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Top Brit think tank: Brexit offers 'serious blow' to TTIP

Steve MacMillan
New Eastern Outlook
Wed, 20 Jul 2016 00:00 UTC
TTIP woman
© www.breitbart.com
The tyrannical corporate trade deal, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), is increasingly facing a multitude of challenges that threaten to derail the entire agreement. With negotiations officially beginning in 2013, US trade officials were arrogantly forecasting that a deal would have been reached by the end of 2014. Today in 2016, 14 rounds of intense negotiations later, there is a serious potential that a deal will not be reached by the end of this year, if at all.

There are, and will continue to be, many implications of the momentous Brexit vote; but one implication that has got less media coverage than it deserves is how it further impedes and complicates TTIP negotiations. In an article for one of the most influential organisations in the UK, the Royal Institute for International Affairs (or Chatham House), Geo-Economics Fellow, Marianne Schneider-Petsinger, admits that the Brexit vote is a "serious blow" to the chances of TTIP being concluded in the immediate future. Petsinger argues that as Britain was one of greatest advocates for TTIP within the EU, the US has lost an important partner who shares Washington's fervour for corporate fascism. Petsinger adds that even though a British exit from the EU will severely delay negotiations, TTIP will still survive the vote.

Comment: TTIP: Corpocratic government with license to abolish all that does not serve its purpose. That Brexit was accomplished by the Brits, shows a renewal in public involvement, a resolve to challenge and win over authority that doesn't support the majority and a will to remain independent and democratic (if that is even still a semi-operating concept).

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Light Sabers

Theresa May's statements on "Russian threat" criticized by Kremlin and Jeremy Corbyn


RT
Wed, 20 Jul 2016 16:24 UTC
theresa may
© Neil Hall / Reuters
Moscow has countered the statements made by new British PM Theresa May on Monday. She addressed lawmakers saying that there is a "real" danger from Russia as she pushed for the renewal of the UK's nuclear deterrent.

"The Kremlin regrets the statement of the Prime Minister," said Dmitry Peskov, the presidential spokesperson, as cited by TASS. "Russia is one of the main guarantees of international stability as well as nuclear and strategic security, it is an absolutely indisputable fact," he added.

Peskov also recalled that Moscow "very actively participates" in the process of nuclear non-proliferation.

Russia, along with the US, is part of a Treaty for Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (START), signed in 2010 between US President Barack Obama and then-Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev. The treaty expires in 2021.
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Wall Street

Just a drop in the bucket: Federal agents surprised an HSBC official in arrest for FX rigging probe

Tom Schoenberg and Patricia Hurtado
Bloomberg
Wed, 20 Jul 2016 16:05 UTC
HSBC bank
Federal agents surprised an HSBC Holdings Plc executive as he prepared to fly out of New York's Kennedy airport late Tuesday, arresting him for an alleged front-running scheme involving a $3.5 billion currency transaction, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Mark Johnson, HSBC's global head of foreign exchange cash trading in London, was held in a Brooklyn jail overnight and will appear in court Wednesday, one of the people said, asking not to be identified because the details of his arrest aren't public. The U.S. unsealed charges against him and Stuart Scott, the bank's former head of currency trading in Europe, making them the first individuals to be charged in the long-running probe.

The arrest and charges are a coup for the Justice Department, which has struggled to build cases against individuals in its investigation into foreign-exchange trading at global banks. U.S. prosecutors once had so much confidence in the quality of evidence they were gathering thanks to undercover cooperators that in September 2014, then-Attorney General Eric Holder said he expected charges against individuals within months. The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority also found it difficult to make cases against currency traders and announced in March that it was dropping its efforts.
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Chess

Turkey neglected the Gulen network, did not see a need to fight it


Sputnik
Wed, 20 Jul 2016 15:48 UTC
Turkey coup
© Reuters/ Murad Sezer
In an interview with Sputnik, retired Major General Ahmet Yavuz pointed the finger at high-ranking Turkish military officials who he said turned a deaf ear to ongoing warnings of Fethullah Gulen supporters acting within the Turkish army. The interview came after Turkish authorities said late last week that an attempted military coup had taken place in the country, which they blamed on a group led by Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, who currently lives in self-imposed exile in the United States.

For his part, the former chief of the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces Necdet Ozel told Turkish television last week that officers supporting Gulen had managed to blend in well, "otherwise we would have excluded them from the army." Commenting on that, Yavuz admitted that "everyone showed negligence, including me" and that "if there is a problem, I have to ask what my share of responsibility had been."

