Europe – Page 16 – praag.org

France will not send military, arms to Kiev

France has no plans of sending military instructors or delivering equipment to Ukraine as opposed to Great Britain, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Wednesday.

On Tuesday, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced that Britain would send instructors to Ukraine to train the country’s military, Sputniknews reported.

“Great Britain has taken a hardline to the situation and is considering a number of measures that you have said [sending military instructors], which Prime Minister David Cameron announced. We have also taken a firm position, but are still pushing for the de-escalation of the conflict,” Fabius said on France Info radio station.

France is party to the Normandy format talks on Ukrainian reconciliation, which also includes Russia, Germany and Ukraine. The most recent Normandy-quartet meeting between foreign ministers took place in Paris on Tuesday.

Kiev authorities repeatedly asked foreign partners for lethal assistance. On Tuesday, Ukrainian Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko said that the United Arab Emirates had agreed to send weapons and military hardware to Ukraine.

A number of European states, including Germany, refused to arm Kiev. The United States, where according to a recent poll by Pew Research Center more than half of the respondents oppose sending weapons to Ukraine, is yet to make a decision on the matter.

Dutch soccer fans trash Rome

Rotterdam 2005, was just another ugly chapter during De Klassieker, when hundreds of Ajax fans had spent the journey down from Amsterdam trashing the train.

Once on the platform outside the stadium they started to tear down the wire fencing. On the opposite side of the barricades, their Feyenoord rivals were waiting.

Rotterdam is barely 50 miles from Amsterdam but Feyenoord and Ajax might as well be at opposite ends of the galaxy for all they have in common.

This weekend Feyenoord fans, however, clashed with armed Italian riot police in one of Rome’s most beautiful piazzas on Thursday.

Police said 20 people had been arrested and more than 10 injured during the clashes ahead of their Europa League tie with Roma.

Six police officers required medical attention, scooters in the area were damaged and the famous fountain at the bottom of the Spanish Steps was damaged with a large chip.

Fans had rampaged through the streets of central Rome before converging on the cobbled square beneath the famous Spanish Steps and trashing the recently restored 17th century Barcaccia fountain, which was designed by Italian artists Pietro and Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

Perhaps Feyenoord fans had Ajax in mind. Ajax is a reflection of the artistic and freewheeling party-city of Amsterdam. Utilitarian and practical-minded Rotterdam is Holland’s factory, and Feyenoord endorse work ethic and blue-collar camaraderie. The loathing is mutual.

But Rome is also notorious for its footballing violence, and has been the scene of bloodshed for Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester United and England fans in recent years.

And then there’s the Jewish question. Amsterdam has a Jewish heritage, which is reflected in Ajax’s history and paraded by some supporters’ groups, who adorn the Amsterdam Arena with the Star of David.

This has produced an anti-semitic backlash among some Feyenoord supporters, who taunt their rivals with songs about Auschwitz and gas ovens.

The soccer chaos in Rome cap comments from one of Italy’s top officials Arrigo Sacchi who said too many coloured players featured in Italian football.

Nicola Zingaretti, president of the Lazio region of Rome tweeted: ‘The scarring of Rome is the work of uncivilised. Now exemplary punishment is needed and no indulgence. Solidarity to the police.’

Putin says US is already arming Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin says the US is supplying Kiev with lethal weapons, telling reporters that the conflict in Ukraine will not be resolved through military escalation.

“According to our intelligence, [US] weapons are already being delivered,” Putin was shown on state television Channel One as telling a press conference on Tuesday, when asked if a shipment of lethal hardware from Washington to Kiev would fan the flames of war in eastern Ukraine.

Putin, speaking in Budapest during a presidential visit to Hungary, added that arms deliveries would only contribute to the loss of lives in the war-torn region.

“I am deeply convinced that whoever and whatever weapons are delivered to the conflict zone, the [outcome] will always be bad … the number of victims could increase,” he said in comments widely published by Russian media.

Kiev and Western nations, in turn, have for months accused Moscow of arming pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine — a charge the Kremlin has repeatedly denied.

