The U.S. Government Supplied ISIS’ Iconic Pickup Trucks

October 14, 2015

This article comes from WashingtonsBlog.com

U.S. counter-terror officials have launched an investigation into how ISIS got so many of those identical Toyota pickup trucks which they use in their convoys.

They don’t have to look very far …

The Spectator reported last year:

The [Toyota] Hilux [pics] is light, fast, manoeuvrable and all but indestructible (‘bomb-proof’ might not, in this instance, be a happy usage).  The weapons experts Jane’s claimed for the Hilux a similar significance to the longbows of Agincourt or the Huey choppers of Nam. A US Army Ranger said the Toyota sure ‘kicks the hell out of a Humvee’ (referring to the clumsy and over-sized High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle made by AM General).

***

The fact is the Toyotas were supplied by the US government to the Al Nusra Front as ‘non-lethal aid’ then ‘acquired’ by ISIS.

Al Nusra Front is literally Al Qaeda.

Public Radio International – an American public radio outlet – also documented a specific shipment of Toyotas by the U.S. State Department in 2014:

Recently, when the US State Department resumed sending non-lethal aid to Syrian rebels, the delivery list included 43 Toyota trucks.

Hiluxes were on the Free Syrian Army’s wish list. Oubai Shahbander, a Washington-based advisor to the Syrian National Coalition, is a fan of the truck.

“Specific equipment like the Toyota Hiluxes are what we refer to as force enablers for the moderate opposition forces on the ground,” he adds. Shahbander says the US-supplied pickups will be delivering troops and supplies into battle. Some of the fleet will even become battlefield weapons.

That’s exactly what happened …

Clinton Cash Connections Exposed – New Docs Raise Questions on Clinton Conflicts of Interest

Source: Clinton Cash Scandal News - Judicial Watch

Clinton Cash Scandal News

OCTOBER 09, 2015

Clinton Cash Connections Exposed – New Docs Raise Questions on Clinton Conflicts of Interest

Courts Put an End to Obama Administration Obstruction Gambit in Clinton Scandal

The Clinton email scandal is serious enough.  Nonetheless, it is useful to remember what exactly Mrs. Clinton was trying to hide before our litigation forced the disclosure of her separate email system.  You can bet that the cover up of the depth of her abuse of office for private gain is one thing about which she does not want you to know the full truth.

Judicial Watch is in the lead in uncovering these Clinton cash abuses.

This week, we released 789 pages of State Department “ethics” review documents concerning former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, revealing that at least one speech by Bill Clinton appeared to take place without the required State Department ethics approval.  The documents also include a copy of Bill Clinton’s draft consultant agreement with Laureate Education, Inc., which was submitted for ethics review by the State Department.  But the State Department redacted the information regarding compensation and the specific services Bill Clinton was hired to provide to the controversial “for profit” education company.  The documents were released as a result of a federal court order in our history-making Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the State Department on May 28, 2013, (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-00772)).

The documents include heavily redacted emails from 2009 about the review of a speech Bill Clinton was set to give to the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI).  An April 1, 2009, email from then-State Department Senior Ethics Counsel Waldo W. “Chip” Brooks notes that the ethics review approval of the speech “was in the hands of Jim [Thessin] and Cheryl Mills.  They were to discuss with Counsel to the former President.  I do not know if either ever did.”

A follow-up September 1, 2009, email to Brooks from a colleague asks, “[W]as there ever a decision on the Clinton request involving scrap recycling?  Below is the last e-mail I have on it – I assume it just died since I don’t’ have an outgoing memo approving the event …”

Brooks responds two minutes later:

“I think the decision was a soft call to Clinton’s attorney and the talk did not take place.  You might want to send an email to [Clinton Foundation Director of Scheduling and Advance] Terry [Krinvic] and tell her that you have a gap in your records because you were gone and wanted to know if the President ever did talk before ISRI?

In fact, Bill Clinton spoke to the scrap recycling group on April 30, 2009, for a reported fee off $250,000.

The documents also include a request from Doug Band of the Clinton Foundation for an ethics review of Mr. Clinton’s proposed consulting arrangement, through WJC LLC, with Laureate Education, Inc.  The Obama State Department redacted key terms of the attached May 1, 2010, draft agreement, including Mr. Clinton’s fees and the nature of Mr. Clinton’s services.

