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The EU has lost control of Europe - German Media


Sputnik News
Mon, 18 May 2015 12:23 UTC
Image
© Flickr / Álvaro Millán

The EU is increasingly becoming weaker and unable to control processes taking place on its soil. The European continent is becoming a playground for two major powers - the US and Russia - which seek to expand their influence in the region.

The EU is no longer able to control processes taking place on the European continent as its policy is dictated by the US-led NATO, and its governments are mere audience members, Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten reported.

According to the newspaper, Angela Merkel's government is weakened because of the spying scandal, while the EU itself is no longer a community of values, but a purely economic community, in which all parties are trying to balance their respective egoism.

Comment: While Russia is out to do business, the US is out to conquer. The EU has proven that, as a slave to the US, it cannot be trusted as a Russian business partner. See:

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Eye 1

Another Ukrainian MP calls for regime change in Kiev


Sputnik News
Mon, 18 May 2015 12:32 UTC
Image
© AP Photo / Efrem Lukatsky

If the government fails to tackle the problems confronting Ukraine, it needs to be replaced, a battalion commander-turned-MP warned in televised comments Friday.

"Unfortunately, I haven't seen any real changes happening here since August of last year, where it comes to our national security, defense or economics," Semen Semenchenko, the ex-commander of the Donbass voluntary battalion and now a Verkhovna Rada deputy, said during the Shuster Live talk show aired on Friday.

If the state fails to perform its constitutional duties then "it's time for the people to join in the process of governance," Semenchenko said.

Comment: For more on the vultures fighting over the carcass of Ukraine, check out:

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Target

No peace deal: Saudis resume airstrikes on Yemen following five-day humanitarian ceasefire


RT
Mon, 18 May 2015 12:54 UTC
Image
© REUTERS/Stringer
Anti-Houthi fighters of the Southern Popular Resistance stand near a tank in Yemen's southern port city of Aden May 16, 2015.
The five-day humanitarian ceasefire in Yemen has ended with the resumption of Saudi-led air strikes against Houthi rebel positions, despite United Nations envoys' calls for an extension of the truce.

Coalition airstrikes hit rebel positions and tanks in several neighborhoods of the port city of Aden, Yemeni security officials told the Associated Press when the ceasefire expired at 11:00pm on Sunday.

"They began bombing Aden a few minutes ago," an army commander loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh confirmed to Sputnik.

Comment: The Saudi-led coalition apparently has no plans for any peace until they are successful in obliterating the opposition Houthi rebels and the inhabitants.

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Star of David

Journalists attacked by Israeli police in Jerusalem


RT
Sun, 17 May 2015 23:01 UTC

An RT Arabic TV crew was attacked by Israeli police while covering the Jerusalem Day march in the Old City. Although the journalists had all documents permitting them to cover the event, the police prevented them from going live.

"After a terrible time we had to pass through check points that they erected everywhere along the Old City, they asked us to move away from the Damascus gate point. They didn't do it gently, they pushed us and broke our camera," RT Arabic reporter Dalia Nammari later told RT International.

The reporter added that other journalists covering the event were treated the same "brutal" way by the Israeli police.

Comment: It's terrible to even think it but this is no surprise.

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Water

Baltimore shuts off water to delinquent homes, but not delinquent businesses

Luke Broadwater
The Baltimore Sun
Fri, 15 May 2015 18:20 UTC
Image
© Baltimore Sun/Luke Broadwater
Damian Henson (at podium), 43, of Edmondson Village, says he received a water turn-off notice from the city over what he believes is an erroneous bill.
Baltimore officials, trying to collect some $40 million in long-unpaid water bills, have shut off service to more than 1,600 customers in the past six weeks.

But records reviewed by The Baltimore Sun show the city's enforcement has been starkly uneven.

While large commercial properties owe the biggest amounts, not one has been shut off. All of the service cuts so far have been to homes.

And while the majority of homes with unpaid bills are in the city, nearly 90 percent of shut-offs have been in Baltimore County. Dundalk and Gwynn Oak have each had more service cuts than all of Baltimore.

Baltimore County Councilman Todd Crandell, a Republican who represents Dundalk, said he found it "odd" that his community, with a population of less than 64,000, saw more enforcement than a city more than 10 times that size. He has asked officials to verify the accuracy of their data.

"There have been a lot of billing errors and mistakes," he said.

The numbers also trouble Charly Carter, director of the advocacy group Maryland Working Families.

"If the city can shut off 1,600 working families from their water, but hasn't shut off even one commercial account, I think that speaks volumes about where their priorities are," she said.

Comment: The concentration of money and power is in the hands of powerful greedy corporations who consider the populace "useless eaters" who don't deserve water, a basic human right. As a result, the U.S. is descending into unimaginable poverty - a clear sign being that these people cannot afford to pay the smallest bill in their households.

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Camcorder

DHS, IRS, debt collectors to expand use of license plate tracking devices

Joe Wolverton II, J.D.
The New American
Sun, 17 May 2015 16:18 UTC
LPR
© www.digitaltrends.com
You're being tracked by a license plate reader.
Despite the objections of millions of Americans and civil liberties advocates, the Department of Homeland Security refuses completely to abandon its license plate tracking program. And now, other government and industry agencies are joining in the surveillance.


