Germany’s refusal to approve a statement calling for an immediate end to Turkey’s exploration in the eastern Mediterranean has prompted Greece, in retaliation, to refuse to support a resolution on the situation in Belarus, wrote the Greek Ekathimerini news platform.

Germany’s decision to side with Turkey occurred during a heated debate at Friday’s meeting of the European Union’s Foreign Affairs Council (FAC).

Monday’s resumption of Turkey’s oil and gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean has exacerbated tensions between Turkey and Greece one again. While Ankara has announced plans to issue new mining licenses, Athens has called on Turkey to withdraw its ships from the Greek islands.

Greece claims that Turkish ships operate in its territorial waters and considers it an illegal operation. Last Wednesday, Athens was supported by France, which sent its warships to the area. Greek ships, along with the French frigate Lafayette and the helicopter ship Tonnerre, then joined a naval exercise in the area where the Turkish exploration is underway.

According to Greek media, Turkish and Greek frigates clashed slightly near the island of Rhodes on Thursday, and Turkish President Recep Erdoğan accused Greece of attacking a reconnaissance ship.

“We said that if they attacked our ship Oruç Reis, they would pay a very high price, they got their answer today,” Erdoğan said, indicating that the first clash had already occurred.

According to the Ekathimerini, a day later he added that one of the ships accompanying Oruç Reis responded to the attack to the necessary extent. However, the Greek side described the alleged clash as a fabrication.

“There was no (subsequent) incident,” a spokesman for the Greek Ministry of Defense told AFP.

Turkey resumed the controversial exploration process on Monday, less than two weeks after the government in Ankara announced its suspension based on diplomatic talks with Greece mediated by Germany.

Turkey once again sent three of its ships to the area between Crete and Cyprus in Greece after Greece signed a maritime agreement with Egypt that defines the maritime borders of the two economic zones.

Similarly, tensions rose last November when Turkey signed an agreement with the UN-recognized Libyan government. The document defined the exclusive economic zone between the Libyan and Turkish coasts, which also extends to the waters near some Greek islands.

At Friday’s FAC teleconference, EU foreign ministers addressed the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean at Greece’s request. However, according to Ekathimerini, the resolution that Greece wanted to enforce called for tougher action against Ankara and an immediate end to Turkish exploration missions, a “blessing” for the agreement between Greece and Egypt.

However, according to diplomatic sources, the German representation refused to sign the statement, mainly because of the deal between Greece and Egypt. Germany, as a mediator between Greece and Turkey, was allegedly upset that the signing of the agreement between Egypt and Greece took place only a day before the planned start of negotiations to resolve the situation.

In a counter move, Greece refused to approve the statement on the results of the Belarusian elections, which led to the fact that the teleconference did not ultimately bring out any statement at all.

However, the head of the EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, described the FAC teleconference as good and constructive on his Twitter, adding to the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean that the ministers “called on Turkey to immediately de-escalate and resume dialogue.”

Turkey was recently sharply criticized by Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg, according to whom the European Union should reconsider its position on Turkey due to the situation.

“I must say that Austria is very concerned about the dangerous and alarming situation that we think could escalate,” said Schallenberg.

Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France was about to increase its military presence in the eastern Mediterranean. In this context, he called on Turkey to end its search for oil and gas in the disputed area, which has led to increased tensions between Ankara and Athens.

In a phone call with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the French president expressed his concern about the unilateral move by resuming exploration, Macron’s office said in a statement.

According to Macron, the exploration should end and there should be a “peaceful dialogue” between two neighboring NATO member states.

As the president’s office added in a statement, France will temporarily strengthen its military presence in the Eastern Mediterranean to better “monitor the situation in the region and thus express its determination to support international law”.

rmx.news/article/article/germany-sides-with-turkey-over-greece-in-gas-exploration-dispute-in-the-mediterranean

The Berlin lawyer Seyran Ates has done some research in the social environment of yesterday’s ” single offender “. There seems to be a lot of the latter. Ates has good reasons for her scepticism towards this kind of culprit and also towards their notorious trivialisation here in Europe. Years ago, she herself was victim of an attack, she was shot in the neck, her companion was killed. She is the target of a fatwa of the Cairo Al Azhar University, with whose Grand Sheikh Al Tayyeb Angela Merkel was blissfully seen at the Protestant Church Congress in 2017, Ates lives under personal protection and under constant danger to her life, she reports the following on Twitter:

Underneath the photo of himself and the crime vehicle, which the alleged A100 attacker of #Berlin posted on Facebook two hours prior to the crime, there were numerous good luck and blessing wishes.