Laureate Education, Inc. is the world’s largest, for-profit, international higher education chain and reportedly uses many of the same practices that spurred a 2014 regulatory crackdown by the Obama administration on for-profit colleges in the United States.  In 2010, according to The Washington Post, the company hired former President Clinton to serve as its honorary chancellor, and since that time the former president has made more than a dozen appearances in countries such as Malaysia, Peru, and Spain on the company’s behalf.  Since 2010, the former president reportedly has been paid more than $16 million from the company for his services.

The Clinton-Laureate connection is rich.  The Daily Caller did some digging into the Clinton tax returns that were highly revealing:

Clinton signed on as the honorary chancellor of Laureate International Universities, a subsidiary of Laureate Education, in 2010. Despite the honorary nature of his position, that didn’t stop the company from paying him on average approximately $3 million a year. The investment likely paid off, though, as Clinton has lent Laureate significant legitimacy and has served as an advocate for the company overseas, making appearance in countries like Peru and Malaysia to praise it. In addition to these direct payments, Laureate also donated to the Clinton Foundation and has cooperated with the Clinton Global Initiative.

The latest State Department documents also show some push-back by ethics officials concerning proposed Clinton speeches to Chinese government-linked entities.  State Department officials, for example, had several questions about a proposed 2009 speech to a subsidiary of the Shanghai Sports Development Corporation, a Chinese “quasi-government” agency.  Rather than answer the questions, the Clinton Foundation representative emailed “we are not going to proceed with this.”  State Department ethics official “Chip” Brooks commented on the withdrawal of the Chinese speech in December 2009 to then-Deputy Legal Adviser Jim Thessin, “Cooler heads have prevailed.”

The documents show the State Department approved scores of requests by former President Bill Clinton to appear as the featured speaker at events sponsored by some of the world’s leading international investment and banking firms, including J.P. Morgan, Barclays, Merrill Lynch, Sweden’s ABG, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Brazil’s Banco Itau, Vista Equity Partners, Goldman Sachs, Vanguard Group (described as “one of the world’s largest investment management companies”), Canada’s Imperial Bank of Commerce, and Saudi Arabia’s SAGIA conglomerate (which claims to be the “gateway to investments in Saudi Arabia”).

While the majority of the documents do not contain the fees that Clinton charged for his speaking services, those that are disclosed reveal that the former president routinely received six-figure honorariums for his advice to the international investment counseling firms and banking institutions, including:

• Barclays Capital Singapore – $325,000
• Needham Partners South Africa – $350,000
• Cumbre de Negocios (sponsored by Nacional Financiera and El Banco Fuerte de Mexico) – $275,000 and $125,000)
• NTRPLC (which describes itself as “developing a new investment portfolio of wind projects in Ireland and the UK”) – $125,000

The documents reveal that between 2009 and 2011, former President Clinton spoke to more than two dozen leading international investment firms and banking institutions, many of them on more than one occasion.  At least one of the documents shows that Hillary Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills used a non-governmental email account for the Clinton ethics reviews. Mills reportedly negotiated the “ethics agreement” on behalf of the Clintons and the Foundation that required the Clintons to submit to rigorous conflict-of-interest checks. Despite this, and in apparent violation of Obama administration ethics rules, the documents reveal that Bill Clinton’s requests for speaking engagement approval were invariably copied to Mills, who was involved in ethics reviews as chief of staff for Mrs. Clinton at the State Department.

The documents also include the demands that Bill Clinton’s speakers bureau, The Harry Walker Agency, laid out for a speech sponsor in Slovenia.  Notably, the documents require that press be kept in a “designated, roped off area in the back of the room with a staff escort” and that the “press should not be given access to any area where the President likely may be.”

This JW lawsuit broke open the Clinton cash scandal by forcing the disclosure of documents that provided a road map for over 200 conflict-of-interest rulings that led to at least $48 million for the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of State. Previously disclosed documents in this lawsuit, for example, raise questions about funds Clinton accepted from entities linked to Saudi Arabia, China and Iran, among others.  This and other JW lawsuits on Benghazi were the key pressure that forced the disclosure of the Clinton email system.

Judicial Watch’s litigation to obtain these conflict of interest records is ongoing.  The State Department has yet to search the email records Mrs. Clinton purportedly turned over to the agency last year, despite Judicial Watch’s first requesting these records in 2011 and filing this lawsuit in 2013.  The State Department also has yet to explain why it failed to conduct a proper, timely search in the 20 months between when it received our request on May 2, 2011, and February 1, 2013, when Secretary Clinton left office.

