EU Reinstates Sanctions on Iran*

EU Reinstates Sanctions on Iran*

The European Union has restored sanctions on an Iranian bank and 32 shipping companies on Wednesday, days after an agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program was reached, according to the EU’s Official Journal.

The move comes despite Europe’s second-highest court order to end the asset freeze on Iranian institutions in January when it found fault with the legal grounds given by the EU. However, the EU relisted Iran’s Bank Tejarat and 32 Iranian shipping firms using new legal grounds, a statement said Wednesday.

All those listed are regarded by EU as involved in nuclear or ballistic missile activities and providing support to the Government of Iran. However, eight firms were not put back on the list. The regulation should come into force on the date of publication, the statement said.

In its reasons for restoring the asset freeze on Bank Tejarat, the EU said that the bank “provided significant support to the Government of Iran by offering financial resources and financing services for oil and gas development projects.”

It also added that Bank Tejarat could be identified as being involved in the “procurement of prohibited goods and technology.” The listed shipping firms are owned by Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL), which was previously put under sanctions.

Bank Tejarat is the third-largest bank in Iran and has offices in the UK, Germany and France. The bank’s assets in these countries have been frozen as part of the sanctions. Millions of US dollars spent to manufacture the chemical concentrate of natural uranium passed through Bank Tejarat in 2011, according to the EU.

The European Union’s measures signal that it will keep up sanctions pressure on Iran until a final nuclear deal scheduled for June 30 is sealed. Last week in Switzerland, Iran and the international powers reached an agreement in the long-running dispute over Tehran’s nuclear program.

Iran and six world powers signed a framework deal to restrict the country’s nuclear program in return for lifting the economic blockade imposed by the UN. Under the deal Tehran is obliged to refrain from creating nuclear weapons.

Tehran insists that it’s not pursuing a nuclear capability, but some nations have accused it of having a clandestine military nuclear program.

Several rounds of sanctions in recent years have targeted Iran’s key energy and financial sectors, crippling its economy.

The US and EU imposed sanctions on Iran’s oil and financial sectors to prevent other countries from purchasing Iranian oil and conducting transactions with the Central Bank of Iran, at the beginning of 2012. Later, EU foreign ministers reached an agreement on another round of sanctions against Iran.

Source*

Related Topics:

Iran, P5+1 Joint Statement Calling For Removal of All Anti-Iran Sanctions*

It Is Time for Iran to Tell the West ‘Goodbye’*

Iran’s Central Bank

The Lie of a U.S. – Israeli Fallout for the Global Stage*

Fracking Companies Free to Use 70 Million Gallons Of Clean Water in the Midst of U.S. Record Drought*

Fracking Companies Free to Use 70 Million Gallons Of Clean Water in the Midst of U.S. Record Drought*

California fracking companies will be allowed to use all the water they want, even during the worst drought in the Golden State’s history.

When Governor Jerry Brown ordered average Californians to cut their water use by 25 percent on April 2, he specifically exempted fracking operations – a move that is drawing widespread criticism.

Fracking operations used 214 acre-feet of water, or around 70 million gallons of water in California in 2014, state officials told Reuters. The industry, though, says the amount is small.

“Hydraulic fracturing uses a relatively small amount of water – the equivalent of 514 households annually,” Steven Bohlen, the state oil and gas supervisor, told Reuters.

Big Oil Exempt

Brown, a Democrat, issued the first mandatory water regulations in California last week after surveys revealed the lowest snowpack in history in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. That low snowpack comes as the state faces a mega-drought that some say is the worst in 1,000 years.

The regulations target average homeowners and small business but not big oil.

A Los Angeles Times report indicates Brown’s restrictions include:

• A ban on watering the median strips of grass on California highways.
• The removal of up to 50 million feet of grass – the equivalent of 1,150 football fields.
• Tax rebates to help homeowners replace older water-guzzling appliances with newer more efficient models.
• The ordering of golf courses, school campuses and cemeteries to reduce water usage.

Local water agencies that don’t comply could face fines of $10,000 a day.

But Brown, a longtime supporter of fracking, refused to implement any restrictions on oil drilling operations. Breitbart reported that oil companies pay $20 billion a year in taxes in California.

Not surprisingly, critics of fracking were not happy.

“The governor must save our groundwater from depletion by directing the state water board to protect groundwater as a public resource,” said the director of Food & Water Watch California, Adam Scow.

Although the water that is pumped from the ground is often fresh, the water that is left over from fracking is not. The fresh water is mixed with chemicals for the fracking process, which involves blasting rock with the mixture. That mixture is put back in the ground.

“Governor Brown should … stop the ongoing contamination of groundwater aquifers by toxic wastewater from oil and gas operations,” Scow said. “… Given that there is currently no safe way to dispose of toxic wastewater, the governor should place a moratorium on fracking and other dangerous oil extraction techniques to prevent the problem from getting even bigger.”

How Fracking Could Threaten Food Supply

At least one community in the Central Valley, East Porterville, ran out of water last year after wells went dry, Off The Grid News reported. In August, residents were forced to rely on bottled water distributed by the local county government.

About half of the new oil wells drilled in California employ hydraulic fracking, The Sacramento Bee reported. Many of those wells are located in the Central or San Joaquin Valley of California, one of the nation’s most important agricultural regions.

Around 300 oil wells were drilled each month for the last decade, according to The Bee. That means around 150 new wells a month were fracked in California for the last 10 years. Most of the fracking wells in California are located in Kern County, around Bakersfield in the Southern San Joaquin Valley, The Bee reported. That region includes the community of East Porterville.

