Iraq tells Swedish ambassador in Baghdad to leave

US bans 14 Iraqi banks in dollar smuggling crackdown: Report

The Cradle | July 19, 2023

Oil firms in the US are reluctant to unload a shipment of stolen Iranian oil sitting in a Greek tanker off the coast of Texas, saying they are too worried about Iranian reprisal to touch the cargo, sources familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

Companies with any exposure whatsoever in the Persian Gulf are literally afraid to do it,  a Houston-based energy executive told the US outlet, adding that companies fear the Iranians would take retribution against them.

I dont know if anybodys going to touch it, another executive at a shipping company told the WSJ.

Washington illegally seized the Marshall Islands-flagged...

The Cradle | July 18, 2023

US video-sharing and social media platform YouTube on 17 July closed 18 channels affiliated with Yemens ruling Ansarallah resistance movement, including those of the media bureau of Yemens Operations Command Center (OCC) and the resistances art and documentary production unit.

In a statement issued to Yemens SABA news agency, Yemeni officials called the move an arbitrary measure and intellectual terrorism that reaffirms the aggressive intentions of the US-Saudi-Emirati coalition of aggression against Yemen by harnessing their media assets to serve their colonial project. It also reveals the falsity of the slogans of freedom of opinion and expression raised by western countries.

The suspended channels reportedly had over 500,000 subscribers and hosted over 7 thousand videos with over 90 million views.

According to officials, many of the closed channels hosted art and music and did not promote any form of political hatred or incitement.

This is not the first time that YouTube and other social medial platforms have deleted Yemeni accounts or pages without any prior justification.

In 2021, the US Justice Department seized the website domain of the Yemeni Arabic-language Al-Masirah television channel and nearly three dozen other regional websites.

Social media giants often purge content that supports the Axis of Resistance and works to silence journalists who document Israeli and US war crimes in the region.

Western censorship often targets non-hegemonic news organizations like PressTV and RT.

Last year, a leak of internal Twitter files offered evidence that the Pentagon collaborated with Twitter to wage a secret PsyOps campaign across West Asia to sway public opinion in favor of Washingtons military interests in the region.

Regardless of the overlapping of terms, whether the region in question is called West Asia or the Middle East, we can say that West Asia is a region that can be defined as an area where states believe they have a particularly close set of relations due to history, culture, and geography. It consists of the states of the Arab League plus Iran and Egypt, with some states belonging to more than one region.

As for Israel, although it belongs to the West Asian region and part of the Middle East geographically, it is closer to Europe politically and culturally; it has connections to European countries and takes part in European events.

West Asia enjoys an important geostrategic location, linking East and West by land and sea, includes the most important international waterways, and holds an economic and political weight in the world.

It has remained at the heart of global security concerns throughout the last decades and has multiple disputes, often with significant involvement from outside powers. Since 2010, at least 7 countries in the region used military force in combat on their own territory, and 11 used it on the territory of other countries.

West Asia is the only region of the world that does not have an inclusive regional security system. Attempts to create such a system have always foundered on the regions myriad tensions and complexities. For that, the issue of security and stability in the region constitutes an urgent and critical question in one of the most turbulent regions in the world, where chaos enhances the security dilemma, due to the complex relations among regional powers, external intervention, and lack of trust between the political players.

The question then is whether the dramatic events that have occurred in the region in the past few years made the current moment ripe, at least, for beginning a process of establishing a comprehensive security system. Much has changed since the so-called Arab Spring outbreak, the emergence of terrorism and other new forms of religious extremist groups, and the perception that America is not so fully committed to regional stability as it was in the past, along with the rise of China and Russia as competing powers in the area.

Under these circumstances, one might ask about the necessary steps to start establishing a comprehensive and cooperative regional security system. In fact, it is hard to believe that a regional security system can be formed easily and quickly because in all cases there will remain disagreements that cannot be fully agreed upon, and many disputes will appear when taking the initial steps to setting up such a system.

Nevertheless, I can say that setting up a comprehensive and sustainable security system to achieve the highest level of stability and cooperation is possible if there is political will. I believe political will and popular desire to achieve this is looming on the horizon. In addition, some historical precede...

July 19, 2023 In an interview with Qatar-based Al Jazeera networks Arabic service on Wednesday, Jasem Mohamed al-Budaiwi, the secretary-general of the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), lauded the normalization of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, highlighting its positive impact on regional stability. Budaiwi expressed the GCCs willingness to engage in profound discussions with []

Press TV July 18, 2023

Pentagon says it plans to send additional fighter jets and naval assets to the Persian Gulf region to increase US military presence in the region, a move that comes against the backdrop of Irans stern warning.

