Monthly Archives: July 2017

The John Roberts court: Champion of free speech – Chicago Tribune

Posted: July 26, 2017 at 3:58 pm

Barack Obama had his share of poor decisions and outright failures. One of his worst moments came during his 2010 State of the Union address. With six justices seated in front of him, he upbraided the Supreme Court for a decision on campaign finance regulation.

"With all due deference to separation of powers," he said, "last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that, I believe, will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections." It was a rude breach of protocol, inducing Justice Samuel Alito to shake his head and mouth, "Not true."

Obama's first sin was being disrespectful to justices who were there out of respect to his office. His second was a bad prediction. The legendary First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams has found that of the $2.76 billion raised in the 2016 presidential election, corporations and other businesses provided only $67 million 2.4 percent. Finally, Obama failed to recognize the sound principles underlying the decision.

The Citizens United decision has been portrayed by liberal critics as proof that under Chief Justice John Roberts, the court has become a captive of business interests and right-wing ideologues. But Brooklyn Law School professor Joel Gora, who has served the American Civil Liberties Union as a staff attorney and longtime member of its board of directors, says they are mistaken.

That ruling, he writes, is part of a commendable but unsung pattern. Over the past decade, Gora argues, "the Roberts Supreme Court may well have been the most speech-protective court in a generation, if not in our history."

He's not alone in this conclusion. Abrams told me the Roberts court has gotten some decisions wrong, but "taken as a whole, it has rendered First Amendment-protective decisions in an extraordinarily broad range of cases, and it deserves great credit for doing so."

Geoffrey Stone, a First Amendment scholar at the University of Chicago Law School who has fiercely criticized the campaign finance ruling, says, "The Roberts court has given more protection to free speech across a larger range of areas than any of its predecessors have although sometimes unwisely."

Citizens United, argues Gora, has been unfairly maligned. "Here you had a law which made it a crime to put out a movie criticizing a major candidate for the presidency of the United States," he says. The First Amendment, wrote Anthony Kennedy, "prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech."

Critics say the conservative justices saw it that way because corporate spending tends to favor conservative causes (see: Koch brothers). Some other free speech rulings, says Stone, could also be ascribed to a rightward bias such as invalidating rules restricting protests at abortion clinics and overturning a law allowing doctors to keep private the medicines they prescribe.

But as Gora notes, many of the court's First Amendment decisions haven't followed that track. It struck down a federal law making it a crime to falsely claim to have won military medals and a California law barring the sale of violent video games to minors.

A court awarded $5 million to the parents of a Marine whose funeral drew demonstrators with signs bearing such offensive messages as "Thank God for dead soldiers." The Supreme Court said the verdict violated the protesters' freedom of speech.

It also ruled against a George W. Bush administration policy requiring overseas groups getting AIDS prevention funds to adopt "a policy explicitly opposing prostitution." None of those decisions fit the policy preferences of conservatives.

The court has sometimes gone wrong on free speech. It upheld a public high school's suspension of a student who brandished a sign saying "Bong hits 4 Jesus," which it took to be a pro-drug sentiment, at a school-supervised event. The court said public employee whistleblowers have no First Amendment protection for anything they say "pursuant to their official duties."

For the most part, though, the court has been a force for freedom of expression. Gora thinks that will be reinforced by the arrival of Neil Gorsuch, who shares the general approach of the court's conservative wing. The new justice indicated in his confirmation hearings that unlike Donald Trump, he has no desire to make it easier for public figures to win libel suits.

Liberals and others will often find fault with the court, as well as Trump. But thanks to the justices, they will have a wide berth to complain.

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schapman@chicagotribune.com

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The right to be forgotten issue gives Trump a chance to use America First for a good cause: Freedom of speech – American Enterprise Institute

Posted: at 3:58 pm

Another round has begun in the battle between Google (and other internet companies) and the European Union over the misbegotten right to be forgotten. Frances supreme administrative court has just bucked the issueup to Europes top court, the European Court of Justice (ECJ). A decision, which will have far-reaching consequences for freedom of speech and the flow of accurate information on the internet, could take up to two years. But well before that, the Trump administration should intervene to make clear that the US will defend Americas leading internet companies and freedom of speech on the internet.