Judicial Watch also is pressing the State Department to conduct a reasonable search for records, including any emails on the Hillary Clinton email server.  On September 3, Judicial Watch filed a request with the court for discovery from the State Department and/or Mrs. Clinton in order to find these records so they might finally be searched as the law requires.  Specifically, Judicial Watch’s attorneys ask the court to take steps to obtain the records directly:

To the extent Secretary Clinton or her agents or vendors continue to have access to this agency system of records, or any records from the system that have migrated or been transferred to any new servers, storage devices, or back-up systems, Judicial Watch respectfully submits that a constructive trust must be imposed on any such records and systems so that the State Department can access and search them for records…

Accordingly, Judicial Watch asks the court to order the State Department:

To identify, either through declarations or discovery, all information in its possession or control about the transfer of any data from the “clintonemail.com” server to Secretary Clinton’s vendor and whether any such data is still available or otherwise recoverable from the vendor’s server, storage devices, or back-up systems.  If the State Department asserts that it does not have this information or cannot obtain it, limited third-party discovery of Secretary Clinton and/or her vendor should be authorized to enable the Court to obtain the information, which is necessary to remedy the State Department’s failure to search the server during Secretary Clinton’s tenure in office, its further failure to secure all federal records on the server when Secretary Clinton left office, and Secretary Clinton’s wrongful retention of these records after she left office.

Judicial Watch’s court filing details how it was “wrongful and in violation of federal law and State Department regulations” to allow Hillary Clinton “to retain exclusive access to this agency system of records (Clinton’s separate email server) and the official State Department communications and records it contains after she left office on February 1, 2013.”

In short, we’re asking the court to allow us to figure out where the Clinton documents are and to take steps to make sure they are preserved and searched as the law requires.

These records show that the “ethics reviews” of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s potential conflicts of interest was a joke.

JW supporters should be proud of how their support resulted in a lawsuit that helped force the disclosure of Hillary Clinton’s separate email system.  And now we hope that it results in getting all the Clinton emails searched to find out what else Hillary Clinton didn’t want the American people to see about her shady dealings.

Judicial Watch’s FOIA lawsuit has become particularly noteworthy because it has been reported that the Clinton Foundation, now known as the Bill, Hillary, & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, accepted millions of dollars from at least seven foreign governments while Mrs. Clinton served as secretary of State.  The Clinton Foundation has acknowledged that a $500,000 donation it received from the government of Algeria while Mrs. Clinton served as secretary of State violated a 2008 ethics agreement between the foundation and the Obama administration.  Some of the foreign governments that have made donations to the Clinton Foundation include Algeria, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman, have questionable human rights records.

Links to the full production of documents can be found here:  May 4, 2015; June 15, 2015; July 27, 2015 and September 4, 2015.  Feel free to review the documents and let us know if you find anything important that we might have missed!

Courts Put an End to Obama Administration Obstruction Gambit in Clinton Scandal

I reported to you last week how the State Department (with the help of Obama Justice Department lawyers) sought to delay dozens Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits (of which Judicial Watch filed 18) – under the guise of a coordination motion with the court.  It created a lot of extra, costly work for us.  But we won!

A few days ago, federal judges here in DC rejected the Obama gang’s meritless stalling tactic.  Below is the statement I made on behalf of Judicial Watch in response to this important victory:

Judicial Watch applauds the decision made by federal judges of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to dismiss quickly the State Department’s desperate effort to buy time for itself and Hillary Clinton.  Today’s decision confirms Judicial Watch’s  contention that the State Department knew that its action had no basis in law – certainly none that it could identify – but nonetheless filed the action despite the time and expense Judicial Watch would be forced to incur as a result.  With this obstruction out of the way, we are one step closer to the legal reckoning for Mrs. Clinton’s and the State Department’s contempt for the rule of law.  Judicial Watch’s massive legal effort – 18 cases to date – will insure that the emails on Hillary Clinton’s illicit email systems will be recovered, preserved, and reviewed for public disclosure as the law requires.

Sure enough, things picked up a bit as a result of this important ruling.  For example, one court almost immediately ordered the State Department to start answering question about the status of Judicial Watch’s FOIA requests concerning the Clinton email issue.  Here’s the text of the court order, issued by U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson:

MINUTE ORDER. In light of the Order entered in No. 15-mc-1188 denying the government’s motion for the designation of a coordinating judge, it is ORDERED that the stay of this case is hereby lifted. It is FURTHER ORDERED that defendant shall file on or before October 15, 2015 a proposed updated schedule for the production of any and all additional responsive records, taking into consideration the information the defendant provided to the Court in Leopold v. U.S. Department of State, No. 15-cv-123 (RC) concerning the status of the release of non-exempt portions of records subject to FOIA contained in the emails provided to State by former Secretary Clinton, but also including information concerning the status of the release of records subject to FOIA contained in the emails provided to State by other former employees, such as Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, Jacob Sullivan, and Phillippe Reines. Plaintiff shall then have until October 19, 2015, to indicate to the Court whether it has any objections to defendant’s proposal. SO ORDERED. Signed by Judge Amy Berman Jackson on 10/8/2015.

