Bowing to Zionist lobby pressure, UK medical regulator hounds British-Palestinian medic
By Maryam Qarehgozlou | Press TV | October 26, 2025
Yielding to pressure from pro-Israel lobbying groups, the UK’s General Medical Council (GMC) has reopened a politically motivated case against British-Palestinian doctor Rahmeh Aladwan over her outspoken criticism of UK-backed Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
The renewed proceedings aim to suspend the 31-year-old medic from the UK medical register over social media posts condemning the genocide in Gaza and the complicity of the British government.
The move comes less than a month after the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) ruled that the complaints against her were not “sufficient to establish that there may be a real risk to patients” and refused to impose any restrictions on her licence.
That September 25 decision had appeared to close the case.
However, under pressure from Zionist lobbying groups — led by the so-called Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) and the Jewish Medical Association (UK) — the GMC has now reversed course.
Both groups, backed by Labour Health Secretary Wes Streeting, have spearheaded a smear campaign to punish Dr. Aladwan for her vocal and strong pro-Palestine stance.
For nearly two years, she has been the target of online smears and defamation for exposing Israel’s slaughter of more than 68,000 Palestinians and the near-total destruction of Gaza.
Earlier this month, the CAA escalated its rhetoric, claiming that Aladwan was conducting a “campaign of hatred against British Jews” and threatened to legally challenge the MPTS for clearing her name.
Streeting — who has publicly vowed to overhaul the way medical regulators handle so-called “anti-Semitism” cases — has openly pushed for harsher measures against critics of Israel.
In practice, his proposal would mean prosecuting anyone who denounces the Zionist regime’s genocidal actions.
Investigations by Declassified UK revealed that Streeting received almost £30,000 from Britain’s pro-Israel lobby, and in 2022, he became the first member of Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet to visit the Israeli-occupied territories — in a move designed to signal a break with former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s pro-Palestine position.
Under this political pressure, a GMC case examiner compiled a new dossier of Aladwan’s social-media posts from late September to early October and referred her again to the Interim Orders Tribunal (IOT).
The CAA quickly boasted that its legal threat had forced the regulator to act.
At Thursday’s hearing, the MPTS agreed to convene a second tribunal — a move that could ultimately strip Dr. Aladwan, a National Health Service (NHS) doctor with seven years of service, of her right to practice medicine in the country where she grew up.
Speaking before the hearing, Dr. Aladwan told reporters she had been “summoned by what is now more accurately called the Genocide Medical Council.”
“It is only four weeks since I was summoned here for exactly these allegations, it is my social media postings, it is my support for the Palestinians to resist under international law,” she said.
“Mostly really, it’s the GMC buckling to the pressure of the Israeli lobby and the MPs such as Wesley Streeting who are funded by them and who are making comments.”
She described the ordeal as a coordinated effort to silence voices of dissent.
“There’s been a huge media smear campaign, corruption, and collusions between all these institutions that have been subverted by the Israeli lobby to just take my license away or silence me.”
Inside the tribunal, Aladwan was even denied the right to address the panel directly. Representing the GMC, Emma Gilsenan said that only her legal representative could pose questions — a privilege she had been granted in the earlier hearing.
Her counsel, Kevin Saunders, instructed by Zillur Rahman of Rahman Lowe Solicitors, denounced the proceedings as a response to “external pressure.”
He highlighted Streeting’s public condemnation of the previous tribunal’s ruling, calling it “an attempt to undermine the rule of law and the determination of an independent body.”
Saunders pointed out that the 12-page dossier presented by the GMC contained nothing new to justify reopening the case.
He stressed that Aladwan’s social media posts were separate from her clinical practice, which has been exemplary, noting that she was expressing solidarity with her own people under siege.
No evidence has ever shown that her posts affected patient safety or her duties as a doctor, he said.
When Saunders requested a stay of proceedings on grounds of “abuse of process,” the tribunal rejected the motion.
‘Surrender to political pressure’
On Friday, after the second tribunal, Dr. Aladwan took to X (formerly Twitter) to condemn what she described as the MPTS’s “surrender to political pressure.”
“They chose to trample on their own ruling from the 25th of September and allow the GMC to resubmit the same evidence—effectively perverting our British legal system on behalf of the ‘Israeli’ Jewish lobby and their funded MP Streeting,” she wrote.
“If a foreign lobby can force our panels to backtrack on a ruling, the finality of British justice is dead.”
She called it “a dark day for Britain,” vowing to continue her fight.
“They picked the wrong British Palestinian. I will fight this — not just for me, but for our sovereignty and fundamental rights in Britain. If the process is the punishment, then bring it on.”
Ahead of the hearing, she had warned that the GMC was determined to destroy her livelihood “to please its masters in the Israeli lobby.”
“Let’s be clear,” she posted. “A British Jewish or ‘Israeli’ doctor could … bomb hospitals and kill patients in Palestine — and keep their license and freely treat British patients. I’m being persecuted for speech. They would be protected for murder. This is Jewish supremacy.”
By Tuesday, Aladwan revealed that the GMC was now seeking her suspension for being “unrepentant.”
“The first tribunal found no need for any order. Now, the GMC demands suspension because I refused to ‘moderate’ speech that was already deemed acceptable,” she said.
