Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Tuesday 25 February 2014

The European Union Times


Posted: 24 Feb 2014 10:43 AM PST

A new report prepared by the Ministry of Defense (MoD) on the telephonic conversation held earlier today between General Staff Chief, General of the Army Valery Gerasimov and Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) of NATO Allied Command Operations, US Air Force General Philipp Breedlove, states that Russia has “informed” the Western Alliance of its “full intention” to protect the Russian citizens of Crimea, even if it means all-out war.
More grimly, this report continues, General Gerasimov was “advised” by President Putin to contact his NATO counterpart to inform the West of an “immediate order” given to Black Sea Naval Infantry and Coastal Defense forces in the Crimea oblast to protect the vital Isthmus of Perekop, which is the narrow 5-7 km wide strip of land that connects the peninsula of Crimea to the mainland of Ukraine.
Russian troops put onto “full war footing” to defend Crimea, this report says, include the nearly 1,200 soldier/marines of the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade along with supporting forces belonging to the 880 Separate Naval Infantry Battalion, 881 Separate Assault Battalion, 888 Separate Reconnaissance Battalion, 1613 Separate Artillery Battery and the 1619 Separate Air-Defense Artillery Battery.
Even though the Obama regime warned Russia yesterday that it would be a “grave mistake” to send its military into Ukraine, this report says, all of these “initial” troops being mobilized for the defense of Crimea are already stationed “in country” as part of the nearly 26,000 Russian forces which comprise the Black Sea Fleet headquartered in the “special status” city of Sevastopol, and as noted by one Crimean organizer: “There isn’t even any need for Russia to invade, they are already right here.”
Important to note, this report says, is that top Putin advisor with responsibility for relations with Ukraine, Sergei Glazyev, had previously warned the Obama regime that US “interference” breached the 1994 treaty under which Washington and Moscow jointly guaranteed Ukraine’s security and sovereignty after Kiev gave up its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal.
Even more critical to note, this report continues, is Russia’s obligation to abide by the terms of the 1774 Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca signed between the Russian and Ottoman Empires which saw the Crimea formally annexed into the Russian Empire in 1783.
Despite the 1954 “illegal action” of ceding Crimea to Ukraine by former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (in what has since been described as a “Greek Gift” power play meant to shift the rebuilding cost to the Ukrainian republic from its World War II devastation from the USSR), this report says, Putin had previously warned the US of its “official position” in 2008 when he told then President George W. Bush, “You understand, George, that Ukraine isn’t even a state.”
As further noted by The Economist News Service regarding Russia’s outlook on Ukraine:
“Putin has never come to terms with Ukraine’s sovereignty, seeing the country as a non-state which ultimately belongs to Russia. He saw the EU’s attempt to sign a deal with Ukraine as little more palatable than NATO’s attempt to draw in Georgia in 2008.
That resulted in a five-day war between Russia and Georgia, leaving separatist parts of Georgia occupied by Russian forces and off-limits for NATO. Experiences gathered then may have come in handy in Ukraine.
Vladislav Surkov, a Kremlin adviser who is formally in charge of dealing with the Georgian breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, has been handling the Ukraine crisis for Mr Putin, and has been spotted in Kiev and Crimea.”