Nice to go from a dead stop to answers in a week or two!  Our lawyers worked hard to oppose this delaying game and I’m happy to see their work bear fruit.

There have been many other developments this week, so be sure to go our Internet site for other news that we don’t have space for this week!

Lower gas prices means no Social Security increase next year

My Way News - Lower gas prices means no Social Security increase next year http://apnews.myway.com/article/20151011/us--social_security-cola-f5098be9ab.html

The Tragic Ending To Obama's Bay Of Pigs: CIA Hands Over Syria To Russia

 

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/10/2015 22:06 -0400

One week ago, when summarizing the current state of play in Syria, we said that for Obama, "this is shaping up to be the most spectacular US foreign policy debacle since Vietnam." Yesterday, in tacit confirmation of this assessment, the Obama administration threw in the towel on one of the most contentious programs it has implemented in "fighting ISIS", when the Defense Department announced it was abandoning the goal of a U.S.-trained Syrian force.

But this, so far, partial admission of failure only takes care of one part of Obama's problem: there is the question of the "other" rebels supported by the US, those who are not part of the officially-disclosed public program with the fake goal of fighting ISIS; we are talking, of course, about the nearly 10,000 CIA-supported "other rebels", or technically mercenaries, whose only task is to take down Assad.

The same "rebels" whose fate the AP profiles today when it writes that the CIA began a covert operation in 2013 to arm, fund and train a moderate opposition to Assad. Over that time, the CIA has trained an estimated 10,000 fighters, although the number still fighting with so-called moderate forces is unclear.

The effort was separate from the one run by the military, which trained militants willing to promise to take on IS exclusively. That program was widely considered a failure, and on Friday, the Defense Department announced it was abandoning the goal of a U.S.-trained Syrian force, instead opting to equip established groups to fight IS.

It is this effort, too, that in the span of just one month Vladimir Putin has managed to render utterly useless, as it is officially "off the books" and thus the US can't formally support these thousands of "rebel-fighters" whose only real task was to repeat the "success" of Ukraine and overthrow Syria's legitimate president: something which runs counter to the US image of a dignified democracy not still resorting to 1960s tactics of government overthrow. That, and coupled with Russia and Iran set to take strategic control of Syria in the coming months, the US simply has no toehold any more in the critical mid-eastern nation.

And so another sad chapter in the CIA's book of failed government overthrows comes to a close, leaving the "rebels" that the CIA had supported for years, to fend for themselves.

From AP:

CIA-backed rebels in Syria, who had begun to put serious pressure on President Bashar Assad's forces, are now under Russian bombardment with little prospect of rescue by their American patrons, U.S. officials say.

Over the past week, Russia has directed parts of its air campaign against U.S.-funded groups and other moderate opposition in a concerted effort to weaken them, the officials say. The Obama administration has few options to defend those it had secretly armed and trained.

The Russians "know their targets, and they have a sophisticated capacity to understand the battlefield situation," said Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., who serves on the House Intelligence Committee and was careful not to confirm a classified program. "They are bombing in locations that are not connected to the Islamic State" group.

With the US now in damage control mode, the finger pointing begins.

First, it is only natural that finger will point at Putin - after all he is an easy target:

U.S. intelligence officials see many factors motivating Russia's intervention: Moscow's reasserting its primacy as a great power, propping up Assad and wanting to deal a blow to the United States, which has insisted that Assad must go to end Syria's civil war.

Russia is also interested in containing IS, an organization that includes thousands of Chechen fighters who may pose a threat to Russia, officials say.

But in the short term, "my conclusion is that the timing of their intervention was driven by Assad really going critical," said Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., also a House Intelligence Committee member.

Alas, blaming Putin only underscores his latest victory over the US state department, leaving the US diplomatic corps no choice but to blame its own. This is imminent, and many heads will - or should - roll.

