Miscellaneous News

delft

Brigadier
Something decidedly odd, from The Independent:
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France: Court orders halal supermarket in Paris to close because it does not sell pork or wine
Lawyer argued alcohol 'not part of the general diet'

France has ordered a
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supermarket in
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to close because it does not sell pork or wine.

The Good Price mini-market in Colombes did not comply with the conditions of its lease, which stated the shop must act as a "general food store," the Court of Nanterre ruled.

The local authority argued members of the local community were not being served properly because the shop did not sell pork or alcohol products.

A bailiff's report said the store almost exclusively stocked halal products.

When the manager was questioned at the time, he said: "It's business. I look around me and I target what I see."

His lawyer argued alcohol "is not part of the general diet" and the store had no obligations to sell it as it was only a complement to food.

The court said the products the shop stocked were "restrictive and did not fit the broad concept of general good."

It ordered the termination of the store's lease and ordered the eviction of the tenants.

The manager was ordered to pay €4,000 to the local authority in legal costs.
France allows kosher supermarkets that will also not sell pork.
I suppose the purpose is to irritate Muslims citizens.
 
Yesterday at 12:33 PM
Saturday at 6:55 PM

now
GOP Senator: It's Time for Military Families to Leave South Korea
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and USAF General on Countering North Korea: ‘The Enemy Has Closed the Gap’
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Various weapons meant to deter North Korea from developing nukes will arrive only in time to deter Kim from using them.

How badly did the United States underestimate the pace of North Korea’s missile development? Here’s Gen. Robin Rand, who leads Air Force Global Strike Command: “We’ve got to get humping,” he said.Rand rattled off a variety of programs and modernization efforts, such as
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— the 44
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missiles buried in silos in Alaska and California; the new B-21 stealth bomber program; and the
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nuclear cruise missile. But in doing so, he acknowledged what has become painfully obvious to anyone watching developments out of North Korea, if largely unremarked upon by a government and military eager to reassure the public: the U.S. response is years behind where military leaders would like it to be.

“None of these systems that I just mentioned are projected to be fielded before the mid- to late 2020s,” Rand said at the Association of Old Crows conference in downtown Washington on Friday. “Some people say, ‘Just in time.’ I say, ‘Late to need.’”

The Hwasong-15 missile that the North Koreans launched last Wednesday is larger than previous iterations, with
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mechanism that enables it to carry a warhead some 8,100 miles. “Such a missile would have more than enough range to reach Washington, D.C., and in fact any part of the continental United States,” noted
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of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The U.S. is
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the systems it might use to strike North Korean targets, in the hopes of deterring the Kim regime from using its new weapons. For Rand, the most important aspect of these is making sure that that strike weapons and interceptors can stand up to current North Korean anti-aircraft (and anti-interceptor) technology — in short, that they can survive the North Korean regime’s best efforts to take them out.

“The things we are doing in these new systems that are coming on, whether it’s long-range standoff [missiles,] the B-21, or the ground-based strategic deterrence, is to to make sure that there’s improvement over what we have currently in the survivability and reliability realm,” he said. “The enemy gets a big vote in are the weapons get to the target. That’s where a lot of things we’re doing are, [going]”

But the long-range standoff missile is won’t be ready for manufacture until 2022. And the new Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider is slated to enter service until 2025.

As for those Alaska and California-based interceptors that are meant to protect the continental United States, researcher
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and
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have pointed out that four must be launched to reach a very high — 97 percent — chance of knocking down each North Korean missile hurtling toward the United States. And firing multiple interceptors at one incoming rocket also won’t work if it turns out that that the poor reliability demonstrated in testing so far isn’t because of individual or manual errors but because there’s just something fundamentally wrong with the interceptors themselves.

All of those doubts predate the Hwasong-15, which
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to throw off interceptors. The U.S. anticipated this and recently announced that it would accelerate the development of a interceptor that could take out multiple potential incoming warheads and decoys). But, here too, the solution won’t be available
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The U.S. is also working on a drone that can fire a laser at a North Korean missile just as it is taking off, when it’s easiest to hit. But the
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also won’t be online until 2021.

All of this suggests that the U.S. underestimated the pace of North Korean technological development by five years or more. Until the new stuff comes online, the United States can improve its odds of countering North Korean missile launches by better predicting when they might occur — and then sabotaging them via
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or something more exotic. This is perhaps the only area where rapid improvements in technology are working for the U.S. and not against it.