In December the US Congress passed legislation authorizing the sending of arms to Kiev. But while US President Barack Obama signed the measure into law, he has been hesitant to use the option, amid widespread warnings arming Kiev would be seen as a declaration of war.

Serial killer German nurse may have killed 178

A German nurse admitted to at least 30 killings.

“A German nurse has admitted killing 30 of his patients by injecting them with cardiovascular medication.

The 38-year-old, identified only as Niels H, told a court-appointed psychiatrist that he had wanted to show off his ‘excellent’ resuscitation skills. He is suspected of having killed 178 patients who were in his care at Delmenhorst hospital, near Bremen, in northern Germany, between 2003 and 2005.

The psychiatrist, Konstantin Karyofilis, told a court in Oldenburg that the accused administered a cardiovascular drug by injecting it into patients’ veins in order to orchestrate medical emergencies that would then require him to resuscitate the patients in the hospital’s intensive care unit.”

Richer than the Vatican

The Roman Catholic archdiocese of Cologne has disclosed it is worth €3.35 billion ($3.82 billion), making it richer than the Vatican, Reuters said.

Cologne church officials announced their report on Ash Wednesday, the start of the Lenten period.

They said the extensive holdings helped care for 2 million Catholics, 60,000 staff and 1,200 churches and chapels.

NATO and Europe on diplomatic collision course

The fraught relationship between Russia and the West, which was supposed to improve following an agreement over Ukraine, has descended instead into renewed acrimony after a series of tense military and diplomatic confrontations.

France and Germany, which had brokered the Minsk accord last week, were yesterday trying to hold together the increasingly fragile ceasefire in Ukraine amid reports that fighting was spreading once again.

Kremlin-backed separatists and Cossack fighters triumphantly paraded through Debaltseve, a strategic point they had captured in the past 48 hours, leaving the Atlanticist project to expand NATO into Ukraine in tatters.

Britain, which along with the EU will be strongly criticised by a House of Lords committee today for “sleep-walking into this crisis”, was drawn towards centre-stage after two Russian Bear bombers off the coast of Cornwall – but just outside UK airspace – were met by RAF jets scrambled from their base in Coningsby, Lincolnshire.

The apparent probe of British readiness came soon after the Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, accused President Vladimir Putin of a “campaign of destabilisation to the Baltic countries”. The Russian leader, he said, presented “as much of a threat to Europe as ISIS”.

Russian deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Lukashevich declared that Fallon’s war-mongering comments were “already beyond diplomatic ethics”, adding: “The characterisation of Russia is completely intolerable. We will find a way to respond to the comments.”

In London, Rory Stewart, the chairman of the Commons Defence Committee, said the West was on a “political razor-edge”. He urged all British political parties to write into their manifestoes a commitment to spend two per cent of GDP on defence – as required by Nato. He also asked them to prepare to deal with threats such as cyber-attacks, irregular troops, and propaganda.

The British Government, which is one of the guarantors of the territorial integrity of Ukraine in return for it giving up a nuclear arsenal, is worried that Germany and France may have already recognised separate regions.

“It [the committee] believes that the EU, and by implication the UK, was guilty of sleep-walking into this crisis,” said the committee chairman, Lord Tugendhat. “The lack of robust analytical capacity, in both the UK and the EU, effectively led to a catastrophic misreading of the mood in the run-up to the crisis.”

An inspection by Dutch military specialists revealed no military activities on the part of Russia in the Rostov region bordering Ukraine, the head of the Russian Defense Ministry’s International Treaties Implementation Department told RIA Novosti on Friday.

Dutch military experts inspected 13,000 square kilometers (5,000 square miles) in Russia’s Rostov Region bordering Ukraine, Sergei Ryzhkov added.

“The inspection took place in accordance with the Vienna Document and was carried out not only on the ground, but also with the help of helicopters,” Sergei Ryzhkov said.

Dutch military inspected the same area in the Rostov Region bordering Ukraine that Ukrainian specialists chose for inspection earlier.