The administration is scrambling to come up with a response to Russia's moves, but few believe the U.S. can protect its secret rebel allies. The administration has all but ruled out providing CIA-backed groups with surface-to-air missiles that can down aircraft, fearing such weapons would end up in the wrong hands, officials say.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the committee, says the U.S. should consider establishing a no-fly zone that allows rebels a safe place from which to operate, and shooting down Syrian helicopters that are bombing civilians. He said the U.S. also should provide arms to the Ukrainian government fighting Russian-backed separatists.

A no-fly zone would require the U.S. military to be ready to engage in air battles with the Syrian government, something it is not prepared to do.

Why? Because it is not the Syrian government that is flying those sorties above Syria, it is Putin, and despite all the posturing, Obama is unwilling to risk World War III just to stop a Qatar gas pipeline to Europe.

Which means Obama now has just one option: admitting that his latest gamble to overthrow Assad, one which started in 2013 with the fake YouTube clips of "chemical attacks", and the resultant naval escalation, coupled with the CIA's training of thousands of local rebels mercenaries, and which escalated with the "appearance" of ISIS in the summer of 2014, is about to end with Obama admitting yet another major political defeat.

The administration "is debating the merits of taking further action or whether they are better off letting Putin hang himself," he said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Because somehow handing over control of the Middle East to the Russian-controlled axis - incidentally the topic of another article yesterday in the WSJ "America's Fading Footprint in the Middle East" - is now spun as a defeat for Putin.

"Our options are much narrower than they were two weeks ago," said Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who serves on the Intelligence and Armed Services committees. "I don't think there is any simple answer. ... Further air involvement has become very problematic because of the Russian engagement."

* * *

And so Putin has once again "won", or as the administration would prefer to spin it, "has hung himself."

Incidentally, this is just the beginning. Now that the U.S. has begun its pivot out of the middle-east, handing it over to Putin as Russia's latest sphere of influence on a silver platter, there will be staggering consequences for middle-east geopolitics. In out preview of things to come last week, we concluded by laying these out; we will do the same again:

The US, in conjunction with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, attempted to train and support Sunni extremists to overthrow the Assad regime. Some of those Sunni extremists ended up going crazy and declaring a Medeival caliphate putting the Pentagon and Langley in the hilarious position of being forced to classify al-Qaeda as "moderate." The situation spun out of control leading to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and when Washington finally decided to try and find real "moderates" to help contain the Frankenstein monster the CIA had created in ISIS (there were of course numerous other CIA efforts to arm and train anti-Assad fighters, see below for the fate of the most "successful" of those groups), the effort ended up being a complete embarrassment that culminated with the admission that only "four or five" remained and just days after that admission, those "four or five" were car jacked by al-Qaeda in what was perhaps the most under-reported piece of foreign policy comedy in history.

Meanwhile, Iran sensed an epic opportunity to capitalize on Washington's incompetence. Tehran then sent its most powerful general to Russia where a pitch was made to upend the Mid-East balance of power. The Kremlin loved the idea because after all, Moscow is stinging from Western economic sanctions and Vladimir Putin is keen on showing the West that, in the wake of the controversy surrounding the annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Russia isn't set to back down. Thanks to the fact that the US chose extremists as its weapon of choice in Syria, Russia gets to frame its involvement as a "war on terror" and thanks to Russia's involvement, Iran gets to safely broadcast its military support for Assad just weeks after the nuclear deal was struck. Now, Russian airstrikes have debilitated the only group of CIA-backed fighters that had actually proven to be somewhat effective and Iran and Hezbollah are preparing a massive ground invasion under cover of Russian air support. Worse still, the entire on-the-ground effort is being coordinated by the Iranian general who is public enemy number one in Western intelligence circles and he's effectively operating at the behest of Putin, the man that Western media paints as the most dangerous person on the planet.

As incompetent as the US has proven to be throughout the entire debacle, it's still difficult to imagine that Washington, Riyadh, London, Doha, and Jerusalem are going to take this laying down and on that note, we close with our assessment from Thursday:  "If Russia ends up bolstering Iran's position in Syria (by expanding Hezbollah's influence and capabilities) and if the Russian air force effectively takes control of Iraq thus allowing Iran to exert a greater influence over the government in Baghdad, the fragile balance of power that has existed in the region will be turned on its head and in the event this plays out, one should not expect Washington, Riyadh, Jerusalem, and London to simply go gentle into that good night."

Which is not to say that the latest US failure to overthrow a mid-east government was a total failure. As Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma says "probably 60 to 80 percent of the arms that America shoveled in have gone to al-Qaida and its affiliates."

