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Seyed M. Marandi: The Strike That Wiped Out Trump’s Plan (It’s Over)

Dialogue Works | April 25, 2026

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Deep Dive Intel Briefing: What We Learned This Week /Lt Col Daniel Davis

Daniel Davis / Deep Dive

April 25, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Comments Off on Seyed M. Marandi: The Strike That Wiped Out Trump’s Plan (It’s Over)

Court Forces German Chancellor Merz to Open Files on 300 “Insult the Chancellor” Cases

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | April 25, 2026

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has used the German state to pursue around 300 criminal investigations against people accused of insulting him, and his Chancellery spent months trying to keep the public from finding out which prosecutors were handling the cases. That wall has now come down.

The Higher Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg has ordered the Bundeskanzleramt to identify every prosecutor’s office running a Merz-insult investigation, along with the file number for each one.

The ruling, which rejected the Chancellery’s appeal against an earlier decision of the Berlin Administrative Court, came after a legal challenge by Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel. Until the judgment, roughly 300 criminal proceedings over alleged slights against the sitting head of government had been shielded from any journalistic scrutiny.

The legal hook for all of it is Section 188 of Germany’s criminal code, a special provision that gives people in political life reinforced protection against insult. The official English translation of the statute states that anyone who “insults a person who exercises a political office in relation to their office or in connection with their office shall be punished with imprisonment from three months to five years.”

A politician gets to sit at the center of a prosecution aimed at a citizen who said something unpleasant about them, and the punishment on the table is years in prison.

How cases enter the pipeline is itself revealing. Citizens are encouraged by NGOs and state-run reporting portals to flag supposed insults, sometimes anonymously.

Those reports travel to the Federal Criminal Police Office, which routes them to the relevant regional prosecutor’s office. The targeted politician is then notified and decides whether to file a formal criminal complaint or whether to leave the prosecution to run without objection. The Chancellery alone receives between 20 and 30 such files every month.

Merz has said he does not sign complaints himself, but also does not block the prosecutions that have been opened in his name. Whether that account holds up against the actual paperwork is precisely what the Chancellery was trying to prevent anyone from checking.

The Chancellery’s argument in court was that no heightened public interest justified handing the information over, and that merely naming the prosecutor’s offices and file numbers could violate the rights of accused individuals. The court did not accept it. The judges held that the Chancellor’s distinctive role in these proceedings made disclosure necessary, and that neither jurisdictional objections nor the absence of urgency stood in the way.

The scale alone deserves attention. A head of government who has triggered roughly 300 criminal investigations over things people said about him is using the machinery of the state against ordinary speech at a volume that does not look like an occasional recourse to legal remedy. It looks like a policy. And the instinct, once the numbers started circulating, was to hide the details rather than defend them.

The chilling effect of a regime like this does not depend on convictions. It depends on the knowledge that a critical Facebook post, a rude placard, or a sharp comment can summon the Bundeskriminalamt, a prosecutor, and potentially a house search. A Stuttgart man who called Merz a “Suffkopf,” roughly a drunkard, saw his home searched after Merz signed a complaint against him.

The lesson lands well beyond the individuals actually charged. Self-censorship becomes the rational response, which is the real product of the law.

Section 188’s defenders describe it as protection for democratic institutions against targeted harassment of officials. The practical architecture of the provision tells a different story.

The category of “insult” is elastic. German courts have struggled for years with where sharp political commentary ends and punishable disrespect begins, and individual judges have reached wildly different conclusions on facts that look almost identical. Into that vagueness steps a provision that hands the sitting Chancellor and his office a direct line to prosecutors considering whether to put a citizen through a criminal process.

The deeper question sits where it has always sat. A democracy that lets its head of government send police to the homes of citizens who call him names has already made a choice about which it values more, the dignity of the office or the tongue of the citizen. The court has forced some sunlight into the process. The provision that makes the process possible in the first place is still waiting for someone to deal with it.

April 25, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Comments Off on Court Forces German Chancellor Merz to Open Files on 300 “Insult the Chancellor” Cases

‘Territorial Theft With Better Branding’: Israel Keeps Advancing Its ‘Yellow Line’ in Gaza

By Stephen Prager | Scheer Post | April 24, 2026

One Palestinian American researcher warned that Israel is seeking “annexation without legal burden.”

Israel’s gradual advancement of its “yellow line” to occupy more territory in the Gaza Strip is fueling concerns that it is seeking to effectively annex and colonize the majority of the territory without any formal agreement.

