Labour Party membership spikes since Coup attempt

More than 60,000 people have signed up to become members of Labour Party in the wake of the revolt against leader Jeremy Corbyn by MPs, the Huffington Post reports.
This would be the biggest membership spike of any British political party in history, and raises Labour's total membership number to 450,000 — 10,000 members higher than the party's last peak under Tony Blair in 1997.
It is unclear how many of those new members signed up specifically to show solidarity with Corbyn, but according to political journalist Paul Waugh the majority back him "by the tiniest of margins."

Post-Brexit reaction #1

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble signaled that Germany wants national governments to set the pace for future cooperation within the European Union, saying they should sidestep the European Commission in Brussels if needed.
Schaeuble’s comments in Sunday media interviews outline the emerging response by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to last month’s U.K. referendum to leave the EU. It signals a looming clash with advocates of EU integration such as European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and those governments that view German-led budget rigor in the euro area as holding back growth and jobs.

Post-Brexit response #2

Angela Merkel could move to oust Europe’s federalist chief Jean-Claude Juncker 'within the next year', a Germany government minister has said, in a sign of deepening European divisions over how to respond to Britain’s Brexit vote.
The German chancellor’s frustration with the European Commission chief came as Europe split over whether to use the Brexit negotiations as a trigger to deepen European integration or take a more pragmatic approach to Britain as it heads for the exit door.
“The pressure on him [Juncker] to resign will only become greater and Chancellor Merkel will eventually have to deal with this next year,” an unnamed German minister told The Sunday Times, adding that Berlin had been furious with Mr Juncker “gloating” over the UK referendum result.

News media are just PR firms now

For high-rolling special interests looking to make an impression at the presidential conventions next month, one option is to pay a lot of money to a media outlet. Lobbyists for the oil industry, for instance, are picking up the tab for leading Beltway publications to host energy policy discussions at the convention, including The Atlantic and Politico.
And for the right price, some political media outlets are even offering special interviews with editorial staffers and promotional coverage at the convention....
“My impression is that paying for journalistically greased access to bigwigs is now routine,” says Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University. “Journalists should be covering conventions. Selling access to their leadership strikes me as an invitation to corruption.”
“There are a lot of ethical red flags here,” says Jim Naureckas, editor of the journalism watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Naureckas notes that for The Hill to refer “to the interviews as ‘earned media’ — that is, as opposed to advertising — raises the question of whether these advertorials will even be distinguished from news coverage in the fine print. If so, The Hill is operating as a straight-up PR agency.”

Is this treason?

Retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, until recently the supreme commander of NATO forces in Europe, plotted in private to overcome President Barack Obama’s reluctance to escalate military tensions with Russia over the war in Ukraine in 2014, according to apparently hacked emails from Breedlove’s Gmail account that were posted on a new website called DC Leaks....
“I think POTUS sees us as a threat that must be minimized, … ie do not get me into a war????” Breedlove wrote in an email to Harlan Ullman, senior adviser to the Atlantic Council, describing his ongoing attempt to get Powell to help him influence Obama.

STOP FUNDING CHILD SOLDIERS!

The Obama administration should require foreign governments receiving United States military aid to immediately end their use of child soldiers, Human Rights Watch said today. On June 30, 2016, the US State Department issued a new list of countries implicated in the use of child soldiers as part of its annual Trafficking in Persons report. The list of 10 countries includes Burma, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Nigeria, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.
The 2008 Child Soldiers Prevention Act prohibits certain forms of US military assistance to countries that either use child soldiers in their national armed forces or support militias or paramilitaries that recruit and use child soldiers. The president can waive the prohibition for national security reasons. Since the law went into effect in 2010, the Obama administration has issued such waivers in 26 of 33 cases, allowing governments using child soldiers to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in US military aid.
“Many of the governments listed by the State Department receive US military aid year after year despite their continued use of children as soldiers,” said Jo Becker, children’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “President Obama should make clear that countries using child soldiers are going to lose US military support.”