Israel greenlights settler attacks on Palestinians: Army official

The Cradle | August 6, 2023
Israeli military official, Reserve Colonel Kobi Merom, said on 5 August that settler attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are greenlit by the government and its ministers, according to Hebrew media.
“What we have seen in recent weeks are dozens of terrorist operations [by settlers] against Palestinian villages, without resulting in arrests,” the general said.
These attacks are “greenlit” and supported by government ministers, Merom added, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and others.
“Minister Smotrich allows the establishment of illegal outposts. Amid the state of collapse that we are spiraling down toward … I am not surprised by the armed incident that took place yesterday in Burqa.”
The colonel was referring to the killing of a 19-year-old Palestinian, Qusai Jamal Matan, by extremist settlers east of Ramallah on 4 August.
Armed Israeli settlers had stormed the village of Burqa that day, sparking clashes with residents of the area. Matan was “shot dead by settlers” during the clashes. That same day, an 18-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israeli troops in a military raid on a camp east of Tulkarem.
In response to the settler killing of Matan, Palestinian resistance fighter Kamel Abu Bakr shot and killed an Israeli policeman in Tel Aviv on 5 August, before being killed himself.
“If the prime minister … does not stop this matter and put his foot down at the cabinet table, we are heading toward complete chaos on the ground,” the Israeli colonel warned.
According to the UN, around 600 settler attacks against Palestinians have been recorded since the start of 2023.
Settler violence has always been common in the occupied West Bank, but has surged significantly since Israel’s current government came to power.
Following a resistance operation in February, which killed two Israelis, settlers launched a massive assault on Nablus’ village of Huwara – laying waste to the town and resulting in numerous casualties.
Following the attack, Smotrich called for the village of Huwara to be “wiped out.”
Later in June, another shooting in the Eli settlement prompted settlers to launch a five-day rampage across the West Bank. The rampage occurred with the approval of the Israeli military.
US Aid to Afghanistan ‘Was Plundered in Washington’
By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 06.08.2023
The Taliban was hardly behind corrupt deals related to US military aid to Afghanistan, Moscow-based political analyst Alexander Knyazev told Sputnik.
US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John Sopko has warned of “unanticipated consequences” from possible corruption pertaining to America’s hefty spending on Ukraine.
Speaking hours after Senate Democrats blocked an effort to install greater oversight over the billions of dollars of US military aid to Ukraine, Sopko recalled that Washington has sent more money to Kiev in one year than it spent in Afghanistan in 12 years.
SIGAR said that he was “not opposed to spending that” and he just wanted “to make sure it’s done correctly and there’s oversight.” Sopko especially warned about the risk of fueling graft, stressing that in Afghanistan, “corruption was the existential threat.” According to him, “it wasn’t the Taliban. It was corruption that did us in.”
As far as corruption in Afghanistan is concerned, one can already refer to this evil as a thing of the past, Russian political scientist Alexander Knyazev said.
“As for Afghanistan, I understand that we should now mention this kind of corruption in the past tense. First and foremost, there are few facts about the spread of Western weapons outside Afghanistan. Secondly, even external observers disloyal to the Taliban movement underscore a decrease in the level of corruption in Afghanistan after the Taliban came to power there,” Knyazev pointed out.
He added that over the past twenty years, “all Western aid to Afghanistan has been plundered, which importantly was not the work of Afghans.” One way or another, the analyst went on to say, “this period for Afghanistan is over.”
He also said that “the lion’s share of American aid to Afghanistan did not reach the country at all, [because] it was immediately plundered in Washington.”
“Probably, if someone ever calculates the US’ aid to Ukraine that was stealthily stolen, the sum will likely exceed what was pinched from America’s Afghan aid that came between 2001 and 2021,” Knyazev argued.
With the US spending a whopping $2.26 trillion on Afghanistan-related issues, such as the national army and security, within the above-mentioned period, this huge sum finally didn’t help America prevent the Taliban from seizing power in the South Asian country in August 2021.
This resulted in the collapse of the Washington-backed Afghan civilian government and mass evacuations, something that came amid the chaotic withdrawal of the US-led coalition troops from Afghanistan, which wrapped on August 30, 2021.
The Jeddah Talks Backfired On Zelensky
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | AUGUST 6, 2023
The latest Western-centric Ukrainian peace talks in Jeddah were intended to sway the Global South towards Kiev’s side in the NATO-Russian proxy war by pressuring these countries to support Zelensky’s so-called “peace formula”. That goal was always doomed to fail from the get-go, however, since this event also provided the representatives of neutral countries like China and India with the opportunity to share their own envisaged endgame to the conflict as well as their shared Russian partner’s.
