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Republican Moves Imperil Democratic Cooperation on Iran

WASHINGTON — The open letter that 47 Senate Republicans sent to Iran’s leadership on Monday warning about making a nuclear agreement with President Obama is forcing Democrats to choose between confronting Tehran and rallying around Mr. Obama as he searches for a diplomatic solution to the nuclear standoff. Democrats say that as concerned as they are about an emerging deal with Iran, Republicans’ extraordinary moves to undermine Mr. Obama’s efforts to reach an agreement are weakening their resolve to cross party lines and challenge their own president. “I think Republicans have made it harder for us to approach this in a careful and bipartisan way,” said Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, who has been a leader in his party on pushing for congressional review of the administration’s policies on war and sanctions, and is a sponsor of a bill to review any removal of congressionally imposed sanctions on […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Oil could lead to the downfall of ISIS

BLASTED: An aerial photograph showing what United States military officials describe as a Command and Control Facility in the town of Tikrit, Iraq, after air strikes appears in this recent undated military handout photograph. As the empire continues to collapse, imperialism and the blatant lies (that come with it) will no longer matter. The PTB will plow forward steamrolling anything in the unrelenting ways of “progress”. We all know what the perpetual war in the middle east is about. Most mindlessly go about filling the car and shopping, whispering to themselves, “We see it, we know it, we just are not allowed to say it”, for fear of losing the false sense of security that the deception of empire instill, through delusion of comfort and “security”. “Oh holy crude” sung to the tune of “Oh Canada.” Elijah and the Widow would be proud ( The Peak of The Oil […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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Sweden cancels military deal after Saudi human rights snub

Margot Wallstroem, Sweden’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Sweden is cancelling a controversial military deal with Saudi Arabia a day after an unusually frank diplomatic bust-up between the two countries over human rights. Government officials in Stockholm said that Sweden would not prolong an arms and training deal that had threatened to tear apart the centre-left coalition in the country. More On this topic IN Europe Swedish business leaders, including dozens of prominent chief executives and chairmen, had publicly lobbied for the deal to be extended, arguing that contracts worth billions of krone with Saudi Arabia could be at risk. But on Monday Saudi Arabia blocked Sweden’s foreign minister Margot Wallström from addressing the Arab League in Cairo. Ms Wallström, who had been invited after Sweden became the first EU country officially to recognise Palestine , said she had been told that Sweden’s discussion of human rights and democracy was […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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ISIS Seizes Opportunity in Libya’s Turmoil

SURT, Libya — The Islamic State has established more than a foothold in this Mediterranean port. Its fighters dominate the city center so thoroughly that a Libyan brigade sent to dislodge the group remains camped on the outskirts, visibly afraid to enter and allowing the extremists to come and go as they please. “We are going to allow them to slip out, because the less people we have to fight, the better,” said Mohamed Omar el-Hassan, a 28-year-old former crane operator who leads the brigade from a prefabricated shed on a highway ringing the city. “Why make the city suffer?” he said, trying to explain his delay more than 16 days after the brigade arrived in Surt. Nearly four years after the ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi , Libya ’s warring cities and towns have become so entangled in internal conflicts over money and power that they have opened […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Iraq fully retakes badly damaged fields

Smoke billows during clashes between Iraqi army forces, supported by Shiite militias, against IS militants near Tikrit on March 9, 2015. (ALI MOHAMMED/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) Pro-government forces have regained control of the Ajil and Hamrin oil fields, but militants from the so-called Islamic State (IS) group set fire to more than a dozen wells as they retreated. "The blowout of the wells took place sequentially," said a senior official from the state-run North Oil Company (NOC), which officially operates the fields. "IS bombed 11 oil wells at Hamrin, another seven wells at Ajil. All are burning."Before the fields were seized by IS militants in June 2014, Aj…

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Iraqi and Shiite Forces Seize Large Parts of Tikrit From Islamic State

BAGHDAD — Iraqi security forces and allied Shiite militias seized large parts of Tikrit on Tuesday, amid reports that most of the Islamic State militants battling to hold the city had begun retreating, security officials said. The progress came after a week of heavy fighting to retake Tikrit, a city in the so-called Sunni triangle that holds strategic and emotional importance in the effort to roll back the Islamic State’s lightning advance toward Baghdad in June. The offensive is the largest pro-government military operation yet, involving a combined force of more than 30,000. And if it succeeds, it would be a significant step in the march north to Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and an early conquest for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Still, previous announcements of victory for the Iraqi government have been reversed before, notably in parts of Anbar Province and at an oil […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Private investors building financial life raft for KRG

Todd Kozel, then CEO of Gulf Keystone Petroleum, in a Jan. 9, 2014 company presentation announcing the restart of exports of Shaikan crude. (Source: GKP TV) of Iraq Oil Report Recommend 146 people recommend this. Sign Up to see what your friends recommend. Two former executives at the heart of Kurdistan’s oil contracting boom are wooing investors for a venture that would seek to profit from the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) financial crisis by providing a cash infusion now in exchange for a share of future oil revenues.The executives, Todd Kozel and Ian Hannam, are looking to form a private investment fund that would purchase the rights to a portion of the so-called "capacity building payments" (CBP) that the KRG will receive from s…

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Hungary Mulls Sending Troops To Iraq

March 10, 2015 EU and NATO member Hungary says it is considering sending 100 troops to join the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State militants in Iraq following an American request. Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told journalists on March 10 that a parliament decision could come in mid-April "and Hungarian troops could arrive in Iraq during the second half of May." Szijjarto said, "Hungary is already a part of the conflict with the Islamic State, because it belongs to the Western community of values, which was attacked by the terrorist organization." He said the soldiers’ role would be to protect a training centre in Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital Erbil, in the north, where coalition troops are training local forces. The mission needs approval by a two-thirds majority in parliament, meaning that Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party needs one opposition vote. Based on reporting by AFP

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Nuclear Power Gains Traction in China

ENLARGE A nuclear reactor to be operated by China Guangdong Nuclear Power was under construction in Taishan, Guangdong province, in October 2013. Photo: Reuters BEIJING—China’s government is breathing life into its nuclear sector with the approval of the country’s first new reactors in more than two years. The National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic-planning agency, approved construction of two reactors in the country’s northeastern Liaoning province by state-owned China General Nuclear Power Corp., according to a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange by the company’s listed unit, CGN Power Co. The statement said the NDRC approved units five and six of the Hongyanhe nuclear-power plant, located near the coastal city of Dalian. China has two operating reactors at Hongyanhe as well as two others already under construction, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The NDRC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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OPEC is winning its battle with U.S. shale: Kemp

LONDON (Reuters) – U.S. shale producers are falling behind in the Red Queen’s Race as the downturn in drilling means that new oil production is failing offset falling output from existing wells. The famous race is named after the scene from Lewis Carroll’s novel “Through the Looking-Glass”, in which the Red Queen warns Alice: “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run twice as fast.” The race is a metaphor for the relationship between increased oil production from newly drilled wells on the one hand and declining output from old wells on the other. The net result is that the downturn in drilling is threatening to cut output for the first time since the start of the shale revolution. Other forms of oil production, notably from offshore fields in the Gulf of Mexico, […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple