Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Wednesday 30 September 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 30 Sep 2015 01:28 AM PDT

Prime Minister David Cameron has been reminded of his family’s links to slavery as he faces calls for Britain to pay Jamaica millions of pounds in reparations ahead of his first official visit to Kingston on Tuesday.
Academics and politicians in Jamaica have demanded the PM issue an apology for the hundreds of years during which Britain enslaved and “extracted wealth” from the island’s people.
In an open letter to Cameron published in the Jamaica Observer, historian Sir Hilary Beckles reminded the PM that his ancestral family benefited from slavery on the island through General Sir James Duff, Cameron’s cousin six times removed.
Downing Street has dismissed Jamaica’s call for reparations on the grounds slavery took place under a different government, hundreds of years ago.
In a cutting letter to the PM, Beckles reminded Cameron of his family’s own involvement in Jamaican slavery.
“You are a grandson of the Jamaican soil who has been privileged and enriched by your forebears’ sins of the enslavement of our ancestors … You are, Sir, a prized product of this land and the bonanza benefits reaped by your family and inherited by you continue to bind us together like birds of a feather,” he wrote.
“I speak, Sir, of the legacies of slavery that continue to derail, undermine and haunt our best efforts at sustainable economic development and the psychological and cultural rehabilitation of our people from the ravishes of the crimes against humanity committed by your British State and its citizens in the form of chattel slavery and native genocide,” he went on to say.
Buckles wrote that while Jamaica fueled Britain’s economic growth at a crucial time in its history, helping it to “become great.” He called on the UK to reciprocate as part of an effort in “cleaning up this monumental mess of Empire.”
“We ask not for handouts or any such acts of indecent submission. We merely ask that you acknowledge responsibility for your share of this situation and move to contribute in a joint program of rehabilitation and renewal,” he added.
Cameron will visit Jamaica and Grenada this week as part of a mission to “reinvigorate” the UK’s relationship with the island nations amid fears they are building closer ties with China and Venezuela.
Britain’s imperial legacy is set to overshadow Cameron’s trade trip, during which he will address Jamaica’s parliament, with Mike Henry MP calling on fellow parliamentarians to turn their back on the PM if reparations are not on the agenda.
Professor Verene Shepherd, chair of the National Commission on Reparation, told the Jamaica Gleaner that nothing short of an unambiguous apology from Cameron would do.
Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller called for discussions on the issue at the UN in 2013 and the parliament has approved a motion for the country to seek reparations from Britain.
The UK’s position that reparations are not the “right approach” has remained consistent.
“This is a longstanding concern of theirs and there is a longstanding UK position, true of successive governments in the UK, that we don’t think reparations are the right approach,” a Downing Street spokeswoman said.
“The PM’s point will be he wants to focus on the future. We are talking about issues that are centuries old and taken under a different government when he was not even born. He wants to look at the future and how can the UK play a part now in stronger growing economies in the Caribbean.”
“Britain has long historical ties with these countries,” she added.
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Posted: 29 Sep 2015 03:58 PM PDT