This resultant dialogue led to the meeting being a double-edged sword for Zelensky. On the one hand, he had yet another high-profile opportunity to repeat his talking points about why Russia needs to be punished for its special operation, but this time with all of that country’s BRICS partners in attendance. On the other hand, however, China and India ensured that his demands weren’t the only scenario on the table. Just like Zelensky, they too were able to share these views with a diverse international audience.
As was expected, no consensus was reached on the way forward, but Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Rybkov revealed on Sunday that Russia’s BRICS partners plan to brief it about the event. This is much more significant than the simple courtesy that it might appear to be at first glance since Moscow will be able to obtain a better understanding of all the attendees’ positions, which will in turn enable it to fine-tune its diplomacy towards those countries that might be interested in a compromise solution.
About that, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov debunked the speculation swirling around the Mainstream Media and even among some in the Alt-Media Community alleging that Russia wants to control more than the four former Ukrainian territories that united with it last September. He reaffirmed on the same day as Ryabkov’s earlier statement that “We just want to control all the land we have now written into our Constitution as ours”, which aligns with what President Putin strongly suggested in June.
This position was already known to Russia’s BRICS partners with whom it’s candidly discussed the special operation, particularly the Chinese and Indian representatives who attended the Jeddah talks. Special Representative on Eurasian Affairs Li Hui and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval each visited Moscow several months back, during which time they met with President Putin. Considering this context, it’s likely that they brought up his stance during the Jeddah talks when explaining their countries’.
Via Special Representative Li and National Security Advisor Doval, President Putin was therefore able to convey his country’s pragmatic position towards this conflict’s endgame to the largest international audience so far, thus breaking through the West’s information blockade. Upon learning that he doesn’t have any maximalist goals unlike Zelensky, those other representatives whose countries truly want peace as soon as possible might be in favor of tacitly recognizing Russia’s gains in exchange for a ceasefire.
NATO Instructors Trained Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion Soldiers in 2021

Sputnik – 06.08.2023
NATO military instructors from Denmark and the United Kingdom trained Ukrainian soldiers at a base of the nationalist Azov battalion, despite Azov’s exclusion from US military funding due to its radicalism, according to documents from the Danish embassy in Kiev seen by Sputnik on Sunday.
A note from the Danish embassy dated May 21, 2021, informed the Ukrainian Defense Ministry of the arrival of six instructors for the 56-th Ukrainian army brigade in Berdyansk and Urzuf, where Azov’s main base was located.
“These sites were previously investigated by Russian law enforcement officers, and the materials found there directly point to intensive training of mobilized Ukrainian citizens by Western officers, using criminal methods of warfare, which the Azovs were fluent in,” a law enforcement officer told Sputnik.
The instructors of the UK’s OP ORBITAL training team had already been present in Ukraine before, the document showed.
“Operation ORBITAL is the code name of a UK program to train Ukrainian army servicepeople from the mobilization reserve. I note that these officers, as stated in the text of the document, have access to classified information, which indicates that Ukraine has provided access to information constituting state secrets, including mobilization planning documents,” the officer said.
Despite the fact that the Azov battalion has been recognized by the United States as a neo-Nazi organization, NATO forces were directly involved in training of nationalist armed formations, they noted.
“This is evidence of Kiev’s intensive preparations for active combat operations under NATO’s supervision,” the law enforcement officer concluded.
In August 2022, the Russian Supreme Court designated Azov as a terrorist organization. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office said that Azov militants use prohibited means and methods of warfare and are complicit in the torture of civilians and the killing of children.
Iran responds to US military moves with more firepower
RT | August 6, 2023
Iran has beefed up the weaponry of its naval forces, arming them with such tools as additional drones and precision missiles with ranges up to 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), amid rising tensions with the US over shipping traffic through the world oil market’s most crucial bottleneck.
The Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy officially took possession of the new gear at a ceremony on Saturday, state-run media outlets reported. The systems include reconnaissance and combat drones, as well as electronic warfare equipment, truck-mounted missile launchers, and hundreds of cruise and ballistic missiles.
The announcement came after reports earlier this week that US military officials had drawn up unprecedented plans to place armed troops on commercial trips in the Strait of Hormuz. Just last month, the Pentagon announced deployments of additional fighter jets and naval assets to the Persian Gulf region in response to “alarming events,” such as Iranian seizures of commercial vessels.
