Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Monday, 4 April 2016

The European Union Times


Posted: 04 Apr 2016 08:19 AM PDT
Do exactly everything they want you to do, or else! If these people aren’t sick then who is? Do Christians go nuts and “radical” without a church?
Government officials fear that the delays in constructing a mosque in Athens, a process that has been beset by legal complications, could allow radical Islam to flourish in the capital.
“Every day that we do not have an official mosque and imam in Athens, we pay for in the increased risk of the radicalization of Muslims in the dark and unofficial places of worship,” an official at the Education and Religious Affairs Ministry who wished to remain anonymous told Kathimerini, referring to dozens of basements that have been converted into makeshift mosques.
Greece passed a law in 2006 to build a mosque in Athens with public money. The legislation also granted the government the right to appoint the imam. Although a plot in Votanikos, near the city center, has been set aside, the construction of the building is being held back by numerous appeals against the project, which the Council of State has to hear.
“It is exactly because of the recent terrorist attacks that we have to move quickly to construct the mosque in Athens,” said the official. “The state has to have an official interlocutor who represents the various branches of Islam. When you do not have official places of worship, who can you speak with?”
Source
        
Posted: 04 Apr 2016 07:58 AM PDT

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s pro-illegal invasion position has been revealed with the re-emergence of details of his 2014 involvement in activism to help illegals in Texas.
Cruz physically helped a “charity” event to provide tractor-trailers full of food, water, clothing, and toys to the swarm of invaders who had illegally crossed the border in July 2014.
As detailed on the Conservative Tree House blog, Cruz took part in the activism organized by the Blaze’s Glenn Beck to supposedly address what they called the “humanitarian crisis” supposedly caused by the mass invasion of nonwhites from Mexico.
The “humanitarian crisis” was, as the report pointed out, “essentially based on fraud” committed by the Obama administration claiming that hundreds of thousands of “Unaccompanied Alien Children” (UAC) were arriving on the southern border en masse, and needed to be cared for.
The reality was the invasion actually consisted of entire families, mostly from Mexico but also from Honduras, Guatemala, and Panama, as the official statistics proved.

“This entire administration talking point was complete nonsense, but the media helped sell the ridiculous story as if it were real; and Ted Cruz and Glenn Beck helped perpetrate the fraud by claiming there was an urgent ‘humanitarian crisis.’ There was neither,” the Conservative Tree House report continued.
As the Conservative Tree House correctly reported, the Obama administration had specifically kick-started the South American invasion approximately a year earlier, and the families were showing up as an outcome of the State Department coordinating the exodus.
These were not “children;” they were entire families—and, as you can see from the pictures, these were entire family units.
The event in question was organized by Mercury One, the charity founded by Glenn Beck, and took place at the border in McAllen, Texas on Saturday, July 19th, 2014.
Cruz helps unload supplies at the pro-invasion day of activism in McAllen, Texas, July 19, 2014.


Cruz, accompanied by Beck, and Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas) toured the facilities set up for the nonwhite invaders—which included medical facilities, and then physically took part in the handing out of gift hampers to the invaders, which included Teddy Bears and soccer balls.
Beck, Alveda King (niece of Martin Luther King), Weber , and Cruz meet with Sister Norma Pimentel of the Sacred Heart Church in McAllen, Texas, July 19, 2014.
Photographs of the illegal invaders and border crossers that Cruz was helping to supply, July 19, 2014.


Cruz is often called “lying Ted” by his leading Republican opponent, Donald Trump. The Conservative Tree House blog is full of reasons why Trump uses these words:
— Ted Cruz was for South American Refugees (2014 link) “Soccer Ball and Teddy Bear Delivery” before he was against SA/Mexican refugees and for promoting a border wall (2015).

— Ted Cruz was for Taking More Syrian Refugees, specifically dismissing the threat of terror embeds, before he was against taking Syrian Refugees (2015 link).

— Ted Cruz was for Anchor Baby Birthright Citizenship, before he was against “birthright citizenship.”
Source
        
