Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Sunday, 20 September 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 19 Sep 2015 03:34 AM PDT

New Zealand has released a final selection of four flag designs, picked from thousands of creative drawings presented over the past few months. Three “ferns” and one “hypnoflag” featuring a koru will now compete to potentially become the new national symbol.
A government-appointed panel has selected the four designs from a long list of 40, itself from an initial pool of more than 10,000.
Ferns dominate the short list, with three quarters of the options featuring one in some form. Two of the four were designed by Kiwi-born architect Kyle Lockwood, who has since settled in Melbourne.
Another was submitted by Alofi Kanter, an amateur artist and a flight attendant who says he sent in the design “to make my contribution.” The final work, by a freelance graphic designer Andrew Fyfe, is the only one featuring a koru instead of a Fern.
“I think there’re two or three there that could potentially be a new New Zealand flag,” Prime Minister John Key told reporters.
Only Kiwis will vote on their favorite of the four in a public referendum in November. The winner will face a second referendum in early 2016 to determine the new national flag between the selected flag and the existing one.
Public opinion in New Zealand is mixed about the idea of changing the design, with many critical of the process’ $26 million price tag. According to Herald Digipoll, a survey showed that almost half of voters were open to a change of flag, although 24 percent said that their decision would depend on the proposed alternative. However, 53 percent oppose any change to the flag.
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Posted: 19 Sep 2015 03:14 AM PDT

A senior judge has ruled a child molester was rightly given a tougher than normal sentence because his victims were Asian and so suffered more from his crimes than if they were white.
Jamal Muhammed Raheem-ul-Nasir was jailed for 7 years at Leeds Crown Court last year for sex attacks on two girls, aged nine and 14. What is the normal sentence in Britain for raping a 9-year-old? 1 year?? Obviously, this 7 years sentence is longer than whatever the standard is.
But the Muslim paedophile took the case to appeal, with his lawyers complaining that his sentence was unfairly inflated and ‘excessive’.
Senior judge Mr Justice Walker has now thrown out those arguments after hearing that the victims’ families feared they would struggle to find future husbands because of the abuse.
The move has been criticised by children’s charity the NSPCC, who insist justice should be blind to the race of victims.
Nasir, 32, was convicted of two counts of sexual assault on a child under 13 and four counts of sexual activity with a child and handed the prison term in December last year.
The judge who jailed him, Sally Cahill QC, specifically said that the fact the victims were Asian had been factored in as an ‘aggravating feature’ when passing sentence.
She stated that the victims and their families had suffered particular ‘shame’ in their communities because of what had happened to them.
Additionally there were cultural concerns that the girls’ future prospects of being regarded as a good catch for arranged marriages might be damaged.
Lawyers for Nasir, of Liversedge, West Yorkshire, argued at London’s Criminal Appeal Court that his sentence had been unfairly inflated.
But their complaints were rejected by Mr Justice Walker, who said: ‘The victims’ fathers were concerned about the future marriage prospects for their daughters.
‘Judge Cahill was having particular regard to the harm caused to the victims by this offending.
‘That harm was aggravated by the impact on the victims and their families within this particular community.’
The argument that Ul Nasir was given a longer sentence due to his own ‘ethnic and religious origin’ was based on ‘a misconception’, he added.
‘The judge who tried the case was in the best position to determine the correct sentence.’
Mr Justice Walker, sitting with Lord Justice Laws and Mr Justice Mitting, at London’s Royal Courts of Justice,, concluded: ‘There is no basis for saying that Judge Cahill adopted an incorrect starting point. This application for leave to appeal against sentence must be refused.’
But an NSPCC spokesman said: ‘British justice should operate on a level playing field and children need to be protected irrespective of cultural differences.
‘Regardless of race, religion, or gender, every child deserves the right to be safe and protected from sexual abuse, and the courts must reflect this. It is vital that those who commit these hideous crimes are punished to the full limit of the law.’
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Posted: 19 Sep 2015 02:45 AM PDT

