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Chess

IRGC confirm they seized foreign vessel in Strait of Hormuz - claim it was smuggling 1mln liters of fuel


RT
Thu, 18 Jul 2019 19:11 UTC
ormuz strait
© Hamad I Mohammed / Reuters
Iran's Revolutionary Guards have seized a "foreign vessel," saying it was "smuggling" one million liters of fuel, the Islamic Republic's media reported. It comes amid Tehran's quarrel with London over a seized tanker.

The tanker was intercepted by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) near Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz off Iran's coast, the bottleneck point for maritime traffic from the Persian Gulf. According to a statement aired by Iranian state TV, the ship was seized on July 14. The IRGC would not provide details about the ownership of the vessel, but said there were 12 crew members on board when it was detained.

The ship in question may be the UAE-owned, Panamanian-flagged MT 'Riah,' which went missing last Sunday while passing the strait and was presumed captured by the IRGC. Tehran earlier insisted the ship had experienced a technical malfunction and was towed into Iranian waters for repair.


Comment: The footage released indeed shows this vessel to be the Riah.



The Iranians had previously stated that they had assisted the tanker due to a "technical fault". (After receiving a request for assistance, Iranian forces approached it and used a tugboat to pull it towards Iranian waters for the necessary repairs to be carried out", Abbas Mousavi said, quoted by the ISNA news agency, according to Reuters.) Now they say that the vessel was later seized after it was determined to have been engaged in smuggling.

The U.S. State Department's response is fairly standard:
"The United States strongly condemns the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy's continued harassment of vessels and interference with safe passage in and around the Strait of Hormuz", the spokesperson wrote in a response to Reuters.

Comment: See also:

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No Entry

UK, Ecuador agree not to extradite Assange where he could be executed


MercoPress
Tue, 16 Jul 2019 10:26 UTC
Duncan/Valencia
© UnknownBritish Minister Alan Duncan • Ecuadorian FM José Valencia
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will not be extradited to any country with capital punishment, Britain's Minister for the Americas and Europe, Alan Duncan announced Monday in Quito after a meeting with Ecuador's Foreign Minister José Valencia.

Duncan told reporters that the United Kingdom was guaranteeing Assange's right to due process and that his government was concerned about his health. He added that his country will not allow him to be extradited "anywhere where he could face capital punishment."

He added that "it is a fundamental term of the agreement we reached that we would not allow him to be extradited to any side where he could face capital punishment," said the representative of the British Foreign Ministry.

After pointing out that the Australian activist "broke the law" and that he chose to enter the Embassy of Ecuador in London seven years ago, he commented that he was never "involuntarily detained" and that it was necessary to remove him from the diplomatic headquarters to take him.
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Attention

Democrats angry: Rand Paul stalls 9/11 victim compensation bill - asks how to pay for it


RT
Thu, 18 Jul 2019 07:22 UTC
9/11 memorial
© Reuters/Brendan McDermidVisitor at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, NYC.
Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has blocked the passage of a measure extending compensation for the victims of the 9/11 attacks, citing cost concerns. The measure had broad bipartisan support.

The bill, which would authorize funding for sick and dying first responders until fiscal year 2090 passed the House in a 402-12 vote last week and had 73 co-sponsors in the Senate. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York), one of the contenders for the presidential ticket in 2020, attempted to pass it by unanimous consent on Wednesday, skipping debate if there were no objections from other senators.

Paul, however, objected. The Kentucky Republican, known as a deficit hawk, blocked the bill until it could be resubmitted with an amendment guaranteeing spending cuts elsewhere to offset its estimated $10 billion price tag.

Paul's office said the senator was "not blocking anything," merely "seeking to pay for it." His objection was met with howls of protest regardless, starting with Gillibrand on the Senate floor and continuing on social media.

Comment: See also:

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Arrow Up

Following France's lead, Spain set to push ahead with tax on US tech giants


thelocal.es
Thu, 18 Jul 2019 11:44 UTC
GoogleAppleFacebookAmazon logo
© SwarajyaThe Big Four
Madrid will push ahead with a tax on large internet and technology firms as soon as a new government is sworn in, Spain's acting economy minister said on Wednesday. Parliament will vote next week on acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's bid to form a new government after his Socialist party won an early general election in April but without an absolute majority.

His government in January introduced a draft law which would slap a 3.0 percent tax on revenues generated from some services to Spanish consumers by the largest tech firms such as Google and Facebook, putting Spain among a vanguard of countries seeking to force the companies to pay more in the markets where they operate.

But before the proposed law could be approved the government was forced to call the early election after it failed to pass its draft 2019 budget in parliament.

Acting Economy Minister Nadia Calvino told news radio Cadena Ser that the government's "intention is to put (the tax) back on the table as soon as there is a government."

"The idea would be to find a global solution because it is a global problem" but since this has so far not been possible, "we must take action because the impact on our economies can not be minimised," she added.

Comment: See also:

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Arrow Up

French military and police increase support for right-populist Marine Le Pen

Chris Tomlinson
Breitbart
Wed, 17 Jul 2019 00:00 UTC
Le Pen
© Francois Lo Presti/AFP/GettyImagesMarine Le Pen
A study of the election preferences of the French military and the gendarmes has revealed an increasing trend to support populist leader Marine Le Pen and her Rassemblement National (National Rally/RN).

