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Russia moves to prolong oil production cuts, market responds favorably


RT
Fri, 01 Dec 2017 17:17 UTC
OPEC's logo
© Heinz-Peter Bader / Reuters
A man fixes a sign with OPEC's logo next to its headquarter's entrance before a meeting of OPEC oil ministers in Vienna, Austria, November 29, 2017.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and non-OPEC producers led by Russia have decided to prolong oil output cuts until the end of 2018. The move is an attempt to reduce global oversupply and prop up crude prices.

US WTI blend was trading 32 cents up at $57.71 per barrel. Brent crude was up 43 cents at $63.06. Both benchmarks were trading near 30-month highs.

The move was widely expected by the market. Besides extending the existing cuts, OPEC also decided to cap the combined output of Nigeria and Libya at 2017 levels below 2.8 million barrels per day.

Comment: What is unsaid here is that there has been a US effort to keep oil prices down, namely to negatively impact Russia. Yet, Russia has positioned itself well enough to counter such measures through a very different set of behaviors than how the US acts on the world stage.

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Star of David

Forget Russia's few hundred thousand for Twitter ads - Take a look at Israel's multi-millions spent interfering in US elections


Viable Opposition
Wed, 25 Oct 2017 12:11 UTC
Netanyahu
© HispanTV
While the American media and Washington are expending substantial energy on the alleged Russian interference in the United States political theatre during the 2016 election cycle, another nation and its American promoters that invest substantially in Washington generally fly under the radar when it comes to political influence-peddling.

According to Open Secrets, the pro-Israel "industry" has made the following political contributions since 1990:
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USA

Pentagon not surprisingly backtracks on pledge to ban dangerously old cluster bombs


RT
Fri, 01 Dec 2017 18:19 UTC
cluster bombs
© U.S. Air Force
The Pentagon has postponed indefinitely a ban on older generations of cluster bombs that was set to take effect in 2019. In its place, a vague policy designed to keep "legitimate weapons with clear military utility" in use.

Cluster bombs are anti-personnel and anti-vehicle weapons launched from aircraft or artillery that disperse as many as several hundred bomblets over a large area. The munitions sometimes fail to detonate on impact and continue to pose mortal danger to civilians for years after conflicts end.

The Department of Defense said it will not meet a January 1 2019 deadline, set in 2008 by the George W. Bush administration, for cluster bomb technology to meet a performance standard of failing to detonate 1 percent or less of the time.

"We cannot risk mission failure or accept the potential of increased military and civilian casualties by forfeiting the best available capabilities," the Pentagon said in a statement about delaying the ban, according to Reuters.
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Vader

Niger approves deployment of armed US drones to operate in combat missions


RT
Fri, 01 Dec 2017 18:56 UTC
US drone
© U.S. Air Force / Reuters
US drone
Armed American drones will soon begin flying over Niger following approval of their use by the West African nation. The move marks a significant expansion of the US military's footprint in this part of Africa, where its reach has so far been limited.

The government of Niger has permitted the Pentagon to operate armed drones out of the country's capital, Niamey, defense officials said on Thursday, according to the New York Times. The newspaper cited a memorandum of understanding signed earlier this week by the US African Command (AFRICOM) and the West African nation.

The memorandum calls for the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to be armed by the AFRICOM initially. The drones will eventually be re-deployed to a Nigerien air base in Agadez, along with 500 US troops.

Comment: See also: Niger ready to host U.S. drone base

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Cow Skull

The Minsk Accord's zombie sanctions: Ukraine admits agreement is dead, but sanctions tied to them live on

Tom Winter
Fort Russ News
Wed, 29 Nov 2017 17:21 UTC
bombed out huse donbass

The Minsk Accords, a symbolic illustration
Where are the sanctions now that Ukraine has admitted the Minsk Accords were:

a) just a clever ploy from the beginning, b) dead, and c) buried?

Each time that the sanctions have come up, usually for a pro-forma extension of them, Minsk has been the linchpin. Examples:
"The European Union's policy toward Moscow will not change as long as Russia fails to fulfill the Minsk agreements, EU High Representative on Foreign and Security Policy Frederica Mogherini said on Monday."

And there is this, from March of this year:
BERLIN (Reuters) - Europe and the United States should keep sanctions in place against Russia until there is progress in implementing the 2015 Minsk accords aimed at ending the violence in eastern Ukraine, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said."It is important that Europe and the United States present a unified front and stick to the sanctions against Russia until there is progress in implementing the Minsk agreements," Gabriel said in an interview with the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper, to be published on Saturday.
Not one word about Ukraine fulfilling the accords. But now that the accords are dead, when may we expect a reexamination of the anti-Russian sanctions?

Comment: More from Fort Russ:
According to Anton Gerashchenko, Ukrainian deputy and curator of the terrorist site "Peacemaker," Ukrainian President Poroshenko signed the Minsk agreements, deliberately deceiving Russia. He stated this on the air of the Ukrainian Channel 5.

"Today Arsen Avakov simply stated the fact that the Minsk agreements have exhausted themselves ... We can say that Petro Poroshenko and our diplomats simply deceived the Russian Federation, and we, concluding these agreements, understood that we would not fulfill them.

"The Minsk agreements were needed in 2014-2015. And President Poroshenko united world leaders, and they pressed Putin and we stopped the movement of military columns into the territory of Ukraine," he said.

The other day the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Avakov said that the Minsk agreements do not work
["are dead" in fact- tr], and to resolve the situation in the Donbass, new agreements must be adopted.