Israeli Likud Minister Yuval Steinitz will tell the United States, Russia and other world powers Israel will not tolerate Iranian forces near its border, the Jerusalem Times reported on Tuesday.
Steinitz made the remark as Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, flew to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday.
“In all of our discussions, first and foremost with the United States, but also with Russia and the rest of the world powers, we must make sure that the Iranian forces will stay in Iran,” Steinitz told Israel’s Army Radio.
“Nobody wants to see Russian forces in the area of the Golan Heights, but we definitely don’t want to see Iranian forces near Israel,” he added.
Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria during the Six Day War in June, 1967. The territory was officially annexed in 1981.
Israel fired on Syrian forces in the Quneitra region over the weekend when errant mortar fire landed in the captured territory.
Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said on Monday Syria had crossed a “red line” in its battle with proxy forces attempting to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
“Israel does not intend to ignore these incidents. We see the Syrian government as responsible for what happens in Syrian territory,” Yaalon said.
Preparations for Ground Invasion of Syria
In August it was reported that Israel is preparing for a possible ground invasion of Syria.
The Israelis began large division-scale training in the occupied Golan Heights in mid-August under the pretext ISIS may invade and also citing the presence of Hezbollah fighters in Syria.
Israel and Hezbollah fought a war in 2006 in Lebanon, northern Israel and the Golan Heights. Some analysts consider the 34-day war as the first Iran-Israel proxy conflict.
“In the scenarios envisioned by the IDF, heavily-armed terrorist cells would infiltrate the Israeli side of the Golan and attack Jewish and Druze villages there, necessitating a strong Israeli response in Syria,” Israel Today reported on August 17.
The announcement of invasion preparations coincide with the possibility Israel may move its borders east “to protect the Druze and other non-hostile populations that are today threatened by the Islamists,” the website reported.
On Tuesday Israel Today reported the country “fears unintentional exchanges of fire between its own forces and the Russian military in Syria. Such a flare-up between Israeli and Iranian forces could give Tehran the excuse it needs to launch a long-range missile assault on the Jewish state.”
The Kuwaiti newspaper Alrai has cited “official sources” as saying Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Russia have launched a “joint operations room” to coordinate their campaign to defeat the Islamic State.
The Times of Israel reported on Saturday:
The newspaper quotes official sources as saying that each party will be responsible for particular areas of Syria, with Russia operating in Latakia, Hama and some parts of the Aleppo province, while Iran will be defending the capital Damascus and down to Quneitra on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights. The report also states that some 100 Iranian special forces trained in urban warfare have arrived in Damascus
Israel claims the Syrian Army has received “substantial support” from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and “most notably fellow Iranian client Hezbollah,” the paramilitary group formed after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982.
The Kuwaiti report also said the Syrian military has given dozens of Soviet-era tanks tanks to Hezbollah.
The Times of Israel reiterated the possibility Israel may conduct ground operations in the Golan and Syria.
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Posted: 29 Sep 2015 03:45 PM PDT

The American billionaire George Soros, who owns the Soros Fund, offered Europe his own way to tackle refugees problem.
He believes that the EU countries should adopt up to a million Muslim migrants annually.
Soros noted that if Europe is ready to carry it out, he will support this initiative and allocate his funds to the European governments as long-term bonds.
According to him, the Muslim refugees, that arrive to Europe, may choose jobs and further accommodation on their own, as well as claim social safety net along with other citizens.
The United Nations states the current influx of 8,000 refugees per day entering the continent is merely “the tip of the iceberg.”
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Posted: 29 Sep 2015 03:23 PM PDT

Germans who make racist anti-migrant posts could have their children snatched by the state and be fired from their jobs, according to the German Lawyers’ Association.
In an article entitled Racism and parenting: Threatening loss of custody?, lawyer Eva Becker, Chair of the Working Group on Family Law in the German Bar Association, outlines the conditions under which “xenophobic” Facebook posts could lead to parents being targeted.
Although Becker asserts that merely opposing the settlement of migrants in Germany would not lead to parental rights being terminated, such views could easily lead to someone being fired from their job.
Expressing a desire for violence against the migrants would constitute evidence enough for a family court to remove children from the home, according to Becker.
While this appears to be a high bar, idle threats of violence are made by countless people on the Internet every day, with the vast majority going completely unpunished.
Given the apparent cover-up of rapes being committed by “migrants” in Germany, the notion of an irate father making violent comments in a ‘heat of the moment’ Facebook rant is entirely plausible. Although such comments are obviously abhorrent, should they really lead to children being taken away from their parents by the state?
Becker suggests that racist and xenophobic statements made in the presence of a child that constitute a “negative influence” would also be investigated by the authorities.
Becker advises ex-partners to collect screenshots of Facebook comments and other Internet activity if they are considering bringing a case before the family court.
As we highlighted yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was caught on a hot mic discussing plans with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to censor anti-migrant Facebook posts in Germany.
“Are you working on this?” Merkel asked. “Yeah,” Zuckerberg responded before their microphone was cut.
Those found guilty of “refugee baiting” remarks will be hit with fines up to €5000 euros or 120 days in jail. The program will be overseen by Network Against Nazis (Netz gegen Nazis), a group led by left-wing activist Anetta Kahane.
As we previously reported, Kahane worked as a Stasi informant under the codename “Victoria” from 1974-1982. The Stasi’s role was to spy on the population of East Germany and to use its vast network of informants to hunt down political dissidents.
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Posted: 29 Sep 2015 02:09 PM PDT

