Continuing our coverage of the coup in Turkey (see here for the previous updates, and here for my previous Focus), news from the past two days has not slowed down. It's coming fast and hard. Erdogan has just announced a 3-month state of emergency.

In FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds's recent commentary, she made the comment that detaining or firing a few thousand individuals would do little to counter the scope of the Gulenist fifth column in Turkey. Well, since those initial numbers, Turkish authorities have fired thousands more public officials and employees.

Breaking it down in numbers so far, the following have been suspended from their previous positions (close to 60,000 people in total): 21,000 private teachers (including 1,577 university deans, public and private - 626 institutions have been closed), 15,000 Education Ministry personnel (latest report adds an additional 6,500 staff members), 399 Ministry of Family and Social Policies employees, 257 employees in the office of the prime minister, 8,000 police officers, 3,500 soldiers, 3,000 judges and prosecutors (all of whom are under investigation) including 2 constitutional judges and 262 military judges/prosecutors, 492 clerics, 130 MIT spies, 120 generals and admirals (that's just under 30% of all generals), and the commander of the Turkish Gendarmerie Gen. Galip Mendi.

More than 9,300 people are currently under investigation for involvement in the coup. In addition to all government officials, all university professors have been banned from traveling abroad. Turkey's main religious body has banned all religious funeral services for military troops killed during the attempted coup; it only applies to those who actively took part, not those who participated "unwittingly or under duress".

Britain is doubling its deployment of troops to Iraq, says Secretary of State for Defense Michael Fallon, citing fight on Daesh terrorists. The additional 250 troops will put the total number of the British military at more than 500, Fallon told reporters on Wednesday in his first visit to the US since the forming of the new British government, AFP reported.

"We will be sending an additional 250 troops into the theater over the next few weeks," Fallon said. "Other countries are being asked to look for their contribution to see what more they can do."

Fallon was in the United States to take part at a meeting of the so-called Global Coalition to Counter ISIL. According to the British government's official website, British forces "have helped train 19,000 Iraqi troops to tackle Daesh."

The northern and western parts of Iraq have been plagued by gruesome violence ever since Daesh terrorists began a campaign of terror in the country in June 2014. The US-led aerial campaign against alleged Daesh positions in Iraq started in August last year. Many have criticized the ineffectiveness of the raids.

Actually, the Nice horror was the demented suicide of a wretch who recently got fired, divorced and arrested for road rage, not a planned jihadi terrorist attack.

Beyond that, the real jihadi threat is rooted in blowback, and combatting it is a domestic police function. Enough militatistic bellicosity already!

The inconvenient truth is, Washington and its NATO vassals have brought bombs, drones, occupations and slaughter to towns and villages throughout the greater middle east for upwards of three decades. It is that senseless intervention and aggression that has fueled the rise of vengeful barbarians who operate under the ideological cover of a twisted Sunni jihaddism.

A state of emergency will be introduced in Turkey for three months following a coup attempt last week, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Wednesday.

Speaking in a live broadcast address following a meeting with the National Security Council in the capital of Ankara, the Turkish leader said the decision was not against the rule of law, and did not violate any democratic freedoms.

"The purpose of the state of emergency is to most effectively and swiftly take steps necessary to eliminate the threat to democracy in our country," he said, as cited by Anadolu Agency.

A draftee fled the APU [Ukraine Military] positions swam across the North Donetsk River, that separates the militia units of the LNR and the APU, and spoke about massive preparations for a Kiev attack in the direction of Lugansk.

The soldier, whose name the source did not disclose, reported that around the perimeter of the front along the North Donets River, there are hundreds of mercenaries in the uniform of the APU. Most of the mercenaries are Poles, almost a thousand of them, they are armed to NATO standards and communicating in English.

Arab mercenaries are housed near the village of Stanica Lugansk. These men are in non-standard issue uniforms with Arabic insignia.

According to the Ukrainian draftee, there are in fact not many Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines.

"Our lads, max one-third. The rest are collected from around the world, there are Chechens, Arabs, Turks, Poles. All are prepared to act, they talk of nothing else but "when we go and give it to the Russians and separatists."

The Syrian National Coalition demands that the US suspend its airstrikes after French warplanes killed more than 120 civilians during airstrikes on Tuesday just a day after US air assaults killed an additional 20 people in Manbij.

