Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Wednesday 5 August 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 04 Aug 2015 03:51 PM PDT

Struggling with the pollution of the Spokane River, a town in the state of Washington is taking agrochemical giant Monsanto to court for selling chemicals that endanger human health and the environment, despite it allegedly having known of the hazard for decades.
The lawsuit, filed in a US District Court in Spokane, Washington, holds Monsanto accountable for pollutants flowing into the 111 miles (179 km) long Spokane River that stretches from northern Idaho to eastern Washington.
“Spokane filed a lawsuit to hold Monsanto Company responsible for PCB contamination that finds its way into the City’s stormwater that flows into the Spokane River,” Environmental Law Firms Baron & Budd and Gomez Trial Attorneys, representing Spokane said in a press release.
The city seeks “compensatory damages,” lawyer’s fees, interest and any other relief the court deems appropriate. The suit doesn’t specify the actual sum of damages being sought from the Iowa-based company.
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) chemical compounds were developed and made by Monsanto from the 1930s until 1979, when Congress banned them over danger they pose to humans and the environment.
Over the decades, PCBs were used in a number of Monsanto’s products that were incorporated into electrical equipment, paints, caulks, and other building materials.
“Monsanto knew then that PCBs were toxic and could not be contained as they readily escaped into the environment finding their way into bays, oceans, lakes, rivers, streams, soil, and air,” the legal team says.
Despite allegedly knowing the risk posed, Monsanto increased the production of PCBs and concealed this information to make profit, the law firm says. Because of such ill practice PCBs became a common environmental contaminant that affected all forms of life and are capable of wiping out entire fish habitats. In humans, PCB exposure is associated with a number of sicknesses, with cancer posing the worst threat.
The city of Spokane will now spend $300 million to keep PCBs from entering the river in coming years, Marlene Feist, the city’s utilities spokeswoman, told The Spokesman-Review. She said the suit is “long-term litigation.”
Feist noted that the Spokane River has elevated levels of PCBs, that has also been found in fish and wildlife. The city is currently trying to meet a 2017 federal deadline to stop pollution from entering the river.
In order to proceed with the clean-up, the Washington State Department of Ecology already began reducing PCBs at their sources in the watershed, and adding more levels of treatment at its water treatment plant.
“No company should be allowed to contaminate the environment and rely upon taxpayers to clean up the mess,” Attorney Scott Summy, a shareholder at Baron & Budd, P.C., one of two firms representing Spokane in the lawsuit said. “Monsanto, one of the most sophisticated chemical companies in the world, knew decades ago that PCBs were a significant contamination threat. And yet the company was concerned more with continuing profits than with protecting the public.”
“The City will incur significant costs to remove PCBs from stormwater and wastewater effluent flowing into the Spokane River, costs that should not be borne by the City or by its taxpayers but by the company that knew its product would cause this contamination,” Summy’s co-counsel, Attorney John Fiske, of Gomez Trial Attorneys, agreed.
Monsanto replied in a statement, saying that they are reviewing the lawsuit and its allegations.
“Monsanto is not responsible for the costs alleged in this matter,” Charla Lord, a spokeswoman with the company told The Spokesman-Review.
“PCBs sold at the time were a lawful and useful product that was then incorporated by third parties into other useful products,” Lord said. “If improper disposal or other improper uses created the necessity for clean-up costs, then these other third parties would bear responsibility for these costs.”
In the past PCB pollution cases had been opened against Monsanto in San Diego and San Jose, California, and Westport, Massachusetts
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Posted: 04 Aug 2015 03:35 PM PDT

