Iran tightens control over Strait of Hormuz, suspending maritime traffic

from Tehran Times

The developments mark the sharpest escalation yet in the maritime dispute between Tehran and Washington since the end of the recent US-Israeli war against Iran, with Iranian military and civilian authorities insisting that responsibility for managing navigation through the strait rests exclusively with Iran under the bilateral understanding reached in Islamabad.

Speaking on state television on Sunday, Iranian Army spokesperson Brigadier General Mohammad Akraminia said the United States had once again demonstrated 'a longstanding pattern of failing to honor its international commitments,' comparing the current dispute with Washington's withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear agreement and 'violations of the recent ceasefire arrangement.'

Akraminia said the Islamabad MoU explicitly assigns Iran responsibility for organizing transit and navigation arrangements in the Strait of Hormuz and obliges the Iranian Armed Forces to ensure the security of maritime passage.

"The armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran are obligated to provide the necessary security for passage through the Strait of Hormuz and to implement the arrangements stipulated under the agreement," he said, adding that Iran would firmly defend the rights granted to it under the memorandum...

read more here 

Strikes on Lebanon Continue as Israeli DM Says They Are ‘Applying Rafah Model’

from AntiWar

Israeli forces continued to carry out drone strikes across southern Lebanon again this weekend, along with reported artillery strikes against towns around the Tyre District. At least one person was reported killed in incidents, and several others wounded.

The one killed person was on a motorcycle near Kfar Roumine, in the Nabatieh District, when he was struck by a drone. Another drone hit a pickup truck transporting garbage around Kfar Dajjal, also around that same district, wounding two people.

Other incidents were reported in al-Mansouri, in Tyre District, wounding as many as four, though details are still emerging on that matter. Israeli forces also carried out demolition operations in villages near the border, including Khiam in the Marjayoun District...

read more here 

Iran says won’t allow US to ‘interfere’ in Strait of Hormuz management

from MEMO

Iran’s military said on Monday it “does not and will not allow” the US to “interfere” in the management of the Strait of Hormuz.

Washington’s “repeated adventures mischief to interfere in the management of the Strait of Hormuz have seriously jeopardized the security of the region,” the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters said in a statement carried by the state broadcaster IRIB.

Tehran “will deal severely with any disruption and insecurity to the passage of commercial ships and tankers by the aggressive and bandit American army outside of Iran’s designated route and without the permission of the armed forces,” it vowed.

The military also warned countries of the region against cooperating with the US army.

Spokesman for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) also said that Tehran “will ontinue to assert Iran’s sovereignty and control over the Strait of Hormuz with strength and determination.”...

read more here 

US ‘taking over’ Strait of Hormuz – Trump

from RT

US President Donald Trump has claimed that America is “taking over” the Strait of Hormuz from Iran, and will act as the “guardian angel” of the key waterway “and get paid for it.” Tehran has earlier declared the strait closed, blaming “hostile actions” by US forces.

Speaking by phone to ‘Fox & Friends’ on Monday, Trump said Iran was getting its “ass kicked” in the war against the US, asserting that the country’s navy, air force and missile capabilities had been “virtually annihilated” and listing senior Iranian leaders he said had been killed. 

He added that US troops were continuing to carry out strikes against Iranian targets after he declared a ceasefire with Tehran to be “over” this past weekend.

“We’re taking over the strait. They’ve got nothing,” Trump said, arguing that Washington should have dealt with what he called the Iran threat “47 years ago.” He accused successive US presidents of having been “tapped along” by Tehran without taking decisive action...

read more here 

Don't Celebrate Lindsey Graham's Death: Be Better Than That

Don't let them drag us into the mud. Lindsey is gone and the only ones who remain to see and hear these slights are his family and friends. If you want to say you are better, you have to be better.

Direct Support 

Lindsey Graham is Dead

by Scott Creighton

Whatever will the world do without one more closeted, Zionist, warmongering neocon?

Sheinbaum takes on cartels, Trump and the legacy of 1968

from al Jazeera

One of Claudia Sheinbaum’s earliest childhood memories is visiting political prisoners with her parents, a moment that helps explain why she calls herself a “child of 1968” — the year protest movements erupted around the globe.

In Mexico, mass student protests targeted the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which had governed Mexico since 1929. Often described as the “perfect dictatorship,” the PRI maintained the illusion of democracy through symbolic elections while suppressing dissent.