"Commanders cannot justify themselves by making statements that they had no specific reasons. We did not see a genuine drive to fight the Gulen movement. We have talked about the Gulen group developing within the army for years, but no one listened to us," he said. While suggesting that all those involved in last week's military coup were members of the Gulen organization, Yavuz at the same time warned against jumping to conclusions.

Comment: Gulen's organization within the Turkish government is just code for the US dominance throughout Turkey's political, judicial, and military systems. Such a vast network isn't possible to be run by a rogue preacher out of a small Pennsylvania town. Yavuz gave a pretty clear nod to US/NATO participation when he spoke of the group's "military intelligence capabilities." Turkey accepted this influence until the failed coup attempt. The network and the players involved were obviously known by the Turkish leadership, which is evident by the quick apprehension of this fifth column.

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Eye 2

Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia: A faith anchored in hate and bigotry backed by the West

Catherine Shakdam
The Duran
Tue, 19 Jul 2016 15:48 UTC
wahhabism
© Muhammad Hamed
While world nations remain mostly oblivious to the crippling danger presented by Saudi Arabia - a nation which wealth has shielded it from criticism, and whose leaders have stood immune from legal pursuits, the Kingdom has a lot to answer to ...

Actually it is not so much Saudi Arabia as a political construct which should worry you, but rather the faith it has leaned on to draw legitimacy from: Wahhabism.

Born in the desert of Nejd in the 18th century - an unwelcoming stretch of land which for centuries has echoed from the war cries of looters and tribal warlords, Wahhabism came into the world courtesy of one self-professed Islamic erudite: Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhab. A follower of Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn Abdul-Wahhad imagined himself a religious authority so grand that only his teachings could be deemed worthy - a sanctity onto Islam, the one school of thought to surpass all others, and in shame bind them!

Or so he claimed ...or so he made others believe!

An ascetic, violent and reactionary faith, Wahhabism is not just anchored in bloodshed, it has been weaved around hate, bred on exclusion, and grown on ignorant bigotry.
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Radar

Nusra Front terrorist group launches deadly missile attack on Golan Heights


Sputnik
Wed, 20 Jul 2016 15:39 UTC
Golan Heights shelling
© AFP 2016/ JALAA MAREY
Nusra Front launched two missiles that killed several civilians in Quneitra province in the Golan Heights, according to a source.

The Nusra Front terrorist group targeted the Syrian city of Al-Baath in Quneitra province in the Golan Heights with high explosive yield missiles, resulting in the death of civilians, an informed source told Sputnik on Wednesday.

"Jabhat al-Nusra [Nusra Front] has launched two missiles with a substance that provides a high explosive power. Several civilians were killed in the assault on the town of Al-Baath," the source said.

Comment: This incident will give Israel an excuse for occupying the Golan Heights.

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Vader

Erdogan tightening grip around Turkey in wake of failed coup

Finian Cunningham
Sputnik
Mon, 18 Jul 2016 15:25 UTC
erdogan
© AFP 2016/ ADEM ALTAN
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is moving rapidly to tighten autocratic hold on power in the wake of the failed coup over the weekend.

This consolidation of power is raising tensions with the US and European Union, with concerns that the president's resort to repression will bring his Western partners into disrepute.

The West may be vexed by Erdogan's truculence, but the strategic importance of his regime for both the US-led NATO military alliance and the EU suggest that they will turn a blind to his excesses - even if those excesses involve further violation of democratic rights.


Comment: The US behavior towards Saudi Arabia and Israel, two allies who are well-known for their cruel human rights practices, should make it clear that the US could care less whether Erdogan turns Turkey into a dictatorship, as long as he capitulates to US interests.


Washington's NATO agenda of encircling, undermining Russia; and the EU's desperate need to halt the influx of refugees mean that Erdogan knows he can crackdown at will. The West may mouth misgivings, but in the end their priority concerns have little to do with international law or democratic rights. And the savvy Erdogan knows that.