If I were the State Security, I would investigate this now.

He shouted “Allahu Akbar” and threatened with a bomb, shortly after he hit several motorcyclists on the Berlin city motorway A100. Shortly before the crime, he posted comments about the crime on Facebook.

It is Tuesday evening, 6.35 pm, when Sarmad A. (30 years old) starts his terror attack on the Berlin city motorway. Six people are injured, one person suffers an artificial coma on Wednesday. The offender was arrested.

Two hours before his first collision, he showed up on Facebook wearing a red shirt and the Opel car with which he committed the attack shortly afterwards.

He also wore the red shirt on the Facebook photo when he was arrested. He also posted religious slogans.

The 30-year-old Iraqi came to Germany as an asylum seeker. After his asylum application was rejected, he is living in Berlin on a toleration order, the German Press Agency learned from Senate circles on Wednesday.

According to the agency, it was not yet clear when he came to Germany. According to photos from his Facebook profile, he was already in Berlin in 2016 at least. Until autumn 2019, he had been accommodated in a shared accommodation in the Altglienicke district. After that, he moved into an apartment in the Reinickendorf district, where he will most likely live together with his brother.A. is said to have at least had contact with an Islamist known as a threat, the newspaper B.Z. learned from security circles. According to the public prosecutor’s office, there were also indications of psychological problems. So far, no indications of membership in a terrorist organization could be detected. According to the newspaper “Tagesspiegel”, however, A. is to be assigned to the group of ISIS.

After the presumed Islamist attack, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office responsible for terrorism keeps itself informed of all developments. “We are in constant close contact with the investigating authorities in Berlin,” said a spokesperson in Karlsruhe on Wednesday in response to a request.

The Attorney General would be responsible if connections of the man to a terrorist organization were to be revealed.Martin Steltner, spokesman for the Berlin Public Prosecutor General’s Office, spoke at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon of “targeted attacks” on motorcyclists whom A. had literally “hunted down”. He said that a religious Islamic background was assumed. The social environment of the 30-year-old must now be clarified. He also confirmed indications of psychological instability.When asked by the newspaper B.Z., he did not mention a possible connection of the 30-year-old with the Islamist milieu, but said that “every stone would be turned over”.”Based on the current state of knowledge, we believe the attack to be Islamist. A religiously motivated background to the crime cannot be ruled out,” Geisel said on Wednesday. The crashes had been deliberately caused. “The fact that the suspect may have suffered from psychological problems does not make things easier. If personal problems mix with religiously charged ideas, this can lead to uncontrollable actions.”

Geisel further explained: “If a car deliberately hits motorcyclists, the latter have no chance.” He said that innocent people “fell victim to a crime out of nowhere”. Among the three seriously injured was a fireman on his way home. “Yesterday’s events show us very painfully how vulnerable our free society is.” Berlin, he said, “continues to be the focus of Islamist terrorism”.

On Wednesday, A. is scheduled to be brought before a judge for attempted murder.

bz-berlin.de/berlin/anschlag-a100-stadtautobahn-kurz-vor-der-tat-postete-er-ein-foto-mit-dem-terror-auto

By Thomas Lifson

The Democrats are hiding their radical platform and the party’s capitulation to the Sanders-AOC socialists, and instead touting the personality and purported character of Joe Biden as a guarantor of moderation.

It’s a phony appeal, of course, on two counts. One is that the lefty rads are totally in control and they know it.  They just have to keep a low profile and count on the media to hide them and their views.

But the other count is harder to conceal: Joe Biden’s mental decline is severe. Maybe they think that they can limit his spontaneous interactions to interviews with Cardi B and People Magazine (which implies they will try to cancel the scheduled debates). Alzheimer’s is no joke, and a substantial portion of the public knows someone who has been afflicted, so they can recognize the symptoms when they see them in Biden. And that’s a big problem, because while Biden has his moments of lucidity, he also has offered plenty of evidence that he is not the same man he was 5 years ago.