To review briefly, this all began in 2014 when the ECJruled that EU citizens had the right to demand that Google and other service providers expunge information that allegedly was out of date, inflammatory, or no longer relevant (although accurate). ThisforcedGoogle, which accounts for 90 percent of the EU internet search market, to bear the burden in cost and resources of removing links to search results from not only the country from which the request had come but also searches conducted in other EU domains. At this time in 2017, the company hasremovedsome 43 percent of individual privacy takedown requests, equivalent to 800,000 links to digital content.

A pedestrian walks past the Google offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., June 27, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

In September 2015, the French national data protection agency went a step further anddemandedthat offending links be removed fromallsearch results worldwide. Google balked at this extraterritorial demand and subsequently received a $115,000 fine in March 2016. Google then appealed the ruling to Frances supreme administrative court, the Council of State, which last week pushed the whole set of questions back up to the ECJ.

Although it complied with the ECJs original mandate, Google has been steadfast in challenging the rationale behind the right to be forgotten doctrine and now the more outrageous worldwide extraterritorial expansion. Itargued from the outsetthat we believe that no one country should have the authority to control what content someone in a second country can access. . . . If the [French courts] proposed approach were to be embraced as the standard for internet regulation, we would find ourselves in a race to the bottom. In the end, the internet would only be as free as the worlds least-free place.

It is impossible to predict what the ECJ will decide but one ominous precedent illustrates Europes arrogant extraterritorial ambitions. Some years ago, the EU, backed by a tortuous, even ludicrous opinion by the ECJ, attempted to extend its internal carbon tax for airplanes beyond its borders. Thus, Asian airlines including a growing number of Chinese flights would pay the tax for not only miles chalked up over the EU but also the entire flight back and forth from Beijing, Seoul, or Tokyo. The ECJ claimed preposterously that the rules were merely an extension of EU internal regulations. Others, including the US, protested, but China went further and acted. It threatened quietly to shift future airline orders heavily away from Airbus and toward archrival Boeing. The incidentculminated in a humiliating retreatfor Europes top political officials and no further attempt to tax airline emissions beyond EU borders.

It is not to argue here that the US should emulate Beijing with overt direct trade or investment threats. However, two alternate courses of action should be adopted. First, as I argued to no avail during the Obama administration, the Trump administration should intervene actively in the court appeal certainly through a public expression of support for Google and possibly with a friend of the court brief. Down the road, the EU has expressed a strong desire torevive negotiationsfor a Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) to link two of the worlds strongest economies and trading powers. The Trump administration should respond affirmatively to such overtures, with the stipulation that the EUs continued demand for extraterritorial internet information removal is a deal breaker.

The bottom line is that the issues involved here clearly transcend Googles business model and competitive position in the EU. As I havewritten previously, At stake is the future of free data flows and the accessibility of accurate, public information through the entire internet.

So how about it, Mr. President? Time to finally use America First! for a good cause: free speech on the internet. It has a good ring to it.

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Arts Center hosts reading from ‘Thank God for Atheists’ Aug. 1 – The Laconia Daily Sun

Posted: at 3:57 pm

CENTER SANDWICH In a special presentation, Tuesday, Aug. 1, at 7:30 p.m., The Arts Center at 12 Main in Center Sandwich will feature the Rev. Marshall Davis reading from his new book, "Thank God for Atheists: What Christians Can Learn from the New Atheism." Over the last many years, Davis has published several books and essays on faith, including "A Christian Version of the Tao Te Ching," "Excusing God: A Critique of Christian Solutions to the Problem of Suffering & Evil" and "More Than a Purpose: An Evangelical Response to Rich Warren and the Megachurch Movement." He also writes a blogspot, Spiritual Reflections, Meditations on Culture, Art, Religion and Spirituality. Recently retired as pastor of The Community Church of Sandwich, Davis is a deep and eclectic thinker, who brings his informed perspective to a wide range of topics essential to living an examined life.

