Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Saturday, 24 October 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 23 Oct 2015 09:37 AM PDT

The US Defense Department seems to be increasingly worried that its existing fleet of strategic bombers is vulnerable to the newest Chinese and Russian-made air defenses. With that in mind, Air Force chiefs are now demanding new ‘trophy’ bombers with the latest weaponry, the mere presence of which would ‘give pause to US enemies.’
“The US Air Force wants up to 100 new bombers armed with all the latest weaponry and radar-evading stealth technology, able to fly long distances, penetrate even the heaviest defenses and destroy scores of targets in a single bombing run,” military analyst David Axe wrote in his article for Reuters.
The expert however noted one small peculiarity in all the above: the air force has no intention of actually putting the jets into active service, as their “mere presence…should give pause to US enemies.”
“This would buy time so diplomats could negotiate to work out major conflicts without anyone resorting to violence,” David Axe says.
The concept of “conventional deterrence” turns out quite costly, even though the Pentagon has played down the costs.
Each of the up to 100 new bombers would cost in the region of $550 million, or $800 million when the cost of research and development is included.
“The potentially $80-billion Long-Range Strike Program is a big deal, particularly for the Air Force,” the expert says.
The Air Force is aiming to deploy the new bombers to US airbases by the mid-2020s.
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Posted: 23 Oct 2015 09:24 AM PDT

US President Barack Obama may become the biggest obstacle to NASA’s Mars colonization plans in the next 15 years, Texan congressman, chairman of the House Science Committee Lamar Smith, told the Daily Caller website, Pravda.Ru reports.
“Every year, the Obama administration proposes funding cuts to the programs that will eventually take American astronauts to Mars – the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion spacecraft,” Smith said.
According to the scientist, Obama prefers to spend money on climate change studies, as well as on the defense industry.
“It is difficult to take seriously the administration’s recent ‘Journey to Mars’ report,” Smith said. “It contains no budget, no schedule and no deadlines. A few pretty photographs and some nice words do not constitute a strategic roadmap,” Lamar Smith stated.
The project has not received any political support from US Congress either, the scientist added.
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Posted: 23 Oct 2015 09:05 AM PDT

An enormous sinkhole suddenly opened up on a road in Sicily, Italy, swallowing a parked car. The driver miraculously escaped harm, having left the vehicle seconds before it sank underground.
The eight-meter-wide hole opened up on a road in the town of Valverde, Catania province on Wednesday. It was most probably caused by days of heavy rains drenching the island. Luckily the female driver had enough time to park the vehicle and take several steps away from it before the car disappeared into the hole.
The car was pulled out by a team of firefighters using a crane.
Heavy rains and violent storms have recently swept Catania, making the roads in the province almost impassable. Local media reports spoke of flooded schools, shops, garages and even hospitals.
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Posted: 23 Oct 2015 08:53 AM PDT

Leftist activists are calling for the removal of a Thomas Jefferson statue because they claim it’s “racist” and “sexist.”
Feminists and #BlackLivesMatter protestors had previously defaced the statue at the University of Missouri using post-it notes with the phrases “Racist,” “Rapist,” and “Slave Owner.”
Now they’re lashing out at students who hosted a “Stand With Jefferson” rally in support of the statue.
“…A black girl got the nerve to have been in the picture and sign the petition #UncleTom,” Kennedyxpress said in a tweet targeted at Jasmine Wells, an African-American who posed with the statue in a picture.
Wells responded by stating her political beliefs should not be determined by her race.
“For a movement that wants to end racism on campus, their response to the event and my participation in it, I felt, was very racist and hurtful,” she told Campus Reform’s Chris Nuelle.
Another Twitter activist, joviallie, claimed the students were “fighting for a slave-owning rapist’s statue instead of fighting for the actual rights of actual people on campus,” a strange statement considering that Thomas Jefferson was the mastermind behind the Declaration of Independence and other documents which cemented human rights and freedoms.
And a self-described “radical feminist” declared “our Founding Fathers are a symbol of racism, genocide and colonization.”
“It’s more than just a statue, it’s a symbol of racism, genocide, colonialism and sexism,” she tweeted.
Fortunately a counter-movement to keep the statue on campus gathered more signatures than the petition to remove it.
“Mizzou was the first university built within the Louisiana Purchase and the quad was literally modeled after Jefferson’s design for the University of Virginia,” Tristan H. pointed out in the “Stand With Jefferson” Facebook group. “So what do they want next? Should the university also change the design of the quad because that is apparently offensive and ‘creating an unwelcoming environment.’”
CNN had similarly attacked Thomas Jefferson during the purge of the Confederate flag this past summer by suggesting the Jefferson Memorial should be removed next because it isn’t “politically correct.”
“Thomas Jefferson owned slaves — third president of the United States, and there is a monument to him in the capital city of the United States,” CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield declared. “No one ever asks for that to come down; is it equal [to the Confederate flag]?”
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Posted: 23 Oct 2015 08:48 AM PDT

The problem of alcoholism is gathering pace by leaps and bounds in the United States.
Spokespeople for the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle said that many Americans have developed a greater fondness for alcohol during the recent years. Heavy drinking among Americans increased 17.2 percent between 2005 and 2012. Binge drinking increased 8.9 percent nationally during the same time frame. Heavy drinking among men rose by seven percent and by 17.5 percent among women, the study said, Pravda.ru reports.
Alcohol-related crimes, job loss and public insurance costs result in the losses of $250 billion for the US budget every year, Rawstory.com says.
Moreover, alcohol kills as many as 88,000 Americans every year. The largest number of alcohol-caused deaths is registered among teenagers and people in their twenties.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 09:00