According to an investigation by Swedish newspaper Dala-Demokraten, Arab migrants are being promised ‘free blonde Swedish girls’ and taxpayer-funded luxury treatment if they pay people smugglers to help them reach Scandinavia.
The report explains how most of the migrants seeking to cross into Europe who are being targeted by people smugglers are not even from Syria and cannot be considered refugees at all given that they reside in neighboring countries not at war.
Websites set up by people smugglers assert that migrants can get asylum quickly in Sweden and that they will be housed in luxury hotels until the government finds free accommodation for them, all at taxpayer expense.
“There is also sexual content in the advertisements, according to Dala-Demokraten,” reports Speisa, which translated the Dala-Demokraten article. “Among other things, the Arabs are promised their own free young willing blond Swedish girlfriend if they manage to illegally get all the way to the promised land in northern Europe.”
“In reality one can say that the young Syrian men are lured to Sweden by the oldest trick in the book – money and girls. Pictures of blonde beauties are published, and that Swedish women require real men,” writes Dala-Demokraten.
Apparently, migrants with no plan on working who travel to Sweden to live on government hand-outs are now considered “real men”.
When illegal immigrants make it to Sweden, they often find that they are not treated like gods, and get angry because of this.
Just recently, a bus full of illegal immigrants to be re-housed in abandoned 50’s housing,refused to get off the bus, complaining that they deserved better housing. They were also upset that they had to make their own food, instead of it being served to them.
Based on the fact that Sweden has experienced a 1400% increase in rapes since it swung its doors open to mass immigration, with the majority of the culprits identified as “foreigners,” one suspects that not all of the migrants’ encounters with ‘free Swedish blonde girls’ will be consensual.
The fact that the websites directly target men again illustrates how the media portrayal of migrants as desperate refugee families fleeing war and ISIS persecution is largely bogus.
According to the UN’s own figures, 72% of the migrants fleeing to Europe are men, with just 13% women and 15% children.
As we reported earlier, a prominent recently gave a speech at a mosque in Jerusalem in which he asserted that Muslims should use the migrant crisis to breed with European citizens and “conquer their countries”.
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Posted: 19 Sep 2015 02:35 AM PDT
A 3D illustration of a metasurface skin cloak made from an ultrathin layer of nanoantennas covering an arbitrarily shaped object.
American scientists say they have developed an ultra-thin invisibility cloak that can wrap around a 3D object and hide it from detection.
Researchers at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley have used microscopic rectangular gold blocks that conform to the shape of an object and can render it undetectable with visible light.
“This is the first time a 3D object of arbitrary shape has been cloaked from visible light,” said Xiang Zhang, director of Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division. “Our ultra-thin cloak now looks like a coat. It is easy to design and implement, and is potentially scalable for hiding macroscopic objects.”
The ‘skin’ cloak is 80 nano meters thick and boasts microscopic light-scattering antennae that can hide an object from optical detection by making light bounce off its surface.
It works by employing specially-devised metamaterials, which can bend or curve the reflection of light. The cloak, can therefore, make an object appear flat and invisible if viewed from the front, but any movement by the viewer or the object would shatter the illusion.
The researchers said the technology could be used for military applications like making large objects like vehicles or aircraft or even individual soldiers invisible.
They also suggested that their finding be used in fashion design and beauty products like a cloaking mask for the face that can hide pimples and wrinkles.
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Posted: 19 Sep 2015 02:32 AM PDT

No nation in history has ever threatened peace more than the United States, US author Stephen Lendman emphasizes, adding that Washington bears full responsibility for creating the notorious Islamic State.
US President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry are hypocritically calling for a diplomatic solution to the world’s burning conflicts, while waging perpetual wars in multiple theaters, US author and syndicated columnist Stephen Lendman underscores.
“Washington bears full responsibility for creating ISIS [ISIL]. Russian UN envoy Vitaly Churkin traced its origin from Bush’s Iraq war, saying it ‘became active when (it) began storming Baghdad…So, the Islamic State ripened in Iraq during the US occupation. (America) should be blamed for’ its rise and proliferation,” Lendman pointed out in his article for Global Research.
Remarkably, the recent poll carried out by the British polling organization ORB International, an affiliate of WIN/Gallup International, has found out that 82 percent of Syrians blame the US for creating ISIL, while 79 percent claimed that “foreign fighters made war worse.”
Furthermore, the poll has indicated that Bashar al-Assad’s positions in Syria have strengthened from a year ago.
“[T]he more that the war has continued, the more opposed to the US the Syrian people have become, and the more that they are supporting Bashar al-Assad, whom the Syrian people know that the US is trying to bring down,” US investigative historian Eric Zuesse commented on the issue in one of his recent articles.
Meanwhile, the Russian leadership is urging the international community to team up and fight against the ISIL threat.
“Russia…has proposed (forming) a wide coalition to fight extremists without any delay. It should unite everyone [against a common enemy],” Russian President Putin said as quoted by Lendman.
Russia is open to dialogue with the United States on the Syrian crisis issue, the Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova notes.
“We have never avoided dialogue with the United States, and remain open for discussion of all issues of mutual interest, including Syria,” Zakharova told RIA Novosti.
The Kremlin has repeatedly clarified that it is providing military aid under existing contracts to official Damascus because now it is the only credible force, capable of resisting Islamic State on the ground.
However, although all of Russia’s actions are within the norms of international law and are carried out in close coordination with the Syrian government, US top officials have no scruples about saying that Russian involvement in Syria “exacerbates” and “extends” the conflict, undermining the US-led coalition efforts to counter extremism.
Washington’s stance is the polar opposite of the truth, Lendman stressed.
“Washington and rogue allies wage endless wars on humanity. Peace and stability defeat their agenda. Mass slaughter and destruction serve it, targeting one country after another, heading inevitably toward direct US confrontation with Russia and China, risking nuclear war to make both countries US-controlled vassal states,” the US author highlighted.
“No nation in world history has ever threatened humanity’s survival more than America,” he stressed.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 08:57