Posted: 04 Apr 2016 07:29 AM PDT

Authorities on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios have deported more than 200 migrants on boats bound for Turkey. The operation is part of what human rights groups label a “dangerous” EU deal to limit the scale and scope of migration to Europe.
“This is the first day of a very difficult time for refugee rights. Despite the serious legal gaps and lack of adequate protection in Turkey, the EU is forging ahead with a dangerous deal,” Giorgos Kosmopoulos, head of Amnesty International in Greece, told AP, referring to the operation, which started at dawn and was conducted under heavy security.
“Turkey is not a safe third country for refugees. The EU and Greek authorities know this and have no excuse […] Even if this first group is not refugees, what we are seeing here is symbolic kick off of what might be a very dangerous practice of returns to Turkey,” he added.
Migrants were escorted onto small ferries by officers from the EU border protection agency, Frontex, to nearby ports on the Turkish coast.
“All of the migrants returned are from Pakistan except for two migrants from Syria who returned voluntarily,” Giorgos Kyritsis, a spokesman for a government refugee crisis committee, told state television, adding that there is “no timetable for returns.”
A number of asylum seekers on the islands have reportedly complained of not being given sufficient time and access to the asylum procedure.
Anas al-Bakhr, a Syrian engineer from Homs now stuck on Chios Island, said police marked his arrival date as March 20, although he claims to have arrived the day before.
“They said the computers were broken that day,” the man told AFP.
Senior UN migration official Peter Sutherland has recently warned in an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today program that “if there is any question of collective deportations without individuals being given the right to claim asylum, that is illegal.”
A total of 50,000 migrants and refugees are stranded in Greece following EU and Balkan border closures, the Ekathimerini Greek daily reported, citing fresh data provided by the government late last month. Only those who arrived after March 20 will be detained for deportation.
Last month EU leaders and Turkey agreed a plan, aimed at opening a “safe and legal” route to the EU for Syrian refugees. The idea is that all new irregular migrants crossing from Turkey into Greek islands will be returned to Turkey; and for every Syrian returned to Turkey from Greek islands, another Syrian will be resettled from Turkey to the EU.
This “temporary link” between resettlement and return is only feasible up to a limit of 72,000, the European Commission noted, however. Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker acknowledged that the European Union and Greece were facing a “Herculean task” to implement the plan.
“I don’t think that this kind of deal can work,” Joaquin Flores of the Independent Journalists Association for Peace told RT. “The direct cause of the refugee crisis has not been resolved. There is still a conflict raging in Syria, which has claimed the lives of half-a-million to a quarter-of-a-million people, depending on reports. Until countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia can really become a proactive force for curtailing the inflow of terrorist fighters from their countries into Syria, then there will be no end to this conflict – a political solution becomes very difficult.”
In return for re-admitting migrants, Ankara is set to receive more financial aid and a promised visa-free travel in the EU for its citizens. Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala said his country is ready to receive 500 refugees on Monday and Greek authorities have provided 400 names, AFP reported.
Up to 4,000 migrants and refugees are being detained on Greek islands since the agreement came into effect March 20. According to Kyritsis, over 130 migrants were deported from Lesbos and more than 60 from the nearby island of Chios.
Scuffles erupted in Chios Island on Sunday night between riot police and local residents objecting to the relocation of migrants, The Toc Greece reported. Locals, protesting the establishment of a temporary migrant accommodation facility at the Tampakika area of the island, worry that it may eventually become a permanent migrant center.
Police sources on Lesbos reportedly said there had been a flurry of last-minute asylum applications on Sunday amongst the 3,300 migrants there.
“We… have over 2,000 people that have stated their wish to seek asylum and we need to see a credible process go ahead with the Greek asylum service for those that wish to express their protection concerns,” Boris Cheshirkov, the UN refugee agency spokesman on Lesbos, told AFP.
Source
        
Posted: 04 Apr 2016 06:58 AM PDT

Republican elites are very upset that Donald Trump is not a popular candidate on the cocktail circuit.
Trump is wildly popular with Middle Class voters but that doesn’t impress the Beltway elites.
The elites also worried about Ronald Reagan’s chances back in March 1980.
The CSMonitor reported, via Free Republic:
The nation’s Republicans are working against the clock to answer two key questions: Can conservative Ronald Reagan possibly attract enough independent and Democratic votes to win in November?
An if he is likely to lose, has former President Gerald Ford time enough to challenge him for the GOP nomination?
The consensus among political experts is that time has probably already run out for Gerald Ford, though he still appears the stronger choice to beat Jimmy Carter in November.
But some experts caution: Don’t count Ronald Reagan out as a national candidate for the fall. He is not, they say, “a McGovern or a Goldwater” — fringe candidates who led their parties to one-sided defeats in 1972 and 1964. Intellectuals don’t want to take him seriously, but he does well with working-class voters. He would take the West, challenge President Carter in the South, and do well in the pivotal Midwest states like Ohio and Illinois, whose southern regions titled toward Carter in 1976, they say.
Back in March 1980 the establishment said the same thing about Ronald Reagan.
They said he could never defeat Jimmy Carter.
He was too divisive.
Reagan trailed Carter by 15 points in February-March 1980.

