Puppet MastersS


Radar

Chinese military vessels enter Russia's Baltic for first time as joint drills kick off

Chinese frigate ''Huangshan'' and Russian Navy's Antisubmarine Ship ''Admiral Tributs'
© Zha Chunming / Global Look Press
The 'Joint Sea 2017' drills of the Russian and Chinese naval forces have begun the first stage of major exercises, marking the first time they have taken place in Europe.

As the Chinese ships entered the Russian sea port of Baltiysk on Friday, the first phase began, with the active phase commencing on July 24.

While the Baltic stage of the exercises is set to last through July 28, the second phase of the Joint Sea maneuvers will be held in the Russian Far East, the Sea of Japan, and the Sea of Okhotsk in September.

"This is the first visit of Chinese fleet in Baltiysk in the history of the Russian-Chinese relations," Tass agency quoted Russian Baltic Fleet spokesman Roman Martov as saying.

Joint Sea 2017 will feature China's most advanced military vessels, including the Type 052D missile destroyer Changsha, missile frigate Yungchen, and the Luomahu supply ship, which concluded live-fire drills in the Mediterranean last week.

Info

US Treasury accuses Exxon Mobil of violating 2014 Russian sanctions

Rex Tillerson
© Reuters
The U.S. Treasury Department accused Exxon Mobil of violating U.S. sanctions on Russia just weeks after they were imposed in 2014, as it hit the U.S oil and gas giant with a $2 million fine.

Exxon Mobil, whose chief executive at the time is now the U.S. secretary of state, pushed back strongly, calling the action "fundamentally unfair."

The violation, which the Treasury Department announced July 20, occurred in May 2014, just weeks after President Barack Obama announced the sanctions against Moscow for its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula.

Those sanctions targeted, among others, the Russian state-controlled oil company Rosneft and its chief executive, Igor Sechin.

Comment: ExxonMobil challenges 'fundamentally unfair' $2mn fine deals with Russia's Rosneft
ExxonMobil filed a legal challenge against the US government immediately after the Treasury Department slapped the oil producer with a $2 million fine over its partnership with Russia's Rosneft, which the government believes is in violation of US sanctions.

The American oil giant maintains that at no point has its dealings with Rosneft violated the sanctions imposed by Washington on Russia in the wake of the Ukrainian crisis three years ago.

In the legal challenge filed against the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), ExxonMobil insists that it followed guidance from the Obama administration which OFAC proceeded to retroactively change.

"OFAC seeks to retroactively enforce a new interpretation of an executive order that is inconsistent with the explicit and unambiguous guidance from the White House and Treasury issued before the relevant conduct and still publicly available today," ExxonMobil's filing in the US District Court, said.

According to an OFAC statement, the restrictions were violated by ExxonMobil's US subsidiaries "by signing eight legal documents related to oil and gas projects in Russia with Igor Sechin, the President of Rosneft OAO, and an individual identified on OFAC's List of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons."

The American oil giant, however, maintains that Rosneft was not subject to any sanctions at the time the documents were signed.

"Instead, the sole basis of OFAC's July 20, 2017 penalty notice... is that the documents were signed on behalf of Rosneft by its President and Chairman, Igor Sechin, who at the time was subject to sanctions only in his individual capacity," the legal complaint said.

Sechin was added on the US sanction list days before the deals were signed for allegedly demonstrating "utter loyalty" to Russia's President Vladimir Putin.

ExxonMobil argues that Obama's executive order and the White House's guidance emphasized that only personal assets of the sanctioned individuals were subjected to sanctions.

"When Mr. Sechin was designated, the Treasury Department made clear that Rosneft was not designated and that Mr. Sechin was being designated as an 'individual'," the 21-page complaint reads.



Handcuffs

'Generation of Al Capones': Prison reform bill to tackle billion dollar bail industry

US prison
© Mark Crosse / Global Look Press
Senators Kamala Harris (D-California) and Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) are reaching across the aisle in a bid to support prison reform. They are co-sponsoring a bill to reform bail conditions which serves as an example of a reform idea that has bipartisan appeal.