Regarding "Thank God for Atheists," Amazon.com reports, "Warning! This book may be dangerous to your faith! This book is not for the faint of heart. This is not a work of Christian apologetics designed to arm the believer with biblical and theological strategies to counter humanist arguments. It is not designed to buttress your Christian faith against attacks from atheists and other unbelievers.

"On the contrary, this book takes the claims of atheists seriously. It listens to the arguments of atheists against the existence of God, and it comes to the conclusion that in a number of areas, atheists are right and Christians are wrong. For that reason it may actually undermine your faith. So please, if you are a Christian, think twice before you read it.

"Drawing upon the writings of the 21st century New Atheists, as well as previous generations of atheists, the author explores the most convincing arguments that atheists make against theism. His conclusion is that the New Atheists have important things to say to todays Christians. He goes so far as to say that atheists are Gods prophets to the Church today, sent by God to purify the Church by proclaiming hard truths that Christians are not willing to hear.

This book examines the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of Christianity as exposed by the New Atheism. It also explores the responses of Christian apologists who oppose the New Atheism. In the last section of the book, Davis reimagines Christianity in the light of reason, evidence, science and historical criticism."

Admission is free, but donations are welcome and support the arts, the Arts Center, and Advice To The Players, Sandwich's Shakespeare Company. Please feel free to bring your copy of "Thank God for Atheists" (or any book of Davis') if you would like him to sign it for you.

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Tree Man, Deformities and an Argument for Atheism – Patheos (blog)

Posted: at 3:57 pm

If truth be told, oftentimes when lying in bed at night with my better half, well put on some trashy TV whilst I tap away furiously at my keyboard. Some of the TV that we watch isnt of the highest cerebral quality, but is entertaining in its own manner. For example, we might watchEmbarrassing BodiesorBody Bizarre,TV shows that document the abnormal bodies and health issues of otherwise normal people (in the case ofEmbarrassing Bodies), and that document truly amazing and challenging abnormalities in the bodies of some very unlucky people on Earth (Body Bizarre).

This is the sort of thing I mean:

Other such episodes have any other number of staggering natural occurrences:

The thing is, any data in the world, in the universe, needs to be explicable in terms of ones worldview. My worldview is naturalism, and these physical abnormalities are easily explained within such a paradigm. Science works to understand them, and then hopefully cure them (not always with success). In a sense, the Problem of Evil (or why there is so much suffering in the world) is answered by the simple naturalistic mantra of shit happens. But with theists, every instance of suffering must be rationalised away with reference to an OmniGod. If God is all loving, powerful and knowing, then how can people like this exist?

I am not, here, being prejudiced about the physical look or situation of these people in the sense of the judgement of the last sentence of these people shouldnt exist. What I am questuoning is that given Gods fathomless love, how can he stack the cards so much against certain people? Sometimes, such harshness, such terrible hands of cards that are dealt to our fellow humans can be so bad that it causes such people to rise to the challenge and arguably become greater, more worthy people as a result. That said, I guarantee that almost every one of them, to a person, would swap their body for a typical body given half the chance. Would you rather have those warty protrusions or the body you presently have (assuming you dont already have the warty protrusions of Tree Man)?

The point here is that, given the existence of OmniGod, it seems that life is desperately unfair. We could talk about this in any number of contexts: neurological disorders, diseases, poverty, IQ or whatever. The world is full of people who are dealt, in the sheer luck (or lack thereof) of their birth, wildly different hands. How do we explain these really challenging and often pretty terrible bodily scenarios in light of an OmniGod? If these bodies were great, then why do we not all have them? If they are terrible, then why do people have them at all? We can explain them without recourse to any post hoc or ad hoc rationalisation with naturalism, but with theism, we have this perpetual headache.