The Guardian reported on Wednesday that Israel has been steadily pushing the truce line to take control of more Palestinian territory in the six months since a “ceasefire” was reached in October.

The yellow line drawn on the ceasefire maps had Israeli troops in control of about 53% of Gaza’s territory, cramming nearly 2 million displaced Palestinians into a territory less than half the size of the one they inhabited before.

But an analysis by Forensic Architecture shows Israel has unilaterally shifted the line westward over the past six months to the point where it controlled about 58% of the strip by December in an occupation zone that continues to grow.

Palestinians living in Gaza reportedly woke up to learn that large yellow concrete blocks denoting the ceasefire line had suddenly moved and that they were now living in a free-fire area, where the Israeli military considers any Palestinian person or vehicle a legitimate target.

The Associated Press found in January that at least 77 Palestinians have been shot on sight when they’ve found themselves on the wrong side of the yellow line or even just near it, even though the line’s boundaries are ill-defined and fluid.

They are among more than 730 Palestinians who have been killed since the “ceasefire” began in October, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which has accused Israel of thousands of violations.

According to The Guardian, some displaced people, such as those who lived near the Salah al-Din road, which spans the length of Gaza from north to south, suddenly found themselves targeted by Israeli forces, who also began demolishing homes and other buildings and constructing new ones.

Though the yellow line was supposed to be set up as a temporary measure under US President Donald Trump’s “peace plan” for Gaza before control of the strip is transferred back to Palestinians, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff Eyal Zamir described it as a “new border” with Gaza back in December, around the time it reportedly began to move.

Eyal Weizman, an Israeli architect and the head of Forensic Architecture’s research agency, recently wrote that the IDF appears to be turning this portion of Gaza into a permanent occupation zone.

The group found that seven new military outposts have been built along the yellow line, including one on what was once a cemetery.

While these areas began as “piles of earth and rubble” organized into crude enclosures, Weizman said that in recent months the roads leading to them have been asphalted, electricity poles have been erected, and buildings and communications towers have gone up inside the bases.

“The bases no longer appear to be the provisional arrangements that Trump’s ceasefire plan claims them to be, but permanent instruments of occupation,” he wrote. “The newly paved roads connect the bases to a matrix of control that is linked to Israel’s road network and communications grid.”

He noted that Israel’s illegal settler movement, which has several powerful representatives in the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been “lobbying hard for the Israeli government to start constructing settlements within the vastly expanded buffer zone.”

Defense Minister Israel Katz said in December that Israel would “never leave Gaza” and spoke of plans to turn IDF military outposts into civilian settlements similar to those that have gradually taken over the West Bank through the violent displacement of Palestinian residents.

Ahmad Ibsais, Palestinian American law student and author of the newsletter State of Siege, wrote for the Al-Shabaka Palestinian Policy Network that by drawing a yellow line, Israel is seeking to consolidate its control over Palestinian land without formally annexing it—in other words, “annexation without legal burden.”

“Borders are typically established through bilateral agreements, adjudication, or mutual recognition under international law,” he wrote. “By contrast, the so-called Yellow Line in Gaza functions as a de facto military demarcation associated with ceasefire arrangements and enforced through Israeli operational control.”

“It shapes civilian movement and territorial control without constituting a formally delimited boundary,” he continued. “In effect, it constitutes territorial theft with better branding, operationalizing US President Donald Trump’s plan for the continued colonization of Gaza.”

Israel declared a similar yellow line about 5-10 kilometers into Lebanese territory, giving the IDF effective control over around 55 towns and villages. The military has reduced many homes and entire villages south of this line to rubble in what Katz has described as a “Gaza model” being applied to Lebanon.

Assistant editor Maya Rosen recently wrote for Jewish Currents that the policy of conquering and settling Lebanon has become “mainstream” in Israeli politics and enjoys broad public support.

Ahmad Baydoun, an architect and open-source intelligence researcher at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, has warned that with this land grab, Israel was seeking to take control of the valuable Qana Gas Field, which is estimated to be capable of producing between $20 billion-$40 billion worth of natural gas exports for Israel. In 2022, a maritime agreement brokered by the US established that control of the field belonged to Lebanon.

Like in Gaza, the Israeli military has forbidden the more than 600,000 Lebanese inhabitants of villages below the line or within a newly established “buffer zone” from returning indefinitely. Katz has said they’ll be allowed to return once the “safety and security of the residents of the north [of Israel] is ensured.”