The Syrian National Coalition has called on the US to immediately suspend all anti-Daesh airstrikes following a spate of failed airstrikes by the NATO coalition that have left over 140 civilians dead. The first airstrike, conducted by the United States in Manbij occurred on Monday and led to the deaths of at least 20 civilians. On Tuesday, French warplanes killed more than 120 civilians near the Turkish-Syrian border in the village of Toukhan Al-Kubra.

On Wednesday, 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, demanding immediate action be taken against the NATO mission in Syria.

Washington's announcement it will continue its operations in the South China Sea has drawn a sharp response from China. Beijing has warned such "intervention" may not be a good idea, naming conflicts in the Middle East as examples.

"Western countries have a long history of failing to establish orderly rule over parts of the world. The Middle East is a classic example," Chinese state news agency Xinhua said on Wednesday, adding that "[t]heir intervention has led to chaos in Syria, Iraq and Libya." Saying that countries outside the region might only cause more problems in the dispute, Beijing has warned them to stay out of the issue, which it says "should be left to the countries of East and Southeast Asia."

The dispute over the South China Sea, which includes the Spratly and the Paracel Islands, involves rival territorial claims from China, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan. China also has ongoing territorial disputes in the region with Malaysia and Brunei.

US military forces are present in the area, with Washington claiming it can operate wherever international law allows. The sea is a strategic water route in the region, with cargo traffic worth several trillion dollars moving through it annually.

In 2007, Putin informed the Western world that Russia will develop a secret weapon to counter US advances. This was said in response to the US missile defense system that was being developed at the time (previously prohibited in international law.) Russia's counter-measure weapon is now almost complete. With the NATO missile defense system on Russia's doorstep - the threat to international security is very real; not that you would know it via mainstream Murdoch media.

In 2002, the United States unilaterally and without consultation, withdrew from the landmark Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. President George W. Bush noted that the treaty is "now behind us," describing the ABM Treaty as a Cold War relic.

Signed in 1972, the ABM Treaty barred both the US and the USSR from deploying national defenses against long-range ballistic missiles. The treaty was based on the premise that if either superpower constructed a strategic defense, the other would build up its offensive nuclear forces to offset the defense.

The superpowers would therefore quickly be put on a path toward a never-ending offensive-defensive arms race, as each tried to balance its counterpart's actions. Until Bush took office, the Treaty was referred to as a "cornerstone of strategic stability" because it facilitated later agreements, reducing U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals.

The US, assuming that a weakened Russia will never again be in a position to counter US hegemonic power, proceeded to encroach on Russia's borders through its manipulation of NATO objectives.

Today, there is no instrument in international law that prevents the possibility of mutually assured destruction. Putin has been sending out warnings for over 10 years - all of which fell on deaf ears. Who will push the button first?

Hours before the deadline to register to vote in Labour's leadership election, Jeremy Corbyn challenger Owen Smith insists he's a better electoral bet for the party, but polls put the Welsh MP far behind the current leader.

Speaking to the BBC Radio 4 Today program on Wednesday morning, Smith once again argued that "Jeremy has still got a lot to say for the Labour Party, but I don't think Jeremy is a leader." Instead, the member for Pontypridd suggested he's the candidate with both the radical rhetoric and the policies needed to win Labour power at the next general election.

But a recent YouGov poll doesn't back his claims, with Corbyn rating 56 points against Smith's 34 head-to-head. The same survey found that 31 percent of Labour members believe Corbyn is likely to lead the party to an electoral victory, while only 8 percent think Smith could do the same. Interestingly, more than a third of members also associate Corbyn with a likely defeat in 2020, while only 20 percent see Smith as a liability.

A lawsuit filed against security giant DynCorp in a Washington DC federal court alleges that the company deliberately overcharged the US government and inflated costs while providing training for Iraqi police between 2004 and 2008. DynCorp International remains a Pentagon contractor despite the charges brought against the company by the US Justice Department.

"The United States filed a False Claims Act complaint against DynCorp International Inc. (DynCorp) alleging that it knowingly submitted inflated claims in connection with a State Department contract to train Iraqi police forces," says a statement released Tuesday.