Kiev authorities and Atlanticists have accused Russia of providing military aid and troops to Donbas militias. Moscow has dismissed the allegations and denied any involvement in the armed conflict in Ukraine.

English football fans push black off train

A recent video shows a black man in Paris forcefully pushed off a subway train by rowdy British Chelsea fans headed for a match with Paris Saint-Germain. An investigation into their identities is underway.

“We’re racist, we’re racist and that’s the way we like it” – this is the phrase they chanted during the incident, seen here in amateur video footage taken at the Richelieu-Drouot station and obtained exclusively by the Guardian.

The black man tried to squeeze past them several times, before being given a hard shove.

It is somewhat ironic that Chelsea is “a Jewish-owned football team where the majority of players are black and foreign,” as the club fan magazine’s editor David Johnstone pointed out, expressing his shock at the incident. He added that “I think the majority of Chelsea supporters are as disgusted by what’s happened.”

French police had to use tear gas on British supporters on the day, shortly before the game, local reports indicate.

Dull leftists attack Pegida with snobbery

The views of the Stammtisch [pub regulars] are a growing force in Germany.

The new popular movement in Dresden — Pegida, or ‘Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West’ has highlighted intra-German divisions: not only those between immigrants and ethnic Germans but also those between most German voters and the country’s small, vainglorious politically correct establishment.

Lutz Bachmann, founder of anti-Islam movement Pegida, said on Monday that the group was ready to choose a candidate to run for Dresden city hall in June.

As thousands once again flocked to the rally in the city, the fifteenth since the movement began last October, Bachmann said that there were three possible candidates, and the person selected would be introduced soon.

Bachmann himself is out of the running, as he has a criminal record and was forced to step down from leading the group after “evidence of racist comments” he had made against immigrants emerged online.

At the meeting, Bachmann also reported on a conference he had held with Pegida offshoots from different cities and put forward ten political demands under the title “Dresden Theses”.

One of the key points in the list is the immediate deportation of people whose asylum applications are rejected.

Other cities saw smaller demonstrations by Pegida copycats on Monday, including Leipzig, Chemnitz, Magdeburg and – for the first time.

In snobby and gay Berlin adherents are called Sachsenschweine — Saxon pigs. It seems that dull leftists everywhere – including South Africa – believe insults, snobbery and vanity are actually arguments.

As The Spectator from January 31, 2015 reported:

The French-Russian philosopher Alexandre Kojève was right to predict that, in a post-modern globalised world devoid of traditional values, the only remaining factor structuring society would be snobbery. When Kathrin Oertel, the de facto leader of Pegida, appeared on a chat show on 18 January, she was asked by the anchorman, ‘Who are Pegida’s supporters?’ ‘Ordinary people like you and me,’ she replied. Quick as a flash, the presenter retorted, ‘Like you, maybe. Like me, maybe not.’ Seldom has a member of the media super-class spoken so lucidly.

Snobbery was also the prime mover behind the great anti-Pegida concert organised by the Dresden city authorities on Monday night. One after another, ageing luvvies came on stage to express their contempt for the movement. ‘Pegida is an uprising of stupid ignoramuses,’ a 60-year-old rocker told the crowd to applause. The propaganda was grotesque: one Muslim woman claimed that immigrants now do not feel safe on the streets of the city — what tosh! — while a Spanish student at the university said that Pegida should learn to accept people from different backgrounds.

Angela Merkel put on her glummest rainy-afternoon-in-Chemnitz face to give Pegida supporters a sound telling-off during her New Year’s broadcast to the nation earlier this month. ‘I say to those who go to these marches, don’t follow these people! They have prejudices, coldness, even hatred in their hearts!’ This is the same woman who, in 2010, wowed a room full of CDU young bloods with a full-frontal attack on uncontrolled immigration and multiculturalism.

Italian coach complains about too many black players

Former Italy and AC Milan coach Arrigo Sacchi has made headlines across the peninsula by stating that there are too many black players in Italian youth teams.

The comments come on the same day after Inter claimed the Viareggio Cup over Hellas Verona and will no doubt cause a stir for the next few days regarding the the ongoing battle against racism in the country.

