Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Monday, 7 September 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 06 Sep 2015 12:33 PM PDT

The majority of French people are opposed to easing the rules for Muslim refugees hoping to settle in the country, according to a new poll. The survey also revealed that most citizens would support sending ground troops to fight Islamic State in Syria.
The survey, conducted by Odoxa for Le Parisien, revealed that 55 percent of the 1,000 people surveyed were against softening the rules for refugees seeking settlement, including those fleeing the Syrian civil war.
Thirty-three percent thought France was less hospitable to refugees than Germany, which has opened its borders to new arrivals and expects 800,000 asylum seekers to reach the country this year. Forty-four percent thought the two countries were comparable in that respect.
French public opinion has been divided on how to handle the refugee crisis, amid a rise in the anti-immigration National Front party and high unemployment.
But some in France are more than willing to welcome refugees.
Around 8,500 people marched in Paris on Sunday, carrying banners reading “Refugees welcome”, and “We are all descendants of immigrants.” Many were waving Syrian flags and chanting, “Open the borders!” according to France 24.
Other pro-refugee demonstrations took place in several cities across the country.
On Thursday, France and Germany agreed the European Union should impose binding quotas on the number of refugees member states must accept.
“Thousands of victims have died since the start of the year. The European Union must act in a decisive manner in line with its values,” Hollande’s office said in a statement. However, the president stressed that “irregular migrants” who are not fleeing war or persecution must return to their home countries.
More than 350,000 refugees and migrants have entered the European Union this year alone, in what has become the worst refugee crisis since World War II.
Support for Syria intervention
Of those surveyed, 61 percent said they would support France taking part in a coalition sending ground troops to Syria to fight Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).
Military action in Syria could become a reality for France. Le Monde reported on Saturday that a “high level source” said the country is considering joining the coalition conducting airstrikes on IS.
If President Francois Hollande decides on airstrikes, the move will likely be widely endorsed by French politicians, according to conservative presidential candidate Alain Juppe.
“I think there could be quite a large agreement on this,” Juppe told reporters on Sunday.
France was the first country to join the US-led coalition carrying out airstrikes on Islamic State in Iraq, but declined to take part in the bombing of Syria.
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Posted: 06 Sep 2015 12:16 PM PDT
Israeli police stand guard during a protest of Arab Israeli Christian students on September 6, 2015.
Thousands of people have held a massive rally in Jerusalem to protest against the slashing of funds for Christian schools by the Tel Aviv regime.
The demonstrators gathered outside the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday and were later joined by a dozen Arab Israeli members of parliament.
The Israeli regime had deployed hundreds of security forces in order to rein in the protesters.
Angry demonstrators complained of discrimination since the Tel Aviv regime continues to fully fund large private school networks that cater to ultra-Orthodox Jews while it slashes the budget for Christians.
“We pay our taxes and therefore we must have the same rights as everyone,” media outlets quoted Manal Issa, a mother who attended the rally with her two children, as saying.
Ragheed Massad, a student from Nazareth, also criticized the Israeli discriminatory policies against Arab Christian schools, saying, “We, all the Arab Christian schools, are demanding equality. There is no equality for our schools.”
The rally comes as more than 30,000 students in 47 schools have been on strike since the school year began on Sept. 1.
The protesters accused Israel of cutting their funding as a tactic to pressure them to join the Israeli public school system. Christian school administrators say the move would interfere with the schools’ high academic achievements.
The protesting Christian schools say this public funding has been systematically cut in recent years to their elementary schools. Abdul Massih Fahim, director of the Catholic Church’s Custody of the Holy Land, which oversees the Christian schools, said funds only cover 29 percent of costs.
To compensate, schools raised tuition fees – a burden for the Arab community.
In recent days Israeli extremist settlers have launched attacks on Christian churches.
Israeli settlers have increased their attacks and hate crimes against Christians and Muslims, as well as their holy sites, but they have rarely been prosecuted.
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Posted: 06 Sep 2015 12:09 PM PDT