As pro-Moscow politicians and activists in Crimea have begun organizing rallies and urging Russia to help defend the territory from advancing “fascists” from the rest of Ukraine, this report continues, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said earlier today that the interim authorities in Kiev had conducted an “armed mutiny” against their country and branded their new leaders “terrorists”.
“If you consider Kalashnikov-toting people in black masks who are roaming Kiev to be the government, then it will be hard for us to work with that government,” Medvedev said. “Some of our foreign, western partners think otherwise, considering them to be legitimate authorities. I do not know which constitution, which laws they were reading, but it seems to me it is an aberration … Something that is essentially the result of a mutiny is called legitimate.”
Most perplexing of the Obama regimes moves against Ukraine, this report continues, has been their “embrace” of the ruthless and corrupt former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who aside from her obsession with horoscopes and psychics, was also an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a 2006 corruption trial held in the US that jailed another former Ukrainian Prime Minister, Pavel Lazarenko, for embezzling $200 million.
As to the Obama regime being the lead instigator in Ukraine’s present crisis there is no doubt, and as we had previously reported on in our 7 February report “US In “Shock And Turmoil” After Snowden Info Lets Russia Tap Top Obama Officials” wherein we wrote:
“A new Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) report circulating in the Kremlin today says that the Obama regime is in “total shock and turmoil” today after the YouTube leaking by the Federal Security Service (FSB) of a highly encrypted telephone conversation between the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland and the American Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, wherein this top US State Department official was discovered engineering the overthrow of the Ukrainian government and shaming her European counterparts by saying “F**k the EU”.
The MoD in their report further notes that a senior delegation of Russian diplomats sent to Ukraine by Putin to assess their options met in the eastern city of Kharkiv with about 3,000 local and municipal officials from the deposed Obama regime supported Neo-Nazi government and together these pro-Russian Ukrainian officials and the Russian delegation passed a resolution denouncing the revolutionary leaders as “extremists and terrorists.”
Vadim Kolesnichenko, a member of parliament from Crimea and one of Ukraine’s most staunchly pro-Russian politicians, read out the resolution to the delegates. “The cohesion and security of Ukraine is under threat,” he said. “Five atomic power stations and 15 nuclear reactors have come under direct threat from extremists and terrorists. As long as the revolutionaries refuse to lay down their arms and surrender government buildings, the local authorities in Crimea and eastern Ukraine will ignore all their decisions and take responsibility for maintaining constitutional order on themselves.”
In concluding their report, the MoD further warns that Ukraine will face bankruptcy within the fortnight unless the US and EU give it and immediate $35 billion.
And most ironically of all of these events now occurring in Ukraine, it now appears that the new Obama Doctrine appears to be that if enough Americans rush to the cities, set fire to government buildings, like the department of Commerce, Federal Reserve, Security and Exchange Commission, Commodities Future Trading Commission etc., they can replace their western style democratic constitutional process with rule by mob violence…after all, if it’s OK for Ukraine, why not the United States?
Source
        
Posted: 24 Feb 2014 10:18 AM PST
The Small Satellite Orbital Deployer, deploys a set of NanoRacks CubeSats.
Developers say they are less than a year away from deploying prototype satellites that could someday soon broadcast free and universal internet all over the globe from high in orbit.
The “Outernet” project being bankrolled by the Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF) of New York is currently in the midst of conducting technical assessment of the project, but say by June they hope to develop test satellite in order to see how long-range WiFi would work if beamed down by a tiny 10x10x10-centimeter payload called a CubeSat.
If all goes as planned, a test CubeSat will be sent into orbit next January, and within a few years there could be hundreds of similar devices circling the Earth and sending back down internet signals. Once that is accomplished, countries that largely censor the web — like China and North Korea — would be hard-pressed to restrict internet access without also going into orbit.
“We exist to support the flow of independent news, information, and debate that people need to build free, thriving societies,” MDIF President Peter Whitehead told the National Journal recently. “It enables fuller participation in public life, holds the powerful to account and protects the rights of the individual.”
To accomplish as much, though, MDIF is facing a rather uphill battle, at least with regards to funding. Funny enough, sending hundreds of tiny WiFi ready satellites into orbit isn’t as inexpensive as one might imagine.
Syed Karim, MDIF’s director of innovation, told the National Journal’s Alex Brown that it would take only three years and $12 billion to get the project up and running.
But “We don’t have $12 billion,” Karim said, “so we’ll do as much as we can with CubeSats and broadcast data.”
“Broadcasting data,” Outernet says on their website, “allows citizens to reduce their reliance on costly internet data plans in places where monthly fees are too expensive for average citizens. And offering continuously updated web content from space bypasses censorship of the Internet.”
Around 40 percent of the planet currently doesn’t have access to any sort of internet service, the company claims, but basic CubeSats could send one-way signals down to earth to deliver news or content through a “global notification system during emergencies and natural disasters,” their website says.
“Access to knowledge and information is a human right and Outernet will guarantee this right by taking a practical approach to information delivery. By transmitting digital content to mobile devices, simple antennae and existing satellite dishes, a basic level of news, information, education and entertainment will be available to all of humanity.” If they can succeed with that, then Outernet hopes to start figuring a way to let customers send data back to the CubeSats, ideally creating free, “two-way internet access for everyone” in a few years’ time.
During a recent question-and-answer session on the website Reddit, Karim explained that the Outernet project is already being more affordable because some of the most expensive aspects of the endeavor, at least with regards to research, have already been considered by other entrepreneurial space experts.
“There isn’t a lot of raw research that is being done here; much of what is being described has already been proven by other small satellite programs and experiments,” Karim said.
“There’s really nothing that is technically impossible to this,” he added. “But at the prospect of telecoms operators trying to shut the project down before it gets off the ground,” Karim said, “We will fight… and win.”
Meanwhile, his group is gunning to figure out how to make that dream a reality without going over budget. Getting one of those tiny CubeSats into orbit could cost upwards of $100,000, Brown reported, and slightly larger satellites being considered by Outernet could run three times that.
“We want to stay as small as possible, because size and weight are directly related to dollars,” Karim said. “Much of the size is dictated by power requirements and the solar panels needed satisfy those requirements.”
Source
        