There are reports that Erdogan private jet was nearly blown out of the skies by F-16 fighter jets flown by coup-plotters. Such reports lend Erdogan heroic kudos and greater license to crackdown on opponents.
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Jet5

Syria outraged over 'bloody massacres of 120 civilians perpetrated by the US and France', appeals to UN


RT
Wed, 20 Jul 2016 15:18 UTC
U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle
© US AIR FORCE / Reuters
A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle
Syria is demanding the UN take action after it says French war planes killed more than 120 civilians during airstrikes on Tuesday near the Turkish-Syrian border. The deaths came just a day after US air assaults killed a further 20 people in Manbij. The Syrian Foreign Ministry sent letters to the UN secretary general and to the president of the UN Security Council, which at present is Japan. Damascus wants the organization to look into atrocities committed by France, which is a member of the US-led international coalition, after it targeted the village of Toukhan Al-Kubra, located near the Turkish-Syrian border and the city of Manbij.

"The French unjust aggression claimed the lives of more than 120 civilians, most of them are children, women and elderly, in addition to tens of wounded citizens, the majority of them are also children and women as reports say that the fate of scores of other civilians who still under debris are unknown too," the Syrian Foreign Ministry wrote, as cited by the Syrian Arab News Agency. The mass death toll in Toukhan Al-Kubra came just a day after US war planes killed around 20 people, mainly women and children, while many more were injured in and around the city of Manbij, the Foreign Ministry states.
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Airplane

MH-17 - the gift that keeps on giving: Two years and counting of anti-Russian propaganda

Robert Parry
Consortium News
Sun, 17 Jul 2016 14:58 UTC
BUK MH17 Ukraine Russia

A photograph of a Russian BUK missile system that U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt published on Twitter in support of a claim about Russia placing BUK missiles in eastern Ukraine, except that the image appears to be an AP photo taken at an air show near Moscow two years earlier.
Two years ago, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot out of the sky over eastern Ukraine killing 298 people and opening an inviting path for a propaganda campaign toward a new Cold War with Russia.

Perhaps it's only fitting that as we reach the second anniversary of the horrific shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flights 17, The New York Times would mark the occasion by once more using the tragedy as a propaganda club to advance the neocon goal of a new, costly and very dangerous Cold War with Russia.

On Saturday, the Times again demonstrated its disdain for normal journalistic practices as it picked up an amateur assertion that the Russians had faked satellite imagery showing Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile systems in eastern Ukraine before the civilian airliner was blown out of the sky on July 17, 2014.

Since that moment, the Times and other mainstream Western publications have been determined to pin the blame for the deaths of 298 people on Russian President Vladimir Putin so the world could plunge ahead into the latest neocon scheme of destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia with the eventual aim of "regime change" in Moscow.

As revolting as it has been to watch the deaths of innocents exploited in the name of big-power geopolitics, what has been most troubling from a journalistic perspective is that the Times has cast aside any pretense of professional objectivity, much as it did during the deception of the American public over Iraq's fictitious weapons of mass destruction in 2002-2003.
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Footprints

Murder of Ukrainian journalist Pavel Sheremet reminiscent of how 'old- style Latin American dictatorship killed opponents'


RT
Wed, 20 Jul 2016 15:00 UTC
Journalist Pavel Sheremet
© Ramil Sitdikov / Sputnik
Journalist Pavel Sheremet
If you are trying to report the facts from the war-torn regions in Donbass, or trying to pass along any sort of objective news that goes against the official line, then you are very much in peril working in Ukraine now, political analyst Aleksandar Pavic told RT. Prominent journalist Pavel Sheremet has been killed by a car bomb in Ukraine's capital Kiev. Ukraine's Interior Ministry says the bomb may have been detonated remotely. Pavel Sheremet worked in both Russia and Ukraine and had lived in Kiev for the last five years.

RT: Do you think Sheremet's death may have been caused by his work as a journalist?

Aleksandar Pavic: Judging by what has been happening in Ukraine ever since the coup on Maidan I think it is definitely linked with his journalistic work. This isn't the first time we had a journalist being targeted in Ukraine over the past couple of years. We had a prominent journalist killed last year, only several days after his name, address and personal details were published on a website which is supported by, among other factors, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry. So, I think this definitely could be linked to at least parts of the Ukrainian state, and to Sheremet's work as a journalist.
"Ukraine is a dangerous place. We could have thought Ukraine would be more peaceful since the so-called ceasefire but it appears that Ukraine still is not safe. Even Kiev, the capital, which is supposed to be more peaceful than Donbass or the Southern region of Ukraine." - Bruno Drweski, professor at the National Institute of Languages and Eastern Civilizations
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