Constellations of
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in Low Earth Orbit, and very-high-resolution satellites can help the U.S. keep a much more persistent watch over the Korean Peninsula. The U.S. is using the latest machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques, such as
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, to sift through that footage to gain a better sense of what the North Koreans might be up to.

“While we cannot address missile launch detection methods, NGA analysts use deep learning specifically to help establish patterns of life among large volumes of imagery in order to detect when that pattern changes,” a spokesperson from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency old Defense One.

In the meantime, the U.S. must settle for the more traditional definition of deterrence, which had less to do with curbing the development of nuclear weapons and everything to do with using them.

“Deterrence is hard to measure,” said Rand. “We’re not in conflict with them. To say deterrence isn’t working, I would take exception to that. For the last 60 years, I would say our deterrence has work.”
 
Monday at 12:33 PM
Saturday at 6:55 PM

now
GOP Senator: It's Time for Military Families to Leave South Korea
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but
No Plans to Evacuate Families Off Korean Peninsula, US Military Says
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The U.S. military has no plans to begin evacuating U.S. families from South Korea, a spokesman said Wednesday following
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that it was getting too dangerous to keep noncombatants on the divided peninsula.

The South Carolina Republican's remarks that he believes it's time to start withdrawing family members of the some 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in the country caused concern among many who fear being separated from their loved ones more than saber rattling from North Korea.

Pacific Command said the safety and welfare of servicemembers, employees and family members is a top priority and contingency plans are in place.

"We currently have no intent to initiate departures for military dependents, whether on a voluntary or mandatory basis, and no intent to modify the policy authorizing military dependents to accompany military members being stationed in South Korea," spokesman
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Lt. Cmdr. Dave Benham told Stars and Stripes in an email.

"Our personnel forward
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to South Korea remain in a consistent state of readiness through various training exercises, which include annual NEO training," he added, referring to drills that occur on a regular basis to prepare families for a possible noncombatant evacuation operation.

That was welcome news for many American family members and other civilians working with the military, which has maintained a presence on the peninsula since the 1950-53 Korean War.

"I'm not going anywhere if I can't bring my family with me," said Shamika Maxon, a budget analyst who works on the
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's
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Garrison in Seoul.

She said relatives and friends in the United States have expressed concern for her safety, but she doesn't feel the danger and is reassured that her South Korean colleagues don't either.

"I look to them and how they are reacting ... and I don't see any difference with their behavior," she said.

The two Koreas have seen tensions rise in the past only to pull back from the brink before an outright conflict could break out.

But the North's rapid progress toward a goal of developing a nuclear weapon that could reach the U.S. mainland and threats from President Donald Trump to take military action to stop it have led to the most serious crisis in decades.

The reclusive communist state has tens of thousands of soldiers and artillery positions poised on the other side of the heavily fortified frontier. However, life goes on largely as usual in South Korea, with many believing the North would not attack in its own backyard.

Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the North was pushing the U.S. closer to conflict and it's time to evacuate dependents. He also said he'll urge the Pentagon to make South Korea an unaccompanied post.

"It's crazy to send
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and children to South Korea, given the provocation of North Korea. South Korea should be an unaccompanied tour," he said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation." "So, I want them to stop sending dependents, and I think it's now time to start moving American dependents out of South Korea."

Warning sign
Thomas Spoehr, a defense expert at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, said North Korea would see such a move as a provocation.

"Certainly when the U.S. seriously contemplates military action family members should be removed. I don't think we are at that point," he said in an email. "We should be careful not to act prematurely."

"North Korea would interpret a move to remove families as a sign of U.S. preparation for offensive military action," he said.

Spoehr, a retired Army lieutenant general, also noted the Trump administration's strategy of applying "global maximum pressure" on the North to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

"Senator Graham probably believes evacuating family members would both contribute to the administration's campaign, and also ensure families are out of potential harm's way," he said.

The U.S. military already has reduced the number of dependents in South Korea when the 2nd Infantry Division introduced rotational units that serve yearlong tours that are unaccompanied.

But many of the other servicemembers have spouses and children with them, which allows for longer assignments.

The 8th Army advertises South Korea as a "dynamic, family-friendly assignment that is personally and professionally rewarding" as a recruiting tool.

Staff Sgt. Chris Contreraz said he has already spent too much time without his family during tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Without my family, I may as well be deployed," he said while buying dinner at the Yongsan food court with his three daughters, ages 3, 5 and 9.

