USA: President Obama's farewell speech

Click on the link below for an unedited transcript of President Obama’s prepared remarks during his farewell address in Chicago, as provided by the White House. 

 

Read the full transcript of President Obama's farewell speech - LA Times

Turkey coup attempt: Crackdown toll passes 50.000 people

More than 50,000 people have been rounded up, sacked or suspended from their jobs by Turkey's government in the wake of last week's failed coup.

The purge of those deemed disloyal to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan widened on Tuesday to include teachers, university deans and the media.

The government says they are allied to US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who denies claims he directed the uprising.

PM Binali Yildirim said the preacher led a "terrorist organisation".
"We will dig them up by their roots," he told parliament.

Turkey is pressing the US to extradite Mr Gulen and the issue was raised during a phone call between US President Barack Obama and President Erdogan on Tuesday, the White House said.

Spokesman Josh Earnest said a decision on whether or not to extradite would be made under a treaty between the two countries.

Read more:mTurkey coup attempt: Crackdown toll passes 50,000 - BBC News

Brexit: Obama gives powerful warning against Brexit - by George Parker and Jim Pickard

Brexit will also mean Schotxit which wants to stay in the EU

Barack Obama, Brexit, Britain, EU, Scotland. Boris Johnson, USA, Barack Obama has delivered a stinging rebuke to supporters of a British exit from the EU, saying that if the UK left the 28-member bloc it would go “to the back of the queue” in seeking a trade deal with Washington.

Standing alongside David Cameron in Downing Street, the US president delivered a clear warning that Britain would be less secure, less influential and less prosperous if it votes to leave the EU on June 23.

Challenging Brexit campaigners who had told the US president to stay out of the debate, Mr Obama said: “I’ve not come here to fix a vote, I’m offering my opinion. You should not be afraid to hear an argument being made.”

Quoting the poet John Donne, Mr Obama said: “No man is an island,” adding “even an island as beautiful as this one.” He said that influential nations in the 21st century did not “go it alone”.

Mr Obama’s backing for the prime minister’s campaign to keep Britain in the EU has infuriated some Brexit campaigners, who called the president “a hypocrite” who would never surrender US sovereignty to a body like the EU.

Boris Johnson, London mayor, suggested that the “part-Kenyan” US president harboured an ancestral grudge against Britain, dating back to animosity about the British empire.

In a powerful intervention, Mr Obama dismissed suggestions that if Britain left the EU it would be able to swiftly conclude a trade deal with Washington, sidestepping long-running EU-US trade negotiations.

“Maybe at some point down the line there might be a UK-US trade agreement but it won’t happen any time soon,” he said. Mr Obama said that the focus was on trying to do a deal with the EU and its 500m consumers.

Mr Obama said that Britain’s EU membership “does not moderate British influence in the world, it magnifies it”.

Note EU-Digest::  Boris Johnson comments about Mr. Obama make him sound very much like Donald Trump - except that Mr. Johnson comments also had negative racial undertones.

Euro-Sceptics nationalistic dreams of being able to go it alone are total nonsensical wet dreams in today's world of global inter-connectivity and power blocks. 

It certainly won't return Britain to its former glory days of being an Empire where the Sun never sets. 
  
Read more: Obama gives powerful warning against Brexit - FT.com

Anti-Terrorism March: Absence of top U.S. official at Paris march disappoint European allies - should US Ambassador France be recalled?

More than 1 million people demonstrate in Paris

As world leaders linked arms and marched in defiance of terror attacks in Paris, there was one glaring absence: a high-level representative from the United States.

President Barack Obama spent the weekend at the White House. Vice President Joe Biden was in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. Secretary of State John Kerry was on a long-planned trip to India. Attorney General Eric Holder was in Paris attending a security summit, but did not make an appearance at the march on Sunday.

The Obama administration was instead represented by U.S. ambassador to France Jane Hartley.
That decision sparked criticism of the administration, including from Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who called it a mistake for the U.S. to not have higher level representation at a rally supporting the nation’s oldest ally.

More than a million people walked the boulevards of Paris Sunday in what French officials called the largest demonstration in their country’s history.

The rally was aimed at showing unity following terror attacks by Islamic militants that left 17 people dead.

The procession was led by some 50 world leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The White House has yet to explain why it decided to forgo high-level representation at the march. The president’s overseas travel is usually planned well in advance given the enormous security apparatus that accompanies him. The vice president has a lighter security footprint and can sometimes travel overseas more quickly.

