The European Union must prepare for the possible failure of Brexit trade talks with the UK, Angela Merkel has said.

Speaking in the German parliament the chancellor said negotiations were being accelerated to try and reach a deal in the autumn that could be ratified by the end of the year. But she told the Bundestag that the EU "must and should prepare for a situation in which an agreement does not happen". She added:

"The progress made during the negotiations have been, to put it mildly, minimal. With Great Britain, we have agreed to speed up these negotiations to be able to agree on a deal in autumn, which would then also need to be ratified until the end of the year."

Her warning comes as the deadline for extending talks passes, with negotiations now surely set to end on 31 December with or without a deal.

Both side met face-to-face for the first time in months on Monday as UK negotiators travelled to Brussels. Previously rounds of talks have been held via videolink because of the pressures of the cornavirus pandemic.

With tectonic changes, reflected largely through a massive decline in Saudi influence, taking place within the 'Muslim world', a potent struggle for new dominance has already begun. The symbolic and actual battlefield is Libya, gateway to a big part of the Muslim world in Africa. While a number of countries — Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Russia, France — are involved directly and indirectly in the 'Libyan saga', Turkey's involvement is not only deeper than all but also the most ambitious one. Turkey, unlike other countries, is not merely a supporter of a particular regime or a political faction; its presence is rooted in its ambitions to reassert and re-establish Turkey's Ottoman era dominance and become the leader of the entire 'Muslim world.' This leadership has both political and religious dimensions rooted in Turkey's support for a particular brand of Islam expressed widely through the Muslim Brotherhood.

Aside from being an affront to EU sovereignty and an imminent threat to European jobs, the sweeping US sanctions targeting the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline mark the end of the Transatlantic partnership, Gerhard Schroeder has said.

A sanctions bill currently being debated in the US Congress is "a widespread, unjustified attack on the European economy and unacceptable interference with EU sovereignty and energy security in Western Europe," former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder argued in a position paper drafted ahead of parliamentary hearings on the matter.

The penalties - which affect "over 120 shipbuildng, engineering, environmental and security companies that work or have worked with Nord Stream 2" - mark the "definite termination of the Transatlantic partnership," the retired chancellor's statement said, as cited by the German business daily Handelsblatt.

"Behind each of these companies are European jobs that are at risk," it warned. Schroeder's judgment appears to match that of Nord Stream AG, a company operating the pipeline.

THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED
A White House Memoir
by John Bolton

577 pp., Simon & Schuster, $32.50

This book review follows an earlier post I did on Middle East policy in Bolton's book.

John Bolton's memoir proves that he's a worse human being than Donald Trump most clearly when he describes what happened after Iran shot down an unmanned U.S. drone aircraft over the Straits of Hormuz in June 2019. Bolton says that he was at first delighted that he (and others) convinced Trump to retaliate by escalating the conflict. He gets Trump to agree to strike three Iranian military facilities, even though, as Bolton writes clinically, the attack would be "likely entailing casualties."

But Trump has second thoughts. He learns the air raids might kill 150 people. Bolton quotes Trump directly:

"Too many body bags," said Trump. . . "Not proportionate." And then: "I don't like it. They didn't kill any of our people. I want to stop it. Not a hundred fifty people."

Trump calls off the attack. Bolton says, "This was the most irrational thing I ever witnessed any president do," and nearly resigns. And three months later, he is gone.

That Bolton thinks this episode shows Trump in a bad light is shocking. The real question is: How did someone with Bolton's poor judgment and immoral ethics get into the rooms at the White House where he could help decide if America goes to war?

U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said in a statement Tuesday night that while the Pentagon has "no corroborating evidence" to support the explosive report last week that the Russian military was offering Taliban-linked militants bounties to kill American troops, he will continue to make sure any potential threat is taken seriously. He said the Defense Department chain of command "and I are fully committed to ensuring American forces in the field have the best intelligence, weapons, equipment, protective gear, tactics, and all necessary authorities to deal with any threats they might face in order to ensure their safety and mission success."


The New York Times, citing unnamed officials, reported Friday that it is believed that some "Islamist militants" or "criminal elements" collected payouts. The report pointed out that 20 Americans were killed there in 2019. It was not clear if any of those deaths were the result of a bounty. President Trump has denied any knowledge of the intelligence.

President Trump late Tuesday night threatened to veto the must-pass bill to fund the military for the 2021 fiscal year if it includes an amendment introduced by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., aimed at renaming military assets named after Confederate leaders and generals.

Warren on Tuesday gave a floor speech on the matter, and the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month approved the measure's inclusion in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The Senate on Tuesday voted 89-4 on a motion to proceed on the bill, which takes it one step closer to passage — but it might be forced to remove Warren's amendment if Trump decides to hold fast to his veto threat.

