Saturday 13 December 2014

The European Union Times

Muslims angry in France after mayor makes “pork or nothing’ school rule

Posted: 12 Dec 2014 09:45 AM PST

A secularism scandal is raging in France, after a mayor in a northwestern town introduced a “pork or nothing” principle at school, even for 27 students who will get no meat substitute.
The rule will apply starting from January 1 in the town of Sargé-lès-Le Mans, and may apply to Jewish pupils as well, though there aren’t any in this particular school.
Mayor Marcel Mortreau bases his decision on the “principle of Republican neutrality.”
“The mayor is not required to provide meals that respond to religious requirements. This is the principle of secularism,” Mortreau told Europe1 radio.
The move was backed up by the Town Hall on the grounds that the food providers face extra work if they have to deliver meat substitutes, the Local reported.
The initiative has been supported by some public school officials.
“We didn’t open school canteens for partisan, religious, philosophical, cultural reasons,” said Eric Le Moal, director of a public school in Lezignan-Corbieres in the Aude, which also passed the one-dish policy last year.
Muslim parents and pupils expressed their fury at the mayor’s decision, especially due to the fact that a second meal doesn’t cost any extra.
“Eating two starters is not the same as eating a meat dish. Meat is something the body needs to work and to think. I need meat, it’s important,” a Muslim immigrant pupil, Tarik, told Europe1 radio.
Tarik’s mother Yasmine called the new policy “discrimination” and voiced her anger that she has to tell “a small child that “you will eat less today because there’s pork on the menu.”
“You hear comments like, ‘if you don’t like it, take your children home.’ It hurts,” she added, though its the truth and the truth always seems to hurt. These Muslim invaders, not only come to Europe unwanted and uninvited, they want to change the Christian European way of life. They want Europeans to adapt after them, they won’t adopt the European way of life. If they dislike the European way of life so much and they still want to hold on to their third world culture and religion, then why are they in Europe in the first place?
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OPCW urges Israel to destroy its chemical weapons

Posted: 12 Dec 2014 09:24 AM PST

This file photo shows employees in protective gear holding a dummy grenade during a demonstration at a chemical weapons disposal facility of GEKA in Munster, northern Germany.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has urged the Israeli regime to destroy its chemical weapons and join the international treaty prohibiting the possession and use of such arms.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, an OPCW official called on Israel’s close allies to put pressure on Tel Aviv so that it would allow international monitors to inspect its suspected facilities.
“I think Israel should be under a little more pressure by its close allies in order to join the treaty,” the OPCW official told The Times of Israel in The Hague on Thursday.
The official noted that he has information about details of Israel’s chemical program from a previous position he held outside the OPCW.
When asked if he knew the size of Israel’s chemical stockpile, he said, “Yes, I know.”
Reports say the OPCW has had contacts with the Israeli embassy in The Hague about this issue.
The OPCW was founded in 1997 to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention, which bans the use of chemical weapons and requires their destruction.
The Israeli regime is widely believed to have chemical weapons as well as being the sole possessor of a nuclear arsenal in the Middle East with up to 400 undeclared nuclear warheads.
Tel Aviv has rejected global calls to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and does not allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect its controversial nuclear program.
Israel neither confirms nor denies its suspected nuclear and chemical weapons capabilities due to its policy of ambiguity.
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North Korea ‘purges the disabled because they humiliate the regime’

Posted: 12 Dec 2014 09:20 AM PST

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un observes the military’s winter training earlier this month. A defector has claimed that his regime routinely ‘cleanses’ the population of disabled people by making them disappear and subjecting them to horrific medical experiments because they are a ‘humiliation’ to the regime.

North Korea is systematically purging its disabled population by making them disappear from public sight, subjecting them to chemical weapons tests and castrating them, defectors claimed today.
Ji Seong-ho, 32, who escaped after he himself suffered horrific treatment after losing a leg and hand, said the Kim Jong-un’s regime felt ‘humiliated’ by them.
He claims babies with mental and physical disabilities are routinely snatched from hospitals and left to suffer ‘indescribable things’ until they die.
Two other defectors also told him of a village in a remote mountain region that had been effectively turned into an asylum to house people with dwarfism.
Mr Ji, who is researching a book on the abuse of North Korea’s disabled population, said: ‘They were forbidden to leave.
‘The men were castrated so they would become extinct. There’s no-one left there by now.’