Given that Israeli settler groups have already begun mapping out new settlements and advertising plots of land for sale in southern Lebanon, Weizman said Katz was making what is by design “an impossible demand” meant to entrench the land grab.

“This exemplifies the circular logic of Zionist settler-colonialism: settlements are built to mark and protect the state’s border, but that makes them vulnerable to attack, and so a buffer zone is established to protect them,” he said. “Afterward, this buffer zone is itself settled to mark and protect the newly expanded borders, at which point another buffer zone becomes necessary.”

April 25, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , | Comments Off on ‘Territorial Theft With Better Branding’: Israel Keeps Advancing Its ‘Yellow Line’ in Gaza

Iran war launched at ‘Israel’s’ request: US memo debunks Trump claims

Al Mayadeen | April 25, 2026

A US State Department legal memo has confirmed that Washington’s military attacks on Iran were carried out in support of “Israel”, contradicting earlier claims by President Donald Trump that the decision was made independently.

Published on April 21 by Legal Advisor Reed D. Rubinstein on the state government website, the document titled “Operation Epic Fury and International Law” outlines the “justification” for US attacks launched on February 28 against Iranian missile systems, naval assets, production facilities, and nuclear infrastructure.

The memo explicitly states that the United States is engaged in the war “at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally,” invoking Article 51 of the UN Charter.

Trump’s version of the truth 

On Monday, Trump insisted that “Israel” did not influence his decision to strike Iran, dismissing reports suggesting coordination with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and rejecting criticism from right-wing commentators.

In a Truth Social post, Trump claimed, “Israel never talked me into the war.”

This isn’t the first time he has pushed back on claims that “Israel” influenced US actions against Iran. In March, Marco Rubio told reporters that “Israel” had reportedly weighed a preemptive strike on Iran, warning it could provoke retaliation against US forces in the region and potentially help set the stage for what became known as “Operation Epic Fury.”

At the time, Trump rejected that framing, telling reporters at the start of an Oval Office meeting with Merz. “If anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand.”

“We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and I thought they were going to strike first. If we didn’t act, they would have,” he said, adding, “It was something that had to be done.”

A memo or an unintended exposé?

At the time, Trump had dismissed suggestions that “Israel” influenced the decision to strike Iran. The memo’s language, however, presents a far clearer picture, emphasizing coordination with and support for the Israeli side as a central legal basis for the operation.

Operation Epic Fury was launched with stated objectives to destroy Iran’s offensive missile capabilities, dismantle its production infrastructure, target naval forces, and prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The document further argues that the war is part of a broader, ongoing confrontation driven by what it describes as Iran’s regional activities, including support for allied groups and strikes on US and Israeli targets.

US officials maintain that their war on Iran complies with international law, arguing that it falls within established frameworks governing “self-defense”. Critics, however, have questioned the legality of the attacks under the UN Charter, particularly given the scale of operations, which by early April had involved thousands of attacks before a ceasefire took hold.

The memo also underscores a more politically sensitive point: Washington’s own account now formally acknowledges a role for “Israel” that Trump had previously denied and downplayed.

April 25, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Iran war launched at ‘Israel’s’ request: US memo debunks Trump claims

How Israel moved Hermes 900 drone production to Serbia to hide from Iranian missiles

By Ivan Kesic – Press TV – April 25, 2026

The Israeli regime has quietly embarked on an effort to relocate production of its most important long-range strike drone – the Hermes 900- outside the occupied territories.

In Serbia, it has found its latest and most controversial partner. The strategy is simple: protect Tel Aviv’s supply chain from Iranian ballistic missiles.

On March 7, 2026, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić made a cryptic announcement. Serbia, he said, would soon open a factory for “the most serious drones in the world” with a foreign partner from the Israeli regime.

By early April, reports had uncovered the full scope of the deal. Elbit Systems – the largest military company in the occupied territories and a firm repeatedly named by UN experts as profiting from the ongoing genocide in Gaza – had agreed to establish a joint drone production facility in Šimanovci, just thirty kilometers west of Belgrade.

The factory, which could begin operations as early as late April 2026, is designed to produce two types of unmanned aerial vehicles, including a long-range model capable of flying at altitudes exceeding six kilometers.

While most media attention has focused on the emerging arms race between Serbia and Croatia, a far more consequential story has gone largely unreported.