Ukrainian president’s envoy for the Crimean Tatars people, Mustafa Dzhemilev, announced the creation of a “Muslim battalion.” One should not minimize the threat of unleashing ethnic and religious wars in the former Soviet Union: Turkey is standing behind Dzhemilev’s actions.
The so-called “World Congress of the Crimean Tatars” took place in Turkey’s Ankara on August 1-2. The organizers of the event were former leaders of the Majlis, Mustafa Dzhemilev and Refat Chubarov. Today, they are personas non grata in Russia for “inciting ethnic hatred.” The “Congress” brought together about 200 groups of Crimean Tatars from different countries, Radio Svoboda says. The participants of the event said they were forced to hold their meeting outside the Crimea because of the pressure from Russian special services. All was happening against the background of support from Turkey that said that it would never support the “annexation of the Crimea.'”
“Unfortunately, throughout history, the right of the Crimean Tatar people to live in dignity in their own homeland was undermined with collective deportations and repression. Today we are witnessing the illegal annexation of the Crimea and other regrettable events,” Turkish President Recep Erdogan said in his written address to the participants of the congress.
Noteworthy, several high ranking Turkish officials and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin attended the congress in Ankara.
During the congress, Dzhemilev called for “international intervention” against the “Russian occupation” of the Crimea and even demanded Turkey should “strictly enforce sanctions against Russia.”
Turkey will always support the Crimean Tatars, Erdogan said – this is a part of his plan to build a new Ottoman Empire. The gas pipeline from Russia to Europe – is just a part of the plan. Supporting President Putin has nothing to do with it. Erdogan is playing his own game, in which Russia is not a priority at all.
During the congress, Dzhemilev spoke of “forced conscription of young men in the Russian army with a prospect of sending them to war against Ukrainian brothers.” As an alternative, he proposed creating a battalion of Muslim fighters under the auspices of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.
The “Muslim battalion” will be created on the base of the voluntary battalion of Crimean Tatars called “Crimea”. In addition to subversive activities, the battalion will be “controlling the passage of people and goods between the occupied Crimea and Ukrainian mainland,” said Dzhemilev.
Dzhemilev and Chubarov are experienced militants, and one should not underestimate their activity. They have attempted to organize a bloodbath in the Crimea before. In February 26, 2014, they attacked activists of the “Russian unity” bloc. On 3 May of the same year, they arranged a shootout on the Russian-Ukrainian border. The Congress does not rely on the opinion of the Crimean Tatars, but this is not required for a provocation – one needs a combat unit and a mess, and this is what Dzhemilev is trying to do with the help of a “Muslim battalion.”
If this happens, the Kherson region will have to deal with Islamization. “In the Kherson region, we consider it appropriate to concentrate all our compatriots who are now forced to leave their homeland and move to other regions of Ukraine. First, living together in our linguistic and religious environment, they will have be less risk of losing their national identity. Second, it will provide an opportunity to open national schools and religious institutions there,” said Dzhemilev.
“This congress is a personal project of Dzhemilev. The goal is to take control of the Crimean Tatar diaspora to take advantage of its influence and capabilities,” chairman of the Federation of communities of Crimean Tatars in Turkey,” Unver Sel told RIA Novosti.
“This is a forum for those who did not accept the new legal reality of the Crimea being an integral part of the Russian Federation, Vasvi Abduraimov, chairman of the Crimean republican public organization “Milli Firka” (People’s Party) told Pravda.Ru. – Dzhmilev’s remarks are pure provocation to tarnish the Crimean Tatar people, that has always been against violence and armed struggle.
According to the politician, Dzhemilev exploits the old myth that says that the Russian people have always been against Russia, against the Russian. Mustafa Dzhemilev is now against Russia too. He wants to have a team of people who would say that they are against Russia and against Russians. However, the people, who live in the Russian Federation, in the CIS, real patriots of their land, will never leave their homeland, now will they stand against the land that they consider their home.
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Posted: 04 Aug 2015 03:29 PM PDT