Source
        
Posted: 04 Apr 2016 06:36 AM PDT

Ted Cruz is clearly pinning his hopes on winning the GOP presidential nomination via a contested/brokered convention this summer in Cleveland.
Drifting slowly beneath the Establishment swamp though is a small army of RNC-devoted delegates who are poised to quickly alter the nomination outcome upon the second and third votes, and neither Donald Trump nor Ted Cruz are likely to survive that outcome.
Why Mr. Cruz continues to allow himself to be used so openly by the GOP Establishment as a wedge to prevent Donald Trump from reaching the majority of delegates necessary to lock up the nomination remains unclear to even some of Cruz’s supporters. Cruz has embraced the Republican Establishment in recent weeks, turning his campaign over to the very forces he once railed against as the “DC Cabal.”
Watch the following video to see what the RNC has already planned in order to overtake the nomination process during a brokered convention. It comes in the form of 168 RNC-loyal delegates who will quickly break away from Trump once voting begins, and then likely do the same to Cruz and finally coalesce behind a candidate who might not have even won a single vote during the primary race – a “fresh face” as GOP Establishment strategist Karl Rove recently declared could emerge.
It’s hard to imagine a man as intelligent as Ted Cruz is unaware of this, which would suggest he’s a willing accomplice in the willful disenfranchisement of millions of GOP primary votes, and if that is in fact true, the remaining question then is WHY?
The fix is clearly in, and this video outlines exactly how the Establishment intends for it to play out at the GOP convention…
        
Posted: 03 Apr 2016 03:54 PM PDT

GOP presidential candidate and frontrunner Donald Trump spoke exclusively with Breitbart Texas on the most recent far left attacks against the organization representing over 80 percent of the Border Patrol agents who protect U.S. borders. The group, the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC), gave their first-ever endorsement during a presidential primary to Trump and now far left efforts are under way to have the group excommunicated and to end their affiliation with a larger union organization.
Trump told Breitbart Texas, “I will always have the backs of the Border Patrol agents who protect America. I know they will never be intimidated by any bullies trying to push them out of the AFL-CIO, and I will never back down from supporting them and fighting for them every day. Together, we will end illegal immigration and save America.”
A prominent extreme open borders group, Not1More, began an effort to smear Border Patrol agents and get them booted from their association with the AFL-CIO, as Breitbart Texas reported.
The NBPC has presented a unique challenge to the groups promoting a secured border, largely due to border security advocates having a tendency to be anti-union. That said, anti-union right-of-center groups would have no information to support their efforts for border security were it not for the efforts of the largely conservative NBPC.
Source
        
Posted: 03 Apr 2016 03:24 PM PDT
A new study says that the world has grown more obese people than underweight ones from 1975 to 2014.
The number of obese adults across the globe has surpassed the underweight ones during the past four decades, a new study says.
The study, which was carried out by a team led by researchers from Imperial College London, compared body mass index (BMI) from 1975 to 2014 across over 19.2 million adult participants (9.9 million men and 9.3 million women) from 186 countries. Its findings were published in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet on Saturday.
The BMI is an attempt to quantify the amount of muscle, fat, and bone mass in an individual. It is derived by dividing a person’s body weight in kilograms by the person’s squared height in meters. A person with lower than 18.5 BMI is underweight, from 25 to 30 he or she is considered overweight, and from 30 upwards is considered obese.
The research showed that global obesity numbers have risen from 105 million people in mid-70’s to 641 million in 2014. The proportion of obese men has seen a more than three-fold increase to roughly 11 percent, and the proportion of obese women has witnessed an over two-fold rise to about 15 percent.
“Over the past 40 years, we have changed from a world in which underweight prevalence was more than double that of obesity, to one in which more people are obese than underweight,” said senior author Majid Ezzati, PhD, from the School of Public Health at Imperial College London in the United Kingdom.
According to the study, over the same period, the proportion of underweight men decreased from about 14 percent to nine percent, and the proportion of underweight women dropped from 15 percent to 10 percent.
If these trends continue, by 2025, worldwide obesity prevalence will reach 18 percent in men and surpass 21 percent in women, with sever obesity surpassing six percent in men and nine percent in women, the study said, adding that underweight remains prevalent in the world’s poorest regions, especially in south Asia.
By quickly enacting “new policies that can slow down and stop the worldwide increase in body weight… including smart food policies and improved healthcare training,” the obesity epidemic can be curbed through the coming decades, Ezzati suggested.
Source
        
