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Turkey arrests 7 more Istanbul attack suspects

Erdogan Turkey
© Drop of Light / Shutterstock.com
Turkish President Erdogan
Turkish court has arrested seven more suspects in connection with last month's triple suicide bombing at Istanbul's main airport, bringing the number in custody to 37, Turkish media reported.

State-run Anadolu Agency said on July 11 that the seven suspects were detained on charges of "membership of an armed terrorist group" and being accomplices to murder.

The private Dogan news agency said all seven -- arrested late on July 10 -- were foreign nationals.

Comment: Inquiring minds want to know: Is Turkey rounding up some of its former assets? Key Daesh personnel in Turkey? or internal enemies unconnected with the attacks? In short, is it making good on its rapprochement with Russia, or simply conducting business as usual?


Network

Hacktivists leak identity of ISIS cyber army top brass

Hacktivists from Ghost Squad Hacker group made revealed the identities of hackers affiliated with the ISIS cyber army called United Cyber Caliphate.

Ghost Squad Hackers (GSH), a hacktivist group made public the identities of hackers affiliated with the ISIS cyber army called United Cyber Caliphate, including leader Mauritania Attacker.


Prior to this, Ghost Squad Hackers had also gone against a Jordan based bank in May 2016 as it laundered money for ISIS as part of Operation Icarus. Ghost Squad Hackers were also involved in Op ISIS. In collaboration with Anonymous and other groups, they took down the Twitter and Facebook accounts of ISIS sympathizers.

Info

Will it hold? President Kiir declares immediate ceasefire in South Sudan

Kiir
© AFP
South Sudan's President Salva Kiir has ordered a unilateral ceasefire after days of fierce fighting between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and rebels backing former vice president, Riek Machar, claimed hundreds of lives in the capital Juba.

Information Minister Michael Makuei at 6:00pm local time on Monday announced on state broadcaster SSBC that President Kiir had issued directives for an immediate cessation of hostilities.

The president has called for the implementation of a peace deal signed between the two sides in August last year, the minister added.

"The president has reiterated his commitment to the continued implementation of the [peace] agreement in letter and spirit, and thus issues an order of cessation of hostilities with immediate effect," the minister said.

However media reports indicate that heavy gunfire was heard in Juba after the order.

Comment: Beware of the Western hand involved in the violence:


Георгиевская ленточка

Putin wages anti-corruption campaign against Russian ruling class to prevent Ukrainian scenario

putin corruption russia politics

Putin cleaning house
In recent weeks in Russia, significant internal political events have taken place tied to the arrest or detention of several senior officials on charges of corruption. The loudest of these was the arrest of the Kirov region (northern Russia) governor Nikita Belykh. The governor was arrested while receiving yet another bribe in the amount of 400,000 euros.

Over the last half a year, several arrests of high-ranking officials and politicians (including governor, regional center mayor, or deputy minister) have been made in Russia. On June 1st, the mayor of Vladivostok (a regional center on the Pacific coast), Igor Pushkarev, was arrested. Prior to Pushkarev, the governor of the Sakhalin region, Alexander Khoroshavin, and Deputy Minister of Culture Grigory Pirumov were also arrested. And this is far from a complete list of the arrests and detentions of high-ranking officials over the past six months. In all of these cases, the charges are the same: corruption and abuse of office. But these are only the most high-profile arrests and detentions. Judging by press reports, over the past year alone the number of high-ranking corrupt officials arrested has reached dozens (or, more likely, hundreds).

Election primaries have begun in Russia and elections to the State Duma (parliament) are set to be held in September. In this context, on June 27th, the congress of the ruling United Russia party opened and was addressed by President Vladimir Putin. The majority of the party is made up of representatives of the ruling establishment. Characteristically, Putin is distancing himself from the party as its leader, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, is not popular in society or among professionals. The arrest of several regional leaders is hurting United Russia's image, hence why, for the first time in its history, the party is holding primaries in the hope of repairing its image and updating its ranks.

Comment: This latest development may be to prevent a Ukraine-style uprising, but it is also part of a larger plan to remake Russia's civil service into an organization that truly serves its people:


Star of David

Of course: Israeli Justice Ministry rebukes Netanyahu money laundering claims

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
© REUTERS/ Ronen Zvulun/File Photo
Israel's Justice Ministry has denied reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was under a criminal investigation for illegally receiving large sums of money, local media reported.

Earlier media reports claimed that Netanyahu was under a criminal examination for shady financial dealings, including a recent transfer of money to either himself or his family member.

The office of Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit rebuked these reports as "inaccurate, to say the least," as quoted by the Haaretz newspaper.

The investigation was announced last Sunday. The Justice Ministry did not disclose the grounds for the inquiry, but said it was not a criminal investigation.

Laptop

Another U.S. technology company announces massive layoffs; 14% of labor force

Seagate
© Seagate Technology
Seagate Technology Plc, a maker of disk drives for computer storage, expanded plans to cut jobs to 14 percent of the workforce, seeking to reduce costs to weather a prolonged slump in demand.

The company will eliminate about 6,500 positions by the end of fiscal 2017, according to a statement. Cupertino, California-based Seagate had previously indicated workforce cuts of about 3 percent, or 1,600 jobs, and the stock rallied as much as 13 percent on news of the broader restructuring. The moves will result in pretax charges of about $164 million next year.