In an interview for Austrian daily newspaper Osterreich, Chancellor Werner Faymann defended his country’s decision to accept the refugees ejected from Hungary, saying it was a humanitarian imperative. He also offered harsh words for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and the Hungarian government, accusing them of sowing the seeds of chaos.
In the interview, published Sunday, the chancellor explained that he made the decision to accept the refugees bottled up in Hungary out of an understanding “that we must set an example of humaneness, because one cannot leave the displaced persons standing before the lowered barriers in the pouring rain. The answer was clear: we opened the border as a symbol of humaneness.” Faymann added that it was equally important that Germany did the same thing.
Faymann criticized Hungarian Prime Minister Orban, saying that “Orban told me and [German Chancellor] Merkel that he guaranteed that there would be no more than 4,000 [refugees], something which I did not believe from the beginning.” It is now believed that at least 6,500 refugees have already crossed the border between Hungary and Austria.
Asked to respond to what his interviewer called the Hungarians’ ‘scandalous’ behavior, Faymann noted that “a picture is worth a thousand words: one cannot solve the refugee problem with barbed wire.” He added that “those who do not assist in resolving the refugee issue will have to reckon with the financial consequences in the future. Solidarity is not a one-way street.”
Asked worryingly about what would happen if the majority of the refugees sought to stay in Austria, the chancellor noted that “this will not be the case; the vast majority want to continue on to Germany. Therefore the joint solution —that everyone who wants to can travel further can, was so important. I negotiated with Angel Merkel through the night, and am very grateful for her show of humanity. Factually, Germany and Austria have demonstrated for the first time that they could tackle the issue of refugees together.”
Faymann emphasized that Europe as a whole needs to solve the refugee crisis, which he said was “the biggest crisis and thus the greatest challenge to Europe in its history.” The politician noted that Europe’s politicians would have to work together to create equitable quotas, to secure the EU’s external borders and to set up emergency aid provision for the refugees.
Hungarian Response
The Austrian chancellor’s commentary provoked a speedy response from Budapest: Hungarian news agency MTI quoted Levente Magyar, Secretary of State of Hungary’s Foreign Ministry, as saying that Faymann was “blowing hot air, out of [his government’s] inability to act on the immigration crisis.” Magyar added that while the chancellor had taken it upon himself to step out as the ‘defender of refugees’, Austria was simultaneously putting pressure on other countries in order to prevent the influx of migrants to Austria. The official concluded that the chancellor’s remarks were the latest in a series of speeches presenting Hungary in a bad light which, he stressed, does not serve the interests of maintaining good-neighborly relations between the two countries.
Magyar’s remarks echo those of Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, who stressed Saturday that the refugee crisis was caused by a “failure of the EU’s immigration policy” and “the result of a series of irresponsible statements by European politicians.”
Hungarian authorities made the decision to let thousands of refugees board buses and head for Austria and Germany on foot after nearly a week of unrest outside Budapest’s central rail terminal, as well as several incidents of refugees breaking out from the camps which authorities had directed them to.
Hungary is presently one of the main transit points for migrants fleeing from war and instability-hit nations in the Middle East who are attempting to reach Western Europe.
Last week, Hungary completed the first stage of its 177 km-long fence with Serbia, ostensibly aimed at deterring illegal border crossings. With Budapest estimating that over 156,000 migrants have entered the country since the beginning of the year, Prime Minister Orban has warned that Hungary might also build a barrier along its border with Croatia, if undocumented immigrants begin arriving from that direction.
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Posted: 06 Sep 2015 11:49 AM PDT

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has given into pressure on his traitorous government over the current refugee crisis, saying that his country is prepared to accept more Muslim refugees from crisis-hit Syria and Iraq.
“We are proposing to take more people from this region as part of our very substantial commitment to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR),” Abbott said at a press conference in Canberra on Sunday.
However, he emphasized that the decision will not lift the overall intake of asylum seekers that Australia had planned to accept from across the globe.
Over the last financial year, Australia settled more than 4,400 people from Syria and Iraq, accounting for 30 percent of the 13,750 places under its Humanitarian Program. The country also plans to gradually increase the annual total intake to 18,750 places by 2018-19.
The announcement came after calls for his government to open the doors of the country to more refugees from Syria.
Earlier this week, Australian Greens Leader Richard Di Natale called on Canberra to initiate an emergency intake of 20,000 refugees fleeing the violence in Syria. Philip Ruddock, former immigration minister, also made the same plea.
Elsewhere in his remarks, the Australian premier said that he had been moved by “the horrific imagery of that little boy washed up on a beach in Turkey,” adding that he was considering further funding for humanitarian assistance to those in refugee camps.
He was referring to three-year-old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi who died along with his mother and 5-year-old brother in a desperate voyage from Turkey to Greece earlier this week. The image of Aylan’s lifeless body lying face-down on a beach near the Turkish resort of Bodrum stirred public outrage at Europe’s handling of the refugee crisis.
Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton is expected to fly to the Swiss city of Geneva later on Sunday for urgent talks with the UNHCR over the refugee crisis.
Most of the refugees who risk their lives to reach Europe are reportedly fleeing conflict-hit zones in Africa and the Middle East, particularly Syria and Iraq.
About 2,500 of the more than 300,000 people who have used sea routes to reach Europe this year have died, the UNHCR says.
The Australian government has been under fire in recent years both at home and abroad for its strict immigration policies and treatment of refugees, among them detaining asylum seekers in offshore facilities in inhumane conditions.
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Posted: 06 Sep 2015 11:37 AM PDT