Posted: 03 Apr 2016 03:15 PM PDT

Officials last week spoke up about the Obama administration’s so-called “catch and release” policies blamed for hindering Border Patrol operations and encouraging illegal crossers from coming into the United States.
A recent letter from the National Border Patrol Council states a high-ranking member of the Obama administration confirmed to Border Patrol agents they have no intention of removing illegal border crossers that are being released with an order to appear in court.
Brandon Judd, president of the American Federation of Government Employees National Border Patrol Council, states in the letter published on March 21 he and two other Border Patrol agents met with Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to discuss concerns about the administration’s policy of releasing illegal crossers into the United States.
Source
        
Posted: 03 Apr 2016 03:01 PM PDT
Terror threats: One of the images calling for German Muslims to carry out terror attacks, features Chancellor Angela Merkel’s offices in Berlin in flames.
ISIS is calling on German Muslims to carry out Brussels-style attacks at several high-profile locations, including Chancellor Angela Merkel’s offices and the Cologne-Bonn airport.
Images and graphics posted online by an ISIS affiliate, included slogans in German inciting Muslims to commit violence against the ‘enemy of Allah’.
Germany’s federal criminal police (BKA) said it knew of the images but that their publication did not necessitate extra security measures.
One of the ISIS images features a militant in combat fatigues standing in a field and gazing at Cologne-Bonn airport with a caption reading: ‘What your brothers in Belgium were able to do, you can do too.’
Another shows the German chancellery building in Berlin on fire with an Islamic State fighter and a tank standing outside the structure. The headline reads: ‘Germany is a battlefield.’
A third graphic featured a military jet, which German media identified as a Tornado used by the German air force, against the backdrop of a mountainous area juxtaposed with the bloodied faces of women and children – said represent civilians who ISIS says have been killed by air strikes.
The caption under this image says: ‘Will you continue to grieve or will you finally act?’
All five pictures circulated on social media on Wednesday bore the logo of Furat Media, an Islamic State affiliate, according to SITE Intelligence Group.
Another ISIS image sees a militant in combat fatigues gazing at Cologne-Bonn airport captioned: ‘What your brothers in Belgium were able to do, you can do too’.
A third graphic featuring a German military jet and alleged Syrian civilian victims of airstrikes is captioned: ‘Will you continue to grieve or will you finally act?’
German media also published an Islamic State video celebrating the attacks in Brussels that featured a three-second shot of Frankfurt Airport, apparently taken from German television news footage.
‘We are aware of this material and our experts are checking it,’ a spokeswoman for the BKA, who monitor suspected militants with German passports returning from stints fighting in Syria and Iraq, said.
‘It is clear that Germany is the focus of international terrorism and that attacks could happen, but this material doesn’t change our security assessment.’
Western Europe is on high security alert after last week’s Islamic State suicide bombings in the Belgian capital that killed 32 people at its airport and in a metro station.
On Wednesday, France said it was investigating a man on suspicion of planning an imminent act of ‘extreme violence’.
Federal police chief Holger Muench said after the March 22 attacks in Brussels that Islamic State appeared eager to carry out further ‘spectacular’ attacks in Europe as it was suffering setbacks on battlefields in Iraq and Syria.
Germany joined the U.S.-led air strike campaign against Islamic State in Syria last year, though limiting its role to reconnaissance and refuelling missions, after the jihadist group killed 130 people in shooting and bombing attacks in Paris.
The BKA spokeswoman said police were aware of that video as well and current security measures were sufficient.
Source
        
Posted: 03 Apr 2016 02:50 PM PDT

Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) has released the biggest leak in journalistic history, posting 11.5 million documents from a Panamanian law firm online and providing “rare insights into a world that can only exist in the shadows.”
SZ said it received the law firm’s documents a year ago from an anonymous source who “wanted neither financial compensation nor anything else in return.”
The German paper obtained further documents in an investigation that followed, involving “400 journalists from more than 100 media organizations in over 80 countries.”
SZ said it decided to analyze the data in cooperation with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
The data in the so-called Panama Papers, “provides rare insights into a world that can only exist in the shadows. It proves how a global industry led by major banks, legal firms, and asset management companies secretly manages the estates of the world’s rich and famous: from politicians, FIFA officials, fraudsters and drug smugglers, to celebrities and professional athletes,” the German newspaper wrote.
The information in the leak covers the activities of the Mossack Fonseca firm over a period from the 1970s to spring 2016.
“The Panama Papers include approximately 11.5 million documents – more than the combined total of the Wikileaks Cablegate, Offshore Leaks, Lux Leaks, and Swiss Leaks,” SZ said.
The data is presented in the form of e-mails, pdf files, photo files, and excerpts from the Panaman firm’s database.
The leak claims to expose the offshore holdings of 12 current and former world leaders and provides data on the financial activities of 128 other politicians and public officials from different countries.

Source
        
Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 19:40