In a New York Times op-ed on Thursday, the two senators set out their case by recalling the horrifying saga of Kalief Browder, a 16-year-old New Yorker who was arrested on charges of stealing a backpack in 2010.

The family was unable to post $3,000 in bail, and Browder was sent to jail on Rikers Island to wait for his day in court. He ended up staying there for three years before charges were dropped and he was released.

"Haunted by his experience, Mr. Browder hanged himself in 2015," wrote Harris and Paul. The pair notes that as many as 450,000 Americans are in jail today awaiting trial because they could not afford to pay jail.

"Whether someone stays in jail or not is far too often determined by wealth or social connections, even though just a few days behind bars can cost people their job, home, custody of their children - or their life," wrote Harris and Paul.

MIB

'We have lost intelligence!' CIA Director Pompeo whines about Russians and Iranians 'making our lives difficult'

Russian Sukhoi-30 aircraft
© Ministry of defence of the Russian Federation / Sputnik
CIA Director Mike Pompeo has downplayed Russia's role in the Syrian operation, saying there is only "the most minimal evidence" that Russia is pursuing a serious strategy there.

US-Russian relations cannot be unambiguously characterized, the US intelligence chief said at the Aspen Security Forum on Thursday. While stating that the landscape in Syria has "fundamentally changed" since Russia entered into the country, he said that its interests are not the same as America's.

"We certainly are trying to find places where we can work alongside the Russians, but we don't have the same set of interest [sic] there. So from intelligence perspective [sic], we're staring at the places we can find to achieve American outcomes in Syria - the things in our country's best interest and not in theirs," Pompeo told New York Times columnist Bret Stephens at the forum in Aspen, Colorado.

Comment: That new strategy would be: 'Iran is no longer compliant, so, uhm, we'll just have to live with it.'


Target

Russian naval doctrine: US 'global strike' concept a direct threat while nuclear arms are good deterrent

US navy ships
© Stoyan Nenov / Reuters
The quest for global domination in the world's oceans, as well as the global strike concept of the US and its allies, puts international stability at risk and poses a direct military threat to Russia, the country's new naval doctrine states.

Moscow's demonstration that it is prepared to use force, including non-strategic nuclear weaponry, is an efficient way to deter this threat, the document says.

One of the main challenges faced by Russia is the "strive of a number of states, mainly the US and its allies, for domination in the World Ocean, including the Arctic region, as well as for establishing overwhelming superiority of their naval forces," according to "the state policy of the Russian Federation in the field of naval activities for the period up to 2030," as ratified by a Decree of the President of Russia on Thursday.

The new naval doctrine openly names the states which represent a direct military threat to Russia, in contrast to the now obsolete 2020 document.

Map

Offensive on Tal Afar: Iraq's new de facto Daesh 'statelet'

Iraqi fighters
© AFP 2017/ AHMAD AL-RUBAYE
Many perilous obstacles lie in the path to this city, with roads leading up to it scattered with improvised explosive devices and snipers ready to take out anyone appearing within their sight.

This is Tal Afar, one of the last remaining, major Daesh (outlawed in Russia) strongholds in Iraq. In January 2014, about six months before the Islamic State proclaimed its caliphate in Iraq, this area was close to becoming a separate administrative division. Within just a short period of time, the city has become the most powerful extremist stronghold in Iraq.

Radar

Secrecy around drone assassination of British citizens in Syria challenged in court

British drone aircraft
© Global Look Press
The UK government's refusal to release key advice on the 2015 drone killing of two British citizens in Syria will be challenged in court on Thursday.

Campaigners have questioned the government's line that the killing by drone strike of British jihadists Reyaad Khan and Ruhul Amin was legal.

Rights Watch UK, the NGO demanding to see the advice from government lawyer's upon which the decision to kill the pair was made, have also accused the government of using a US-style drone kill list.

The civil liberties group says the disclosure of the advice is in the public interest, while the Cabinet Office and the attorney-general have rejected this claim, arguing the advice must remain secret because it involves information about intelligence agencies.

