Saturday, December 01, 2018

Stealth Warship Joins Iran's Naval FleetDecember 1, 2018

Dubai - Iran’s navy on Saturday launched a domestically made destroyer, which state media said has radar-evading stealth properties, as tensions rise with arch-enemy, the United States.

In a ceremony carried live on state television, the Sahand destroyer — which can sustain voyages lasting five months without resupply — joined Iran’s regular navy at a base in Bandar Abbas on the Gulf.

The Sahand has a flight deck for helicopters, torpedo launchers, anti-aircraft and anti-ship guns, surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles and electronic warfare capabilities, state television reported....

...Iran launched its first locally made destroyer in 2010 as part of a program to revamp its navy equipment which dates from before the 1979 Islamic revolution and is mostly U.S.-made.

Iran has developed a large domestic arms industry in the face of international sanctions and embargoes that have barred it from importing many weapons.

Separately, a naval commander said Sahand may be among warships that Iran plans to send on a mission to Venezuela soon.

“Among our plans in the near future is to send two or three vessels with special helicopters to Venezuela in South America on a mission that could last five months,” Iran’s deputy navy commander, Rear-Admiral Touraj Hassani Moqaddam, told the semi-official news agency Mehr....

There is no such thing as playing fair anymore. Russia is intent on destroying the civilized world. Russia and Cuba has filed an alliance under the new President. Either hold the President of Cuba and Putin responsible for human rights violations AND MEAN IT or suffer the consequences.

The technology they use to permanently damage diplomats and who knows who else, generals and congress persons next, is indiscriminate in it's use. The technology harms all forms of life. I think it is microwave.

The USA has sound technology, but, rarely deploys it because of it's unknown consequences that may be permanent. But, there is no reason to not give the Chinese, Russians and Cubans a taste of their own medicine. That means the USA and Canada will deploy the technology within the USA and Canadian borders against diplomats that are supposed to be immune to such tactics.

Get real or visit the Hague and start dragging these people before the tribunals.

November 29, 2018
By Anna Mehler Paperny

Toronto - Canada’s government (click here) is reviewing its diplomatic presence in Cuba, officials said on Thursday, after another staff member developed the same mysterious health problems that first began affecting diplomats last year.

Canadian and U.S. diplomats in Havana first began complaining of dizziness, headaches and nausea in the spring of 2017. The United States reduced embassy staffing in Cuba from more than 50 to a maximum of 18, after more than two dozen personnel developed unusual illnesses.

Another Canadian diplomat showed symptoms over the summer, government officials said in a telephone briefing. Tests confirmed the person suffered from the same health issues that had affected a dozen other Canadian staff, spouses and their children, officials said....

Not that I am interested in victimizing doctors, but, this is ridiculous. Their country deploys technology to permanently injure diplomats while they cry "slavery" to the USA Courts. If the settlement is achieved from Brazil, the monies should be forwarded to the USA and Canadian treasuries to pay for the doctor bills of those effected by Cuban war technology.

The USA and Canada need to file sanctions against Cuba and then proceed to collect any monies available to pay for the permanent physical damage Cuba and Russia has caused to their diplomatic corps.

Russia doesn't want the USA and Canada in Cuba because it wants to build military bases there now that there is a new president.

November 29, 2018
By Andres Oppenheimer

The scandal surrounding the 15,000 Cuban doctors (click here) who have been working as virtual slaves in Brazil is growing: Some of them filed a lawsuit in Miami against the Washington-based Pan American Health Organization (PAHO.)

The lawsuit, filed Friday, claims that the regional health organization not only supervised the program, but pocketed $75 million of its funds. Meanwhile, the doctors were receiving less than 10 percent of their salaries.

Sam Dubbin, a Miami attorney representing at least four Cuban doctors who defected in Brazil, told me that the lawsuit alleges that PAHO, an agency of the U.N. World Health Organization, supervised and profited from an illegal scheme under which the Cuban doctors had to work in conditions that violate U.S. and international forced labor laws....

November 28, 2018
By Mac Margolis

When the Cuban government (click here) gave the word earlier this month to recall the more than 8,000 physicians it deployed in Brazil, the media, physicians and public health wonks were alarmed. What would become of the patients the expatriate doctors had been tending in parts of the country where public services were already precarious at best and the only folks in white were Pentecostal pastors.