Posted: 24 Feb 2014 10:11 AM PST

According to a WHO report, in the next 20 years, the world will see an increase in the number of oncological patients. Over the period between 2014 and 2034 the number of cases each year will increase by 22 million people. Mortality will also increase up to 13 million people a year. Among other things, it is expected that the cost of treatment will increase significantly.
The most common types of cancers include lung cancer (1.8 million, 13 percent), breast cancer (1.7 million, 11.9 percent) and colon cancer (1.4 million, 9.7 percent). Most people died from lung cancer – 1.6 million people (19.4 percent).
Experts note that their prediction is based on the most pessimistic model that is still reversible if the problems of adding all sorts of chemicals to our food and drinks, GMOs, obesity, smoking and alcoholism are urgently addressed. In particular, governments were recommended to deal with advertisement of cigarettes, alcohol, and sugar, as well as increase the prices of these commodities.
Last year, experts from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) included in the WHO said that the main cause of cancer was air pollution. According to experts, in 2010, polluted air containing carcinogens caused deaths of 223 thousand people. The direst situation in this respect is in India and China.
Late last year the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation conducted a study and found that every fourth Russian faces a threat of sudden death. Scientists also found that nearly half of the adult population suffers from at least one chronic disease.
What are the prospects for fighting cancer in Russia?
Experts emphasize that the main problems of the Russian healthcare are not the lack of highly qualified doctors or advanced treatments and equipment. If cancer is detected early, timely application of advanced technologies and treatment programs used by Russian specialists can beat the disease.
Russian patients are infamous for having advanced forms of cancer. In the near future targeted drugs will be developed that would help prolong patients’ life by five to ten years.
Experts stress that there is no need to seek treatment abroad. However, “if a person wants to be treated abroad, and has money for it – it’s their right,” commented chief oncologist of the Moscow Health Department, Chief Physician of Moscow City Oncology Hospital number 62 Anatoly Makhson. “We often get patients who have started treatment abroad, then ran out of money and returned to Russia. We have repeatedly faced the fact that not every western clinic provides the same or greater level of cancer care as the federal Russian Oncology Center. In foreign clinics patients sometimes paid huge money for tests that do not affect the treatment strategy. As a result, they received the same care and the same drugs they would get in specialized clinics at home,” he said.
To recover and maintain the quality of life, cancer patients need to constantly take expensive drugs. This is the weakest point of the Russian healthcare system. Experts stress that the main problems of the Russian healthcare system is insufficient funding and wrong management decisions.
Good drugs are always expensive as pharmaceutical corporations spend large sums of money on their development.
In Russia “Pharma 2020″ program was adopted promoting the development of the pharmaceutical industry. “R-Pharm” CEO Vasily Ignatyev said: “In recent years, the pharmaceutical industry has been developing very dynamically. Active programs to support the domestic pharmaceutical industry have been implemented, new plants are being built, domestic and licensed drugs are manufactured, and standards of good manufacturing practice (GMP) have been introduced. However, a number of unresolved issues remain. They include tightening the quality control of drugs in circulation, as well as sustainable and predictable funding for health care and drug supply to enable lower prices and an increase in the availability of modern methods of treatment.”
“Regionalization of health” (“fiscal space”) implies a reduction in federal funding for medicine by increasing regional funding, while only 17 of the 83 subjects of the Russian Federation are in good financial standing. Regionalization threatens Russians suffering from cancer with geographically based “discrimination.” Budget deficit for oncological treatment is observed in the vast majority of subjects of the country, and in some regions the gap between actual and necessary funding for treatment is tenfold.
60 percent of Russian oncologists had to deny patients free drugs, including for reasons that have no legal grounds (for example, due to insufficient budget financing).
No more than 50-60 percent of cancer patients in St. Petersburg receive adequate drug therapy. Over a third of Muscovites and 40 percent of the residents of the Moscow region believe that they do not receive a guaranteed volume of free medical care.
“We all live in one country, under one Constitution, and we should have equal civil and social rights, including for treatment. Financing of every Russian cancer patient should be in accordance with the accepted standards of treatment. Regionalization and standards are incompatible, funding and the level of health in different regions vary considerably,” said the chief oncologist of St. Petersburg, head physician of the St. Petersburg City Clinical Oncology Dispensary Georgiy Manikhas. “For example, each patient registered in Moscow is allocated 43.5 thousand rubles for treatment, in St. Petersburg – seven thousand rubles, and in other cities of the North -West Federal District – three to five thousand rubles.”
According to 73 percent of all surveyed oncologists, new fiscal policies exacerbate the problem or make the situation worse.
Chief oncologist of Russia, academician Mikhail Davydov recently spoke quite clearly: “Today we do not have a serious program that would support the regional health care system.” As a result, we have to deny patients treatment. In short, the information on the budget is disappointing. In Russia 2.8 percent of GDP (instead of planned 4.6 percent) is allocated for health care. For comparison, in the United States this number is 18 percent, in Europe – an average of ten percent.
“Health care is the main component of the country’s security, just like the army. Mobile readiness of the healthcare system is the same as that of the army. Meanwhile, healthcare funding is 20 times lower than necessary,” said Mikhail Davydov.
The budget has been adopted. Is there any way to swing the pendulum in the other direction? Experts do not exhibit optimism. Have all leverages with the government been exhausted? It is hard to say. So far they are not apperent.
Source
        