What makes this deal particularly significant is not merely the technology transfer or the financial terms, but the strategic logic driving it.

The Israeli regime, having suffered devastating losses of its Hermes 900 fleet during the recent US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran, is desperately seeking to diversify its production base – outside the reach of Iranian retaliation.

Serbian factory: Details of the 2026 agreement

The joint venture agreement between Elbit Systems and Serbia’s state-owned Yugoimport SDPR gives the notorious Israeli arms company a controlling 51 percent stake, while the Serbian partner holds the remaining 49 percent.

According to documents obtained by some journalists and confirmed by two independent sources close to the military industry, the factory will produce two distinct drone types.

The first is a short-range model with a high payload and rotary wings, designed for tactical reconnaissance and strike missions in confined operational environments.

The second is far more advanced: a long-range model, faster and capable of operating at altitudes exceeding six kilometers, making it suitable for deep-penetration surveillance missions well beyond Serbian borders.

A source familiar with the deal described the long-range drone as “more advanced” than the Pegasus, a combat reconnaissance drone that Serbia already produces domestically.

“It has a higher flight altitude and greater operational autonomy,” the source explained. “The essence of the whole story is the transfer of technology, because our engineers will also work on it. This drone is actually the crowning glory of the entire project.”

Experts from Utva, an aircraft factory owned by the SDPR, will also be involved in the production process, a clear indication of significant investment in local technical expertise.

The planned site of the factory has itself become a source of controversy: a facility owned by Pink Media Group, the media empire of Željko Mitrović, a businessman with close ties to Vučić’s ruling party.

Following the publication of investigative reports, Pink Media Group issued a denial, claiming that neither Mitrović nor any entity associated with him had participated in negotiations or leased any facility for the project.

However, the denial did not address the documentary evidence or the two independent sources that confirmed the arrangement. The question of the factory’s precise location remains unresolved.

Serbian-Israeli cooperation: Weapons, spyware, and political connections

The drone factory agreement is merely the latest chapter in a rapidly deepening relationship between Belgrade and Tel Aviv that encompasses weapons trade, intelligence technology, political consulting, and diplomatic alignment.

The value of ammunition and weapons exports from Serbia to the Israeli regime has increased by an astonishing 42 times since 2023, reaching 114 million euros by the end of 2025, according to available evidence.

The vast majority of these exports were conducted through Yugoimport SDPR, the same state-owned company now partnering with Elbit on the drone factory.

Beyond conventional weapons, the partnership extends into the shadowy realm of surveillance and espionage technology.

Serbian authorities have used forensic products purchased from the Israeli company Cellebrite to unlock and extract data from mobile devices belonging to journalists and social media activists.

A new spyware tool designated “NoviSpy” has been deployed to infect these devices, enabling the Serbian internal security service to monitor and suppress critical voices.

The methods employed bear the unmistakable signature of Israeli technology and training. The personal connections between the two regimes run deep.

Asaf Eisin, an Israeli consultant, has been described as the main architect of Vučić’s victorious election campaigns.

His role extends beyond mere political consulting; he is widely considered Vučić’s secretive strategist, providing the Serbian president with the kind of sophisticated campaign management techniques developed in the occupied territories.

The Serbian opposition has characterized Eisin as an “agency for winning elections,” and his track record across multiple political campaigns in the Balkans supports this assessment.

In September 2024, while the Israeli regime faced increasing international isolation over its genocidal actions in Gaza, the regime’s president, Isaac Herzog, paid an official visit to Belgrade, meeting with top Serbian officials.

The timing was significant: the Israeli regime was under diplomatic pressure worldwide, yet Vučić welcomed Herzog as a gesture of solidarity.

Foreign policy analysts noted that Serbia saw this as an opportunity to demonstrate its alignment with Washington’s closest West Asian ally, a calculated move to curry favor with the incoming Trump administration.

This alignment was formalized in September 2020 through the Washington Agreement, in which Serbia committed to opening a chamber of commerce office and a state office in Jerusalem al-Quds.

The move was hailed in Tel Aviv as “an important and courageous step,” while critics noted that it placed Serbia firmly on the side of the occupation and against Palestinian sovereignty.

The United Arab Emirates, which normalized relations with the Israeli regime in 2020, has emerged as a significant investor in Serbia, while also serving as a conduit for technology transfer and military cooperation.

The connection to the UAE, brokered through the same Washington Agreement, has created an axis that runs from Abu Dhabi through Tel Aviv to Belgrade.

This triangular relationship has allowed Serbia to access advanced defense technologies while providing the Israeli regime with a European production and logistics hub.

Elbit Systems: A company surrounded by global controversy

Elbit Systems, the Israeli military firm at the center of the Serbian drone factory deal, has accumulated a staggering record of international controversies spanning human rights violations, financial divestment campaigns, grassroots activism, and legal challenges.

The company generates approximately 90 percent of its revenue from military activities and is deeply integrated into the Israeli regime’s military apparatus, making it a focal point of criticism amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza or the occupied West Bank.

One of the longest-running controversies concerns Elbit’s involvement in infrastructure tied to the Israeli occupation, particularly the surveillance systems installed along the separation wall in the occupied West Bank.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion in 2004 declaring the wall contrary to international law, yet Elbit continued to supply technology for its operation.

This triggered early international backlash. In 2009, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund divested from Elbit, with the finance minister stating at the time: “We do not want to finance companies that contribute so directly to violations of international humanitarian law.”

Similar decisions followed from Danish and Swedish financial institutions.

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement has made Elbit a primary target, noting that the company’s technology contributes directly to horrendous human rights violations against Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied territories.

These campaigns have achieved tangible results. HSBC withdrew its investment from Elbit in 2018 after the company acquired IMI Systems, which manufactures cluster munitions.

In 2026, a major Canadian investment arm divested from Elbit following sustained protests over its role in supplying equipment used in the Gaza genocide.

A UN Special Rapporteur report published in June 2025 listed Elbit among companies profiting from the genocide in Gaza. The report specifically mentioned drones developed and supplied by Elbit, describing how they operate alongside warplanes during bombing campaigns, used to monitor Palestinians and gather intelligence on targets.

The report concluded that “drones, hexacopters and quadcopters have become ubiquitous killing machines in the skies over Gaza.”

Direct action activism has targeted Elbit facilities worldwide. In the United Kingdom, groups such as Palestine Action have broken into and occupied Elbit-linked sites. The 2024 Filton facility break-in caused significant damage and led to arrests and high-profile court cases.

In 2025, Elbit closed a UK facility after sustained protests, a symbolic victory for activists demonstrating that reputational and military costs can affect even large arms firms.

In Spain, a steel shipment linked to Elbit’s subsidiary IMI Systems was canceled following protests. In France, the government barred Israeli military firms, including Elbit, from displaying offensive weapons at the Paris Air Show in 2025, citing the genocide in Gaza.

In 2025, a NATO-affiliated procurement agency barred Elbit from contracts due to a corruption investigation, suggesting that the company’s liabilities extend beyond activist campaigns into formal military-sector governance.

Meanwhile, in North Macedonia, Elbit’s involvement in “Safe City” surveillance systems has raised concerns about mass surveillance, transparency, and potential misuse, extending the ethical debate beyond armed conflict into civil liberties and digital rights.

Hermes 900: Capabilities and role in the aggression against Iran

The Hermes 900 unmanned aerial vehicle, produced by Elbit Systems, has proven to be the most important drone in the Israeli regime’s inventory for long-range strikes, and its performance during the recent US-Israeli aggression against Iran demonstrated both its strategic value and its acute vulnerabilities.

As a medium-altitude, long-endurance platform, the Hermes 900 can remain airborne for over 30 to 40 hours, operating at high altitudes that allow it to monitor vast areas without requiring frequent refueling.

This endurance is enhanced by satellite communications, enabling beyond-line-of-sight control and real-time data transmission across distances that would be impossible for ground-controlled systems.

The drone’s long-range capability made it particularly suitable for surveillance missions far from Israeli-occupied territories, including monitoring Iranian military infrastructure and tracking the movements of the Axis of Resistance forces throughout the region.

The Hermes 900 is equipped with sophisticated intelligence-gathering systems, including electro-optical and infrared sensors, synthetic aperture radar, and signals intelligence tools.

These allow it to detect troop movements, missile systems, and communication signals, even at night or in poor weather conditions.

Crucially, the Hermes 900 can designate targets using laser systems and relay precise coordinates, enabling fighter jets or other platforms—including long-range cruise missiles—to conduct strikes based on the intelligence it gathers.

This targeting capability made the drone a critical component of the regime’s aggression against Iranian infrastructure during the war that began on February 28, 2026.

The cost to the Israeli regime was still catastrophic. The largest number of Israeli drones shot down during the recent aggression were of the Hermes 900 type—approximately 20 units, with several more downed in 2025.