If these bodytypes are sub-optimal (and you could take this to a much finer detail of differentiating myself from another normal body type that differs only in smaller scaled things, but still presents at least some non-zero degree of unfairness), then God is unfair in stacking the cards in favour of one person against another. Peoples suffering appears to be a thing of random chance, determined by where and how they are born, or some other variable outside of their control.

Unfairness, as previously mentioned, can be instantiated in many different contexts. But here we can take away any ideas of mind (though the mind is affected quite considerably in the sorts of cases above) and look at simple physical differences as instantiating unfairness. We dont need to talk about what sin they may have done, and whatpunishment they may have deserved. These are birth defects, often, dealt out to the unborn.

Simply put, God is unfair, and this is yet another way of showing it.

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Human Genetic Engineering Cons

Posted: at 3:56 pm

Many Human Genetic Engineering Cons are there that can stop a person from getting through the entire gene therapy. It is a process in which there is a modification or change in the genes of a human. The aim or objective of using Human Genetic Engineering is to choose newborn phenotype or to change or alter the existing phenotype of an adult or an already grown child. Human Genetic Engineering has shown a lot of promise for curing cystic fibrosis. It is a kind of genetic disease that exist in humans. It will increase the level of immunity in people. Increased immunity will make them resistant to several severe diseases.

There is also a speculation that Human Genetic Engineering can be used in other area of work. It can be used for making changes in the physical appearances. Metabolism may notice some improvements. Human Genetic Engineering Cons can be seen on the mental abilities of a human.

However, it can make certain improvements in the intelligence level. Human Genetic Engineering has made a lot of contributions in the field of advanced medical sciences. There is not much data about Human Genetic Engineering Cons . One can easily think of it as a successful invention in the field of medical science.

Gene therapy can be used for curing several deadly diseases. Many diseases are there that have no cure, so this is a helpful invention in this field. It can lead to various health benefits. Genetic engineering can also lead to population free from any diseases. However, some Human Genetic Engineering Cons are also there that can trouble human beings.

This is because of the complications involved in human genes. A person has multiple physical attributes that differ from each other, so chances are there that these attributes get controlled by only one gene sequence. This helps the scientists to make changes or alteration in only one gene at a time and the remaining multiple sequences of genes will automatically be altered.

Scientists involved in this alteration process also noticed that whenever a DNA strand gets a new gene, then it becomes difficult for the DNA strand to make a decision about where the new gene will be settled. It is one of the factors that contribute to Human Genetic Engineering Cons. With the help of genetic engineering scientists will find no difficulty at the time of altering a part of DNA in a human. This will keep them resistant or away from any genetic disease or effects. These effects might be there on the reproductive cells of a person.

For an instance, it these reproductive cells are there on parents that their children will automatically acquire the effects of genetics. Such Human Genetic Engineering Cons can cause few genetic diseases on humans. Chances of errors are always there in making use of genetic engineering for human cloning, agriculture, and in any other related field. Entire human generation can lead to mutation if these Human Genetic Engineering Cons do get removed at their earliest.

Human Genetic Engineering Cons

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Salvaging Hubble – New Scientist

Posted: at 3:55 pm

The illustrious Hubble Space Telescope will eventually re-enter Earths atmosphere and be destroyed or so I understand. Could it be returned to Earth safely and put in a museum? If so, what would be the cheapest way to do it?

(Continued)

Our apologies to Sam Palasciano whose earlier submission to this question on 3 June contained an error introduced by us Ed

Hubbles primary mirror weighs roughly 1800 pounds or 800 kilograms, not 450 as the article stated. This could be significant if someone wanted to seriously pursue this question.

However, I would much rather someone came up with a way of extending the life of the Hubble telescope in orbit. The replacement Webb Telescope, as I understand it, operates at different wavelengths. Hubble was designed to have a more useful operating window, including both ultraviolet and infrared, an advantage that will be lost when it is closed down.

Sam Palasciano, Oceanside, California, US

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Smith astronomer presents rare images of stars at national conference – GazetteNET

Posted: at 3:55 pm

NORTHAMPTON When Smith College astronomy professor James Lowenthal got images back from the Hubble Space Telescope this year, his initial response was simple: Wow!