The old gaffe-prone Biden was never the sharpest knife in the drawer, but the video below from the Trump campaign put the lie to the contention that his mental wandering off is just “Joe being Joe.” It is barely over a minute long:

“You can’t beat somebody with nobody” is a political dictum (attributed to Jack Abramoff) that carries a lot of truth. By nominating a candidate whose mental capacity is rapidly falling, the Democrats are trying to beat somebody with nobody.  

This video argues against both counts of the Democrats’ fraud. Biden lacks the focus and energy to keep the radicals reined in, even if that were possible). And his character, even if voters accept the fiction that it is sterling (ignoring his corruption in China, Ukraine and elsewhere), now that nobody is home upstairs, it doesn’t matter.  

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/devastating_trump_campaign_video_portrays_the_dramatic_mental_decline_of_joe_biden_over_the_last_few_years.html#ixzz6VZZRZvMr

Clan criminality in Germany’s most populous federal state, North Rhine Westhpalia, rose by 30 percent last year, with a significant part of the clans consisting of immigrants, the state’s Minister of Interior Herbert Reul said at Monday press conference.

Reul said that the Arab clans are mostly involved in robberies, fraud and organized crime, which indicates that some of these group operate just like the Mafia, according to Hungarian news outlet Magyar Hirlap.

According to a recent report by German magazine Focus, in the state the number of crimes committed last year by clans was 6,104, a 30 percent increase from 2018. Police databases indicate that there are 111 active groups with 3,779 members. Reul said the rise in the number of clan crimes was partly due to the fact that police are now more focused on these types of crime, which indicates that the problem may have been present for a longer period of time than previously thought.

German police and politicians have also expressed their fears over Chechen clans, many of whom are involved with organized crime and a series of revenge attacks.

“There were problems with Chechens in other cities, especially in places where refugee applicants were concentrated,” said Brandenburg Interior Minister Karl-Heinz Schröter. “They are expressed in the conflicts between immigrants from Chechnya and other nationalities which involved whole groups of people who actually live in other areas of Germany immediately gathering. They were mobilized to respond by a member of the group who felt slighted, and sometimes it resulted in assaults.”

According to a report by Die Welt, five police officers were injured in Berlin’s Neukölln district on Monday, when the officers attempted to break up a street fight and were attacked by local residents. Police had to use tear gas to disperse the attackers and get the situation under control.

Neukölln is known for having the highest percentage of immigrants of all twelve Berlin boroughs and a number of Kurdish and Arab clans, some of which have been involved in high-profile murders. 

In another incident on Aug. 8, Berlin daily Tagesspiegel reported that while investigating the rape of a 15-year-old girl at a bathing lake near the German capital’s Tegel airport, the first responding police units had been attacked by bathers who threw bottles at them, forcing them to withdraw. They eventually managed to get the situation under control when a police intervention unit arrived.

While a police spokesman said the identity of the attackers was unknown as they only wore swimming trunks, Tagesspiegel noted that the attackers were of immigrant background. The 15-year-old victim was taken to a nearby hospital for medical checks and police also made an appeal to other potential victims to file complaints.

rmx.news/article/article/arab-clan-crime-rate-up-30-percent-in-german-state-of-north-rhine-westphalia

This video of a police operation in the central station of Hanover causes a lot of discussion on the net!

Following the arrest of a suspected Turkish-born purse-snatcher (31 years old) from Gifhorn on Sunday evening, there were tumultuous clashes with bystanders who were watching the scene.

According to the police, three youths (15,16,19 years old) disrupted the arrest and ignored pronounced restraining orders. Officials tried to arrest the rabble-rousing trio as well. But the three resisted violently. The 16-year-old and the 19-year-old managed to free their younger buddy from the grip of a policeman – the 15-year-old ran away.

According to the BILD newspaper, the two-minute lasting video apparently started exactly at the moment when the three young men started to fight with the policemen.

When an officer pushed away a young woman who was interfering, bystanders reacted with indignation. They discussed agitatedly with the security forces from the police, federal police and security.

The rioting attracted so many onlookers that the police had to issue about 200 sending-off orders!The 16-year-old Iranian and the 19-year-old Turkish man are under investigation for, among other things, resisting law enforcement officers, assault, insulting and releasing prisoners. The 16-year-old is also under investigation for violation of the weapons law. Officials had found a nightstick and a switchblade on him.

The fugitive 15-year-old apparently committed further crimes after his escape. Shortly after the incident at the central station, he is said to have spat at a passenger (68 years old) in a bus because the passenger had asked him about his missing face mask.

