uawchild
uawchild's Journal188 arrest warrants issued for members of Turkey’s supreme courts
Source: RT - Russa Today
Turkish prosecutors have issued arrest warrants for 140 Constitutional Court members and 48 members of the Council of State in the wake of Friday night’s attempted coup. Ten arrests have already been made, local media reported.
The ten jurists detained were all members of the Council of State, which is Turkey’s top administrative court, NTV broadcaster reported.
The arrests followed media reports that judges at other courts had been detained, as the government’s crackdown on the judiciary in the wake of the coup attempt widens.
https://www.rt.com/news/351602-turkey-supreme-court-arrested/
Read more: https://www.rt.com/news/351602-turkey-supreme-court-arrested/
Post coup, will Erdogan be embattled or embolden?
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Turkey awoke this morning to scenes of carnage and destruction, after an overnight coup attempt was quashed when president Recep Tayyip Erdogan used FaceTime to call on citizens to stop it.
The death toll rose to at least 265 around noon on July 16, when Prime Minister Benali Yildirim announced that 161 “martyrs” had been killed, in addition to at least 104 coup participants. More than 1,400 people were wounded, and about 2,800 arrested in connection with the coup, which he said was backed by a “parallel terrorist organization.” More than 2,700 judges have been removed from duty, reports Reuters.
Turkey’s intelligence agency had declared the coup over in the early hours of the morning, and said the Air Force was responsible.
http://qz.com/734072/turkeys-government-defeated-a-coup-and-forced-the-men-behind-it-to-strip/
Erdogan and his supporters are in the process of removing, as he calls it, a "parallel structure" in the Turkish judiciary, military and Turkish society in general -- in plain language, his political opposition.
Where will this leave Erdogan's government moving forward?
Is he strengthened after crushing the coup attempt? Or will this purging of what seems to be ALL of the opposition ultimately weaken his hold on power?
The Navy's Sitting Ducks
By
Tobin Harshaw
With Iran testing ballistic missiles, the Russian military bombing in Syria, war grinding on in Yemen and Islamic State as deadly as ever, it may seem like a very dangerous time for the U.S. to find itself without an aircraft carrier near the Persian Gulf. Actually, it’s very unlikely to be a problem, and it's a good occasion to reconsider the Navy’s plans to build a new fleet of superexpensive “supercarriers."
The Theodore Roosevelt carrier turned for home last week, and the Harry S. Truman won’t arrive until late this winter, a rotation planned by the Pentagon long ago. This is unusual, as the Navy usually has one or two carrier groups in the Gulf region. But the Navy is rethinking its rotations, and some gaps will result. Under the latest plan, the 10 U.S. nuclear carriers are on 36-month schedules, which include two deployments overseas of roughly seven months each. This gives them nearly two years in port for maintenance and renovation. This year, the Navy has had just two carriers out on station at a time, down from three or four, largely to save money.
Even so, this all costs a fortune. A carrier strike group can have more than 7,000 crew members, and in addition to the flattop and its 60-plus aircraft, it usually consists of at least three large warships (missile cruisers, destroyers and frigates), a fast-attack submarine and a host of smaller support craft. It costs about $6.5 million every day to keep the armada afloat. This is on top of the $4.5 billion each current Nimitz-class carrier cost to build, which now seems like a bargain compared to the next-generation Ford class, the first of which is coming in at nearly $13 billion. (The Navy plans to buy up to 10 of them.)
So what do we get for all the billions? The goal is a hyper-capable, multipurpose combat platform that can react to virtually any expected crisis. The reality, increasingly appears quite different: a lumbering white elephant that’s easy prey for a Chinese rocket or a terrorist in a motorboat.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-10-22/aircraft-carriers-are-the-navy-s-sitting-ducks
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Well, that last line was a bit over the top. I don't think our aircraft carrier task forces have to worry about terrorists in motorboats.
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edit added: Whoops spoke to soon there, maybe not terrorists, but read this:
"A Navy war game in 2002 that simulated a swarm attack by speedboats of the type Iran has in the Gulf had devastating results: 16 major warships would be destroyed, including one aircraft carrier. Anti-ship weaponry has only grown more potent since then."
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But they do seem to be string ducks for the slew of ever more advanced anti-ship missiles being developed.
Aircraft carriers are now only effective against 2nd and 3rd tier militaries that lack advanced missile technology. Even then, militaries at Iran's developmental level are very close to being a threat to carriers also.
So, are aircraft carriers sitting ducks in a real shooting war, say, oh, with China? I think they are.
How The Hague ruling against China could spell trouble for Japan
by South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
Japan has built structures on uninhabited rocks 1,740 km from Tokyo to mark its territory - just like China has done in the South China Sea.