Addressing a briefing on Monday, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh claimed the deployment would be an effort to counter Iran, citing a number of alarming events in the Strait of Hormuz earlier this month.

On July 10, an Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) commander announced that the US made unprofessional and risky attempts to impede the seizure of a foreign oil tanker smuggling Iranian fuel in the Persian Gulf last week, but the IRGC successfully confiscated the vessel.

According to IRGCs Rear Admiral Ramazan Zir-Rahi, the vessel carrying contraband fuel had arranged military backing from US military forces in the area but was still seized by Irans naval forces.

He further elaborated that the US Navy attempted to intervene as IRGC naval forces moved in to intercept the oil tanker involved in smuggling one million liters of Iranian oil and gas.

Singh, however, alleged that Iran is conducting destabilizing activities that threaten the free flow of commerce through the strategic Strait of Hormuz of which the world depends on for more than one-fifth of the worlds oil supply.

The Secretary of Defense has ordered the deployment of the destroyer USS Thomas Hudner, F-35 fighters and F-16 fighters to defend US interests and safeguard freedom of navigation in the region, she told reporters.

She did not give details about the date the fighter jets and guided-missile destroyer would be sent to the region, or how long the new deployment would last but emphasized that the move would help to monitor and secure vital waterways.

On Friday, an unnamed senior American defense official also said the US will send F-16 fighter jets to the Persian Gulf region this weekend in a bid to protect ships from Iranian seizures.

The official claimed that the F-16s will give air cover to the ships moving through the strategic Strait of Hormuz and increase the US militarys visibility in the area, the Associated Press reported.

Iran says it views US military vessels lurking in the waters of the Persian Gulf as a threat to its security and a source of tensions and instability in the region.

On Monday, Irans Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani warned the United States to refrain from any provocative moves in the region, especially close to the countrys borders.

The spokesman further said that Tehran reserves the right to take deterrent measures under international law.

Iran monitors with...

Syria: Two killed in suspected Israeli missiles strike on Damascus

The BBC News website has to date published seven written reports relating to the July 3^rd/4^th counter-terrorism operation in Jenin. Seeing as those reports will remain online as what the BBC describes as permanent public record that is in the public interest, the way in which the background to and reasons for that operation are portrayed in those reports is clearly worthy of review.

The context to that operation includes a rise in violence that began some two years ago with collaboration between known terrorist organisations and the formation of the Jenin Battalion (BBC portrayal of which was previously discussed here), Additional factors include the failure of the Palestinian Authority to exert control over areas, including Jenin, supposedly under its administration and the rise in the number of PA security forces personnel taking part in terrorism and violence. A particularly significant element of the picture is the...

Orientation

How long has capitalism existed? Has it always been with us all the way back to tribal societies or is it a product of the modern age? Is there any pattern to its evolution? Is it cyclic,  spiral-like  or random? What is the nature of capitalist crises? Why does capitalism grow flush in certain parts of the world, die out in others and yet seemingly reignite itself in another part of the world? What can world-systems theory tell us about the current battle between the Anglo-American empire and the multipolarists of China, Russia and Iran?

What is capitalism?

Capitalism is a historical economic system that arose in Europe in the 15^th century.  Over a 600-year period its leading hegemons were first the Italian city-states of Genoa and Venice. In the 17^th century these city-states were superseded by the Netherlands. The British overtook the Dutch in the 18^th century and the United States crowded out the British well before World War I. Capitalism is characterized by a law-enforced right of private property (as opposed to state or community ownership) in the areas of:

• raw materials (land)
• means of production (tools and methods of harnessing energy)
• labor (who uses the tools and the methods of harnessing energy to work on raw materials)
• commodities (finished products and services)
• money which is transformed into capital stocks, bonds and derivatives
• power settings in which decisions about the economy are made (political settings). These include The National Association of Manufacturers and The Business Round Table. Internationally the Council of Foreign Relations, the World Economic Forum and the G7 are examples.

The purpose of capitalism is to make a profit which is unlimited in scope, protected by law, and if necessary, by the military. According to world-systems theorist Immanuel Wallerstein capitalists derive their profits by two processes:

• broadening its reach, colonizing the periphery counties for its natural resources, inducing it to produce a single cash crop while paying wages far below wages of the workers in the core countries.
• deepening its re...

JUL 18, 2023 With Irans SCO veto, no other West Asian country can join the eastern security and economic alliance without Tehrans say-so. This is a remarkable position of leverage for the Iranians, who have overnight gained access to a $6 trillion marketplace and military cooperation with Asias biggest powers. Mohamad Hasan Sweidan After a []