No official figure exists for how many Hermes 900 units the Israeli regime originally possessed, but estimates place the number in the dozens, somewhere between 25 and 50.

Some military analysts estimate that the attrition rate for the Hermes 900 fleet may have exceeded 80 percent during the unprovoked war of aggression.

The blow was so severe that the Israeli Air Force reportedly avoided deploying its remaining units over Iran for extended periods, effectively ceding the skies to Iranian air defenses and forcing Tel Aviv to rely on less capable platforms.

This degradation of Israel’s most important long-range surveillance and targeting asset represented a strategic victory for Iran’s air defense network, which had demonstrated the ability to detect, track, and destroy even the most advanced unmanned platforms.

Strategic logic: Foreign production as a hedge against Iranian retaliation

The timing of Serbia’s drone factory agreement with Elbit Systems is not coincidental.

The contract was signed in August 2025, a month and a half after the first US-Israeli aggression against Iran, when it became clear to Tel Aviv that Iranian ballistic missiles could threaten domestic production facilities.

The Israeli regime has since been insisting on peripheral supply chains, offering its clients relatively outdated surveillance technologies while using the arrangement to secure aircraft platforms for new aggressions throughout the region.

This strategy is not new. According to military analysts, the Israeli regime agreed to cooperate with India on Hermes 900 production as early as 2018 through a joint venture between Adani Defence & Aerospace and Elbit Systems, with a dedicated UAV facility in Hyderabad becoming operational in December 2018 for producing components.

By approximately 2020, this facility had expanded to assembling and exporting Hermes 900 units, making India the first production site outside the occupied territories.

Military analysts estimate that India produced approximately 20 of the estimated 50 Hermes 900 drones in the Israeli fleet, meaning that nearly 40 percent of Tel Aviv’s long-range unmanned surveillance capability was manufactured outside the occupied territories, a significant hedge against the vulnerability of domestic production facilities to Iranian retaliation.

In 2024, India formally fielded its own version, the Drishti-10 Starliner, with the first indigenously assembled unit delivered to the Indian Navy in January 2024.

The Swiss experience with Hermes 900 production has been far less successful, offering a cautionary tale for Serbia. Switzerland acquired the drones in 2015 but required extensive modifications through the Swiss partner RUAG to enable safe operation in civilian airspace.

The integration of a detect-and-avoid system proved extremely difficult, leading to repeated delays that pushed full operational capability to around 2029.

Some delivered drones could not meet expected performance standards, and one notable incident involved structural issues that caused a drone to break apart during testing.

The Swiss government was forced to scale back its requirements, abandoning certain advanced features while costs continued to rise.

Parliamentary committees raised doubts about whether RUAG and Elbit could fix ongoing problems, with some officials discussing potential cancellation.

For a neutral country like Switzerland, the deal also sparked debate about whether such partnerships compromise neutrality or align the country too closely with foreign military-industrial interests.

Brazil’s experience offers a different set of challenges. While the Hermes 900 is assembled locally through AEL Sistemas, a Brazilian subsidiary of Elbit, the program has been plagued by technical reliability issues.

Multiple crashes have occurred, including one during the 2024 floods in Rio Grande do Sul when a drone used in rescue operations crashed due to a technical problem.

In March 2026, another Hermes 900 crashed during a military exercise in Mato Grosso do Sul, reportedly leaving the Brazilian Air Force with only one operational unit at the time.

These incidents have raised concerns about fleet fragility and whether Brazil is over-reliant on a complex foreign system that it does not fully control.

Even with local assembly, critical components, software, and maintenance expertise remain tied to Israeli suppliers, creating a structural dependency that critics argue limits Brazil’s technological sovereignty.

Serbian gamble: Risks and domestic opposition

Within Serbia, the drone factory agreement has generated significant controversy.

Military observers point out that Elbit will retain complete control over intellectual property, meaning that while Serbian workers may assemble drones, the country will not gain the ability to independently produce or replicate the systems.

Petar Vojinović, an aviation analyst, explained that the most likely arrangement gives Elbit control over sales and intellectual property, with Yugoimport merely participating in production and collecting revenue percentages from sales.

“It is expected that Elbit will retain complete control over the intellectual property,” he noted.

“Thus, Elbit’s intellectual property will be protected, and Serbia will most likely not be able to produce or replicate the drones that will be manufactured.”