Asian immigrants are expected to surpass Hispanics to become the largest group of foreign-born people in America by 2065, according to estimates in a new groundbreaking study.
The composition of the US immigrant population will change dramatically, according to Pew Research projections.
In 2015, nearly half of immigrants (47 percent) residing in the US are Hispanic. But as immigration from Latin America, especially Mexico, has slowed down in recent years, the share of the foreign born who are Hispanic is expected to fall to 31 percent by 2065. Meanwhile, Asian immigrants are expected to make up 38 percent of the foreign-born population by 2065.
Part of the reason for the shift is that the fertility rate of women in Latin America, especially Mexico, has decreased. Pew’s director of Hispanic research, Mark Hugo Lopez, said that in Mexico women are now having around two children, while in the 1960s and 1970s, they were having about seven children per woman on average.
“There are relatively fewer people who would choose to migrate from Mexico so demographic changes in Mexico have led to a somewhat smaller pool of potential migrants,” he told AP. “At the same time we’ve seen a growing number of immigrants particularly from China or India who are coming for reasons such as pursuing a college degree or coming here to work temporarily in the high-tech sector.”
Despite the projected increase in Asian immigrants, Hispanics will still make up a larger number, thanks to their children born in the US.
“Hispanic population growth is coming from people born here in the United States,” Lopez said. “It is really US births that are now the driver of Hispanic population growth, and that’s a recent change from what we saw in the ’80s and ’90s.”
Immigrants presently make up 14 percent of the population, a significant increase from 5 percent in 1965. Pew Research projections also show that black immigrants and white immigrants together will become a slightly larger share of the nation’s immigrants by 2065 than in 2015 (29% vs. 26%).
If current demographic trends continue, future immigrants and their children is projected to become an even bigger source of population growth. Between 2015 and 2065, they are likely to account for up to 88 percent of the US population increase, or 103 million people, as the nation grows to 441 million, the new study shows.
No racial or ethnic group will hold a majority in the United States by 2065, with whites holding 46 percent of the population, Hispanics at 24 percent, Asians at 14 percent and blacks at 13 percent. (as things stand now, the US is 62 percent white, 18 percent Hispanic, 12 percent black and 6 percent Asian.)
Pew also asked Americans surveyed to describe in one word immigrants currently living in the US. Twelve percent said “illegal,” 5 percent – “overpopulation,” 4 percent – “legality (other than illegal),” 3 percent came up with such variants as “jobs,””deportation,””Americans” and “work ethic.” Forty-nine percent offered some general descriptions, 12 percent of those were positive, 11 percent negative and 26 percent neutral, according to the report.
The survey was conducted online from March 10 to April 6, 2015, the margin of sampling error is said to plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.
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Posted: 29 Sep 2015 01:34 PM PDT

The Republican presidential frontrunner laid out a set of tax proposals on Saturday, including a zero rate for those with low incomes and tax cuts for corporations; however, Wall Street financiers would have to pay more.
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump gave an outline of his tax plans for the presidency on Saturday, including a proposal to impose higher taxes on Wall Street bankers, to cut federal corporate taxes, and slash the income tax to zero for low earners.
“It’s a substantial reduction for the middle-income people. Because our middle class is being absolutely decimated. It will also be a corporate reduction, I think it’ll be a great incentive for corporations.”
“There will be a large segment of our country that will have a zero rate, a zero rate.”
“We’re talking about people in the low-income brackets that are supposed to be paying taxes, many of them don’t anyway,” said Trump, in an interview with 60 Minutes.
On Monday, the Republican is set to unveil his tax policy proposal in full at a press conference in Trump Tower. During Saturday’s interview, while promising tax breaks to corporations and people and low- and middle-incomes, he singled out Wall Street bankers as those who he plans to tax more.
“I’m a pretty good Republican. But, I will tell you this, I do have some differences [with the party]. I don’t want to have certain people on Wall Street getting away with paying no tax.”
The frontrunner for the GOP nomination was asked about how the US would finance such measures, in light of the $19 billion federal debt.
Trump replied that such tax cuts would be made possible by bringing jobs to the US from other countries. His economic policy intends to prevent them from using the method of currency devaluation to lower their production costs.
“If I bring jobs back from China, from Japan, from Mexico, from so many countries, everybody’s taking our jobs.”
“They don’t respect our president. They don’t respect our country. They will respect me. They won’t be doing it,” declared Trump, using combative terms to set out his policy.
“If they don’t come to the table, they’re going to have a tax when they put their products into this country. And they’re going to behave.”
Trump ended the interview by describing his motivation for running for the presidency.
“I love my business. I didn’t want to do this. I just see our country as going to hell. And I felt I had to do it,” he explained.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 08:45