Comment: This represents a reversal. February 2014, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson ordered the cancellation of the ICE agency plan to develop a national license-plate tracking system after privacy advocates raised concern about the initiative.


While there has been some slight scaling back of the scope of the surveillance, DHS will continue using the controversial technology in almost half of the United States, comprising most of the largest population centers.

"The LPR [License Plate Reader] data service shall compile LPR from at least 25 states and 24 of the top 30 most populous metropolitan statistical areas to the extent authorized by law in those locations," a contract issued by DHS Immigration and Customs officials reports.

There will be a corresponding decrease in the number of images gathered by the devices that are subsequently reported to DHS. One source indicates that the inventory will be reduced from 30 million images, as originally requested by DHS, to six million.

Although that may seem like at least a small victory for privacy and liberty, that's not the whole story.

Last year Bloomberg reported that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Forest Service (among others) awarded nearly half a million dollars to Vigilant Solutions, a California-based company that provides tools for tracking license plates and for accessing license plate databases.

Comment: Another realm of privacy gone with the snap of a camera shutter. Another example of sacrificing the rights and liberties of innocent citizens to Big Bro and the lock-down mentality of today's America. American citizens: you now stand in line behind sleazy debt collectors and repossessors thanks to the pathocratic institutions run amok with tyranny. Minute-by-minute knowledge of who and where you are? The door, dear sheeple, is locking on the virtual cage.

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Dollars

Google bribes, uhm... invests, uh... takes care of, eh?.. helps Europe media!

Phil Butler
Russia Insider
Sun, 17 May 2015 15:24 UTC
Image

Zeit Online - Google News mashup - Google making controversial moves in the influence space.
Just in time for the European Union's anti-trust case against search giant Google, the Mountain View company announced a groundbreaking (trust cohesive) media "assistance" program worth €150 million euros. According to Germany's Zeit (THE TIME), Google aims to put in place a so-called "Digital News Initiative" to work hand-in-hand with publishers Zeit, and 7 other major European news players.

The report from Zeit goes on to spell out just how Google will work with the German political magazine and others to create a more "sustainable model" for developing news. Zeit, along with the Financial Times, the Guardian, Les Echos in France, El Pais in Spain, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung are the core of an Initiative Committee of eight founding members of the new Google news cadre, cohort, cartel, shoot!... group I mean. However Google and these founders frame the announcement, sane individuals have to be asking; "Are you serious?"

Comment: Yup, it's all about central control of the news, and the web for that matter.

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Eye 2

Victoria 'f*ck the EU' Nuland to discuss implementation of Minsk accords in Moscow


ITAR-TASS
Sun, 17 May 2015 15:10 UTC
Victoria Nuland
© ITAR-TASS/ Maxim Nikitin
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland will visit Moscow on May 17-18 to discuss with Russia's representatives the implementation of the Minsk agreements, says a statement released by the U.S. Department of State on Saturday.

Nuland is expected to meet with senior Russian government officials to discuss the next steps aimed at implementing the Minsk agreements following her visit to Kiev on May 14-16 and also the meetings held by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Sochi.

She will also discuss bilateral issues with Russian officials and meet with civil society representatives, the U.S. Department of State says.

Comment: It is interesting to see the US increase it's participation on the Minsk Agreements implementation. Something must have gone wrong with their original plan.

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Stock Up

Iran to supply Europe with crude oil once sanctions lifted


Sputnik News
Sun, 17 May 2015 15:00 UTC
Image
© Flickr/ Pieter van Marion

Iran has reportedly signaled its readiness to start supplying crude oil to Europe after sanctions are lifted against it.

Tehran said on Sunday that it is ready to start exports of crude oil to Europe as soon as the economic sanctions against Iran are lifted, sources said.

In an interview with the Iranian news agency IRNA, Mohsen Qamsari, the director for international affairs of the National Iranian Oil Company, said that Iran can ship almost half of the supplies of crude previously consumed by the European market.

Comment: Normalized relations between Iran and the rest of the world could spell trouble, since Israel has been whipping up anti-Iranian hysteria for quite some time. Don't forget what happened when France began voicing displeasure with the anti-Russian sanctions. Psychopaths kill, lie, torture, and cheat to get their way. Check out:

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Snakes in Suits

France's Hollande salesman extraordinaire

Finian Cunningham
Sputnik
Thu, 14 May 2015 14:54 UTC
Image
© REUTERS/ Enrique de la Osa
French President Francois Hollande touched down in Havana this week proclaiming it a historic moment as the first Western leader to visit isolated Communist Cuba.

Hollande said it was an "emotional occasion" to witness the "opening up of Cuba". His visit, which will include meetings with Cuban President Raul Castro, follows a "historic handshake" last month between America's Barack Obama and the Cuban leader in neighbouring Panama.

That meeting with Obama was hailed as the moment that Cuba "came in from the cold". It was reported as marking the end of decades of economic isolation imposed by Washington on the Caribbean socialist state. The American president followed through on promises to remove Cuba from America's terror blacklist. He has also overseen the partial lifting of travel and financial restrictions.
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