In 2012 Peter Sutherland, the non-executive chairman of Goldman Sachs International and the UN’s special representative for migration, urged the EU to “do its best to undermine” the “homogeneity” of its member states and create “multicultural states” in Europe.
On Saturday the German daily Die Welt reported this process is well underway. It cited a telephone conference between the interior ministers of German states that revealed “302,415 asylum seekers have already been registered” this year in the country.
The figure is higher than the one reported by the Federal Office for Migrants and Refugees (BAMF) which recorded 258,000 current requests for asylum.
The Der Tagesspiegel newspaper, however, said the unofficial “internal numbers” at the BAMF suggest as many as 600,000 asylum applicants in 2015.
In 2009 official figures put the Muslim population in Germany at around 4 million, or roughly five percent of the population, representing the largest population of Muslims in Europe.
In November Felix Strüning of the Stresemann Foundation said Germany’s SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service) has downplayed the actual numbers on the influx of Muslim immigrants in the country in order to stifle criticism of the multicultural agenda mentioned by Peter Sutherland.
Strüning writes for Citizen Times that “the number of refugees entering Germany has risen exponentially. And this implies a massive increase in the percentage of the population of Muslim persuasion,” a fact the SVR has “blithely swept under the rug.”
Although the actual number is unknown, native Germans have expressed concern about the influx.
“The growing number of Muslims in the country (and specifically the Turks) makes the locals… increasingly more hostile towards them. A group of experts with the Council of Europe headed by former Foreign Minister of Germany Joschka Fischer recently conducted a study and found that the number of people who are afraid of Muslims is growing,” writes Vadim Trukhachev.
A separate study was conducted 18 months ago by experts of the sociological institute Dimap specifically in Germany. Thirty-six percent of Germans expressed serious concern over the expansion of Islam, and 39 percent – mild concern. The fears are largely exaggerated, but these figures eloquently show that the problem exists. Strictly speaking, its existence was acknowledged by Chancellor Angela Merkel herself.
“This [multicultural] approach has failed, utterly failed,” the German chancellor said in 2010.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán denounced the globalist multicultural agenda when he delivered his State of the Nation address in February.
“Europe is facing questions which can no longer be answered within the framework of liberal multiculturalism,” Orbán said. “Can we shelter people, many of whom are unwilling to accept European culture, or who come here with the intent of destroying European culture?”
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Posted: 04 Aug 2015 05:29 AM PDT

The British government is said to be taking a tougher line on undocumented immigrants following its latest migrant crisis.
According to the Guardian, immigrants living illegally in the UK will face sudden eviction from rental properties under new laws the government is set to announce.
The government will change the law to allow landlords to evict such immigrants without a ‘court order.’ This comes as the UK home secretary, Theresa May, has said that Britain’s “streets are not paved with gold.”
Meanwhile, landlords who fail to check the immigration status of tenants could be fined or imprisoned for up to five years under a new criminal offence to be included in a new immigration bill.
Greg Clark, the communities secretary, has reportedly said that “we are determined to crack down on rogue landlords.”
In recent weeks, hundreds of migrants have tried to make it into the undersea tunnel connecting France to Britain in the hopes of finding a way onto a train or truck headed for the UK. At least 10 migrants have died attempting the dangerous journey since June.
The latest crisis has forced British Prime Minister David Cameron to call on French President Francois Hollande to hold urgent talks and discuss the situation at the port of Calais, where the refugee crisis “could last all summer,” he said.
Cameron called the pictures of migrants tearing down fences and hanging onto trucks as they try to enter the Channel Tunnel “unacceptable.”
He had earlier drawn criticism by calling the migrants ‘swarms.’
France and Britain vowed on August 2 that ending a crisis which has seen thousands of attempts by migrants to reach England from Calais in recent weeks is a “top priority.”
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Posted: 04 Aug 2015 05:20 AM PDT

The picture of a heroic Chinese cop rescuing a newborn baby girl, who was dumped in the pipe of a public toilet in Beijing, has captured a lot of hearts. The baby survived and is now recovering in a local hospital thanks to her guardian angel.
A police station in western Beijing received a call from locals who said they heard baby crying in the public toilet. The officer Qian Feng immediately rushed to the scene and discovered the tiny infant.
“The baby’s head was pointing downwards and her whole body had already fallen into the drain. We could only see the baby’s feet from the side,” Qian Feng told the Beijing Times.

The baby was wrapped in a towel and taken to a near-by hospital. According to Chinese media reports, the infant is healthy and is now recovering.
Officers also found blood around the lavatory bowl where the baby was found which indicated she was born in the toilet and abandoned there. Police are now trying to establish the identity of the baby’s mother.
This is not the first ‘miracle’ baby rescue in China. In 2013, a newborn baby boy was dumped in a toilet and had to be cut free by firefighters in Zhejiang. The infant suffered cuts and bruises but survived.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 21:46