Asked about the criticism, Kerry said, “I really think that this is sort of quibbling a little bit.” Still, the State Department announced that Kerry would be traveling to Paris this week to show solidarity with the French people.

A European parliamentarian when asked about this obvious Faux-Pas by the US State department: said: "European are very disappointed that a top US official did not attend the solidarity demonstration against global terrorism in Paris, This is not expected from a country considered by many as the " leader of the Western World and one of the closets friends and allies of  Europe."

"Shouldn't US Ambassador in France be recalled ?"

EU-Digest

Middle East: ‘America in Retreat’: Why Neo-Isolationism Exploded Under Obama and What We Can Do About It - by James Kirchiek

Pulitzer Prize winner Bret Stephens’ new book looks at an America in retreat from global engagement.

One of President Barack Obama’s more annoying habits is a rhetorical propensity for describing policies in black-and-white terms. The nation can either accept his ideas or risk ghastly consequences.

Naturally when you paint the world in such stark colors, you see any and all opposition as delusional, malevolent, venal or a combination of all three. In no realm of policy-making has Obama’s obduracy been more profound than foreign affairs, the area about which he knows the least but presumes to know the most.

An early and memorable indication of Obama’s tendency to portray disagreement unfairly was his response to John McCain’s suggestion, during the 2008 presidential campaign, that America maintain a troop presence in Iraq for “maybe 100 years.” The U.S. maintains forces in Germany and Japan as a stabilizing presence decades after defeating those countries in war, the Republican nominee said, and the lives of its soldiers there are not under threat. Deliberately misconstruing McCain’s remarks in both letter and spirit, Obama assailed McCain as a warmonger, “willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq.”

A generous appraisal of Obama’s comments might chalk them up to mere campaign rhetoric. That might have been possible had not Obama—acting against the advice of his Secretary of State, Joint Chiefs Chairman, two Secretaries of Defense, and numerous other national security officials—executed plans to remove all American troops from Iraq by December 2011. The results of that rash decision, the most dire of which has been the rise of ISIS, are now plain for us to see. Obama had inherited an Iraq that was largely pacified, yet so committed was he to reducing America’s footprint in the Middle East that he sacrificed a set of hard-won gains to fulfill an ideological commitment.

Read more: ‘America in Retreat’: Why Neo-Isolationism Exploded Under Obama and What We Can Do About It - The Daily Beast

US Foreign Policy-A New Intelligent Approach ? : Obama: "Being The Best Hammer Doesn't Mean Every Problem Is A Nail" - by Mark Lander

Not every Problem is a nail

President Obama on Wednesday May 28 tried to regain his statesman’s mantle, telling graduating cadets here that the nation they were being commissioned to serve would still lead the world and would not stumble into military misadventures overseas.

Speaking under leaden, chilly skies, Mr. Obama delivered the commencement address at the United States Military Academy.

“America must always lead on the world stage,” he said. “But U.S. military action cannot be the only – or even primary – component of our leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.”

Under pressure from critics who say the United States has been rudderless amid a cascade of crises, the president said that those who “suggest that America is in decline, or has seen its global leadership slip away – are either misreading history or engaged in partisan politics.”

A day after announcing that the last American soldier would leave Afghanistan at the end of 2016, the president told this latest class of Army officers that the United States faced a new, more diffuse threat in an arc of militancy stretching from the Middle East to the African Sahel.

Mr. Obama has been deeply frustrated by the criticism of his foreign policy, which during his first term was generally perceived as his strong suit. He has lashed out at critics, whom he accuses of reflexively calling for military action as the remedy for every crisis.

The overriding objective he said  is to avoid an error on the order of the Iraq war.

He brushed aside as reckless those who say the United States should consider enforcing a no-fly zone in Syria or supplying arms to Ukrainian troops.

In the speech, Mr. Obama described an array of priorities, ranging from the Iran nuclear negotiations to a new global climate change accord, which he said would occupy his final two-and-a-half years in office.

He also spoke of the need for the United States to look eastward to Asia, promoting his long efforts to negotiate a trans-Pacific trade agreement and pledging to defend American allies in the region in their territorial disputes with China in the South and East China Seas.

Note EU-Digest: Kudos to President Obama for at least showing the intention of his Administration to the world, in this major foreign policy speech at West Point, that the "gun-boat diplomacy" of the US is not acceptable anymore and has come to an end.   