What he was looking at were the brightest infrared galaxies in the universe close-up views of rare, ultrabright collections of stars from the early universe that are furiously producing even more stars. Those views, Lowenthal told the Gazette at his office on Tuesday, may someday help answer a fundamental question about the history of the cosmos: how did galaxies form and evolve?

The images Lowenthal was observing made use of a well-known effect called gravitational lensing. Essentially, the light from those 22 distant galaxies passes through the gravitational field of a closer massive object, which acts as a kind of cosmic magnifying glass for researchers on Earth.

That foregrounded, natural lens allows astronomers to see otherwise impossible-to-see pictures of the distant universe. Light traveling from those galaxies takes billions of years to reach Earth, so researchers are quite literally looking into the past at galaxies from as long as 12 billion years ago about 90 percent of the way back to the Big Bang, according to Lowenthal.

Lowenthal presented those images at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas, last month.

The reaction has been in our scientific community, This is so, so cool, Lowenthal said of the response from his colleagues.

But before Lowenthal could take that peek into the past with his fellow researchers including Min Yun, Kevin Harrington, Patrick Kamieneski and Daniel Wang of the University of Massachusetts Amherst they had to write a scientifically rigorous proposal laying out their case for getting highly sought- after time on the Hubble telescope.

We convinced them it would be really cool, Lowenthal said of the proposal. And wow! It was really cool.

Lowenthal said Yun and others cleverly discovered the galaxies by using publicly available data from several telescopes, and used the Large Millimeter Telescope a joint project between UMass and Mexicos National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics to confirm their distances from Earth.

It was thanks to that work narrowing down a list of distant galaxies that the team knew where to look when they got time on the Hubble telescope.

The distant galaxies in the Hubble images are producing 5,000 to 10,000 times more stars than the Milky Way, but are using the same amount of gas contained in the Milky Way. That fact leaves astronomers to puzzle over what exactly is fueling that star birth.

Possible explanations for the rapid creation of stars could be the collision of massive galaxies, a flood of gas or something entirely different. At issue is the very nature of galaxy formation and evolution.

Those are lingering questions that Lowenthal hopes to answer, but first the images from the Hubble telescope must be decoded.

While gravitational lensing makes those distant galaxies more visible in high detail, it also bends their light, leaving warped images with streaks, circles and arcs that can leave researchers unclear about what exactly theyre looking at. The task now is to unscramble those pictures.

To explain the warping of the images, Lowenthal used the analogy of looking at candlelight through a wine glass. The light will appear in different spots, or even stretch across the bottom of the glass in a circle, depending on how the glass is held.

Because the images theyve received are warped, researchers must now work backwards to reconstruct what those galaxies actually looked like before passing through the lens. Knowing the distance of those galaxies, Lowenthal and others must figure out other variables like the gravitational pull of the lens to model what the original image looked like, or to even figure out what the background and foreground are.

From Hubble, we got only monochromatic, black and white images. Its only one wavelength, Lowenthal said, noting that hes hoping to get images from Hubble in the future that will show colors like red and blue. If we did have that information, it would tremendously, instantly help us separate foreground from background, because the foreground and background are almost always different colors.

Lowenthal and his colleagues failed to get approval to use the Hubble telescope during the latest cycle of proposals, but he said he hopes theyll soon have access again, and they hope to gain further insight into the nature of those early galaxies.

While he waits for more data, however, the images Lowenthal already has have nevertheless changed his perception of the cosmos in at least some way. As a scientist who normally studies distant galaxies without much emphasis on gravitational lensing, the new images have made him rethink the galaxies he has been looking at for so many years.

I have not been thinking, Most of those galaxies are probably gravitationally lensed, at least a little bit, Lowenthal said. And now Im thinking, Everything is lensed!

Its definitely startling to have a big shift like that, he said, though the smile on his face and wonder in his eyes seemed to indicate he was far more excited and curious for the work ahead than startled.