Brigadier General Abolfazi Shekarchi, a spokesman for the Iranian military, denounced Washington’s proposed deployment of troops on private ships. “What do the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean have to do with America?” he told Iran’s Tasnim news agency. “What is your business here?”
About 20% of the world’s oil supplies, or one-third of all seaborne crude shipments, go through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage that connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. Tehran typically accuses the operators of detained ships of shipping violations, such as oil smuggling. Some of the vessels have only been released after other countries free detained Iranian tankers.
The new missiles give the IRGC Navy better accuracy and longer range than it previously had available, commander Alireza Tangsiri said. “The cruise missiles can attack several targets simultaneously, and the commands can be altered after takeoff,” he added.
US-Iran tensions have risen since Washington pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018. Efforts to revive the agreement, known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), have failed, despite the change in US leadership when Joe Biden succeeded Donald Trump as president in January 2021.
FCC Defies Court Mandate, Delays Review of Cellphone Radiation Guidelines
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 2, 2023
Despite the Children Health Defense’s (CHD) “historic win” against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) nearly two years ago, the FCC has yet to comply with the court mandate to explain how its radiofrequency (RF) radiation exposure guidelines adequately protect humans from harm.
The agency last week published its regulatory agenda for the next six months. The agenda made no mention of the Aug. 13, 2021, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit court decision.
Commenting on the omission, W. Scott McCollough — CHD’s chief litigator for the organization’s electromagnetic radiation (EMR) cases and the lead attorney for its 2021 victory — told The Defender, “The Federal Communications Commission has just formally admitted that it intends to continue disobeying the D.C. Circuit’s August 2021 order requiring it to reassess its RF exposure guidelines.”
“This wanton and irresponsible defiance of the court’s order is deplorable,” McCollough said. “Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people are getting sick from RF radiation exposure from devices the FCC is knowingly putting in commerce.”
This is taking place “even though all the most current science tells us the [FCC] guidelines are woefully inadequate to protect sensitive adults and defenseless children, and all the increasing non-natural radiation is contributing to species decline,” McCollough said. “We will not stand for this, and neither should the public.”
CHD sued the FCC in 2019 after the agency determined there was “no appropriate basis” for updating or amending its RF radiation exposure guidelines, which the agency initially set in 1996.
The FCC sought to justify its 2019 decision by saying, “We take to heart the findings of the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), an expert agency regarding the health impacts of consumer products, that ‘[t]he weight of scientific evidence has not linked cell phones with any health problems.’”
However, the D.C. Circuit panel majority — after reviewing 11,000 pages of evidence refuting the FCC’s position — told the FCC it must do a better job of explaining how its 1996 guidelines regarding wireless-based technologies adequately protected public health.
The panel remanded the case back to the FCC, meaning the agency was required to reopen its investigation of its RF radiation exposure guidelines.
The panel majority said the agency must also:
“(ii) address the impacts of RF radiation on children, the health implications of long-term exposure to RF radiation, the ubiquity of wireless devices, and other technological developments that have occurred since the Commission last updated its guidelines, and (iii) address the impacts of RF radiation on the environment.”
The FCC has since refused to take action, despite an April 2023 petition from CHD urging them to “quit stalling” and comply with the court-ordered mandate.
According to McCollough, “The FCC intends to keep stalling until it is too late to do anything because any reductions to the exposure limits would require a massive recall and overhaul of the entire wireless infrastructure they want to get deployed now.”
“They and the wireless industry are obviously planning to make the court remand meaningless through this fait accompli maneuver,” he added.
FCC report ‘a joke’
Under the Regulatory Flexibility Act, Congress requires agencies such as the FCC to produce a public report twice a year that outlines the agency’s anticipated or ongoing regulatory undertakings.
McCollough called the FCC’s July 27 public report submitted to comply with this law “a joke.”
“This report lists 75 ongoing regulatory ‘actions,’” McCollough said. “For all but one, the ‘Next Action’’ is stated to be ‘undetermined.’ In other words, for the listed actions the FCC tells us it does not know what action, if any, it plans to take next or when it will do so.”
He added:
“This is clearly not true; the commission certainly has plans for the what and when but it prefers to keep only insiders in the know.
“The FCC would much prefer to do its dirty work in a dark back room so only its industry cohorts and masters know what the true ‘agenda’ is.”
