Russia's Northern Fleet marines will undergo special training in 2015 for military activities in the Arctic, Northern Fleet spokesperson Vadim Serga said Thursday.
In 2015, the Independent Marine Infantry Brigade of the Northern Fleet's United Strategic Command will focus on training in the Arctic, Serga said.
The planned exercises are aimed at increasing the proficiency of military personnel deployed on the coast of the Arctic Ocean and in other Arctic areas. The marines will practice parachute jumping and the use of small arms and artillery inside the Arctic Circle.
In December 2014, Russia unveiled a revised military doctrine prioritizing the protection of national interests in the Arctic. The region, which is believed to have vast reserves of oil and gas, has been the focus of attention for four other nations bordering the area: the United States, Canada, Norway and Denmark.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in December that the country is not planning to militarize the Arctic, but is taking the necessary measures to ensure its defense capabilities in the region.
North Korea has displayed its cyberattack capabilities and advances toward making nuclear warheads, the country's adversaries say. Now, the North appears to have shown progress in fitting submarines with missile launchers.
A report posted on Thursday on the website of 38north, a prominent research group that focuses on North Korea, said commercial satellite imagery of a North Korean submarine, taken less than a month ago, indicates the vessel may have one or two vertical launching tubes for either ballistic or cruise missiles.
The submarine, first seen last July, could be an experimental test bed for underwater missile launching, which would be harder to detect than land-based launchers, the report said. It was written by Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., an arms expert and authority on North Korea's defence capabilities.
"North Korea's development of a submarine-launched missile capability would eventually expand Pyongyang's threat to South Korea, Japan and US bases in East Asia, also complicating regional missile defence planning, deployment and operations."
U.S. weapons intended for Iraq’s beleaguered military are winding up in the possession of the country’s Shiite militias, according to U.S. lawmakers and senior officials in the Barack Obama administration. These sources say that the Baghdad government, which was granted $1.2 billion in training and equipment aid in the omnibus spending bill passed last month, is turning hardware over to Shiite militias that are heavily influenced by Iran and have been guilty of gross human-rights violations.
One senior administration official told us that the U.S. government is aware of this, but is caught in a dilemma. The flawed Iraqi security forces are unable to fight Islamic State without the aid of the militias, who are often trained and sometimes commanded by officers from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. And yet, if the U.S. stopped sending arms to the Iraqi military, things would get even worse, with IS overrunning more of the country and committing human-rights horrors on a broader scale. The risk of not aiding them was greater than the risk of aiding them, the official said, adding that this didn't mean the administration was unconcerned about the risks involved.
The official added that while the government in Baghdad under new Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi has been more responsive to U.S. concerns about weapons transfers than the previous government of Nouri al-Maliki, it has not been vigilant enough.
On Facebook, members of Iraqi Shiite militias proudly display American arms, such as this photofrom October of an M1A1 Abrams tank draped in a Hezbollah flag:
Washington was hopeful that new regime would be more capable and responsive to its concerns, but already there have been some obvious red flags. For example, Iraq’s new interior minister, Mohammed al-Ghabban, was a senior official in Iraq’s Badr militia, an organization U.S. officials have privately suspected of launching attacks on hundreds of Sunni Iraqis over last decade.
Andrew Parker said Al Qaeda terrorists in Syria were trying to direct atrocities here and planning “mass casualty attacks” against the West.
His chilling warning came as French police continued the hunt for brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, chief suspects in the Paris magazine massacre in which 12 people were shot dead.
Mr Parker, 52, warned that the terrorist threat was growing at the same time as MI5’s ability to track terrorists was being reduced.
Extremists are finding more secretive ways of communicating online and avoiding being tracked by the security services.
Mr Parker said: “If we are to have the best chance of preventing such harm, we need the capability to shine a light into the activities of the worst individuals who pose the gravest threats.
Britain’s terror alert remains at the second highest level of “severe”, which means an attack is highly likely.
In the UK four serious plots, ranging from lone wolf attacks to major terrorist operations, are known to have been foiled in the past year.
Mr Parker, who directed Britain’s response to the July 2005 London bombings, said the number of British extremists who have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight as jihadis has risen to 600 with half of them already back home.
About 40 are known to have been killed in action, mainly fighting for Islamic State, which Mr Parker described as “visceral” in its brutality and indulging in “the very worst imaginable forms of treatment of other human beings”.
Eastern Ukraine is nearing a humanitarian catastrophe, as residents struggle to get food and medicine, rights group Amnesty International told Reuters. The UN refugee watchdog added that the elderly in the region could be severely hit by Kiev’s policies.
People in the southeastern Lugansk and Donetsk regions are struggling financially and are barely scraping by, according to the deputy director of Europe and Central Asia at Amnesty International, Denis Krivosheev.
“While it may be too early to call this a humanitarian catastrophe, it’s clearly progressing in that direction,” Krivosheev said, adding that pensioners are the most vulnerable part of the population.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) also expressed major concern for the elderly, pointing to Kiev’s dangerous decision to transfer payouts of social benefits and pensions to government-controlled areas.
According to UN figures, around 5.2 million people in Ukraine are living in conflict zones. Of that number, 1.4 million are in very vulnerable conditions and require assistance as they struggle with the cold winter, money problems, and lack of services.
Moreover, Krivosheev stressed that aid sent to southeastern Ukraine from Russia and other countries – such as food and medicine – is often stifled by pro-Kiev private armies that are preventing it from reaching those in need, with the goal of starving the population there.
“Attempting to create unbearable conditions of life is a whole new ballgame...using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is a war crime,” Krivosheev said.