After months of protests, a crowd of activists assembled in Mexico City’s Plaza de las Tres Culturas on October 2, 1968. Helicopters circled overhead and flares were reportedly fired into the crowd, before snipers opened fire from nearby rooftops. As bodies fell, a panicked crowd scrambled for cover.

Estimates vary, but up to 300 were believed to have been killed and more than a thousand arrested, effectively quashing the movement.

‘Should Shock the Conscience’: Trump Admin Escalates War on Press With Subpoena of New York Times Reporters

from Common Dreams

The Trump administration on Friday escalated its war with the press by subpoenaing several reporters at The New York Times days after the paper published a story on Wednesday that detailed security concerns about the luxury jet the Qatari government gave to President Donald Trump.

According to the Times, the subpoenas are attempting to force reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Wednesday next week, a move that the paper describes as an “extraordinary escalation in President Trump’s efforts to threaten and intimidate independent news organizations.”

West Bank Settlers Held Rep. Ro Khanna at Gunpoint at Destroyed School

(The genetic freak inbred Zionist settlers don't care. They just want to steal land. They aren't smart enough to drive much less worry about Israel's international reputation and or relationship with the political left in the States. All they know is what they want and how to stick their junk in their sisters to make more little genetic freak inbred Zionist settlers.) 

from AntiWar

US Representative Ro Khanna (D – CA) reports that he was held at gunpoint for more than an hour earlier this week during his visit to the occupied West Bank when Israeli settlers confronted his entourage as he toured a destroyed Palestinian village.

“We were at a village that Israeli settlers had destroyed, they had destroyed the school, they had destroyed that village, and we were just looking at it,” Khanna said. “And these hoodlums come in with machine guns – M4, an American-made machine gun – and they detain us. They block off the road.”

The incident took place at the destroyed village of Khirbet Zanuta, a village near Hebron that was reported “ethnically cleansed” by settlers in 2023. Khanna reported that the settler group summoned the IDF and that the IDF sided with the settlers over the Americans...

read more here 

How Marco Rubio Is Running Venezuela From Afar

(The Times article seems to approve of the new neoliberalized Venezuela as one of the writers is posted in Caracas and is surely aligned with the business interests of the nation.  They also lie about the capture of Maduro, suggesting it was a military achievement by TrumpyBear rather than treasonous betrayal by Delcy Rodriquez. However it does make clear how close Gusano Rubio and Delcy have become, talking and texting every day multiple times, her taking her orders from Rubio and doing Washington's bidding. She's down with the revolution, huh?)

from the NYT

President Trump was sitting in the Oval Office earlier this year with Secretary of State Marco Rubio when an idea came to him.

Maybe he should dispatch Mr. Rubio permanently to Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, where U.S. commandos had carried out the proudest foreign policy achievement of Mr. Trump’s second term: the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the country’s president.

Mr. Rubio could be the next leader of Venezuela, Mr. Trump suggested. And while the president’s aides say he was joking — and that he frequently teases Mr. Rubio about an overseas assignment — the fact is that Mr. Rubio does not need to move to Caracas.

He already runs Venezuela from Washington.

In the six months since U.S. forces blew open Mr. Maduro’s bedroom door and snatched him in the dead of night, Mr. Rubio has become the de facto viceroy of Venezuela, holding sway over a sovereign nation in a way that no American official has since L. Paul Bremer III arrived in Baghdad in 2003 to run U.S.-occupied Iraq

Mr. Rubio now effectively controls Venezuela’s finances, the distribution of its natural resources and its government, according to interviews with more than a dozen officials and people close to both governments in Washington and Caracas, who provided details about his involvement in steering the country’s policies. Many spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private interactions and internal discussions.

While he has not visited Venezuela in person since the U.S. took over, the secretary of state is deeply involved in the country’s day-to-day operations, keeping in close contact with Delcy Rodríguez, who was Mr. Maduro’s vice president and now leads her country on an acting basis, with the imprimatur of the United States. The two exchange messages in Spanish on WhatsApp, trading gossip, birthday greetings and selfies.

Despite the banter, the relationship between Mr. Rubio and Ms. Rodríguez is far from a partnership. It is a manifestation of Trump-era American power, in which the winner takes all regardless of sovereignty and international law.