McCollough said the remanded docket — meaning the case number for the court-ordered investigation into the science on RF radiation — is not on the list “and there is no other ‘action’ that would suit the FCC’s court-ordered duties.”
Miriam Eckenfels-Garcia — who directs CHD’s EMR program — said:
“We are very disappointed to see that the FCC continues to fail to comply with the court order and continues to ignore the ever-growing scientific evidence of human and environmental harm from RF radiation levels well below the current FCC exposure guidelines.”
According to Eckenfels-Garcia, CHD’s EMR team has identified several available legal options given the FCC’s continued refusal to obey the 2021 court mandate and will be initiating action on them soon.
“The agency’s lack of prioritizing the protection of humans and the environment makes clear how deeply captured the agency is,” Eckenfels-Garcia added.
The Defender reached out to the FCC to ask when the public might expect the agency to comply with the 2021 mandate, but the agency did not respond by our publication deadline.
Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
African neighbors finalize Niger war plans
RT | August 4, 2023
The militaries of several ECOWAS members have agreed on a plan for military intervention in Niger and are waiting for a final political decision, a senior official of the bloc said on Friday.
The Economic Community of West African States has already sanctioned the junta in Niamey over last week’s military coup and demanded the restoration of ousted president Mohamed Bazoum before Sunday.
Even as Nigeria sent diplomats to its northern neighbor, its capital Abuja was hosting a planning meeting of ECOWAS chiefs of staff. Notably absent were Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Guinea.
“All the elements that will go into any eventual intervention have been worked out here, including the resources needed, the how and when we are going [to] deploy the force,” said Abdel-Fatau Musah, ECOWAS commissioner for political affairs, peace and security.
Musah added that the final decision will be made at the political level, but that ECOWAS will not telegraph when and where it will strike.
“ECOWAS will not be used for coups. Democracy is what we stand for and democracy is what we will sustain,” General Christopher Gwabin Musa, chief of Nigeria’s defense staff, told AP.
On Thursday, Bazoum appealed directly to the US to intervene. Washington has some 1,000 troops in Niger, engaged in counter-terrorism operations against Islamist groups that arose after NATO’s 2011 regime change intervention in Libya. Niger’s former colonial master France has another 1,500 troops on the same mission.
The Nigerien junta repudiated all military treaties with France on Thursday, and sacked the country’s ambassadors to the US, France, Togo and Nigeria. Paris and Washington have said they do not intend to remove their troops from the country, and only recognized Bazoum as the legitimate leader.
Niamey has warned both the West and ECOWAS that any military intervention will be met with deadly force. “All aggression or attempt at aggression against the state of Niger will see an immediate response,” junta spokesman Colonel Amadou Abdramane, said on Friday.
In a joint statement earlier this week, Burkina Faso and Mali said that an ECOWAS incursion into Niger will be taken as a declaration of war against them as well.
EU state will order Russians to leave
RT | August 4, 2023
The government in Riga will send official notices next month to almost 6,000 Russian nationals, informing them they have 90 days to leave the country, a Latvian parliamentarian confirmed on Friday.
“There are 5,000 to 6,000 of them. These are people who have not shown any desire, either to take the exam or to obtain a temporary residence permit. They are silent,” Ingmars Lidaka, head of the parliamentary committee on citizenship and migration, told the Lithuanian state broadcaster LRT.
The Latvian Interior Ministry confirmed that the notices are currently being prepared, and will be sent out in September to “around 6,000” recipients, according to the news agency Elta.
Last year, after the hostilities in Ukraine escalated, Riga imposed a requirement for Russian nationals who wish to reside in Latvia to take and pass a Latvian language test. Ethnic Russians make up about a quarter of the Baltic state’s 1.8 million residents, and have been denied Latvian citizenship since Riga declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Then-president Egils Levits argued last August that ethnic Russians suspected of disloyalty to Latvia should be “isolated from society,” citing the Ukraine conflict. However, back in 2021, Levits openly spoke of a plan to promote “Latvianism” in language and culture in order to make it dominant by 2030.
Last September, around 100 activists in Riga protested the upcoming education law – which would eliminate Russian from all schools – as a “language genocide.”
In January, Latvian authorities arrested Marat Kasem, editor-in-chief of Sputnik Lithuania, who had returned to visit his dying grandmother. Though a Latvian national, Kasem had been deported to Russia in 2019 because of his association with Sputnik.