Antichrist Pope Francis has called on every European parish to self destroy by hosting one Muslim refugee family each in a goodwill gesture that will begin in the Vatican state. It comes as Europe faces the worst refugee crisis since World War II.
“I appeal to the parishes, the religious communities, the monasteries and sanctuaries of all Europe to take in one family of refugees,” Pope Francis said after his Sunday address.
He added that it is not enough to say “have courage, hang in there” to the refugees making the dangerous journey into Europe.
The pontiff, whose comments were met with applause from the crowd in St. Peter’s Square, also said that two parishes in the Vatican will each take in a family of refugees in the coming days.
Francis said the call to action is a “concrete gesture” to prepare for the extraordinary Holy Year on the theme of mercy, which will begin on December 8.
The call goes out to tens of thousands of Catholic parishes in Europe. There are more than 25,000 parishes in Italy alone, and more than 12,000 in Germany, where many of the refugees are hoping to settle.
This is not the first time that Pope Francis has expressed compassion for those fleeing war-torn countries. In June, he said that the mistreatment of asylum seekers “makes one cry,” as they are merely “victims of injustice, of this throw-away economy” and war.
Earlier that month, the pontiff said that leaving migrants to die at sea is an “attack against life” comparable to abortion or euthanasia.
Sunday’s comments come as Europe faces the worst refugee crisis since World War II. More than 350,000 refugees have crossed into the EU in 2015 alone, bound for Western Europe. Germany and Sweden are key destinations, after both countries threw open their borders to the new arrivals.
The UN refugee agency has said that Europe needs to create as many as 200,000 spots for new refugees, though many countries are reluctant to do their share. Hungary has built a massive razor-wire fence along its border with Serbia, while Slovakia has stated it wants only Christians.
The European Union has called for emergency talks on the refugee crisis on September 14. The meeting will be attended by interior ministers from each of the bloc’s 28 member states.
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Posted: 05 Sep 2015 03:05 PM PDT

The world’s largest car manufacturing company, Toyota, has announced an investment of $50 million in joint artificial intelligence research centers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University.
The research will focus on social benefits such as how to make cars safer and how to enhance people’s quality of life through enhanced mobility and robotics, especially among the elderly.
Toyota made the announcement on Friday in California, with its largesse taking place over five years.
“We will initially focus on the acceleration of intelligent vehicle-technology, with the immediate goal of helping eliminate traffic casualties,” Toyota’s Kiyotaka Ise, chief officer of the company’s R&D group and senior managing officer.
The car company said it wants to use artificial intelligence to develop solutions to complex mobility challenges.
“One million people worldwide die each year in car accidents,” said Gill Pratt, executive technical advisor at Toyota and a former program manager for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). “That’s one [death] for every year since the invention of stone tools. That’s unacceptable.”
Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL) will collaborate with MIT and Toyota to develop intelligence systems to recognize, understand and act in complex traffic environments.
“Our team will work to help intelligent vehicles recognize objects in the road, predict behaviors of things and people, and make safe and smart driving decisions under diverse conditions,” said Professor Fei-Fei Li, director of SAIL.
Toyota has been developing robots for industrial use since the 1970s, and has worked in support of robot applications since the 2000s.
Pratt said he joined the company from DARPA because of its emphasis on social benefits that would improve the outcomes for the elderly, or to increase the mobility for people.
“We often talk about autonomy and autonomy in machines, or a car that moves around by itself,” said Pratt. “ The focus [for Toyota] is more on the autonomy of people.”
“What it means for a person to have the ability to decide for themselves when they want to move and where they want to move, and to enable that to occur regardless of the limits of age or illness.”
Pratt said the goal is to develop systems that will intelligently transport goods and people not only outdoors, but indoors, inside of their homes and “for all people to be able to have more meaningful lives, and to have mobility be an integral part of it.”
One current example can be seen on the city streets of Grenoble, France, where Toyota is testing its iRoad urban mobility vehicle. Designed to help reduce traffic congestion, the vehicle is powered by a lithium battery and can travel 31 miles, or 50 kilometers, on a single charge. It is said to handle like a motorcycle, with the comfort and stability of a car.
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Posted: 05 Sep 2015 02:13 PM PDT

A dangerous find has been discovered in the warehouse of radioactive substances at the Croatian Roger Boscovich Institute. These are 400 kilos of unregistered and unguarded uranium. The building is situated in the centre of the capital city Zagreb.
The Croatian journalists claim, that private company staff responsible for the Institute buildings cleaning accidentally ran across the materials marked with “Radiation. Dangerous for life” notice.
The Zagreb residents, who learned about the unguarded uranium demanded authorities to investigate the case in short terms and assess the level of danger for life and health of the local people. Mood of panic has struck the city.
Specialists claim that uranium and its compounds are extremely toxic. The damage caused to the human body is almost irreversible.
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Posted: 05 Sep 2015 02:04 PM PDT