Tokyo has been quick to applaud the decision by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on Beijing’s claims to reefs and atolls in the South China Sea, but experts warn that the ruling could come back to haunt Japan.
Of particular concern, they point out, should be the court’s ruling that the “islands” are little more than rocks that cannot support human habitation and economic life and cannot therefore be used to extend China’s control over the region.
Japan spends millions building structures on uninhabited rocks 1,740 km from Tokyo to mark its territory
Beijing arguably learned the tactic of enlarging rocks that would otherwise be submerged at high tide from Japan, which has spent billions of yen on reinforcing and enlarging Okinotorishima. This tiny atoll, 1,740 km south of Tokyo extends Japan’s exclusive economic zone over some 400,000 square km of the Pacific Ocean - larger than Japan’s total land area.
“The Hague ruling completely de-legitimises Japan’s claim to those waters,” said Stephen Nagy, an associate professor of politics at Tokyo’s International Christian University.
“Under this ruling, if it was to be applied to Japan, then Japan would no longer have that EEZ,” he told South China Morning Post.
“It’s as simple as that.”
http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/1989782/how-hague-ruling-against-china-could-spell-trouble-japan
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How INTERESTING, Japan uses an artificial island 1,740 km from Tokyo to expand its exclusive economic zone over some 400,000 square km of Pacific ocean!
Woah BABY!
In Mr. Rogers voice: Can you say DOUBLE STANDARD, boys and girls? Good. I knew you could.
David Icke accuses TV hosts of ‘abuse’ after heated interview about shape-shifting lizards
Conspiracy theorist David Icke claims he was verbally abused by Australian TV hosts after they aggressively challenged him on his belief that the moon is a hollow space station.
Icke slammed chat show hosts Lisa Wilkinson and Karl Stefanovic for their behavior during the Thursday morning interview, accusing them of being “childish and superficial.”
The eccentric former journalist, who is currently touring Australia and presenting 12-hour seminars, said he was also abused by another team member of the show off air.
Footage of the interview shows Wilkinson and Stefanovic grill Icke over some of his more bizarre conspiracy theories, which include the belief that many influential people are actually shape-shifting lizards.
https://www.rt.com/uk/351006-david-icke-abuse-interview/
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OK, Trump for sure is a shape shifting lizard, that's obvious. Who else? David Cameron is another obvious one....
World War II Isn't Quite Over for Poland and Ukraine
By Leonid Bershidsky
World War II isn't quite over in what historian Timothy Snyder called the Bloodlands. The nationalist government in Poland is eager to confront Ukraine about an ethnic cleansing episode in 1943, and the Ukrainian authorities, whose own nationalism is a sometimes violent reaction to Russian aggression, are torn between glorifying the perpetrators of those crimes and apologizing to the Poles, their closest allies in Europe.
In the Volhynian massacre, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the military wing of Stepan Bandera's Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, killed up to 100,000 Poles mainly in the Volhynia, or Volyn region that is part of today's western Ukraine but was part of Poland before World War II. The reasons the Ukrainian nationalists did this were twofold. Between the two world wars, Poland had oppressed Ukrainians living in the area, forcibly converting them to Catholicism and generally treating them as second-class citizens. And in 1943, many Volhynian Poles sympathized with the Red Army, which had turned the tide against Nazi Germany's onslaught, and cooperated with Moscow-backed guerrilla units.
Poland's Populist Turn
By 1943, Bandera himself was in a German concentration camp, and his allies in Ukraine were disillusioned with Germans as allies who would help them set up an independent Ukraine. They also hated the Soviets with a passion (after the war ended, they kept up resistance against them in the woods for another four years). They realized they would have to fight alone, without any foreign support, and they moved to destroy what they saw as a fifth column. In his book about the region's bloody history, Snyder, who is sympathetic toward modern Ukraine, thus described the chain of violence:
The OUN-Bandera, the nationalist organization that led the partisan army, had long pledged to rid Ukraine of its national minorities. Its capacity to kill Poles depended upon German training, and its determination to kill Poles had much to do with its desire to clear the terrain of purported enemies before a final confrontation of the Red Army.
http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-07-13/world-war-ii-isn-t-quite-over-for-poland-and-ukraine
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Yep Ukrainian nationalists and Poles ethnic cleansed each other. I knew about this because my aged Polish and Ukrainian relatives still argue about it at Thanksgiving.
A stray thought on the weapons we sell...
Do you think the hi-tech military equipment we sell overseas has any built in software back doors to disable the equipment?
Like, do the fighter jets we sell scan for some secret off signal that we could one day use to make the plane fall from the sky?
Like I said, just a stray thought.
South China Sea: Beijing’s case against forced arbitration
China says a declaration it made a decade ago should have prevented the Permanent Court of Arbitration from ruling on the South China Sea disputes, and also justified Beijing’s decision not to take part in the Hague proceedings.