He described the private armies as “renegade gangs” which need to be handled.
Some of the latest data from Ukraine points to a massive movement of people, with over one million forced to leave their homes.
Figures from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) show that 610,000 people have been uprooted in Ukraine and 594,000 have been forced to leave the country as refugees.
What follows is the dark corner of the reality known as Islamization. A radicalized progression whereby all countries on the face of the Earth are intended to be under Sharia Law. In light of the events in Paris, these clips speak for themselves.
Christian persecution across the globe has reached a new high in modern times and the worse may be yet to come, according to a report from the Christian watchdog group Open Doors. The group issued on Wednesday their latest World Watch List, which ranks countries based on their hostility to Christians. They said their research indicated worldwide persecution of Christians was particularly rampant last year and only increasing.
Today, Open Doors released its annual World Watch List, which ranks the top 50 countries where it is most dangerous and difficult to be a Christian. This year, the threshold was higher for a country to make the list, indicating that worldwide levels of persecution have increased. Topping the 2015 list for the 13th consecutive year is North Korea. Africa saw the most rapid growth of persecution, while the Middle East saw targeted attacks, resulting in a mass exodus of Christians.
Approximately 100 million Christians are persecuted worldwide, making them one of the most persecuted religious groups in the world. Islamic extremism is the main source of persecution in 40 of the 50 countries on the 2015 World Watch List. While persecution can take many forms, Christians throughout the world risk imprisonment, torture, rape and even death as result of their faith.
“Even Christian-majority states are experiencing unprecedented levels of exclusion, discrimination and violence,” said David Curry, president and CEO of Open Doors USA. “The 2015 World Watch List reveals that a staggering number of Christians are becoming victims of intolerance and violence because of their faith. They are being forced to be more secretive about their faith.”
While violent persecution is most often reported by media, nonviolent persecution is also on the rise. Violence has increased dramatically in Iraq, Syria and Nigeria, but Christians in other countries are experiencing persecution in their personal lives through family, community and national spheres of life. Christians are often ostracized by family exclusion, the loss of a job or even rejection from a community.
“The goal of the World Watch List is to keep Christian persecution on the radar of those enjoying the privileges of freedom,” said Curry. “The perpetrators of persecution need to know that the world is watching and stands in opposition to persecution. And for the persecuted, we want them to know that they are not forgotten.”
When Islamic terrorists expressly tell their victims why they’re being attacked, our mainstream media will do anything to cover it up. They’ll change the subject, they’ll blame the victims… they’ll even stealth-edit* their own copy.
Here’s the latest example of the New York Times censoring itself to avoid offending Muslims after an act of Islamic terror. This morning, BenK at Ace of Spades quoted an NYT story by Liz Alderman titled “Survivors Retrace a Scene of Horror at Charlie Hebdo.” Take note of these two paragraphs from that story:
Sigolène Vinson, a freelancer who had decided to come in that morning to take part in the meeting, thought she would be killed when one of the men approached her.
Instead, she told French news media, the man said, “I’m not going to kill you because you’re a woman, we don’t kill women, but you must convert to Islam, read the Quran and cover yourself,” she recalled.
I was intrigued by this quote, and it seemed worth exploring, so I went to the NYT story to quote it. But guess what?
Here’s what it says now:
Ms. Vinson said in an interview that she dropped to the floor and crawled down the hall to hide behind a partition, but one of the gunmen spotted her and grabbed her by the arm, pointing his gun at her head. Instead of pulling the trigger, though, he told her she would not be killed because she was a woman.
Nothing about telling her to convert to Islam. Nothing about telling her to read the Quran. Nothing about telling her to cover her face.“Don’t be afraid, calm down, I won’t kill you,” the gunman told her in a steady voice, with a calm look in his eyes, she recalled. “You are a woman. But think about what you’re doing. It’s not right.”
So, imagine yourself as an NYT editor for a moment, if you can withstand the nausea. Why would you specifically take out the part about the Islamic terrorist proselytizing for Islam in the middle of the terrorist attack? Why delete this woman’s account of being threatened at gunpoint and being told to convert to Islam?
That’s easy. Because you’re one of America’s moral, ethical, and intellectual betters, and you don’t want it to be true. Your reporter hastily left that inconvenient truth in her story by accident, so you airbrushed it out, without any acknowledgment, to preserve the narrative. You turned it into, “Hey, maybe these guys aren’t so bad after all. They didn’t kill the women, right? Let’s not be too hasty.”
Billionaire investor George Soros has called for the European Union to provide Ukraine with $50bn (£33bn) of economic aid and warned that sanctions against Russia may fail to rein in Vladimir Putin.
"Sanctions hurt not only the country on which they are imposed but also the countries that impose them," said Mr Soros in an essay in the New York Review of Books. "By contrast, all the consequences of helping Ukraine would be positive."
According to the financier, the EU's Balance of Payments Assistance facility and the European Financial Stability Mechanism have unused funds of $47.5bn and $15.8bn respectively. These could be used to support Ukraine by modifying their respective regulations by a qualified majority upon a proposal by the European Commission, he said.
"Europe needs to wake up and recognize that it is under attack from Russia," writes Mr Soros. "Assisting Ukraine should also be considered as a defense expenditure by the EU countries. Framed this way, the amounts currently contemplated shrink into insignificance."
"If the international authorities fail to come up with an impressive assistance program in response to an aggressive Ukrainian reform program, the new Ukraine will probably fail, Europe will be left on its own to defend itself against Russian aggression, and Europe will have abandoned the values and principles on which the European Union was founded. That will be an irreparable loss," he said.
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