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AN OVERWEIGHT MAN has been charged with animal abuse in southern Spain after a young donkey died three days after he sat on it at an outdoor Nativity scene.
The five-month-old donkey named Platero was on display along with other animals in the centre of the town of Lucena in Spain’s Andalucia region, as part of their annual Christmas celebrations.
But on December 10 a man weighing nearly 150 kilos climbed into the donkey’s pen and sat on the animal’s back to have his picture taken, two animal rights groups, Adebo and Circulo Animalista de Podemos Lucena, said in a statement.
A photo widely circulating on social media show the portly man, who wore a blue shirt and green pants, grinning as he poses on the donkey with one hand on his hip and the other hanging on to the wooden fence that was meant to keep him out.
Two days later the donkey was taken to a vet after local residents contacted Lucena town hall to say that the animal was not able to stand, the animal rights groups said. The donkey died the following day.
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“Our Platero was literally squashed by a man,” the statement said.
The man proudly posed with his almost 150 kilos of weight on the fragile body of the animal, fatally injuring him.
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Police in Lucena detained a 38-year-old man over the incident and charged him with animal abuse, a local police spokesman said.
“TAKE CARE OF ANIMALS! Don’t be an ass…Show humanity and intelligence. Respect the rules,” Spain’s national police said in a Twitter message that included a link to a story about the case in El Mundo newspaper.
Nativity scenes depicting the birth of Jesus are found across towns and cities in Spain in the lead-up to Christmas, and often include live animals such as sheep and donkeys.
@David: Our hands are tied because our membership of the EU means we cannot unilaterally sanction these terrorist states. If we want to be serious about being a republic then we need to renegotiate our position within the(increasingly militaristic and corporate captured) EU. The Irish people didn’t vote for joining an entity that supports(or turns a closed eye to) genocide and now we need a conversation on whether our membership should involve bespoke measures that would allow us act according to our republican values IMO
@Sean: So much killing across the world Sean but see nothing from you about most of it – you are very selective – so by your own logic you also supoort genocide… or at the very least are happy to turn a blind eye to it when it suits your narrative huh!
@Sean: There was a bill that passed through our courts, twice. That bill says we can “boycott” all products from Israel and any other colonized state. What are the EU gonna do, if someone stood up and said we are applying our own sanctions.
During the Iron Age, two related Israelite kingdoms, Israel and Judah, controlled much of Palestine, while the Philistines occupied its southern coast. The kingdom gradually became a vassal of Rome, which annexed the area in 63 BCE. Roman Judea was troubled by large-scale Jewish revolts, which Rome answered with by destroying Jerusalem and the Second Jewish Temple.
In the 4th century, as the Roman Empire christened, Palestine became a center of Christianity, attracting pilgrims, monks and scholars. Following the Muslim conquest of the Levant in 636–641, several Muslim ruling dynasties succeeded each other as they wrestled control of Palestine: the Rashiduns; the Umayyads, who built the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem
@thomas molloy: Ah, here you are back – with your pseudo history this time – to try to justify the existence of the modern state of Israel, and its appalling atrocities on the Palestinian people.
The Palestinian people are semites.
They have been in that region since time immemorial.
They changed their religion, some to Christianity, most later to Islam.
(Just as we changed our religion to Chritianity.)
No one who claims descendancy from those who left these shores long ago has any right to return.
Any right to return and attack our government, set up their own state on our homeland, drive us off our homeland into enclaves.
No more than do the Israeli colonial invader of Palestine.
@thomas molloy: Heavy taxes on agricultural land forced many Jews to migrate from rural areas to towns. Social and economic discrimination caused significant Jewish emigration from Palestine, and Muslim civil wars in the 8th and 9th centuries pushed many Jews out of the country. All killing should stop to help the populations live together.
@thomas molloy: Jews have had a continuous presence in the land of Israel.
While the Romans expelled the majority of Jews in 70 CE, the Jewish people have always been present in the land of Israel. A portion of the Jewish population remained in Israel throughout the years of Jewish exile while the rest settled around the world and became the Jewish diaspora. In particular, Jewish communities existed throughout much of this period in what is known as the Four Holy Cities: Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed (Tzfat), and Tiberias. Jerusalem is the most sacred, known for the Western Wall. Hebron is associated with the Cave of the Patriarchs, the traditional burial site of several important Biblical figures. Safed became the center of Jewish mysticism in the sixteenth century.
@thomas molloy: Yes, Jews have had a continuous existence in the land we call Palestine.
As have all other Palestinians.
That does not give Jews from other lands any right to invade Palestine, engage in terrorism, drive the Palestinian people off their land, and establish a state in the homeland of the Palestinian people, depriving those people of their lands, their homes, and their future.
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