Which is at least great news for the military-industrial complex. It means more "terrorist attacks" on U.S. "friends and allies", and perhaps even on U.S. soil - all courtesy of the US government supplying the weapons - are imminent.

Average:

Powerful explosions kill dozens at peace rally in Ankara

Published time: 10 Oct, 2015 07:30Edited time: 10 Oct, 2015 20:33

A man helps an injured woman after an explosion during a peace march in Ankara, Turkey, October 10, 2015. © Recep Yilmaz / Reuters

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Dozens of people have been killed and scores injured in two blasts at a peace rally in the Turkish capital, Ankara, officials said. According to the Turkish government, the explosions appeared to be the result of suicide bomb attacks.

The death toll from the tragedy has reached 95 people, the office of Turkish Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said.
Earlier, Health Minister, Mehmet Muezzinoglu, said that at least 186 people have also been injured in the incident, with 28 of them in intensive care.

READ MORE: Deadly blasts rock Turkish capital LIVE UPDATES

According to local media, the explosion took place near Ankara Central railway station, the busiest in Turkey, which serves 181 trains daily. Several ambulances have been reportedly seen at the scene.

According to Lami Ozgen, head of the Confederation of Public Sector Trade Unions, or KESK, the bombs "exploded in very short intervals," AP reported.

The explosions occurred at a rally dubbed “Labor, Peace, Democracy” that kicked off at 10:00 local time (0700 GMT). Turkey's largest trade unions were planning to get together for a demonstration to protest the Turkish government’s renewed military campaign against Kurdish rebels.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu held a meeting with security officials following the tragedy, his office said.

"We are investigating the explosion and will share our findings with the public as soon as possible," a Turkish official told AFP.

Later, Davutoglu said the attack could have been carried out by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), Kurdish militants, or radical leftist groups.

“Since now ISIS is having hard times in Syria. Those fighters might be coming back to Turkey; might be planning more attacks in central location; in possibly touristic areas or in Istanbul, which is the economic capital of Turkey,” journalist Isil Sariyuce told RT.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has commented on the attack, calling for "solidarity and determination as the most meaningful response to terror."

"Like other terror attacks, the one at the Ankara train station targets our unity, togetherness, brotherhood and future," he said. 

The hashtag #Ankaradayız (We are Ankara) has been used in 35,000 retweets in the hours since the attack.

Turkish labor unions, who were among the organizers of the peace rally, have called for a two-day strike from October 12 to 13 in response to the bombing.

Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, condemned the attack.

“The news from Ankara this morning is shocking and disturbing. This is a ruthless and barbaric attack on peaceful demonstrators. I express my condolences to all who have lost their friends and loved ones. Freedom of assembly and freedom of expression are fundamental pillars of democracy," he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent his condolences to Turkish President Tayyip Recep Erdogan over the Ankara tragedy, the Kremlin press service said in a statement.

In his telegram, Putin expressed the hope “that the perpetrators of this cynical crime would be brought to justice, and confirmed readiness for close cooperation with the Turkish authorities in the fight against the terrorist threat," the statement added.

Shortly after the attack, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) announced it was planning to halt its activity in Turkey, a news website close to the PKK reported, as cited by Reuters.

Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) claimed that their members were especially targeted in the deadly explosions.

"Just after the beginning of the march, at about 10:04 a.m., two bomb attacks occurred among the HDP cortege. For this reason, it is understood that the main target of the attacks was the HDP," the party said."Many of the injured people are heavily injured, so there is a fear that the number of dead people may increase."

HDP leader, Selahattin Demirtas, blamed the government for the attack, saying that it was part of Erdogan’s campaign against the Kurds. 

“The government’s right and chance to hum and haw has long expired. You are murderers. Your hand is bloody. Blood has splattered from your face, your mouth to your nails and all over you. You are the biggest supporters of terror,” Demirtas said, as cited by Reuters. 

PM Davutoglu refuted the accusations, calling them an “open provocation.”

No one has claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack, but it comes amid renewed fighting between Turkish security forces and Kurdish rebel forces.

READ MORE: At least 30 killed, 100 injured in 'terrorist attack' on Turkish town near Kobani

In July at least 30 people were killed and over 100 injured in an explosion that struck a cultural center in the town of Suruc, southeast Turkey, near the Syrian border, in what the authorities called a “terrorist attack.”