Component makers are suffering through a fifth consecutive annual decline in personal-computer shipments. The magnetic spinning-disk technology that Seagate uses in its hard drives is also facing competition from semiconductor-based storage products that the company doesn't have.

The shares rose as high as $27.20 in extended trading following the statement. They had closed little changed at $24.09 in regular New York trading.

Black Cat

Mass surveillance, deportations & nuclear weapons: UK's new PM is the same as the old boss

Elizabeth May
© Press Association
Britain's Home Secretary Theresa May will become the next British Prime Minister
Theresa May will replace David Cameron as Britain's prime minister on Wednesday. What do we know of the woman who's heading for 10 Downing Street?

May, 59, will be the UK's second woman prime minister after Margaret Thatcher. She is one of the longest-running home secretaries in British history and has earned a reputation as one of Whitehall's toughest operators.

RT has examined her voting record and policies, from human rights and mass surveillance, to immigration and nuclear deterrents, to get a picture of what Britain can expect from the new PM.


Laptop

CIA/Mossad-created Stuxnet virus no longer threatens Iran

data
© Pixabay
In the follow-up to the recently released documentary "Zero Days" by Alex Gribney on the Stuxnet worm, a "terrifying and groundbreaking virus jointly created by the US and Israel against Iranian nuclear technologies," one Iranian expert on regional security reassured Sputnik that the virus no longer poses a threat to his home country.

Alex Gribney's recent documentary "Zero Days" lays the story of the Stuxnet worm, a computer virus which was created by branches of the CIA and Mossad to cripple Iranian nuclear plants.

The story provides many fascinating details on how the virus got into the relevant networks, what it actually did when it got there, how it was discovered (and whose fault that was) and the fact that no one in the United States or Israel has ever acknowledged its existence.

The worm is described as "terrifying and groundbreaking."

However, Mani Mehrabi, an Iranian political analyst and an expert on regional security, has told Sputnik that no matter how black the virus is being painted, it poses no more threat to the Iranian networks.

Comment: A joint U.S.-Israeli virus. How symbolic! More on stuxnet:


Stormtrooper

The militarization of law enforcement: Police murder because they are trained to murder

militarization of police
© forcechange.com
In response to my request for information on US police training, readers have sent in a variety of information that seems to fit together. I am going to assemble it as best I can as a working hypothesis or provisional account. Perhaps a former or current police officer concerned about the change in the behavior of US police, or an expert on police training and practices, will come forward and verify or correct this provisional account.

First, we know that the police have been, or are being, militarized. They are armed with weapons of war that hitherto have been used only on battlefields. We don't know why police are armed in this way, as such weapons are not necessary for policing the American public and are not used in police work anywhere except in Israeli-occupied Palestine.

There is an undeclared agenda behind these weapons, and neither Congress nor the presstitute media have any apparent interest in discovering the hidden agenda.

Comment: Truth in Media: The Root of Police Militarization




Arrow Up

Paul Craig Roberts - Putin is the only responsible world leader the West has

Putin
© Wikimedia Commons
A Reuters news report under the names of presstitutes Robin Emmott and Sabine Siebold shows how devoid the West is of honest, intelligent and responsible journalists and government officials.

First we will examine the dishonesty or incompetence of the reporters and then that of Western government officials.

Emmott and Siebold describe NATO as a "Western defense alliance." Since the Clinton regime NATO has been an alliance for waging offensive war, a war crime under the Nuremberg rules established by the United States. Under the NATO banner a number of countries have been bombed, invaded, and had their governments overthrown by Washington acting under the cover of NATO.

These destroyed countries posed no threat whatsoever to the countries of the NATO alliance and undertook no aggressive actions against NATO members. How is it possible that Reuters' reporters and editors are not aware of this? Why do they call an instrument of Washington's aggression a "defense alliance"?

Emmott and Siebold report that "Russian aggression" is the reason NATO is deploying 3,000 to 4,000 troops in the Baltic states and Poland. In other words, something that does not exist - Russian aggression toward the Baltics and Poland - is assumed to be a fact that must be countered with military deployments.

The reporters do not question whether this insignificant number of NATO troops constitutes a defense or a provocation. The number of troops would have to be 100 times greater before the force even begins to approach a defensive force. What then is the purpose of the 3,000 or 4,000 NATO troops?

Every informed person knows that there is no need of a defense force against Russia in the Baltics and Poland. Aside from this fact, only an absolute idiot could think that three or four thousand troops constitutes a defense against the Russian Army. In June 1941 Operation Barbarossa hit Russia with an invasion of four million troops, the majority German component of which were probably the most highly trained and disciplined troops in military history, excepting only the Spartans. By the time that the Americans and British got around to the Normandy invasion, the Russian Army had chewed up the Wehrmacht. There were only a few divisions at 40% strength to resist the Normandy invasion. By the time the Russian Army got to Berlin, the German resistance consisted of armed children.

The Reuters reporters raise no question about President Obama's statement that 1,000 of this insignificant force will be Americans in order "to enhance our forward presence in central and eastern Europe." Why does the United States need a "forward presence" in central and eastern Europe? What does a US "forward presence" in central and eastern Europe represent except an insane recklessness? One thousand US troops are good for nothing except a provocation.