"I will Veto the Defense Authorization Bill if the Elizabeth 'Pocahontas' Warren (of all people!) Amendment, which will lead to the renaming (plus other bad things!) of Fort Bragg, Fort Robert E. Lee, and many other Military Bases from which we won Two World Wars, is in the Bill!" Trump tweeted.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was slammed on social media over a tweet mocking Florida senior citizens who are vulnerable to the coronavirus.

Several states are seeing a spike in coronavirus cases, including Florida. A report from Bloomberg News noted that a "record number" of Floridians ages 75 and older are testing positive for the virus at a more rapid rate than in past weeks.

The economist, however, appeared gleeful by the life-threatening news.

"Reality is coming for white supremacists driving golf carts," the 67-year-old columnist tweeted while sharing the article.

The jab against Florida's seniors may have been referring to the controversial video President Trump shared on Twitter on Sunday showing one of his supporters in a parade of golf carts shouting "White power" in response to anti-Trump protesters during a recent clash in The Villages. Trump took down the tweet after swift condemnation with the White House stating that the president didn't hear the remark.


Krugman's tweet sparked fierce criticism.

The imposition of the nationwide lockdowns required elite consensus. There's no way that a project of that magnitude could have been carried out absent the nearly universal support of establishment elites and their lackeys in the political class. There must have also been a fairly-detailed media strategy that excluded the voices of lockdown opponents while- at the same time- promoting an extremely dubious theory of universal quarantine that had no basis in science, no historical precedent, and no chance of preventing the long-term spread of the infection. All of this suggests that the lockdowns were not a spontaneous overreaction to a fairly-mild virus that kills roughly 1 in 500 mainly-older and infirm victims, but a comprehensive and thoroughly-vetted plan to impose "shock therapy" on the US economy in order to achieve the long-term strategic ambitions of ruling class elites. As one sardonic official opined, "Never let a crisis go to waste."

It was clear from the beginning, that the lockdowns were going to have a catastrophic effect on the economy, and so they have. As of today, 30 million people have lost their jobs, tens of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses have been shuttered, second quarter GDP has plunged to an eye watering -45.5 percent (Atlanta Fed), and the economy has experienced its greatest shock in history. Even so, pundits in the mainstream media, remain steadfast in their opposition to lifting the lockdowns or modifying the medical martial law edicts that have been arbitrarily imposed by mainly-liberal governors across the country. Why? Why would the so-called "experts throw their weight behind such a sketchy policy when they knew how much suffering it was going to cause for ordinary working people? And why has the media continued to attack countries like Sweden who merely settled on a more conventional approach instead of imposing a full-blown lockdown? Swedish leaders and epidemiologists were unaware that adopting their own policy would be seen as a sign of defiance by their global overlords, but it was. Elites have decided that there can be no challenge to their idiotic lockdown model which is why Sweden had to be punished, ridiculed, and dragged through the mud. The treatment of Sweden further underscores the fact that the lockdown policy (and the destruction of the US economy) was not a random and impulsive act, but one part of a broader plan to restructure the economy to better serve the interests of elites. That's what's really going on. The lockdowns are being used to "reset" the economy and impose a new social order.

But why would corporate mandarins agree to a plan that would shrink their earnings and eviscerate short-term profitability?

The media firestorm over alleged Russian intelligence collusion with Afghan militants to kill US troops has the hallmarks of a psy-ops orchestrated by America's Deep State.

The real bounty hunters in this high-risk game are not Russian operatives allegedly directing militant assassins. Rather, it is domestic political enemies of Donald Trump directing US media outlets to hobble his presidency or chances of re-election.

Since his shock election back in 2016, the political establishment and their favored Democrat surrogates along with media affiliates have been unrelenting in trying to crash Trump's presidency.

Trump may be an odious figure of dubious character. He's a plutocrat and demagogue accused of harboring racist tendencies.

Nevertheless, there seems little doubt that the Deep State have him marked down for sabotage. That's not Trump being paranoid. The whole non-entity Russia meddling "scandal" which began as soon as he was elected to the White House in November 2016 was the foremost expression of the "resistance".

An Iranian military prosecutor says there is no indication that the downing of a Ukrainian passenger jet in Iran in January was due to a cyberattack on the country's defense system.

Speaking on June 29 to some of the families of the victims, Gholam Abbas Torki, the military prosecutor for Tehran Province, reiterated that human error was the cause of the accident that killed all 176 people on board the Boeing 737 airliner.

He said the operator of the air-defense system had not received permission from his superiors before firing two missiles at the airliner.

"Twenty-six seconds passed between the first and second firing, but unfortunately during this time the operator also did not get permission for the second firing from the network," Torki added.

He said three people remain in detention over the downing of the Kyiv-bound aircraft, while three others have been released on bail.