North Koreans stage a protest in support of the regime’s statement against a UN resolution on human rights.

Another defector told of a government programme where disabled people are reportedly sent for medical experiments such as ‘dissection of body parts’ and ‘tests of biological and chemical weapons.’
Im Cheon-yong, a former officer in North Korea’s special forces, told the Daily Telegraph: ‘The regime wants to do this “legally” so they offer to buy disabled children from their parents.
‘If that doesn’t work, they threaten them.’
Mr Im said he defected in the 1990s after witnessing chemical and biological weapons tests on disabled children and adults.
Mr Ji said he lost his left leg above the knee and his left hand at the wrist after being run over by a train while scavenging for coal at the age of 14.
He was dumped in a wheelbarrow by railway staff and taken to hospital, where he was forced to undergo two amputations without anaesthetic.
After he was discharged, he crossed into China to beg for food, but was arrested when he returned.
During his interrogation, he said officers were furious that he had ‘hurt the dignity’ of former leader Kim Jong-il.
He finally defected in 2006 and later helped his mother, brother and sister to do the same, however, his father caught and died in prison after being tortured.
The claims of North Korea’s disabled ‘cleansing’ comes two weeks after the UN pushed the Security Council to take its leaders to the International Criminal Court for an indictment on crimes against humanity.
The resolution, drafted by both Japan and the European Union, states that North Korea’s human rights abuses are ‘without parallel in the contemporary world.’
However, Pyongyang struck back by describing the United States as a ‘a tundra of human rights’ following the countrywide protests over the shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer in Ferguson.
Source

US threatens Russia with nuke missiles

Posted: 12 Dec 2014 08:08 AM PST

US warships launch a coordinated volley of missiles.

The Pentagon has threatened Russia with redeploying nuclear cruise missiles to Europe, accusing Moscow of violating two arms control treaties.
“We don’t have ground-launched cruise missiles in Europe now obviously because they’re prohibited by the treaty,” said Brian McKeon, principal deputy undersecretary for policy at the Department of Defense.
“But that would obviously be one option to explore,” he added.
Washington says Moscow violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.
However, Russia denied the allegation and said the testing of a ground-launched cruise missile in July 2014 was in compliance with the INF treaty.
Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security Rose Gottemoeller announced that US President Barack Obama has written his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin about the violation.
Gottemoeller said that the United States were considering a list of “military countermeasures” against Russia.
McKeon also warned Russia not to engage in an “escalatory cycle of action and reaction.”
He said Russian and US counter-actions “will make Russia less secure.”
“This violation will not go unanswered, because there is too much at stake,” he said.
Russia says the US missile plans across the globe are a real threat not only to Russia but also to the whole world, adding the missile systems harm the strategic balance of forces across the globe.
In October, the US military commissioned its new missile base in southern Romania amid strong opposition by Russia.
The military base will be the first to feature the Aegis Ashore ballistic missile system and it will be operational by the end of 2015.
Source

US tanks, APCs, Humvees roll through Latvia

Posted: 12 Dec 2014 07:40 AM PST

A freight train carrying a whole column of American armored vehicles has been caught on camera in Latvia. Dalbe Railway Station, where the train was reportedly spotted several days ago, is less than 300km from the Russian border.
The train was carrying at least 38 vehicles and several semitrailers, including eight Bradley Fighting Vehicles, nine M113 Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs), four petrol tankers, Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks (HEMTTs), High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWVs), an M88 Hercules Armory recovery vehicle, a couple of trucks, some tactical engineering and medical vehicles, at least four containers and a pair of railcars with ammunition.
Latvian authorities have confirmed to Delfi news portal that the train spotted on December 7 was loaded with the vehicles of the 1st Cavalry Division of the US and the train was heading to Lithuania.
American armored vehicles have been sent to the Baltic States and Poland for military drills and are set to remain for the constant training of local troops and rotation of US forces.
More fighting vehicles will be pre-positioned at US military bases in Germany. Deployment of additional hardware to Baltic States and Poland goes on within the framework of the US ‘Operation Atlantic Resolve’ effort, established to reassure American allies in Eastern Europe anxious about a “resurgent Russia.”
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