The Ifop study, conducted for the Jean Jaurès Foundation, looked at communes with a large number of soldiers compared to the average population and found some, such as Mailly-le-Camp, saw a 50.4 per cent vote for the populist party in the European elections this year, Le Figaro reports.

The commune of Suippes, home to the French 40th Artillery regiment, also has a much higher vote for the RN than the average for the rest of the department where it is located with 45.5 per cent support in the European election.
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Star of David

Israeli ex-commander set up fake farming project in South Sudan - used money to sell weapons, stoke conflict his company could then 'solve'

James North
Mondoweiss
Thu, 18 Jul 2019 18:34 UTC
Yisrael Ziv
© REUTERS/Tsafrir Abayov/File PhotoBrigadier-General Yisrael Ziv, commander of Israeli forces in Gaza, speaks at a news conference in Gaza September 3, 2002.
Once again, a powerful Israeli commits serious crimes in Africa. Once again, there are no consequences in Israel.

This time, the alleged criminal is a former major general named Israel Ziv, who once headed the Israeli army's Operations Directorate. The scene of his crimes is the nation of South Sudan, which has been torn by a civil war since 2013, in which some 400,000 people have already died. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) has just added more details to the terrible story.

The story is complicated, but here is a summary: in 2015, ex-General Ziv's "security services firm" contracted with the South Sudanese government to run a farming project, intended to alleviate hunger there. The need is obvious; some 7 million South Sudanese face hunger, mainly due to the disruption of the civil war, and 1.8 million of them are on the brink of starvation.

In fact, the farming project was a fraud. Ziv allegedly used it as cover to sell the government $150 million worth of weapons, "rifles, grenade launchers, and shoulder-fired rockets." The OCCRP just found that he worked with a big international oil trader, Trafigura, to cover his tracks.

But the story gets even worse. Ziv wasn't apparently content with his profits so he allegedly also stoked the conflict. The U.S. government, which blacklisted him last December, charged that "he has also reportedly planned to organize attacks by mercenaries on South Sudanese oil fields and infrastructure, in an effort to create a problem that only his company and affiliates could solve."


Comment: And where do you think he learned to do precisely this? Why, in the IDF, of course.


Ziv's activities are so reprehensible that even the Trump administration's Treasury Department sanctioned him and three of his companies.
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Bad Guys

'The Squad' revives feud with Pelosi: Be aware when you 'single us out' that we're 'women of color'

Joseph A. Wulfsohnhor
Fox News
Thu, 18 Jul 2019 18:14 UTC
the squad
The four progressive congresswomen who are currently in a nasty feud with President Trump offered a not-so-subtle warning to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, the next time she "singles them out."

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich, Ilhan Omar, D-Minn, and Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass, often referred to as "The Squad," sat down with "CBS This Morning" host Gayle King on Tuesday as the House voted to formally condemn Trump over tweets that Democrats labeled as racist.

King asked the congresswomen if they've been in contact with Pelosi.

"Our teams are in communication," Ocasio-Cortez responded.
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Arrow Down

New polling shows congresswomen attacked by Trump with weak favorability ratings

Chris Mills Rodrigo
The Hill
Wed, 17 Jul 2019 18:04 UTC
trump the squad
President Trump and (L-R)Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.)
The four congresswomen whom President Trump attacked over the weekend have weak favorability ratings among a national audience, according to a new poll released Wednesday.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) had the highest favorability among the four in The Economist/YouGov Poll. Twenty-two percent of respondents had a very or somewhat favorable opinion of her, compared to 18 percent who had a very or somewhat unfavorable opinion, giving her a net favorability of +4 points.

Only 2 of the 5 Democratic freshmen women included in the survey, Pressley and Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), had a positive favorability rating.
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Gold Coins

Russia's top investigator of high-profile crimes seeks confiscation of property from corrupt officials


RT
Thu, 18 Jul 2019 18:05 UTC
Russian money
© Sputnik / Vladimir Trefilov
The confiscation of property acquired by corrupt officials will allow the state to more effectively pay compensatory damages caused by corruption, the head of the Russian federal agency that deals with high-profile crimes said.

The measure should be brought back to make the punishment for corruption inevitable and put the officials in a position where misuse or abuse of authority becomes pointless, Aleksandr Bastrykin, the head of the Investigative Committee, argued.

The measure would prove paramount, he said, because "corruption is directly responsible for hampering the development of the country's economy."
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Family

Think President Trump is a racist? Watch his meeting with members of persecuted religious minorities


The Duran
Thu, 18 Jul 2019 17:07 UTC
Trump oval office meets religious leaders
© Fox NewsTrump invited those who suffered religious persecution to the White House.
With the backdrop of most media calling the US President a racist, Donald Trump held a conference in the White House regarding religious liberty. But this was not just about Christians under persecution at home in the US. Rather, this was a move to protect the religious liberties of all religious groups in all regions of the world. President Trump was accompanied by several dozen people from Christian, Muslim, Yazidi, Jewish and many other religious groups that are under persecution in various countries all around the world: China, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Eritrea, and many other places.

The President started the session with a number of remarks on the problem of religious persecution around the world, with the guests surrounding him as the backdrop. We have see this countless times with many leading politicians who give stage time to those who support a particular agenda. But, at least in Obama's days, those people remained nameless and faceless, and voiceless, as President Obama spoke his interpretation of their case.
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