Other analysts emphasized that the key issue is knowledge transfer, arguing that If part of the development and production occurs in Serbia, it means training personnel, access to technology, and the possibility of further development without complete dependence on partners.

The political dimension of the deal has also drawn sharp criticism. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, during a visit to Serbia in March 2026, described Serbia as “one of Israel’s strongest and most determined allies, without any shame.”

Serbian civil society organizations have raised concerns that by hosting an Elbit production facility, Serbia could become a legitimate military target in any future conflict involving the Israeli regime.

Unlike Croatia, which has secured its position through NATO and EU membership, Serbia remains outside both alliances, lacking the protective umbrella that would deter potential retaliation.

The Serbian people are widely critical of their authorities, with many claiming that officials are reaping lucrative commissions from such controversial agreements.

The fact that the factory may be located on property associated with a media mogul closely tied to the ruling party has only intensified suspicions about corruption and self-dealing.

While Vučić has portrayed the deal as a triumph of Serbian diplomacy and technological advancement, critics see it as a risky alignment with a pariah regime that could expose Serbia to diplomatic isolation or worse.

April 25, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How Israel moved Hermes 900 drone production to Serbia to hide from Iranian missiles

EU economic sanctions ramp up NATO war plan on Russia

Strategic Culture Foundation | April 24, 2026

The European Union announced its 20th round of economic sanctions against Russia this week. The bloc of 27 nations began imposing sanctions on Moscow when the conflict in Ukraine erupted in February 2022. Every six months, the EU has been extending these economic measures, which Brussels claims is support for Ukraine to “deter Russian aggression.”

The 20th round of sanctions unveiled this week attempts to go much further in inflicting damage on the Russian economy. It was flagged as the biggeset package yet and a “multi-layered targeting of key sectors” of the Russian economy, primarily its energy industry.

It is tempting to dismiss the EU sanctions policy as feeble and a form of insanity. The bloc keeps repeating an action expecting a different result each time, when the record shows that the action of sanctions is having little detrimental impact on Russia. If anything, it is the EU that has suffered an economic downturn as it unilaterally cut itself off from Russian oil and gas, the traditional source of affordable energy feedstock for European industries. Russia’s economy has not crashed as was anticipated when the sanctions were first imposed more than four years ago. In fact, the Russian Federation has maintained a robust economic performance as it finds alternative markets in Asia for its oil and gas products. The soaring price for a barrel of crude due to the reckless U.S.-Israeli aggression on Iran has given Russia a further boost.

However, it would be a mistake to simply brush off the EU sanctions as futile and self-defeating.

There is a more blatant and sinister aspect to the new round of sanctions. Brussels is nakedly showing its war agenda. The new measures aim to restrict all sectors of Russian energy production, including “exploration, extraction, refining and transportation.” The EU is endeavoring to tighten restrictions on “third countries” to prevent Russia from circumventing existing embargoes on shipping, port access and trade. Whether these new measures achieve their objective of “crippling the Russian economy” is debatable. But it is the belligerent intention – stated now with more determination – that is significant. The EU is brazenly laying out a plan to strangle Russia in conjunction with upping the military threat.

It is the accompanying developments that are ominous and which give full meaning to the economic measures.

This week the EU hailed that its €90 billion ($105 bn) loan to Ukraine had finally been approved. That financial aid was blocked by Hungary since December. But with the recent election loss for Viktor Orbán’s government, Budapest’s veto has been lifted under the new prime minister, Péter Magyar. EU leaders were ecstatic that the financial transfer to Ukraine can now go ahead.

Two-thirds of the EU loan – some €60 bn – is reportedly allocated for military aid. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said that the first tranche worth €45 bn will be transferred to Ukraine within weeks and that it would be used to increase the production of aerial combat drones. “Drones from Ukraine for Ukraine,” she said by way of trying to give the impression that the EU is not a party to the war.

An EU leaders’ two-day summit held in Cyprus on April 24-25 was reported with a celebratory mood. Von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa, along with the EU’s Foreign Affairs Commissioner, Kaja Kallas, were cock-a-hoop at the “breakthrough” of releasing the largest single financial package to Ukraine so far in combination with the new economic sanctions aimed at drilling down on Russia’s economic core. Attending the summit in Cyprus was Ukraine’s nominal president, Vladimir Zelensky, who reportedly joined the EU leaders for dinner to discuss new developments.