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Russia to Raise Firepower in South to Neuter NATO Air ‘Threat’ – Newsweek

Posted: at 3:54 pm

Russias Defense Ministry has vowed to increaseits firepower in its southern regions near Ukraine and the Black Sea, in response to U.K. jets in Romania.

The Royal Air Force (RAF) currently runs patrols on behalf of NATO ally Romania, with four Typhoon jets deployed near the Romanian port city of Constanta. London made the deployment in April, just as the U.S. deployed two of the worlds most advanced warplanes, the F-22. One of the RAFs jets scrambledon Tuesday to track a group of Russian bombersflying across the Black Sea.

Related: How do the new U.S. sanctions on Russia work, and why is Europe worried?

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The tailing was at such a distance that the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed it did not even see the Typhoon, though Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced on Wednesday at a conference of military officials that Russia needed to beef up measures in the region regardless.

Under these circumstances, Russia is forced to take symmetrical measures for neutralizing the emerging threat for national security, conducting actions for strategic containment and raising the battle capabilities of Russias Southern Military District, Shoigu said.

Shoigu did not say what the measures would be but usedthe recentU.S.-lead Sea Breeze drill conducted with Ukraineas a reason why Russia needed to reinforce further. NATO has repeatedly denied its limited multinational reassurance measures are intended to be aggressive towardRussia.

Over the last half a year the Southern Military District received over 600 units of combat equipment, Shoigu said, state news agency Itar-Tass reported. The battle training of the staff and the preparation of the military authority is being perfected constantly.

He indicated that the high rate of exerciseswould continue.

The Black Sea and the Southern Military District is currently one of the crucial areas for Russia, which borderstwo nations on whose territory it has deployed troopsUkraine and Georgia.

Three NATO states sit on an extensive share of the Black Sea coastline. As ties between Russia and the NATO alliance have soured over Crimea, Black Sea waters have seen a handful of tense encounters between Russian and Western personnel.

Among the more spectacular was a near miss between a U.S. aircraft and a Russian jet jumping to escort it, getting within 10 feet for the U.S. jet.

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NATO(-member) in Name Only? – The American Interest

Posted: at 3:54 pm

Several developments this week demonstrate the continued deterioration of Turkeys relationships with traditional Western allies. The most shocking of the stories began to unfold when the state-owned Anadolu News Agency disclosed classified information about the whereabouts of soldiers from the United States and Europe who are fighting ISIS. As Al-Monitor noted:

The reportrevealedcrucial information on some of the US bases and on French and American soldiers in the region. The article and a detailed map appeared in AAs English version on July 18. On July 19, the leak spread to international media outlets. The US military told the press that publishing such sensitive informationwas professionally irresponsible.

Although President Recep Tayyip Erdoans chief foreign policy advisor, Ibrahim Kalin, denied any government involvement in the revelations about secret bases, the unwillingness of the president to remove the story from the webpages his ministries control speaks volumes. The Turkish state has indirectly sanctioned the dispersal of highly sensitive information that endangers the lives of American and European soldiers.

U.S. support for the Syrian Kurds remains the proximate reason for this tit for tat undertaken by the Turkish side. But there are more fundamental factors is Erdoans turn against the West. His governments once cavalier interest in pursuing EU membership has turned to outright hostility; he has revived neo-Ottoman foreign policy goals that turn Turkey to the east and the Islamic world; and he has domestically discredited Kemalism as a governing philosophy.

These large trends portend difficulties for the functioning of Europes web of alliances. As Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty notes the Parties may by unanimous agreement, invite any other European Stateto accede Turkey will not in the near future play ball on a controversial enlargement. This reality lends credence to President Trumps often crude avowal that NATO has in some important respects become obsolete. Meanwhile a new, assertive, but not very capable power is freelancing around the already fragmented Middle East and the Caucasus. The EU, having failed to bring Turkey into the fold when it was willing, must now learn to live with a hostile and aggressive new power on its fragile southeastern frontier.

