford Wives: College Edition. It’s all so … unempowering,” writes Bailey, before she went on to argue that “beauty” and “sexuality” aren’t positive commodities.
“Some have condemned Bailey, the writer of the op-ed, for being a hypocrite as she runs a fashion and lifestyle blog,” reports the Daily Mail.
Others responded to the video in a more positive fashion.
“This is what I imagine heaven will look like,” wrote one.
“Can we all just calm down and give these ladies a break? I am ALL for empowering women but I am also ALL for fun. Let’s all be realistic here. When you are 18 years old and entering college, you are not only looking for the educational value but there is a social aspect as well,” wrote another respondent to Baily’s article.
“You have a problem with white skinny girls with long hair? Like most people, I rather see this than a bunch of fat bald girls,” added another.
The clip was soon removed from YouTube after the backlash despite receiving over 500,000 views, but was later re-posted by other users.
One wonders if the reaction would have been less severe if the girls in the video had been a lot fatter and less attractive. Criticism of their behavior in that context may even have been labeled “fat shaming” by some of the very same people upset over this video.
As we have previously highlighted, radical feminists believe that men being attracted to thin, pretty fertile women is a conspiracy contrived by the beauty and cosmetics industry, when it’s actually scientific fact based on crucial factors like hip to waist ratio.
This has led to the growth of bizarre feminist offshoot movements like “fat acceptance,” which encourages even morbidly obese women to embrace “body positivity,” providing them with an excuse not to acknowledge that their lifestyle is incredibly harmful to their health.
Watch the videos below for further insights into why feminists hate attractive women and how this spawned the “fat pride” movement.
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Posted: 18 Aug 2015 09:09 AM PDT

Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians have taken to the streets across the country to protest against alleged government corruption and looming recession, calling for the resignation of President Dilma Rouseff.
At least 5,000 demonstrators gathered in the city center of the capital Brasilia on Sunday and a police estimate showed that some 419,000 other protesters marched in 12 other cities of Latin America’s biggest country.
Organizers, however, claim that about 664,000 people marched in nation-wide rallies.
The crowds protested against alleged endemic corruption in the government, chanting “Dilma out” and “corrupt government.”
The rallies had been largely called by web-based activist groups with demands ranging from Rousseff’s impeachment to putting an end to corruption.
“Our goal is to change Brazil. We can’t take this corruption any longer, these levels of misery and suffering. You can’t have millions of reais siphoned off each year… If Congress has even a minimum of sense, it will decide on impeachment,” said Rogerio Chequer, leader of the Vem Pra Rua (Go on the Streets) group among those organizing the protests in Sao Paulo.
Rousseff was re-elected as the country’s president in October, but her administration’s reputation has since been badly hurt by a kickback scandal involving the ruling party, crooked businessmen and the country’s giant state-run oil company Petrobras.
The Petrobras scandal emerged last year, implicating senior politicians of the governing party, to which President Rousseff belongs.
A recent poll conducted in Brazil showed that Rousseff’s approval rating has fallen a record eight percent. Other similar surveys conducted on the president’s approval ratings in April and June, also revealed a drop in her popularity.
The Sunday rallies were the third major anti-Rousseff demonstration held this year, with over 600,000 and at least one million protesters taking to the streets in April and March, respectively.
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Posted: 18 Aug 2015 09:00 AM PDT

Police sources say a raid on the Moscow headquarters of the Church of Scientology earlier this year revealed spy equipment installed in reconciliation rooms. A leak claims the recordings could allegedly be used to blackmail parishioners of the church.
Illegal audio and video recording equipment was planted in the headquarters of a religious organization situated on Taganskaya Street in downtown Moscow, says Russia’s Investigative Committee representative Yulia Ivanova.
“As part of criminal action a search was made in the premises occupied by the religious association. The search revealed special technical devices, used for surreptitious obtaining of information, being installed in the personal interview rooms,” Ivanova said, adding that investigation on the issue continues in order to determine who, if anybody, was at fault.
Initial reports about a search being made in the Church of Scientology headquarters in the center of the Russian capital emerged in late January.
LifeNews media outlet reports that a search warrant was issued after police received a tip that a variety of recording devices, including microphones and cameras, had been secretly installed in the Church of Scientology and routinely used by its members.
Technical devices have been allegedly detected in rooms where confidential conversations with people – so-called ‘auditing’ – took place, LifeNews reported. Aсcording to its police sources, Moscow’s Church of Scientology recorded interviews between visitors and auditors allegedly to later blackmail the former.
A police source told RIA Novosti that “most probably, the recordings were later analyzed to reveal a ‘touchy subject’ of wealthy visitors and to hold it against them. Possibly also to blackmail, which now is the subject of an investigation.”
Scientology, founded in 1952 by L. Ron Hubbard, is often accused by critics of being a cult and a commercial enterprise. Dubbed as one of the most controversial new religions of the 20th century, it teaches that people are immortal beings who have forgotten their true nature. According to Hubbard, “a civilization without insanity, without criminals and without war, where the able can prosper and honest beings can have rights, and where man is free to rise to greater heights, are the aims of Scientology.”
The Church of Scientology previously came under the radar of Russian law enforcement authorities back in the 1990s, when intelligence agencies came across questionnaires that Hubbard’s followers distributed to potential members. A thorough analysis of the booklets showed that they met all the criteria for ‘hosting professional intelligence activities’, LifeNews reports.
People were not only asked about their marital status, religious beliefs, interests, income and hobbies, but for instance, if this or that person had previously served in the military, Scientologists found out the particular number of his unit and the exact whereabouts of the weapons storage sites.
“Signs of a destructive, totalitarian sect have been found in their activities,” a former employee of the department for combating organized crime in Moscow, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told LifeNews.
“This sect does not give one any freedom of choice. People are given no chance to leave. They are being kept on a short leash instead, constantly put under pressure. A person becomes dependent on the sect members by virtue of the information that he had given them,” the source added.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 09:07