Read more: ‘America Must Always Lead,’ Obama Tells West Point Graduates - NYTimes.com

Turkey - let's get real - a far bigger and more serious problem than Crimea - by RM

 








While the world  focuses on Crimea and the comical  "tick-tac-toe" between President's Obama and Putin,  there is another geo-political  problem, which in terms of scope and strategic importance to the West, is far more critical than Crimea.

That problem is called Turkey, on the opposite side of Crimea, with the Black Sea in between .

Here we are now facing a corrupt and paranoid PM and his government, who have gone power crazy and totally out of control, taking Turkey down the road of potentially violent public disturbances and economic meltdown.

Even though, in all fairness Erdogan's accession on to Turkey's political scene more than 10 years ago "raised many eyebrows right from the start, most Turks gave him the benefit of the doubt and overlooked Erdogan's hard-line reputation, and the religious undertone of his AKParty given the apparent prosperity the country was experiencing under his leadership. 

Then came a change, the "Genie got out of the bottle", and the AKparty and Erdogan became more and more dictatorial, eliminating all forces of opposition, including those in the powerful Turkish military, the press and many other organizations.

The situation got even worse after Erdogan  got into a "spat" with his Guru and Mentor, Muhammed Fethullah Gülen, who lives in Pennsylvania, USA, as an exile and from there also  controls a global network of schools and organizations under the banner  "Moderate and Peaceful Islam.".   

Obviously back in Pennsylvania Muhammed Fethullah Gülen, was not very happy his "pupil"  Erdogan had stopped listening to him and rumors and evidence began circulating about the billions Erdogan and his croonies in government had swindled.

Erdogan pointed his finger at his former buddy Muhammed Fethullah Gülen claiiming that it was him who had created a  parallel state within the state that wanted to topple his government. 

Unfortunately for Erdogan despite his illegitimate reshuffling of thousands of police officers and hundreds of judges and prosecutors, he nor his government were able to track down a single piece of evidence of what he called a "parallel state".

In light of all these signs of corruption, it has also become evident to many people in Turkey that the whole parallel state argument by Erdogan  was an imagined enemy that Erdogan, like Don Quixote, used in his fight against the "windmills".

But Erdogan still has quite a few cards to play. As a result of the Turkish electoral and voting system Erdogan and his party still control the Turkish parliament.  Consequently Erdogan's AKParty is approving new laws on a daily basis to consolidate and strengthen his grip on every level of the Turkish  society. 

Mr Erdogan's other major fobia is that he is totally intolerant of criticism from whatever source it comes and has not hesitated to use his powers to have anyone he considers "a threat to the Republic" thrown into jail.

Turkey now has more journalists in prison than just about any other country in the world.

Turkey ranked 154th out of 180 countries surveyed in the World Press Freedom Index released by the Reporters Without Borders Association on Feb. 12, even behind China and  war-torn nations such as Afghanistan and Iraq.  The report noted further that “the Gezi Park revolt highlighted the repressive methods used by the security forces, the increase in self-censorship and the dangers of the prime minister’s populist discourse,”

More recently, audio recordings that appear to be of Erdogan have shown how deeply he is involved in government corruption, were posted on Twitter by an anonymous account holder, just weeks before the March 30 local elections in the country.

 Even though Erdogan denied that these recordings were legitimate he apparently decided it was better to be 'safe than sorry' and just get rid of Twitter altogether.

On Thursday, March 20 Erdogan made good on his promise to wipe out Twitter in his country, and Turkish tweeters are now reporting that they are unable to access the service.

Twitter published a message on its service that same day advising users in Turkey that it was still possible to send Tweets on twitter using mobile phone text messaging. 

Erdogan has previously also called social media a "menace to society" and threatened to ban YouTube and Facebook.  Last year, at least 25 people were arrested for tweeting messages of protests against Erdogan and his government. It now also appears that Facebook is being shut down in Turkey.

Indeed, the world, and particularly the EU should wake up and "smell the roses"  about the situation in Turkey, 

Like it or not, Turkey is a powerful economic ally of the West, a member of NATO and a candidate member of the EU with a population of 81.7 million. 

In contrast Crimea and its  2.3 million people, which since 700 BC  has been changing hands many times including being part of the Cimmerians, Bulgars, Greeks, Scythians, Romans, Goths, Huns, Khazars, Kievan Rus, the Byzantine Empire, Venice, Genoa, Kipchaks, the Golden Horde, the Ottaman Empire, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, Germany, Ukraine and now Russia again. 

Crimea or Turkey - Come on EU Commission and EU-Parliament - You don't need to be Einstein to figure that one out ?