Previously, the first deputy chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security Franz Klintsevich buried the Minsk agreements.


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Pumpkin 2

Not satire? PBS Frontline series "Putin's Revenge" is quite unintentionally hilarious


Off Guardian
Thu, 30 Nov 2017 00:00 UTC
putin eating popcorn
PBS's Frontline series offers what it calls the "inside story of how Vladimir Putin came to see the United States as an enemy - and why he decided to target an American election." We are publishing it here because it has to be seen to be believed.

The sinister music and Burnsian black and white photography, the gravel-voiced narrator, all trying to give gravitas to a script that is so divorced from any kind of maturity, sanity or veridical reality it will make you dizzy.

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Red Flag

'Fact checking' with a bias: Calling Pence a liar while protecting 'Pocahontas' Warren shows why people loathe mainstream media

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway
The Federalist
Wed, 29 Nov 2017 00:00 UTC
elizabeth warren

Journalists need to learn what facts are before claiming to fact check.

Earlier this week, Donald Trump made a joke at an event honoring the great World War II Navajo Code Talkers. He poked fun at Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who used to claim to be Cherokee despite not having any evidence to substantiate the claim. Democrats and their media footsoldiers decided it's racist to mock someone for falsely claiming to be Native American. For example, Jim Acosta of CNN wrote: "WH press sec says 'Pocahontas' is not a racial slur. (Fact check: it is.)"

Uh, fact check: no. For one thing, as Gabriel Malor said, "No, derogatorily referring to a person who falsely claimed to be a Native American as Pocahontas is not a racial slur. It demeans no racial or ethnic group." It definitely demeans women who claim that they're Cherokee sans evidence.

If your friends make fun of you for falsely claiming you totally have a real, live girlfriend in Toronto and she's really busy so that's why they can't meet her, that doesn't mean they hate Canadians. If people mock you for claiming to be British royalty by unceasingly addressing you as "Her Highness," that doesn't mean they hate the queen. You get the idea.

Comment: Spreading the lie: How Google and MSM use "fact checkers" to flood us with fake claims

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Pirates

Washington is using private contractors to conduct Deep State covert operations

Valery Kulikov
New Eastern Outlook
Fri, 01 Dec 2017 17:21 UTC
Military contractors
It is no secret that the last couple decades saw an abrupt increase in the number of private military companies or private security contractors (PMCs), the overall budgets of some easily surpass the military budgets of certain sovereign states. The turning point in the creation of such companies occurred in 1995 during military operations conducted by the Armed Forces of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina against Serbian troops, when hostilities were outsourced to a number of security contractor firms.

There can be no second opinion about Washington being the most faithful adept of the PMC concept, since the number of wars the US has been waging against other states requires the Pentagon to find extra hands to do its dirty work for it. American intelligence agencies were quick to comprehend in mid 90s that they would need a lot of private contractors if they were to carry on their dubious operations across the globe over the next several decades. Therefore, the Pentagon began encouraging various companies to handle a wide range of outsourced military tasks. As a result, over the last decade alone the US military has signed more than 3,0 00 contracts with PMCs.
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Info

The head of the State Duma Regulations Committee says Russian lower house to ban access to all US reporters


RT
Fri, 01 Dec 2017 18:38 UTC
State Duma plenary meeting
© Vladimir Fedorenko / Sputnik
State Duma plenary meeting
The head of the State Duma Regulations Committee has said that the Russian Lower House will ban all visits by journalists working for US mass media. This is in reply to the US Congress's hostile moves towards Russia's RT America television.

"By our decision we are offering this move for the consideration of the State Duma Council and plenary session. We are expressing our attitude to the inadmissibility of attacks on democratic values, freedom of speech and the right to receive objective information," MP Olga Savastyanova told RIA Novosti on Friday.

The lawmaker added that she expected the corresponding motion to be passed on the State Duma plenary session on Wednesday and come into force before the end of next week. Federal lawmakers also plan to approve of a recommendation to Russian regional legislatures to introduce similar measures.

Comment: The United States will undoubtedly use this as a means of pointing out how they are the victim, and hypocritically exclaim how Russia is against freedom of the press. It will be lost on them that it is the US who is the aggressor, and there are natural consequences for their actions.

See also: Russian lawmakers order probe of RFE/RL, VOA, and CNN

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Pirates

US envoy for Ukraine is driving the negotiation process into the ground

Alex Gorka
Strategic Culture
Thu, 30 Nov 2017 16:50 UTC
Kurt Volker
"Kurt Volker is an experienced and tough-minded diplomat who knows how to combine principles and pragmatism into policy. He is widely respected across the political spectrum," said Paul Saunders, the executive director of the Center for the National Interest and a former George W. Bush administration official, in his comments on Kurt Volker's appointment as the Trump administration's special envoy charged with ending the war in Ukraine. "The fact that they appointed [Volker] is a sign this administration is serious about Ukraine," John Herbst, former US ambassador to Kiev, told Foreign Policy. "The United States remains fully committed to the objectives of the Minsk agreements, and I have complete confidence in Kurt to continue our efforts to achieve peace in Ukraine", said State Secretary Rex Tillerson, emphasizing that the Minsk accords were the basis for the diplomatic endeavor.

Indeed, the hopes were high. It was widely believed that a diplomat with experience as rich as Kurt Volker's was the right man for the job. Five months has passed since his appointment in July. The negotiation process is stalled and there is no light at the end of the tunnel.
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