Several US missile warships, over 800 sailors and a Navy SEALs team have arrived in the Black Sea to take part in the 12-day Sea Breeze 2017 naval exercise off Ukraine, which will include maritime forces from 16 countries.
The multinational war games are taking place in the northwestern part of the Black Sea near the Ukrainian port city of Odessa. They will feature 31 vessels, 29 aircraft and over 3,000 troops, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said on Monday.
Naval forces from 16 nations, including the US, Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Norway, Poland and Turkey will practice “planning and conducting operations in compliance with NATO standards,” focusing on anti-submarine and anti-ship warfare, air defense, mine clearance and hostage rescue.
The US Navy has sent its Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser ‘USS Hue City’ and the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer ‘USS Carney’, along with a P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft, the Sixth Fleet said in a press release.
Bomb disposal teams from the Naval Special Warfare Unit 2, otherwise known as Navy SEALs, as well as combat divers are also expected to arrive in Ukraine, as are some 800 US sailors and marines.
"We’re building strong relationships here which are crucial to peace and stability in the region,” said Captain Dan Gillen, a commanding officer of the ‘USS Hue City’.
“Our presence and participation in Sea Breeze bolsters confidence and reassures our allies and regional partners of our commitment to security in the Black Sea,” he added.
A hundred Islamists are now openly enforcing Sharia law on the streets of Berlin, according to local police who are investigating a recent string of violent assaults in the German capital.
The self-appointed morality police involve Salafists from Chechnya, a predominantly Sunni Muslim region in Russia. The vigilantes are using threats of violence to discourage Chechen migrants from integrating into German society; they are also promoting the establishment of a parallel Islamic legal system in Germany. German authorities appear unable to stop them.
The Sharia patrol came to public light in May 2017, when Chechen Salafists released a video warning other Chechens in Germany that those who fail to comply with Islamic law and adat, a traditional Chechen code of behavior, will be killed. The video's existence was reported by Meduza, a Russian-language independent media organization based in Latvia. The video, which circulated through WhatsApp, an online messaging service, showed a hooded man aiming a pistol at the camera. Speaking in Chechen, he declared:
Chechens interviewed by Meduza said that expectations for behavior are more rigid and strict in among Chechen emigrants in Germany than in Chechnya itself. This situation has been described as "a competition in righteousness" between Chechens living abroad and those in Chechnya who are loyal to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov: each party is seeking to prove that they are the better Chechens, and threats of violence against "errant" women are viewed as "acts of patriotism."
Is Bill Gates a Nazi, racist, "Islamophobe" or fascist? As PG Wodehouse's most famous butler would have said, "The eventuality would appear to be a remote one". So far nobody in any position of influence has made such claims about the world's largest philanthropist. Possibly -- just possibly -- something is changing in Europe.
In an interview published July 2 in the German paper Welt Am Sonntag, the co-founder of Microsoft addressed the ongoing European migration crisis. What he said was surprising:
"On the one hand you want to demonstrate generosity and take in refugees. But the more generous you are, the more word gets around about this -- which in turn motivates more people to leave Africa. Germany cannot possibly take in the huge number of people who are wanting to make their way to Europe."
These words would be uncontroversial to the average citizen of Europe. The annual survey of EU citizens recently carried out by Project 28 found a unanimity on the issue of migration almost unequalled across an entire continent. The survey found, for instance, that 76% of the public across the EU believe that the EU's handling of the migration crisis of recent years has been "poor". There is not one country in the EU in which the majority of the public differs from this consensus. In countries such as Italy and Greece, which have been on the frontline of the crisis of recent years, that figure rockets up. In these countries, nine out of ten citizens think that the EU has handled the migrant crisis poorly.
How could they think otherwise? The German government's 2015 announcement that normal asylum and border procedures were no longer in operation exacerbated an already disastrous situation. The populations of Germany and Sweden increased by 2% in one year alone because of that influx of migrants. These are monumental changes to happen at such a speed to any society.
Muslim immigrant women who have adopted a Western lifestyle are particular targets of gangs of Muslim men in certain parts of Germany who have emigrated in the past three years from the Muslim-majority Russian state of Chechnya, including Berlin, reports Der Taggespiegel.
A video of an armed man in a hood began circulating in the Chechen community in March.
“Here, in Europe, certain Chechen women and men who look like women do unspeakable things. You know it; I know it; everybody knows it,” he declared, according to the Latvia-based Russian language news aggregator Meduza.
He said Chechen women “who flirt with men of other ethnic groups and marry them, Chechen women who have chosen the wrong path and those [creatures] who call themselves Chechen men – given half a chance, we will set all of them straight.”
“Having sworn on the Quran, we go out onto the streets. This is our declaration of intent; do not say that you were not warned; do not say that you did not know.”
Meduza interviewed a woman who was targeted after the Shariah enforcers videoed her walking down the street with a non-Chechen man. When the gang showed up at her door, she hid, but the man was brutally beaten, losing almost all of his teeth.
“Why does my private life concern [them] at all?” the woman asked, according to Meduza. “I don’t know them. I don’t want to. I’m not their sister or daughter. My private life is no one else’s business.”
On Sunday, Venezuela’s opposition marked one hundred days since a series of daily protests against the socialist government, triggered by the Supreme Court’s aborted attempt to replace the National Assembly and install itself as the national legislative body.
During those hundred days, beginning in late March, over one hundred people have died and an untold number of others arrested for peacefully assembling against the government. According to the Venezuelan outlet Runrun.es, 108 people ranging in age from 14 to 54 have been killed since the latest wave of protests began, mostly students in their late teens and early 20s. The government has not prosecuted anyone over these deaths in nearly 90 percent of cases.
Protesters have largely remained peaceful as dictator Nicolás Maduro ordered the nation’s Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) to attack civilians with tear gas and rubber bullets and, in some cases, run civilians over with armored tanks. Opposition leaders in the National Assembly are demanding the liberation of all political prisoners, free and fair elections, and the full restoration of the democratic order. In response, Maduro has created a parallel legislature tasked with drafting a new constitution that would greatly expand his powers.
In what appeared to some an attempt to preempt hundred-day protests on Sunday, the government transferred the nation’s most prominent political prisoner, Leopoldo López, to house arrest on Saturday, citing health concerns. López, the head of the opposition party Popular Will, was sentenced to nearly 14 years in prison in 2015 for organizing peaceful protests; his wife, Lilian Tintori, says he was tortured shortly before his release and has lost some of his eyesight.
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