“Italy is without dignity, there is no pride: it’s not possible to see a youth team with 15 foreigners,” Sacchi stated while speaking at a ceremony in Pistoia as reported by Sportmediaset.

“Watching the Viareggio Cup I must say there are too many black players, even in the Primavera.

“I am not racist, my history as a coach speaks for itself starting with Frank Rijkaard, but our football must show some pride.”

Source: forzaitalianfootball.com

German TV channel ZDF airs fake news

A citizen’s media group has lodged a complaint against German television channel ZDF for airing a photograph of Russian tanks in eastern Ukraine, which in reality were Russian tanks on patrol in South Ossetia in 2008.

Just days after a US politician presented on the Senate floor falsified images of Russian tanks purported to be taken in eastern Ukraine, one of Germany’s largest broadcasters appears guilty of the very same error.

The German media watchdog group, known as the Permanent Open Committee of Media Monitoring, has issued a complaint against federal channel Zweiten Deutschen Fernsehens (ZDF) over false reporting on the situation in eastern Ukraine, Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten has reported.

The complaint involves a photograph that purports to show Russian military presence in eastern Ukraine, a claim that Moscow has denied on numerous occasions.

The news segment aired by ZDF featured a photo with the caption “Russian armored vehicles moved through Isvarino in the Lugansk region, February 12, 2015,” citing “Ukrainian army spokesman Andrei Lysenko.” However, there is one glaring problem with the photograph in question: it shows Russian tanks in South Ossetia, not Ukraine.

Putin heads for Hungary

Vladimir Putin has chosen Hungary for his first state visit to an EU state since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis a year ago. Energy issues are expected to top the agenda, yet the Russian leader usually has an ace up his sleeve.

The Russian president’s visit to Hungary is keeping EU officials in Brussels guessing about what sort of deals exactly are going to be signed in Budapest.

Putin is visiting Prime Minister Viktor Orban at a time of unprecedented confrontation between the western world and Russia over the bloody conflict in Ukraine.

The EU has broadened its anti-Russian sanctions on Monday, expanding the blacklist with 19 more people and nine new companies. The EU blacklist now includes 151 citizens of Russia and Ukraine’s self-proclaimed eastern republics, as well as 37 Russian companies.

The Kremlin press service said that talks of the Russian and Hungarian leaders will focus on bilateral economic and trade relations, and in particular the nuclear energy deal signed in December.

Under a deal worth up to €10 billion, Russia’s Rosatom will build a 2,000 megawatt addition to Hungary’s state-owned nuclear power plant MVM Paksi Atomeromu.

Orban is famous for his skeptical attitude towards many European Union’s policies, particularly Brussels’ siding with the US in the sanctions against Russia, a campaign that damages ailing European economies.

Despite all the accusations, Orban’s Fidesz party won last year’s general election with a landslide victory, receiving practically 45 percent of votes and securing Orban’s third term as the Hungarian prime minister.

Prime Minister’s supporters view his action as defending Hungary’s national interests against agendas of international corporations and foreign governments. Among the biggest successes of the Orban government was the law that forced conversion of mortgages denominated in Swiss francs, which saved Hungarian borrowers from suffering a debt cost hike after Switzerland unpegged their currency from the euro, which resulted in sharp 20 percent gain in value.

Jew secretly films Parisian reactions to his religion

A journalist wearing a religious skullcap in Paris had the French public’s reaction filmed by a hidden camera.

Zvika Klein, a reporter for Jewish news outlet NRG, walked in the city for ten hours wearing a kippah – also known as a yarmulke – on his head as well as knotted ritual religious tassels.

Posting the video on YouTube, he wrote: ‘Welcome to Paris 2015, where soldiers are walking every street that houses a Jewish institution, and where keffiyeh-wearing men and veiled women speak Arabic on every street corner.’

He spent a day in Paris with a bodyguard while a photographer secretly documented reactions of the public using a GoPro camera hidden in his backpack.

He wandered through Jewish neighborhoods, around the Eiffel Tower, and then through mostly Muslim neighborhoods.