That the exodus was triggered by yet another outburst by intemperate right-wing President-elect Jair Bolsonaro only aggravated the worries. Bolsonaro not only offended Cuba by accusing it of promoting slave labor — keeping some 70 percent of the contracted doctor’s fees while barring their families from joining them in Brazil — he also had no fallback plan for the services they rendered. Millions of poor patients would be left unassisted, it was said, so inviting a public health disaster. “This is a sad day for Brazilian health and foreign policy,” former health minister Alexandre Padilha lamented....

...As it happened, Cuba was taking bows with a tip of someone else’s beret. For decades, the governments of Fidel and Raul Castro could deliver medical services pro bono thanks largely to life-support from Havana’s erstwhile foreign sponsor, the Soviet Union....

There is plenty of money floating around between Russia and Cuba to pay for the doctor bills for all the diplomats and their families and pets for the rest of their lives, while curtailing the ability of Cuba to grow into a military threat to the USA.

...Cuba’s medical internationalism raked in some $9.6 billion on average annually from 2011 to 2016, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) estimated last year. According to Vidal, better than three-quarters of that bounty came from just two markets: Brazil and Venezuela....

...Dubbin cited several documents, including an audit of the Mais Medicos program by Brazil’s Supreme Accountability Office, a congressional agency similar to the General Accounting Office in the United States, as showing that over the past five years, Brazil paid about $1.5 billion to PAHO for the program. Of that money, PAHO paid $1.3 billion to Cuba, and kept $75 million for itself. Cuba, in turn, paid the Cuban doctors in Brazil about $125 million, Dubbin said....

The country pauses at the loss of the Late President George H. W. Bush.

Sincerest of sympathies to the Bush family. I am sure he will be dearly missed.

I think history will treat the forty-first President well. He was a war hero. There were many reasons to endear George H. W. Bush to a distinguished place in history.

The presidency is only aspect of this great American. I always believed him to be a kind man. He was once a diplomat and that showed through in his public life. He knew his stuff.

November 30, 2018
By Scott Horsley

George H.W. Bush (click here) was the definition of establishment success: Yale graduate. Prosperous business career. Forty-first president of the United States.

But to one admittedly biased observer, the elder Bush has always been shortchanged.

"As a result of him being a one-term president, historians hadn't paid much attention to him," George W. Bush told NPR in a 2014 interview. He called his father "one of the greatest one-term presidents in the nation's history."

George Herbert Walker Bush died Friday at the age of 94....

Saudi Arabia and Russia have agreed on many issues, including investment. That is why Putin is so excited. (click here for news article - thank you)

...While some world leaders distanced themselves from the Saudi crown prince accused of ordering the assassination of a journalist, and from Russian President Vladimir Putin. But those two men appeared happy to see each other at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Friday.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Putin clasped each other's hands and smiled widely as they greeted each other Friday. The greeting quickly gained traction on Twitter....

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Saudi Arabia's energy minister Khalid Al-Falih (click here) will meet with his Russian counterpart Alexander Novak during the summit to discuss an oil output in 2019, the Russian news agency RIA reported. Novak also said that Russia's 2019 oil output is expected to be at the same level as this year but could be adjusted, depending on a deal between OPEC and non-OPEC members. Producer group OPEC and its allies are meeting in Vienna next week to discuss oil production.



Saudi Arabia pushes for “quiet cut.” A few weeks ago, rumors floated of a potential aggressive production cut at the upcoming OPEC+ meeting, perhaps as large as 1.4 million barrels per day. However, that now looks unlikely, as President Trump has simultaneously protected Saudi Arabia from international outrage over the Khashoggi murder, at the same time that he has pressured them into keeping oil prices low. Russia is also not keen on a large production cut. That leaves Saudi Arabia looking for a “quiet cut,” which would mean taking production back down to previously agreed upon production limit – around 10 mb/d, down from the current 11 mb/d.

They also share an interest in a space (click here) and nuclear (click here) programs. The Crowned Prince has promised to bring money to Russia. They are probably the only two countries that actually have admiration for the other.