Posted: 24 Feb 2014 06:01 AM PST

The ability to remotely wipe your data has been available on smartphones for quite some time now, however, a new proposed law would make this technology mandatory on all new cell phones if it’s passed.
In fact, the new proposed law takes it a step further by calling for ‘kill switches’ on all smartphones, so users can not only remotely wipe their data, but also render their phones non-operational in the event of theft.
The proposal is called the Smartphone Theft Prevention Act and is being introduced by Senators Amy Klobuchar, Barbara Mikulski, and Richard Blumenthal.
The proposal does have its opponents, however. CTIA’s (a wireless industry group) Vice President of government affairs, Jot Carpenter, doesn’t think too highly of the proposed law:
“While Senator Klobuchar and CTIA are of like mind when it comes to wanting to prevent the theft of wireless devices, we clearly disagree on how to accomplish that goal…rather than impose technology mandates, a better approach would be to enact Senator Schumer’s legislation to criminalize tampering with mobile device identifiers. This would build on the industry’s efforts to create the stolen device databases, give law enforcement another tool to combat criminal behavior, and leave carriers, manufacturers, and software developers free to create new, innovative loss and theft prevention tools for consumers who want them.”
If the law is passed, then these ‘kill switches’ would need to be added to smartphones without any additional cost to the consumer.
Do you think ‘kill switches’ should be included in all smartphones?
Source
        