As to Crimea, let's be frank - Crimeans voted fair and square they don't want to be part of Ukraine anymore. Maybe the simple solution would be for President Obama to shake hands with President Putin, wish Crimea well, and tell  President Putin not to start messing with Ukraine in the future,  or else. 

Let's get real - its time to focus on Turkey. .

EU-Digest

Ukraine: Obama and Putin Playing Chess With New Cold War At Stake - by RM

It's amazing to hear US Senator McCaine calling for force to solve the Ukraine crises while President Obama and President Putin are playing a complicated game of chess in trying  to solve the problem without militarily involvement.

How can President Obama and his European allies counter Putin's opening gambit of this chess game? And how can the United States and the EU roll back what Putin has pulled off so far?

The US Obama Administration and the EU can-not and must-not confront Russia militarily -- it would be suicide in today's nuclear age.

At this point it looks like actions from the West against Russia, over the long term, will come in a form where it will hurt Russia and President Putin's popularity at home the most - economics.

But not everyone agrees that this scenario is the best course of action - certainly not the Republicans in the US, or for that matter, the conservative right-wingers in Britain.

US Republican Sen. John McCain - presently one of the the least popular senators in the US of those surveyed by the Public Policy Polling, with low marks from members of his own party, independents and Democrats, is among the Republican's loudest critics of the Obama Administration foreign policy.

He directly blamed President Obama's "incompetent" foreign policy for inviting the crisis in Ukraine and  recently told a pro-Israel group that the president has repeatedly failed to demonstrate American strength in the face of adversaries.

McCain was not the only Republican to criticize the Administration's handling of the crisis.Many other GOP critics just about tripped over each others feet to attack Obama.

On Sunday March 2, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., even went as far as to tell CNN in an interview, "we have a weak and indecisive president whom invites aggression.".

As an independent congressman remarked afterwards, "this kind of rhetoric by the Republicans can basically be qualified as that of five year old's playing with marbles and one suddenly throwing a tantrum."

To put some perspective as to the causes of what is happening in Ukraine, and why Obama and Putin are now having to negotiate and play a game of chess,  requires us to turn back the clock to when the Soviet Union (USSR) formally ceased to exist on 26 December 1991. 

From that date onward,  the United States has relentlessly pursued a strategy of encircling Russia, just as it has with other perceived enemies like China and Iran.

At the same time, the US also increased its military capability in Europe after it brought an additional 12 countries from central Europe, all of them formerly allied with Moscow, into the already existing NATO alliance. This in fact has now brought US military power and might directly on Russia’s borders.

Apart from facing the issue of encirclement President Putin probably also had a few other sleepless nights after he compared US military spending, which is 40% of the worlds total military spending,  to that of his own country, which is only 5.5% of the total global military spending.

Let's face it and be realistic, Russia is now basically between "a rock and a hard place" and  that is not a good place for them or anyone else to be in.

Obviously there are no angels on either side -  but for this issue is to be resolved everyone has to take a step back, look at the bigger picture, calm down and reach a negotiated diplomatic solution.

EU-Digest

NSA Spy Network: Obama NSA reforms receive mixed response in Europe and Brazil - by Ian Traynor, Philip Oltermann and Patrick Wintour

NSA SPY Network

Viviane Reding, vice-president of the European commission, said Obama's speech was a step in the right direction: "I am encouraged to see that non-US citizens stand to benefit from spying safeguards. In data protection we trust. I agree with President Obama [that] more work will be needed in future. I look forward to seeing these commitments followed by legislative action."

Jan-Phillip Albrecht, the German MEP who is steering through the European parliament stiffer rules on the transfer of data to the US, dismissed the White House initiative. "It is not sufficient at all," he said. "The collection of foreigners' data will go on. There is almost nothing here for the Europeans. I see no further limitations in scope. There is nothing here that leads to a change of the situation."

Claude Moraes, the British Labour MEP who authored last week's report by the European parliament on the NSA issue, was mildly more complimentary. "There is substantial acknowledgment that the NSA has caused the deepest concern and anxiety in Europe. But there will be a big pause before we can judge whether the protections will be forthcoming for EU citizens," he said.

Moraes singled out the issue of judicial redress for EU citizens in the US courts if they feel their data privacy rights have been abused. "He didn't actually give any substantial proposals in the foreign area," he said.

Read more: Obama NSA reforms receive mixed response in Europe and Brazil | World news | theguardian.com