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PACE votes for Russia's immediate return after three years under sanctioned absence


RFE/RL
Tue, 25 Jun 2019 00:31 UTC
PACE
© stortinget.noParliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has voted to make it possible for Russia to return to the chamber following a three-year hiatus. The vote took place early on June 25 following debate during PACE's opening summer session in Strasbourg.

The decision marked the first time that a major sanction imposed on Moscow since its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region in March 2014 has been reversed.

With 47 member states, the Council of Europe is the continent's main human rights body.

A total of 118 parliamentarians agreed to welcome Russia back into PACE immediately and to blunt the assembly's ability to impose sanctions similar to those on Russia in the future. Sixty-two members of the parliamentary assembly voted against the move and 10 abstained.

In a resolution, PACE decided that its members' "rights to vote, to speak, and to be represented in the Assembly and its bodies shall not be suspended or withdrawn in the context of a challenge to or reconsideration of credentials." The assembly said this clarification of its rules was to "ensure that member States' right and obligation to be represented and to participate in both statutory bodies of the Council of Europe is respected."
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Arrow Down

More collective punishment: Israel cuts off fuel supply to Gaza - because 'arson balloons'


Sputnik
Tue, 25 Jun 2019 19:40 UTC
gazans
© AP Photo / Adel Hana
Israel suspended its supply of fuel to the Gaza Strip on 25 June as a countermeasure to several explosive-laden balloons launched from the Palestinian territory, a spokesman for the Israel Defence Forces said.

"Due to the incendiary balloons launched from the Gaza Strip against the Israeli territories with an aim to cause fire in [Israeli] regions surrounding Gaza, it was decided that fuel supplies to a power station in the Gaza Strip through a border crossing would be suspended from today and until further notice", Avichay Adraee, a member of the IDF Arab media division, said on his Twitter.

The statement comes after fire balloons from Gaza caused at least 13 fires in southern Israel on 24 June, with two of them lasting well into the night of 25 June.

Israel imposed a maritime blockade on Gaza on 12 June after several of these balloons caused eight fires in the country's south. The blockade was eased a week later.

Comment: See also:

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Star of David

Forget Trump's 'deal of the century': Annexing the West Bank has always been Israel's goal

Jonathan Cook
Mondoweiss
Tue, 25 Jun 2019 19:24 UTC
illegal settlements israel
© ReutersThe Israeli flag flying over Israeli settlements in the West Bank
When Israeli prime ministers are in trouble, facing difficult elections or a corruption scandal, the temptation has typically been for them to unleash a military operation to bolster their standing. In recent years, Gaza has served as a favourite punching bag.

Benjamin Netanyahu is confronting both difficulties at once: a second round of elections in September that he may struggle to win; and an attorney general who is widely expected to indict him on corruption charges shortly afterwards.

Netanyahu is in an unusually tight spot, even by the standards of an often chaotic and fractious Israeli political system. After a decade in power, his electoral magic may be deserting him. There are already rumblings of discontent among his allies on the far right.

Given his desperate straits, some observers fear that he may need to pull a new kind of rabbit out of the hat.
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Yoda

UN Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer has become one of Assange's most vocal advocates

Jjimmysllama
MintPress News
Wed, 19 Jun 2019 18:00 UTC
free assange poster
On May 9, UN Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer, visited WikiLeaks founder and journalist Julian Assange at Belmarsh Prison, where he is currently serving a 50-week prison sentence for a minor bail violation. Melzer was accompanied by two medical experts who specialize in the examination of possible victims of torture as well as the documentation of symptoms, both physical and psychological. The team was able to speak with Assange and conduct a medical assessment following a set of guidelines known as "The Istanbul Protocol," a tool designed to help UN workers and others investigate, document, and report incidents of torture and ill-treatment.

The results were shocking.

According to Melzer, the evidence is overwhelming that Assange has been "deliberately exposed, for a period of several years, to progressively [more] severe forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," the effects of which he described as psychological torture. Melzer also found that Assange has been exposed to:
"persistent, progressively [more] severe abuse ranging from systematic judicial persecution and arbitrary confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy, to his oppressive isolation, harassment and surveillance inside the embassy; and from deliberate collective ridicule, insults and humiliation, to open instigation of violence and even repeated calls for his assassination."

Comment: No surprise; the author @jimmysllama was removed from Twitter on or about June 21st.

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Black Cat

From Exxon to 'ambassador': Carlos Vecchio's path to becoming Venezuela's top coup lobbyist

Anya Parampil and Diego Sequera
The Grayzone
Tue, 25 Jun 2019 14:59 UTC
trump vecchio venezuela
© The White HouseVenezuelan "ambassador" Carlos Vecchio presents his fake credentials to Trump
The story of regime-change brain Carlos Vecchio's rise through elite US institutions and the oil industry captures the essence of Venezuela's opposition.

May 24th was a day of hard-earned celebration for Carlos Vecchio, the man tasked with leading the Trump administration's coup attempt in Venezuela from the US capital. His face was largely obscured in the grainy Twitter video of the moment he and his gaggle leaned out of a third-story window and hoisted a brand new flag onto Venezuela's former diplomatic mission in Washington DC, but Vecchio was clearly beaming as a small crowd of supporters cheered from below.