Many media outlets, including Off The Grid News, have reported that the California mega-drought could lead to food shortages and high grocery bills because California is the nation’s largest grower of many food crops. The fear is that fracking could make the situation worse.

Source*

Related Topics:

Fracking Company Must Pay $3 Million To Sickened Family*

The Watery Road to Serfdom: After Detroit, Baltimore*

Protestors Shut down Nestlé Plant in Drought Stricken California*

Nestle ‘Liberating’ Water from Drought Stricken Indian Reservation*

U.S. Running out of Water*

Illegal to Collect Rain Water, yet Bottled Water Comes from Drought-Riddled Areas*

The Foreign Fighters of Boko Haram, and El Shebaab*

The Foreign Fighters of Boko Haram, and El Shebaab*

Over the years that which these entities have professed to defend has been lost with the infiltration and increasing brutality that entered the battle ground with questionable foreign fighters. Direct reports from civilians have testified to this reality even though the media both corporate and the so-called alternative media do not reflect this reality. By the time declared an allegiance to ISIS, the information had already surfaced that many of the leaders are from both North Africa, and the West… This may well have been the template for the creation of ISIS.

In 2013, The Christian Monitor reported:

Justice Minister Mohammed Adoke charged that Boko Haram is being influenced from abroad. “Nigeria is experiencing the impact of externally-induced internal security challenges, manifesting in the activities of militant insurgents,” he said while defending the country’s record at a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva…

Boko Haram fighters, including current leader Abubakar Shekau, were reported fighting alongside al-Qaida affiliated groups that seized northern Mali last year.

A Nigerian daily

Military sources have confirmed the arrest of eight French nationals, caught fighting under the terror group Boko Haram.

According to ThisDay Live, The Cameronian army had apprehended these fighters and are insisting on trying them, but France is against this idea….

A Nigerian military insider told reporters that the arrest of these Europeans have caused tensions between France and one of her Francophone allies in the sub-region following the shocking discovery that some French citizens are staunch members of the sect, a throwback to their membership of the terror group, Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Findings suggest that France is angry at her former colony for not giving up on the idea of trying them in Africa and wants the French men handed over to the French authorities.

French Foreign Minister, Mr. Lauren Fabuci had ordered for the transfer of the suspects into French hands.

This has angered the Cameroonian authorities, who are dumbfounded by the manner in which France had demanded the release of its nationals.

A Cameroonian minister was quoted to have said: “Mr. Lauren Fabuci, the French Foreign Minister, has ordered Cameroun to release immediately eight Europeans captured by our security men, for being part of Boko Haram terrorists.

In 2014:

An alarm has been raised over the growing influence of foreign fighters in the ranks of violent insurgent group, Boko Haram, just like any other terrorist group all over the world.

The Minister of Defence, Lt-Gen. Aliyu Gusau (rtd), who raised the alarm yesterday during the opening of a four day Defence Advisers/Attachés annual conference in Abuja, called for a united effort in combating the menace.

In 2014, The Herald reported:

Two foreigners arrested with a troop of Boko Haram fighters have been identified as hired guns who are non-Nigerians.

El Shebaab

A videotape of Omar Hammami in which he urges “commanders of jihad and the honorable scholars” to intervene to resolve “friction” between foreign fighters and Somali members of Shabaab was released on the Internet yesterday. Hammami, the American terrorist also known as Abu Mansour al Amriki, who has served as a Shabaab military commander, propagandist, recruiter, and fundraiser, has previously stated that his life is in danger.

“I witnessed important parts of this history during my friction with the men of al Qaeda like Abu Talha al Sudani, Abu Abdullah al Sudani, Abu Mansour al Bayhani, Saleh al Nabhan, and Abu Fadl al Qamri,” Hammami says, naming top al Qaeda leaders in East Africa who have been killed over the past several years. “The conflict that was taking place in Somalia between those men and between the emirs of [unclear] is still continuing, after some were captured and the majority martyred.”

The Christian Monitor

Hammami with other foreign fighters in Shabaab.

… those foreigners who join Al Shabab often have disproportionate power, according to a report by the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria. Omar Hammami, an American from Alabama, is Shabab’s chief propagandist. Abu Musa Mombasa, a Pakistani, is head of training. Sheikh Muhammad Abu Faid, a Saudi citizen, is Shabab’s chief financier

In 2012

‘Britons are thought to make up about 25 per cent of the 200 or so foreign fighters that the Al-Shabaab group in Somalia currently fields’, a report by the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) said.

The report added that ‘most of these individuals appear to be only informally networked, making the most of personal links through Kenya or South Africa’.

According to the report, ‘young British men, and some women, go to fight in Somalia, Yemen and the border areas of Pakistan. So, too, do an increasing trickle of disaffected American men, some of whom have already served in the US Army’.

Foreign fighters in ISIS

Foreign fighters in ISIS

Foreign fighters’ in Afghanistan

Related Topics:

Destroying Nigeria Vital to World Entropy *

Bishop Badejo: U.S. won’t fight Boko Haram because of their Eugenics Agenda in Africa*

The REAL Pirates of Somalia Stand Up!‏

Nairobi Mall Massacre a Set Up*

The Misled Foreign Fighters in Iraq*

CIA + Contractors = ISIS in Afghanistan*

How GCHQ Monitors Germany, Israel, the EU and Africa*

A Freudian Slip!? U.N. Reveals Close Links Between Israel and Al Qaeda Affiliates in Syria*

Israel Admits Aiding CIA’s al-Qaeda in Syria*

Unholy Trinity United States-Israel- Saudi Arabia Sowing Discord amongst Muslims*

The Lie of a U.S. – Israeli Fallout for the Global Stage*