Info

'Unintended consequences': US corporations lobby against anti-Russia sanctions

US Congress building
© Michael Weber / Global Look Press
A wide range of American conglomerates, including oil, energy, banking, aerospace, auto and heavy manufacturing enterprises have jointly started a lobbying campaign against the new round of sanctions against Russia passed by the US Senate, CNN reports.

BP, ExxonMobil, General Electric, Boeing and Citigroup, MasterCard and Visa are reportedly among the companies raising concerns the punitive measures will ultimately harm their businesses, rather than the Kremlin.

Ford, Dow Chemical, Procter & Gamble, International Paper, Caterpillar, and Cummins have reportedly warned the measure could impact their businesses as well.

The new bill, aimed at punishing Russia for alleged meddling in the US presidential election, was approved last month. The measures target already sanctioned Russian banks and energy sector, limiting the financing period for them to 14 and 30 days respectively.

Megaphone

Secretive CIA Syria program details exposed by murder of 3 Green Berets at Jordanian air base

murdered green berets Jordan
Staff Sgt. Matthew C. Lewellen, 27, of Kirksville, Missouri; Staff Sgt. Kevin J. McEnroe, 30, of Tucson, Arizona; and Staff Sgt. James F. Moriarty, 27, of Kerrville, Texas
"The Jordanian government had a strong incentive to gloss over the murders of the three Green Berets. Likewise, the CIA was scared of potential blowback and the exposing of their covert program," says investigative journalist Jack Murphy, himself an Army special forces veteran.

A premeditated green-on-blue attack in Jordan outside of King Faisal Air Base (at al-Jafr in Southern Jordan) late last year resulted in the deaths of three elite US Green Berets in what the media initially dubbed a mere unfortunate gate incident and what the Jordanian government dismissed as a "a tragic accident devoid of any terrorist motives". But the whole event and subsequent attempts at cover-up just as Obama was leaving office enraged both the families of the slain and the US special forces community; and it further threatened to blow wide open the CIA's illegal Syrian regime change operation, called Timber Sycamore, which involved American special ops soldiers being tasked with training so-called "moderate" Syrian rebels in Jordan and Turkey as part of an inter-agency program.

As details of the court case involving the shooter continue to emerge this week, the media continues to misreport the true nature of the what the US special forces personnel were doing in Jordan in the first place, and how a CIA secret program put them at risk.

On Monday (July 17) a Jordanian military court sentenced the attacker, a Jordanian soldier named Marik al-Tuwayha, to life in prison with hard labor for the premeditated murder of Staff Sgt. Matthew C. Lewellen, 27, of Kirksville, Missouri; Staff Sgt. Kevin J. McEnroe, 30, of Tucson, Arizona; and Staff Sgt. James F. Moriarty, 27, of Kerrville, Texas. In Jordan a "life sentence" can mean the possibility of being set free after serving 20 years for good behavior.

Evil Rays

Propaganda alert: U.S. State Department claims that Iran is 'foremost state sponsor of terrorism'

Teheran mural
Iran continued to be the "foremost state sponsor of terrorism" in 2016, with groups supported by the country maintaining their ability to threaten the United States and its allies, a new report by the U.S. State Department says.

The report released on July 19 also noted that the Islamic State (IS) militant group, which it blamed for multiple attacks and "atrocities," was rapidly losing ground in Iraq and Syria, but it warned that fighters returning home could pose risks for countries in Central Asia and the Balkans.

The Country Reports on Terrorism has been issued annually since 2004 under a mandate that requires the State Department to provide Congress with regular updates on terrorism throughout the world.

The report took aim at Iran in a time of heightened tensions between Tehran and the United States, which has long accused Iran of sponsoring international terrorism and destabilizing the region. Iran has also been targeted by U.S. sanctions over its weapons programs and human rights violations.


Comment: Yes, even though Iran has complied with an internationally brokered nuclear arms agreement, how dare it have a strong enough military force to repel attacks from countries like, well, the U.S.!