The fact the Obama administration is leaving known ISIS training camps alone suggests the White House is protecting the terrorist group, according to presidential candidate Donald Trump.
“Well, you [as president] would knock the hell out of the training camps, that one’s a given, and it’s incredible we don’t do it [since] we know where they are,” he said on the Michael Savage Show. “It’s almost like, ‘are we protecting these people?’”
Trump is closer to the truth than he realizes; a secret U.S. government document obtained by Judicial Watch reveals the U.S. and other NATO nations deliberately backed al-Qaeda in Iraq, which morphed into ISIS, and other Islamic extremist groups to overthrow Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
“The Salafist [sic], the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” the Pentagon document stated. “The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support [this] opposition, while Russia, China and Iran ‘support the [Assad] regime.’”
ISIS grew directly out of al-Qaeda in Iraq when the latter gained territory in Syria in 2013.
“On April 8, 2013, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) – Al-Qaeda in Iraq – released a recorded audio message by its leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, in which he announced that the Syria jihadi group Jabhat Al-Nusra (JN) has been merely an extension of ISI [Islamic State of Iraq] in Syria,” the Middle East Media Research Institute reported. “…Al-Baghdadi announces that the names ISI and JN are not to be used anymore; instead, he declares the official merging of the two groups under the name ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham’ [also known as ISIS].”
And Turkey’s prime minister, a U.S. and NATO ally, was caught shipping arms to al-Qaeda and ISIS via Syria-bound trucks operated by the country’s intelligence agency, according to Turkish military officials in early 2015.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu banned media from reporting on three of the trucks searched by the military’s Gendarmerie General Command, which discovered 45 to 55 missiles or rockets, 30 to 40 crates of ammunition, including mortar rounds, and Douchka anti-aircraft ammunition.
“The trucks were carrying weapons and supplies to the al-Qaeda terror organization,” a report by the Gendarmerie General Command stated.
Davutoglu also removed public prosecutor Aziz Takei from office for ordering the search and 13 soldiers involved were charged with espionage punishable with 20-year prison terms.
“Though the scandal is tearing the country apart, the government opted for its favorite tactic of covering it up,” Turkish journalist Fehim Taştekin reported. “A court in Adana banned written, visual and Internet media outlets from any reporting and commenting on the stopping of the trucks and the search.”
“All online content about the incident has been deleted.”
Except for one video, which is available here.
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Posted: 05 Sep 2015 01:24 PM PDT

Marine Le Pen, leader of the French “National Front” party called migrants that die trying to reach Europe to be victims of the EU countries authorities.
Commenting on the photo of a Syrian boy, who died not far from the Turkish city of Bodrum, Le Pen said that, “the photo evidences a terrible responsibility of our authorities, as there are thousands, dozens of thousands of migrants who risk their lives every day trying to overcome this deadly route just because the EU has already adopted a certain quantity of people”.
Marine Le Pen noted that “migrants flee from death, which was brought by our (French) leaders”, meaning the French involvement in the settlement of the Libyan conflict under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, and “bad choice” as for Syria, where the current President Francois Hollande “should have used diplomacy ahead of weaponry”.
Pravda.Ru reported, that over 340,000 migrants have arrived into the territory of the EU since the beginning of 2015. according to experts, the situation with illegal migrants in the EU countries is the worst crisis concerning civilians displacement after the WWII.
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Posted: 05 Sep 2015 12:11 PM PDT

One of the biggest Norwegian banks DNB has issued a credit card with a picture of “a hook-nosed Jew, laughing gleefully against a backdrop of gold coins,” according to The Jerusalem Post.
The card annoyed The Hallelu Foundation, which tries to create a positive image of Israel in the world. The foundation has accused the bank of anti-Semitism.
The foundation contacted the bank and asked to clarify the situation. DNB said that the design of the card was chosen by a customer of the bank.
“We have been notified about a picture of a Visa card issued by us, with an anti-Semitic drawing of a Jew. We have, however, strict guidelines for what kind of pictures that are allowed, and this control is manual. Unfortunately, our manual controls have failed in this particular case, and we are deeply sorry for that,” stated the apology from the bank published on Hallelu’s Facebook page.
The bank also clarified that the card will be blocked, and the client will be given a new one with a neutral design.
Last year, Spanish clothes retailer Zara had to remove a striped baby shirt with a sewn-on badge similar to the Star of David, after shoppers were outraged by its similarities to a Nazi death camp uniform.
“The item in question, part of the Cowboy Collection for babies, was inspired by the character of the sheriff in Wild West movies,” explained the store.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 09:03