Even though the decision to ignore the tribunal’s ruling has raised questions about Beijing’s respect for international law, China insisted the international tribunal had no jurisdiction to decide the case.
Beijing’s main argument, presented in a series of official statements between 2014 and the release of a white paper yesterday, is that the South China Sea disputes are inseparable from sovereignty issues.
As such, the issues were beyond the scope of the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (Unclos), which the tribunal referred to in its ruling delivered on Tuesday.
The official documents from Beijing stated that the tribunal, formed under the convention, had no jurisdiction to decide issues of sovereignty.
In a lengthy article released by Xinhua after the ruling, China said it released a written declaration in 2006 that said disputes concerning maritime delimitation and other issues should not be settled through compulsory procedures without its agreement.
The shot heard around the bloc: South China Sea ruling will put China’s ties with Asean to the test
But the tribunal still accepted the case and declared its own jurisdiction over the issue.
Despite saying in the ruling it did not decide on sovereignty and maritime delimitation, the tribunal did determine whether the land features in the disputed waters were islands or not, and commented on some of China’s law enforcement activities in the waters.
Legal experts said such decisions touched on sovereignty issues.
“It is the terrestrial territorial situation that must be taken as a starting point for the determination of the maritime rights of a coastal state,” Chris Whomersley, a former deputy legal adviser to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, said in a recent article.
It seemed unprecedented for an international tribunal to consider the status of a feature when the territorial sovereignty over that feature was disputed, he added.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/1989579/south-china-sea-beijings-case-against-forced
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Chris Whomersley, a former deputy legal adviser to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, said that, huh?
And who the HELL is Chris Whomersley to GAINSAY the international tribunal, you might ask?
"Chris Whomersley has recently retired as Deputy Legal Adviser in the United Kingdom’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office after a career spanning thirty-six years and covering many areas of international law. Chris spent a number of years dealing with aviation issues, and he has been involved in the Channel Tunnel project since its inception. For the last ten years, he was responsible for policy on international law of the sea. This included dealing with these issues both multilaterally and bilaterally, as well as in the European Union. He led the United Kingdom delegations in a number of bilateral negotiations on maritime delimitation. He was also the leader of the UK delegation to the International Seabed Authority, and was a member of its Finance Committee. Recently, he was responsible for the arrangements relating to the declaration of an Exclusive Economic Zone around the United Kingdom, as well as for the law updating UK legislation on deep sea mining. In 2014 Chris was honoured by HM The Queen for his services to international law."
http://www.thegreenwichforum.co.uk/chris-whomersley/
Oh, it seems that Chris Whomersley might actually know what he's talking about. Go figure.
ISIS says its ‘minister of war’ Omar the Chechen has been killed
Source: RT - Russia Today
A news agency linked to Islamic State, Amaq, has claimed that Abu Omar al-Shishani, reported to be the group’s chief military strategist, has been killed south of Mosul. Previous media reports of his death later proved to be unfounded.
Al-Shishani, better known as Omar the Chechen, reportedly "died in combat" near the Iraqi city of Shirqat, 100km from the ISIS stronghold of Mosul.
Iraqi government forces say they have almost encircled Shirqat, as they drive their offensive northward into the heart of ISIS territory.
The Pentagon is verifying whether al-Shishani died in a US drone strike carried out earlier this month, officials told CNN. Washington previously boasted that it took out al-Shishani, who has a $5 million bounty on his head, in Syria in March, only to backtrack when Islamic State said he survived his injuries.
The 30-year-old al-Shishani, famous for his distinctive red-tinted beard, was born into a mixed Georgian-Chechen family, and served in a spec ops unit in the Georgian army, before volunteering to join Islamic State three years ago.
Read more: https://www.rt.com/news/350950-isis-al-shishani-killed/
Boris Johnson appointed UK foreign secretary by new PM Theresa May
Source: RT - Russia Today
The former London mayor and leader of the Leave campaign, Boris Johnson, has been appointed Foreign Secretary in the cabinet of the new British prime minister, Theresa May.
Read more
Britain's Queen Elizabeth welcomes Theresa May at the start of an audience in Buckingham Palace, where she invited her to become Prime Minister, in London July 13, 2016. © Dominic LipinskiTheresa May becomes new UK prime minister
The Queen “has been pleased” to approve Johnson’s appointment as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the British government website said.
Earlier, it was announced that Philip Hammond would replace George Osborne as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Britain’s finance minister.
"The Rt Hon George Osborne MP has resigned from Government," Number 10 said.
Michael Fallon will keep his post of Defense Secretary in the new government, the Independent reported.
New appointments in May’s cabinet are expected to be made during the evening.
Read more: https://www.rt.com/uk/350946-boris-johnson-may-cabinet/
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