The Kurds have been fighting Turkish authorities for several decades, demanding an independent state or at least greater autonomy. The Turkish Kurds’ main insurgent group, the PKK, considered as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and NATO, was founded in 1978 and has been engaged in fighting with Turkey since 1984.

In September, the PKK claimed that its fighters had killed 15 Turkish soldiers in a surprise attack on an armored convoy.

READ MORE: 17 PKK members killed in Turkish military assault on Kurdish city of Silvan – reports

Earlier this month, Turkey mounted a military assault on the city of Silvan, which has a mainly Kurdish population, killing at least 17 militants.

The First Crack: Deutsche Bank Preannounces Massive Loss, May Cut Dividend

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/07/2015 16:20 -0400

• Carrying Value
• Commercial Paper
• default
• Deutsche Bank
• Fitch
• fixed
• goldman sachs
• Goldman Sachs
• Greece
• Lehman
• Lehman Brothers
• LIBOR
• Prudential
• ratings

Amid numerous rumors that Deutsche Bank is among the corporations exposed to the VW fiasco, and to be clear there is no news to confirm that, DB has just kitchen-sinked it in a pre-announcement:

• *DEUTSCHE BANK SEES 3Q NET LOSS EUR 6.2 BLN
• *DEUTSCHE BANK TO RECOMMEND DIVIDEND CUT OR POSSIBLE ELIMINATION

Deutsche Bank stock is crashing down around 6% after-hours on the news.

*  *  *

Full Press release: Deutsche Bank expects to incur charges that will materially impact third quarter 2015 results:

An impairment of all goodwill and certain intangibles in Corporate Banking & Securities (CB&S) and Private & Business Clients (PBC) of approximately EUR 5.8 billion. This is largely driven by the impact of expected higher regulatory capital requirements on the measurement of the value of these segments as well as current expectations regarding the disposal of Postbank.

An impairment of the carrying value of Deutsche Bank's 19.99% stake in Hua Xia Bank Co. Ltd. of approximately EUR 0.6 billion. This reflects an updated valuation triggered by a change of the intent of the holding as Deutsche Bank no longer considers this stake to be strategic.

Litigation provisions of approximately EUR 1.2 billion, the majority of which are not expected to be tax deductible. Final litigation provisions in the quarter may be affected by further events before we finalize and report third quarter results.

The impairment of goodwill and intangibles and of the Hua Xia investment will have no significant impact on Deutsche Bank's regulatory capital ratios. Deutsche Bank currently expects to report a fully-loaded CRR/CRD4 Common Equity Tier 1 ratio for the third quarter of approximately 11%, which includes the impact of European Banking Authority Regulatory Technical Standards (\"Prudential Valuation\") that were adopted in the quarter.

Based on these charges, Deutsche Bank expects to report a third quarter income before income taxes (IBIT) loss of approximately EUR 6.0 billion and a net loss of EUR 6.2 billion. Year-to-date results through the third quarter are expected to be an IBIT loss of approximately EUR 3.3 billion and a net loss of EUR 4.8 billion.

Excluding the impact of the impairment of goodwill and intangibles, the third quarter IBIT loss would be approximately EUR 0.2 billion and the net loss would be approximately EUR 0.4 billion, largely reflecting the litigation provisions and Hua Xia impairment. On the same basis, Deutsche Bank expects to remain profitable year-to-date through the third quarter with IBIT of approximately EUR 2.5 billion and net income of approximately EUR 0.9 billion.

As part of the planning for the implementation of Strategy 2020, the Management Board will recommend a reduction or possible elimination of the Deutsche Bank common share dividend for the fiscal year of 2015.

All the aforementioned amounts are estimates. The final amounts will be determined in the coming weeks and will be disclosed in our announcement of  third quarter results, together with details of the implementation of  Strategy 2020, which is now scheduled to occur on October 29.

*  *  *

Is this the first crack (or the kitchen-sink'd last one?) As we asked previously, Is Deutsche Bank the next Lehman?

Submitted by NotQuant.com

Looking back at the Lehman Brothers collapse of 2008, it’s amazing how quickly it all happened.  In hindsight there were a few early-warning signs,  but the true scale of the disaster publicly unfolded only in the final moments before it became apparent that Lehman was doomed.

First, for purposes of drawing a parallel, let’s re-cap the events of 2007-2008:

There were few early indicators of Lehman’s plight.   Insiders however, were well aware:   In late 2007, Goldman Sachs placed a massive proprietary bet against Lehman which would be known internally as the “Big Short”.  (It’s a bet that would later profit from during the crisis).