Finally, on that swampy spring afternoon, Vecchio had arrived as Venezuela's "ambassador" to the United States. Or had he?

Vecchio's quest to illegally seize and occupy Venezuela's US embassy had been a far more arduous battle than he likely imagined. A group of anti-war activists had managed to prevent his entry for over a month by establishing a presence inside the building at the invitation of Venezuela's elected president, Nicolas Maduro. Their goal was to block Vecchio and his cohorts from taking over the premises until a diplomatic resolution regarding the mission's status could be reached.
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Bullseye

Best of the Web: Goad, threaten, backtrack: Trump & Bolton's Iran policy is confusing, dangerous & achieves NOTHING

Igor Ogorodnev
RT
Tue, 25 Jun 2019 17:44 UTC
trump and bolton
© Getty Images/Sean Gallup
Washington's fuzzy and high-drama "maximum pressure" approach to Iran has no realistic endgame - but is good for making the world a more unstable place for both America's adversaries and allies.

National Security Advisor John Bolton's Tuesday claim that US diplomats are "surging" across the Middle East in search of a "path to peace" only to encounter "deafening silence" from Tehran might have ordinarily seemed merely mendacious.

But considering the extraordinarily rich array of pronouncements and actions from the White House in the past week, most are no longer sure if Bolton is playing the diplomat, gaslighting us or actually believes his words. If - surely, like many of the world's foreign ministers - you are struggling to keep up, here is the timeline since Thursday, when Iran admitted shooting down an American drone:
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Snakes in Suits

Russian MP correctly brands NATO chief 'irresponsible babbler' over 'Russian INF non-compliance' claim


RT
Tue, 25 Jun 2019 17:33 UTC
Jens Stoltenberg
© REUTERS / Joshua RobertsNATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg
NATO is to discuss this week what it will do after the looming expiry of the INF Treaty, with its chief pinning the blame for the development on Russia. This charge prompted some name-calling from a senior Russian MP.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty will expire in six months after the US announced its withdrawal from the Cold War-era agreement in February. The Donald Trump administration claimed the move was due to Russia's non-compliance, a charge that Moscow denied. The US-favored narrative was reiterated by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg as he was announcing that the alliance will be discussing what measures it will take after the treaty ceases.

"We call on Russia to take the responsible path, but unfortunately we have seen no indication that Russia intends to do so," he told the media during a press conference ahead of a two-day meeting of the defense ministers of member states.

"Our response will be defensive, measured and coordinated," he said.
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Bullseye

Moscow: 'Unacceptable' to lump Iran together with ISIS as Middle East's 'chief security threat'


RT
Tue, 25 Jun 2019 17:27 UTC
oman tanker attack
© SNA / Reuters
It's wrong to label Iran as the main threat to the Middle East, Russia's senior security official warned, while stressing that data produced by Washington is not enough to blame the Iranians for recent tanker attacks.

"Iran was and remains our ally and partner," Secretary of Russia's Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, said on Tuesday.
In that sense, any attempts to portray Tehran as the chief threat to regional security, let alone lump it together with ISIS and other terrorist organizations, are unacceptable to us.
The senior official made his remarks in Jerusalem following a meeting with President Donald Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, and his Israeli counterpart, Meir Ben-Shabbat, both of whom clashed with the Russians over their views on Iran.
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Snakes in Suits

Soros & US billionaires call for new wealth tax; public reacts with instinctive skepticism


RT
Tue, 25 Jun 2019 17:23 UTC
soros
© Reuters / Lazslo Balogh
A group of US billionaires including infamous financier George Soros is backing a "moderate wealth tax" on the fortunes of the richest .01%, echoing several Democratic candidates' proposals. Somehow, Americans don't trust them.

"Polls show that a moderate tax on the wealthiest Americans enjoys the support of a majority of Americans - Republicans, Independents, and Democrats," the group of 20 billionaires, including Soros, his son Alexander, the Pritzker, Gund, and Disney families, and the elusive Anonymous, wrote in a letter published by the New York Times on Monday.

While acknowledging that "major policies seldom come to pass without the prior support of wealthy elites or other wealthy interests," the billionaires made the case that taxing the rich would benefit everyone by bankrolling solutions to "our climate crisis," infrastructure improvements, "public health solutions," and wiping out student loan debt. Why, it would even "strengthen American freedom and democracy," the billionaires gush.
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Vader

Trump signs executive order delivering 'hard-hitting' sanctions against Iran

Alex Pappas
Fox News
Mon, 24 Jun 2019 16:53 UTC
Khamenei
© Official Khamenei website/Handout via REUTERS
President Trump struck back Monday at Iran by issuing "hard-hitting" financial sanctions against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his associates.

"Today's action follows a series of aggressive behaviors by the Iranian regime in recent weeks including shooting down a U.S. drone," the president said in the Oval Office, calling Khamenei "responsible for the hostile conduct of the regime."

Trump said the sanctions "will deny the supreme leader and the supreme leader's office and those closely affiliated with him and the office access to key financial resources and support." Speaking to reporters in the White House briefing room Monday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the sanctions "lock up literally billions of dollars more of assets."

"Along with that action today, we are also announcing specific actions targeting those responsible for recent activities," Mnuchin said, adding that the president has instructed him to sanction Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif "later this week."
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