Posted: 24 Feb 2014 05:32 AM PST


On Saturday, oligarch, embezzler, murder suspect and former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, released from a clinical hospital in the eastern industrial city of Kharkiv, told the Euromaidan revolutionaries in Kiev’s Independence Square to stay the course.
“Do not leave Maidan as long as you have not obtained what you wanted,” she told the crowd. “Your fight for freedom will bring about democracy in other ex-Soviet republics.”
“This is a different Ukraine. This is a Ukraine of free people, and you have given this country to each and all of us, those who are living today and those who will live tomorrow. That is why people were on Maidan, who perished on Maidan will be heroes for ever,” she said.
As she traveled to Kiev to embrace the revolution that claimed the lives of around 100 people and brought down the government of a corrupt Yanukovych and his confederates, half-Jewish Tymoshenko declared she is “sure that Ukraine will be a member of the European Union in the near future and this will change everything,” according to the Interfax news agency.
Saturday brought a slew of developments in the former Soviet republic. The dismissal on Friday of president Viktor Yanukovych was followed up by the sacking of Foreign Minister Leonid Kozhara and Education Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk. Warrants were issued for the arrest of former Incomes Minister Oleksandr Klimenko and former Prosecutor-General Viktor Pshonka. Parliament named its former speaker, Oleksandr Turchynov, as interim president. Turchynov set a deadline of Tuesday to form a new government. Parliament also seized the impeached president’s luxury estate outside of Kiev after protesters entered it on Saturday. Yanukovych has fled the city and is believed to be in Kharkiv. Rumors swirled over the weekend that his jet was denied permission to leave the country despite a statement by Yanukovych to the contrary.
“I have no intention to leave the country. I am not going to resign, I’m the legitimately elected president,” the fallen president said in a televised statement on Saturday. “Everything that is happening today is, to a greater degree, vandalism and banditry and a coup d’etat,” he said. “I will do everything to protect my country from breakup, to stop bloodshed.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Secretary of State John Kerry by telephone the opposition has refused to follow a peace agreement signed last week. It was, he said, “sharply degraded by opposition forces’ inability or lack of desire” to respect it.
“Illegal extremist groups are refusing to disarm and in fact are taking Kiev under their control with the connivance of opposition leaders,” Lavrov said.
Lavrov’s boss, Russian president Vladimir Putin, had previously urged the Obama administration to “use every opportunity to stop the illegal actions of radicals and return the situation to constitutional channels.”
The developments set the stage for the final dismemberment of Ukraine. It is speculated that the eastern, pro-Russian portion of the country will break away from the western part as it embraces the European Union. Southern Ukraine, in particular the Crimea, has strong ties to Russia. The region hosts a Russian naval base at Sevastopol. Politicians in the region have called for autonomy from Kiev backed up by protection from Moscow.
Regardless of the west-east divide and calls by ultra-nationalists to keep Ukraine whole, serious economic problems continue to wrack the country and are driving it headlong into the hands of European Union apparatchiks and international bankers.
In December, Russia offered Ukraine $15 billion while political figures like Tymoshenko promised to deliver the country to the globalists at the EU. Now that the latter appears inevitable, the people of Ukraine can expect the suffer the fate of other poor and wanting junior partners of the globalist union – severe austerity and reduced living standards as the financial elite loot the country.
Source
        
Posted: 24 Feb 2014 04:54 AM PST

The new Ukrainian authorities have put missing President Yanukovich on the wanted list on suspicion of involvement in mass killings during the riots in Kiev. He was reportedly last seen at his residence in Crimea.
The arrest warrant was issued on Monday, acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov announced on his Facebook page.
He added that Yanukovich was last seen on Sunday night leaving his security detail a private resort in Crimea in southern Ukraine.
In addition to Yanukovich, some other officials are now wanted in Ukraine, Avakov said, but did not name them.
The ousted Ukrainian leader had fled Kiev last week after days of deadly clashes between armed radical protesters and security forces.
He was believed to have visited the city of Kharkov on Saturday and later tried to leave the country, but failed when his plane was not allowed to take off by the border guards, who said it hadn’t filed the proper paperwork. His exact movements were unknown to the public.
But Avakov’s report details a suggested travel route that Yanukovich may have taken, which includes helicopter trips from Kiev to Kharkov and later from Kharkov to Donetsk, two failed attempts to leave that city on separate private jets, a motorcade transfer to a private Crimean resort and later to another one in Crimean Balaclava.
There he offered his bodyguards the choice either to go with him or stay. Those who stayed were issued official resignations of their governmental security detail, Avakov said.
Various reports on Sunday night and Monday claimed that Yanukovich had been arrested in Donetsk, hiding with a thousand-strong entourage in a monastery, was preparing his personal yacht to sail away through the Black Sea, or had been assassinated by foreign special services.
So far the rumor mill has not been accurate.
The opposition-controlled parliament earlier tried to impeach Yanukovich, but later decided not to follow procedure and simply declared him deposed on the grounds that he is not conducting his presidential duties.
His own Party of Regions blamed him for the killings in Kiev and the chaos that befell Ukraine.
Yanukovich’s downfall came after three months of mishandling the political crisis, during which he failed either to meet enough opposition demands to ensure the deflation of the tension or act decisively to restore public order.
As he avoided taking responsibility, the opposition forces became increasingly dominated by radical activists, who eventually resorted to violence against police to attain their goals.
The situation in Ukraine remains unstable, with reports of vigilantism on the ground, brewing secessionist sentiment in the predominantly-Russian east and south of the country, the paralysis of the national security service and a looming financial collapse.
Source
        
Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 09:36