"It's very important to have them with me. I don't have to worry about missing birthdays, Christmas, all the important holidays," he said, adding he'll look to the military for guidance. "I'll start worrying if they actually tell the families to leave."

"I don't see the Koreans being as worried as we are," he added. "Everything is business as usual here off post."
 

delft

Brigadier
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Dead terrorists can't harm us: New Defence Secretary says British citizens who fought for ISIS should be ‘eliminated’ and never allowed to return to the UK

By
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Published: 22:31 GMT, 6 December 2017 | Updated: 00:00 GMT, 7 December 2017

Not a single British citizen who has fought for
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should be allowed back into the UK, the Defence Secretary declared last night.

Gavin Williamson signalled he was prepared to hunt down and use air strikes against the remaining 270 UK passport holders who have travelled to
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and
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.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, he said: ‘Quite simply, my view is a dead terrorist can’t cause any harm to Britain.’

He added: ‘I do not believe that any terrorist, whether they come from this country or any other, should ever be allowed back into this country.

‘We should do everything we can do to destroy and eliminate that threat.’

His comments are the starkest yet on the issue of whether British jihadists should be allowed to return home to the UK.

In October, Britain’s terror watchdog, Max Hill QC, sparked a row by suggesting that some young people who had travelled to Syria and Iraq should be allowed to come home and re-join society.

He said that it was not worth losing a generation of young people who ‘naively’ went to join Islamic State.

But Mr Williamson’s remarks appear to be an emphatic rejection of that argument.

More than 800 UK citizens are thought to have gone to fight for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Around half of them have already returned, and around 130 have been killed, leaving an estimated 270 left.

Earlier this year, the Mail revealed that RAF pilots had been secretly assassinating British jihadists in Syria and Iraq, using drones and fighter jets to work through a ‘kill list’ of targets - particularly those plotting attacks back in the UK.

In his interview, Mr Williamson condmened British citizens who had gone abroad to join terrorist organisations ‘that hate everything that Britain stands for, hate our values, hate that Britain is as a beacon to the world of democracy and tolerance.’

He said it was right that Britain’s forces were trying to tackle that threat - to stop those people from returning home to launch attacks here.

‘Our forces are right across the globe degrading and destroying that threat, making sure that these people who want to bring destruction, death, bloodshed onto our streets aren’t able to come back,’ he said.

‘That is as important part of the jigsaw as what we actually do on the streets in Britain.

‘Every day we have got British service personnel making a difference to make sure some of those people that want to cause that harm are never able to come back to this country. That is something I am incredibly proud of.

‘I do not believe that any terrorist, whether they come from this country or any other, should ever be allowed back into this country.

‘We should do everything we can do to destroy and eliminate that threat.’

Defence sources made clear that UK terrorists in Iraq and Syria would either be taken out in airstrikes by warplanes or drones operated from RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire.

Mr Williamson said: ‘Quite simply my view is a dead terrorist can’t cause any harm to Britain.’

The Defence Secretary also pledged that those British fighters who had ‘splintered’ and fled to other countries would also be found and prevented from returning to the UK.

It is understood they will have their passports taken off them if they try to cross over international borders.

..........................................
Condemned to death without due process.
BTW UK and most other countries signed and ratified a treaty that makes it illegal to make someone stateless.
 

solarz

Brigadier
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Condemned to death without due process.
BTW UK and most other countries signed and ratified a treaty that makes it illegal to make someone stateless.

Why not just arrest them when they try to return, and put them on trial?

This just shows that the British do not have confidence in their own justice system.

Canada was the same under Harper, moving to strip citizenship from suspected terrorists. Why not just arrest them and prosecute them under Canadian laws?

When Obama was closing down Guantanamo Bay, China demanded the repatriation of a group of Uighurs. Obama refused and sent them to other countries.

Conservatives always talk tough on crime, but they don't even have the guts to deal with their own terrorists. Hypocrisy at its finest.
 

Equation

Lieutenant General
Oh boy. United States becomes only nation to recognize Jerusalem as capital of Israel,

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Protests follow US move to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital
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in Brussels,
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in Manama and Katrina Manson in Washington
4 hours ago

Jewish propaganda are strong in the US government. That's why Israel can get away with having nukes, meanwhile lets paint North Korea and Iran as the bad guy.o_O
 
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