In an article accompanying the video, he said tourist attractions were ‘relatively calm’ – ‘but the further from them we walked, the more anxious I became over the hateful stares, the belligerent remarks, and the hostile body language,’ he wrote.

Boys shouted ‘Viva Palestine’ and as he passes a group of youths, one remarks: ‘I’m joking, the dog will not eat you’.

Fingers were pointed at him in a cafe – and moments later, thugs awaited him on a street corner, he adds.

A little boy was shocked at his appearance in his neighbourhood, he reports. ‘What is he doing here Mommy?’ he asked. ‘Doesn’t he know he will be killed?’

Israeli premier Netanyahu said Europe was no longer a safe haven for Jews following attacks in Paris and Copenhagen, adding that Israel is now the only country in the world where Jews can feel safe.

His comments sparked fury from Jewish groups and were promptly refuted by the leaders of France, Germany and Denmark.

But Mr Klein’s video shows, in Paris, Jews ‘are barred from entering certain areas’.

Source: Daily Mail

Finland shuts door on black refugees

Refugee quotas have significantly been reduced by Finnish municipalities

Finnish municipalities have significantly cut quotas on receiving refugees from foreign countries.

Refugee quotas have significantly been reduced by Finnish municipalities, with just 40 of them signaling readiness to receive refuges, local media outlets reported.

Last year, the municipalities received more than 1,000 refugees, a record number that experts attributed to additional government funding and the Syrian conflict.

In addition, Finland increased the quota for refugees from 750 to over a thousand.

This year, the refugee quota stands at 1050, but it is unlikely to be implemented in time.

Meanwhile, the regions of Satakunta and South Ostrobothnia have said that they will not receive refugees this year.

The regions of Uusimaa, Ostrobothnia and Pirkanmaa will receive the majority of refugees — 160, 120 and 100 respectively.

As for the major cities, most refugees will be received by Tampere and Kuopio, while Helsinki and Turku will only receive a dozen people each.

People fleeing Syria remain refugees of choice for Finnish municipalities, while refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo are reportedly the most unwelcome people.

Source: Sputnik News

Bibi urges EU Jews to move to Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday urged European Jews to move to Israel after a Jewish man was killed in an attack outside Copenhagen’s main synagogue.

“Israel is your home. We are preparing and calling for the absorption of mass immigration from Europe,” Netanyahu said in a statement, repeating a similar call after attacks by jihadists in Paris last month when four Jews were among the dead.

Two police officers were also wounded in Sunday’s attack in Copenhagen, one of two fatal shootings in the normally peaceful Danish capital on the weekend.

In the first attack on Saturday, a 55-year-old man was killed at a panel discussion about Islam and free speech attended by a Swedish cartoonist behind controversial caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

“Extremist Islamic terrorism has struck Europe again… Jews have been murdered again on European soil only because they were Jews,” Netanyahu said in the statement.

The Israeli prime minister said his government was to adopt a $45 million (39.5 million euro) plan “to encourage the absorption of immigrants from France, Belgium and Ukraine”.

“To the Jews of Europe and to the Jews of the world I say that Israel is waiting for you with open arms,” Netanyahu said.

He had made a similar call after three days of bloodshed in Paris that started with the January 7 attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo where 12 people were gunned down, followed the next day by the shooting death of a policewoman just outside the city.

On January 9, the gunman who killed the policewoman took hostages at a kosher supermarket in Paris. He killed four Jewish hostages before police shot him dead when they raided the store.

The bodies of the four were later flown to Israel where they were buried.

Officials in Copenhagen described the weekend attacks as an act of terror and said the man believed to be behind the shootings was shot dead after opening fire on police at a rail station.

The Palestinians also condemned the attack “in the strongest terms,” with PLO official Saeb Erakat calling the Copenhagen attacks “absolutely unjustifiable.”

“Terrorism knows no religion or nationality, and our opposition to such violence must be firmly united. We stand in solidarity with the Danish people,” Erakat said in a statement.

Source: AFP