In the summer 2007 subprime loans were beginning to perform poorly in the marketplace.  By August of 2007, the commercial paper market saw liquidity evaporating quickly and funding for all types of asset-backed security was drying up.

But still — even in late 2007,  there was little public indication that Lehman was circling the drain.

Probably the first public indication that things were heading downhill for Lehman wasn’t until June 9th, 2008,  when Fitch Ratings cut Lehman’s rating to AA-minus, outlook negative. (ironically, 7 years to the day before S&P would cut DB)

The “negative outlook” indicates that another further downgrade is likely.   In this particular case, it was the understatement of all time.

A mere 3 months later, in the course of just one week,  Lehman would announce a major loss and file for bankruptcy.

And the rest is history.

Could this happen to Deutsche Bank?

First, we must state the obvious:  If Deutsche Bank is the next Lehman, we will not know until events are moving at an uncontrollable and accelerating speed.   The nature of all fractional-reserve banks — who are by definition bankrupt at all times – is to project an aura of stability until that illusion has already begun to implode.

By the time we are aware of a crisis – if one is in the offing — it will already be a roaring blaze by the time it is known publicly.   It is by now well-established that truth is the first casualty of all banking crises.  There will be little in the way of early warnings.   To that end, we begin connecting the dots:

Here’s a re-cap of what’s happened at Deutsche Bank over the past 15 months:

• In April of 2014,  Deutsche Bank was forced to raise an additional 1.5 Billion of Tier 1 capital to support it’s capital structure.  Why?
• 1 month later in May of 2014, the scramble for liquidity continued as DB announced the selling of 8 billion euros worth of stock – at up to a 30% discount. Why again?  It was a move which raised eyebrows across the financial media.  The calm outward image of Deutsche Bank did not seem to reflect their rushed efforts to raise liquidity.  Something was decidedly rotten behind the curtain.
• Fast forwarding to March of this year:   Deutsche Bank fails the banking industry’s “stress tests” and is given a stern warning to shore up it’s capital structure.
• In April,  Deutsche Bank confirms it’s agreement to a joint settlement with the US and UK regarding the manipulation of LIBOR.   The bank is saddled with a massive $2.1 billion payment to the DOJ.  (Still, a small fraction of their winnings from the crime).
• In May,  one of Deutsche Bank’s CEOs, Anshu Jain is given an enormous amount of new authority by the board of directors.  We guess that this is a “crisis move”.  In times of crisis the power of the executive is often increased.
• June 5: Greece misses it’s payment to the IMF.   The risk of default across all of it’s debt is now considered acute.   This has massive implications for Deutsche Bank.
• June 6/7:  (A Saturday/Sunday, and immediately following Greece’s missed payment to the IMF) Deutsche Bank’s two CEO’s announce their surprise departure from the company.  (Just one month after Jain is given his new expanded powers).   Anshu Jain will step down first at the end of June.  Jürgen Fitschen will step down next May.
• June 9: S&P lowers the rating of Deutsche Bank to BBB+  Just three notches above “junk”.  (Incidentally,  BBB+ is even lower than Lehman’s downgrade – which preceded it’s collapse by just 3 months)

And that’s where we are now.  How bad is it?  We don’t know because we won’t be permitted to know.  But these are not the moves of a healthy company.

Jürgen Fitschen will step down May 2016. Jain will step down at the end of this month.

How exposed is Deutsche Bank?

The trouble for Deutsche Bank is that it’s conventional retail banking operations are not a significant profit center.  To maintain margins, Deutsche Bank has been forced into riskier asset classes than it’s peers.

Deutsche Bank is sitting on more than $75 Trillion in derivatives bets — an amount that is twenty times greater than German GDP.    Their derivatives exposure dwarfs even JP Morgan’s exposure –by a staggering $5 trillion.

With that kind of exposure, relatively small moves can precipitate catastrophic losses.   Again, we must note that Greece just missed it’s payment to the IMF – and further defaults are most certainly not beyond the realm of possibility.

Not good.

And if the dominos were not adequately stacked already, there is one final domino which perfects the setup.

Meet Tom Humphrey.  He heads up Deutsche Bank’s Investment Banking operations on Wall Street.

He was also head of fixed income at Lehman.

Prior history.

History never repeats.   But it does rhyme.    In market terms, it tends to rhyme just about every 7 years.

* * *

For more read the Zero Hedge piece from April 2014: The Elephant In The Room: Deutsche Bank's $75 Trillion In Derivatives Is 20 Times Greater Than German GDP

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