On Monday morning, the young German-Turkish man is said to have threatened someone with a knife in the Linden-Nord district with an accomplice (18 years old). This time, too, he offered considerable resistance to his arrest, insulted the officers.

Because of his highly violent behaviour, a possible influence of drugs on the adolescent was suspected, among other things, so he was examined by a doctor and a blood sample was taken. The results are still pending.

At present, the police are also evaluating the mobile phone video of the passer-by on the incident. Did the officers react appropriately to the arrest disturbers? Police spokesman Martin Richter: “An evaluation of the operation is currently taking place. For this reason, no detailed statement on this operation can be made at this time. According to the current status, no one has filed charges against the police officers involved.

bild.de/regional/hannover/hannover-aktuell/200-platzverweise-messer-junge-15-sorgt-fuer-tumult-im-hauptbahnhof-72442550.bild.html###wt_ref=https%3A%2F%2Fm.bild.de%2F&wt_t=1597841903731

In the church of St. Mary Magdalene in the street Magdalenenstraße in Gernsheim (photo) criminals ran amok between Saturday evening ( August 15) and Tuesday evening ( August 18).

According to initial findings, the unidentified persons gained access to the church rooms by force. Once inside, they damaged several parts of the church furniture. In addition to four silver-plated candlesticks, the criminals also captured a cross. The total damage is estimated at several thousand euros.

Anyone who has made suspicious observations during this period or can give clues as to the whereabouts of the stolen items is asked to contact the police in Gernsheim by calling 06258/93430.

presseportal.de/blaulicht/pm/4969/4683585

by Giulio Meotti

The evolution of cancel culture is called self-cancellation. At the first signs of criticism and to avoid being overwhelmed by stigmas, writers have begun to eliminate their own work.Alexandra Duncan had the cover of “Ember Days” ready. The novel was to be published by Greenwillow, which is part of the global publishing giant HarperCollins. But the author withdrew it. The problem? The novel is about a Gullah African American, but Duncan is white. The tweeters had already begun to attack her.The author initially tried to defend her work. Then the failure. “My view of the world is as limited as a white person. I am deeply ashamed of having made a mistake.”“The mood is becoming so militant that you are no longer allowed to write from the perspective of anyone other than yourself,” observes the literary agent Natasha Fairweather.

The Duncan affair could be dismissed as a case of personal mythomania, were it not that there are already many similar cases.

Amélie Wen Zhao was ready with the novel “Blood Heir,” a fantasy saga for teenagers, and had already sold it to Random House Children’s Books with a half-million dollar contract. But some critics, who had read the drafts, dismissed the novel as “racist,” so Zhao withdrew the book. Zhao had the audacity to talk about a world in which not only blacks are slaves, there are slaves and that’s it.

Keira Drake in “The Continent” centered the plot on a white girl who saves everyone. An unlikely heroine in times of “white privilege.” So, accused of “racial paternalism,” Drake withdrew the book.

The publication of the novel “When We Were Fierce” by E. E. Charlton-Trujillo, author of the award-winning “Fat Angie,” has been postponed by the author and publisher following criticism. The author apologized for “racial insensitivity.”

Kosoko Jackson, an African American and Lgbt writer, was about to come out with “A Place for Wolves,” the story of two homosexuals in the former Yugoslavia. After allegations of “cultural insensitivity,” Jackson also asked the publisher, Sourcebooks, to cancel the release.

One of the writers who signed the letter in Harper’s Magazine against “cancel culture”, Salman Rushdie, was overwhelmed thirty years ago by an Iranian fatwa that ordered the cancellation of the “Satanic Verses” under penalty of physical cancellation of the author himself. Rushdie was left alone by many European publishers who shivered in fear, from the French Christian Bourgois to the German Kiepenheuer.

Today it is the writers themselves, and not a few publishers, who cancel themselves in the name of another type of fear.

We are in the plot of “A too noisy solitude” by Bohumil Hrabal, the writer in disgrace for a long time and under forced oblivion in the former Communist Czechoslovakia, which tells of a man who for thirty-five years worked on the shredding of banned books, pressing them in parallelepipeds of paper.

When cancelling someone was decreed by dictatorships, not idiotic democracies, courage, not today’s abject cowardice, abounded.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/285536