It gets even more sinister. The Kiev regime has been stepping up deep air strikes on Russian energy and other industrial infrastructure. There is no doubt the regime is being assisted with NATO expertise in finding such wide-ranging targets in Russia’s vast territory. This week, for example, a drone strike hit an industrial facility in Novokuybyshevsk in the central Samara region, nearly 900 kilometers southeast of Moscow and nearly 2,000 kms from the warzone in Donbass.

Clearly, the EU’s economic strikes are designed to reinforce the damage that NATO is trying to inflict with drones and missiles on Russia’s industrial base. These are not separate initiatives but an integral war strategy.

In announcing the latest round of sanctions Kaja Kallas could hardly contain her Russophobic glee. “Today we have broken the deadlock. On top of the €90-billion loan for Ukraine, we have adopted the 20th sanctions package,” she said.

Deceptively, the sanctions were billed as “increasing pressure on Russia to stop its brutal war of aggression and engage in meaningful negotiations towards a just and last peace.”

That’s a cynical con – a con that is betrayed by the EU’s own stated objective of “crippling” the Russian economy. How can one have a “just and lasting peace” by crippling a country?

The real purpose of the funds that EU citizens will have to pay through decades of indebtedness is to escalate NATO’s war in Ukraine against Russia. The economic sanctions are war measures aimed at maximising the impact of military attacks.

Other developments this week raise the stakes to even more sinister levels.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk discussed joint nuclear weapons “scenarios” in a bilateral summit in Gdansk. The French leader wants to share his country’s nuclear weapons capabilities with other European countries. It is reported that French and Polish warplanes will begin joint exercises on flying nuclear weapons in the Baltic region. This is evidently meant as a threat to Russia. It amounts to Paris and Warsaw carrying out training exerises for nuclear strikes on Russia.

In yet another provocative development, it is reported that Britain is leading a NATO Joint Expeditionary Force to formulate a naval plan to blockade the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad located between Poland and Lithuania. Kaliningrad provides Russia with vital port access to the Baltic Sea.

The European NATO leaders are concerned that U.S. President Donald Trump has lost interest in the “Ukraine project” against Russia owing to his reckless war with Iran. That is why they are ramping up the war effort against Russia while telling barefaced lies about wanting to achieve “lasting peace.”

So far, the EU’s economic sanctions against Russia have been an abject failure. But the failure of economic measures is no longer the point. It is what they reveal about an intensifying NATO war plan against Russia.

Moscow has repeatedly called for a negotiated end to the conflict while the EU and NATO accuse Russian leader Vladimir Putin of “not wanting peace.”

People can make their own minds up about who the aggressors are. NATO is at war with Russia and is not interested in negotiations. Criminally, the NATO aggressors are creating a boiling frog situation for Russia. The European russophobic leaders seem to want war at any cost.

April 25, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Comments Off on EU economic sanctions ramp up NATO war plan on Russia

USDA/NIAID-Funded Scientists Build Chimeric Bird Flu Viruses with 100% Mortality in Mammals: Journal ‘npj Vaccines’

By Jon Fleetwood | April 24, 2026

A newly released npj Vaccines study confirms that U.S. government–funded researchers constructed hybrid influenza viruses in the lab and used them to trigger complete mortality in animal experiments, while framing the work under vaccine development.

The experiment, titled “Dual-Route H5N1 Vaccination Induces Systemic and Mucosal Immunity in Murine and Bovine Models,” was conducted by University of Nebraska–Lincoln scientists Joshua Wiggins, Adthakorn Madapong, and Eric A. Weaver.

You can contact the university’s Center for Virology here and the School of Biological Sciences here.

The creation of deadly chimeric pathogens was financed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

The study explicitly states:

“This research was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (Grant Nos. 2020 -06448 and 2024 -08723 to E.A.W.), and by the National Institutes of Health –NIAID (Grant No. 1R01AI147109 to E.A.W.).”

You can contact NIAID here, the NIH here, HHS here, and the USDA here to voice opposition to taxpayer-funded chimeric research on pandemic pathogens—particularly after Congress, the White House, the Department of Energy, the FBI, the CIA, and Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) all acknowledged that the deadly COVID-19 pandemic was “likely” the result of a laboratory incident involving genetically modified pathogens.

April 25, 2026 Posted by | War Crimes | | Comments Off on USDA/NIAID-Funded Scientists Build Chimeric Bird Flu Viruses with 100% Mortality in Mammals: Journal ‘npj Vaccines’