Riga charged Kasem with espionage and held him imprisoned for four months, eventually agreeing to reduce the charges and impose a fine of €15,500 ($17,000). After the new Latvian president, Edgars Rinkevics, complained about the prosecutors’ leniency, the journalist left the country once again.
August 6: Humanity for Peace International Demonstration
August 6 from 1 – 4 pm EDT Humanity for Peace (HumanityforPeace.net) will be holding a demonstration on the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima — along with the subsequent bombing of Nagasaki probably the most heinous crimes committed in human history.
Location: Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, E 47th St, New York, NY 10017
Current list of speakers include:
Gerald Celente – Founder/Director of the Trends Research Institute and Publisher of the weekly Trends Journal magazine.
Mike ter Matt – Candidate for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination.
Scott Ritter – Former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer.
Garland Nixon – Veteran progressive radio and talk show host.
Diane Sare – Independent candidate for U.S. Senate in New York 2024.
Muhammad Salim Akhtar – National Director of the American Muslim Alliance and the American Muslim Task Force on Civil Rights and Elections.
Jose Vega – Sare for Senate staffer and LaRouche activist/interventionist since 2014.
Ahmadou Diallo – President and founder of the Guinean American League of Friends for Freedom.
Rev. Dr. Terri L. Strong – Chairwoman of the Action and Global Concerns Committee for the National Church Women United Organization.
Aaron Day – Former Chairman of the Free State Project; author of the book The Final Countdown: Crypto, Gold, Silver and the People’s Last Stand Against Tyranny by Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).
Jude Elie – leader of the Haitian diaspora in the United States; President of the Haitian Salesians of Don Bosco Past Pupils Worldwide.
Malcolm Burn – Grammy Award-winning record producer; host of the weekly “The Long Way Around” radio program heard on Radio Kingston, WKNY in Kingston, NY.
Demands are as follows:
1) The immediate ending of all funding and weapons to Ukraine.
2) Convene immediate unconditional peace talks.
3) The Dissolution of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
4) A new international security architecture must be created to end the division of the world into blocs, eliminating geopolitics. This new architecture must take into account the security concerns of every sovereign nation, large or small.
The demonstration will be livestreamed by the Schiller Institute at this link and by Humanity for Peace at this link.
Contact us at contact@humanityforpeace.net, follow us on X @4peacehumanity.
Below is the Mission Statement of the demonstration:
The danger of nuclear war has escalated to a point that no thoughtful person on the planet can ignore it any longer. Yet, in this atmosphere, there are still some who think there should be more weapons, more sanctions, and who think that a nuclear war can be won against Russia. It is very clear that those who have provoked the war, and continue to escalate it, do not care about the lives of the people of Ukraine or any other nation on the planet for that matter. This is NOT acceptable to those of us who care about the well-being of ALL of humanity — those who do not wish to see the human race wiped off the face of the earth.
We, therefore, call on the citizens of the world to come together and raise our voices against this madness. Humanity For Peace is building a unified coalition, above ideologies, to stop this unfolding escalation towards nuclear war. We refuse to let humanity perish at the hands of insanity.
August 6 will be the 78th anniversary of the unnecessary and genocidal nuclear bombing of Hiroshima by the United States, which was followed days later by the same crime against Nagasaki. Humanity For Peace is proud to announce that on this occasion, August 6, 2023, an international rally will be held to remind the world that nuclear war should never be fought and can never be won. Humanity is better than that, and we must reject the destiny of inevitable war as a morally repugnant and horribly cynical view.
The main rally will be held at the United Nations in New York City, NY, from 1-4pm, which will be live streamed over the internet. In solidarity with this, sister rallies will be held in other cities around the world. Please get in contact with us if you are interested in organizing another sister rally.
There are currently over 20 organizations sponsoring the event. If your organization would also like to sponsor the event, please contact us. More information, including the current speakers list, can be found at HumanityForPeace.net.
As President Kennedy said in his famous address to American University in 1963, war is not inevitable — but only if we work instead to create peace. The leadership in the United States and NATO is currently not working towards this goal, but rather are further escalating and inflaming the situation in Ukraine. For this reason, an international chorus of voices must be raised against this policy, and sound the call for peace!
Join us August 6 — we must make this sentiment the dominant voice in the world!
Humanity for Peace – Requiem Concert:
Sunday, August 6, 2023, 6:00 pm – 8:00 PM
Location: The Unitarian Church of All Souls at 1157 Lexington Avenue at East 80th Street, New York, NY
The concert will be free and open to the public.

02.13.2026