Meanwhile, in the latest development of the ongoing saga of acrimony between Germany and Turkey, NATO itself has decided to step in and de-escalate things between its two feuding member states.The current dispute, whichbegana week ago with the arbitrary detention of a German human rights activist in Turkey, has snowballed with astonishing speed.Reutersreports:

The mediation offer by NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, announcedon Monday, came as Ankara itself sought to limit the economic fallout from thedamaging row with Berlin, dropping a request for Germany to help it investigate hundreds of German companies it said could have links to terrorism.

Readers may need to fight the urge to rub their eyes at that sentence. An argument over a single German detainee has caused a cascade of disputes, with the German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaublethreatening to curtail investment in Turkey, and Ankara returning the favor bysubmittingto Interpol a list of 700 German companies Turkish authorities supposedly suspect of financing terrorism.Then came the further retaliatory action taken by Turkey with regard to Germanys military. The same Reuters article notes:

Adding to tensions is Turkeys refusal to let German members of parliament visit soldiers stationed at two air bases []

This has already led Germany to move troops involved in the campaign against Islamic State from Turkeys Incirlik base to Jordan. The risk of further decampments has sparked deep concern in NATO and now prompted it to intervene.

Yes, Germany is willing to move its troops out of NATO due to an inter-member political conflict which it cannot resolve. It would prefer to keep them in Jordan, a country which, on the whole, has shown itself to be a much more dependable ally in the fight against ISIS than the mercurial and self-serving Turkey.What more damming signal could there be for a defense alliance in distress than the inability of its members to coperate with each other on mutual defense?

After a few days of these increased tensions, Turkey capitulated in part, caving to economic pressure by retracting its list of terrorism-supporting companies. (It went even further to try to save face, saying the submission of the list to Interpol had arose from a simple communications problem.)

This suggests that Europe may still hold some leverage over Turkey, despite its Presidents growing unpredictability.Whatever Erdoans self-serving geopolitical machinations lead him to do, he cannot change the fact of his countrys economic interdependence with Europe.Yet the days when NATO could command the loyalty of its members, necessitating that they handle disputes with co-parties discreetly, are long past. Its ranks may continue to fill with members in name only.

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RAF Typhoons scrambled to see off two Russian jets racing towards … – The Sun

Posted: at 3:54 pm

Fighter jet raced towards Moscow's TU-22 Backfire bombers off the coast of Romania

THE RAF this morning scrambled one of its fighter jets to intercept two Russian bombers in the Black Sea.

A British Typhoon raced towards Moscows TU-22 Backfire bombers as they approached Nato airspace off the coast of Romania.

PA:Press Association

The supersonic Brit jet - capable of reaching speeds of 1,500mph - was based atMihail Kogalniceanu Air Base on the western Black Sea coast.

Russia and Ukraine occupy the northern extreme of the sea.

The jets did not come close enough to see each other and the Russian aircraft departed southwards.

Wing Commander Lewis Cunningham, Officer Commanding 3(F) Squadron said It worked as we would have expected it to.

"We took down the details, ran to the aircraft and I took off within the prescribed timeline.

He added: Its satisfying. We spotted that there was something happening and then very quickly the phone call came and we were running out of the door.

Wing Commander Andrew Coe, Commanding Officer of 135 Expeditionary Air Wing based in Romania, said: This was a routine operation and is no different to what NATO aircraft do in other areas on a regular basis."

Russian and RAF jets have tracked each other several times in recent years - with Vladimir Putin's air force launching several sabre-rattling runs around the UK.

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In February, RAF top guns intercepted two nuclear-capable Russian Blackjack bombers as they skirted the west coast of Scotland and Ireland.

On the way they were met by two of Britains supersonic Typhoon jets scrambled from two Scottish bases.

At the time ann RAF spokesperson said:We can confirm that quick reaction alert Typhoon aircraft from RAF Lossiemouth and RAF Coningsby scrambled to monitor two Blackjack bombers while they were in the UK area of interest.

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