“This is not about safety. It’s about punishment. They are explicitly seeking what the ‘Israeli’ lobby demanded: my removal from practice for my political views. This is the weaponisation of medical regulation. This is political persecution.”
Arrest before tribunal: A ‘political theatre’
Only two days before facing her second tribunal, Aladwan was arrested by British police — a move many saw as part of a broader campaign to silence and intimidate her.
In a video posted on social media, the British-Palestinian doctor could be seen confronting police officers as they informed her she was under arrest for “three malicious communications and one offence of inciting racial hatred.”
According to the officer, the charges stem from Aladwan’s posts on October 7 — marking the second anniversary of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the Hamas-led operation launched in response to over seven decades of Israeli apartheid — and from a July 21 speech at a pro-Palestine rally outside the Foreign Office, where police claimed she had called for “the eradication of Israel.”
Aladwan, who in her posts described the historic resistance operation as the day Israel was “humiliated,” immediately challenged the officer’s motives.
“You are doing this for the Israeli Jewish lobby so you can get an arrest on me before my tribunal on Thursday,” she said in the video. “This is what the UK does to its doctors.”
After her release, Aladwan denounced the arrest as “political theatre, not policing.”
In a detailed social media post, she described harsh and degrading conditions during her detention — denied water for six hours, refused essential medication, left in a freezing cell without a blanket, and isolated with a broken intercom.
“These are not standard procedures. They are punitive measures,” she wrote.
Aladwan also revealed the political motive behind the arrest.
“An officer explicitly informed me the police would be ‘reporting the arrest to the GMC.’ This is a non-reportable event. This admission reveals the direct channel of communication between the police and my regulator,” she said.
She further noted that the arrest was part of a coordinated campaign of intimidation aimed at influencing the medical tribunal and shaping public perception.
“It reveals a seamless network: lobby groups, politicians (Streeting), police, regulator (GMC),” she wrote. “They are not following due process. They are executing a strategy. Our British institutions have become enforcement tools for a foreign, hostile agenda—for the Israeli Jewish lobby—and the entire world can see it.”
Her post ended with a defiant declaration: “Free Britain and Palestine from Jewish supremacy (Zionism).”
Later, Aladwan published her bail conditions, which she said were a form of “house arrest.”
She is banned from attending any public event or protest related to Palestine or the Israeli regime in London, placed under curfew at a specified address, and required to notify police if she leaves home for more than 48 hours.
‘Losing grip over the narrative’
The arrest sparked outrage among pro-Palestine activists and supporters online, who harshly criticized British authorities for weaponizing law enforcement to suppress dissent.
A social media activist, Thomas Keith, wrote that the state’s reaction only exposes its weakness.
“The irony is that every time they try to silence a Rahmeh Aladwan, they just spotlight the hollowness of their so-called freedoms,” he said. “The more aggressive and coordinated the repression, the more obvious it is that the state is panicking, losing its grip over the narrative as more and more people refuse to look away from Gaza.”
“What you’re seeing is Britain showing the world it’s still an empire at heart, propping up colonialism abroad and silencing dissent at home. The cost of speaking the truth has never been higher, but the mask is off, and more people than ever see exactly who benefits from the machinery of state repression.”
Ellen Kriesels, another user on X, highlighted the hypocrisy of reopening a cleared case under lobby pressure and condemned the GMC’s renewed action as a blatant act of political persecution.
“This doctor was cleared by a tribunal three weeks ago. Now she is going back there on Thursday after intense media and political pressure at the behest of pro-Israel lobby groups. No new material. Political persecution is what this is. Shame on the GMC,” she wrote.
Aladwan herself has long maintained that silence is complicity. After her first tribunal in September, she posted a message urging others to resist fear and speak truth.
“We must operate without fear. We must name the root cause and identify the criminals. Palestinians are bravely resisting with their lives. The least we can do is resist with our words, uphold the principles of liberation (thawabet), and speak the full truth.”
She condemned Zionist supremacist structures behind the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the extermination of Palestinians across the occupied territories.
“The Jewish lobby and Jewish supremacists need to have some shame,” she wrote. “While Palestinians are being kidnapped, tortured, murdered, starved, raped, and burned alive by Israeli Jews, they continue to play victim and cry over our words and activism that are rooted in justice, morality, and humanity.”
In her message, she made clear what this struggle is really about.
“This is not about Jewish feelings or tears. This is about genocide caused by Jewish supremacy, extremism, and unadulterated terrorism.”
The Cameras Were the Goal Not the Solution
By Cam Wakefield | Reclaim The Net | October 24, 2025
If you live in Greater London, chances are you’re being watched right now. Not by MI5. Not by your nosy neighbor. No, it’s far more mundane than that. You’re being monitored by Mayor Sadiq Khan’s army of always-watching number plate cameras, installed under the noble banner of cleaning the air.
And here’s the twist: the air hasn’t changed. But the surveillance? That’s permanent.
When the Ultra Low Emission Zone was expanded in 2023 to cover the entire city, 579 square miles of roads, driveways, and backstreets, the stated goal was to reduce pollution.
What it actually achieved was the creation of one of the most comprehensive, always-on vehicle tracking systems in the country. Possibly the continent.
Thousands of cameras now scan and record every single vehicle, every single day, across every borough. And according to new research from the University of Birmingham, all of this has achieved virtually nothing significant in terms of environmental impact.
The emissions stayed. The cameras stayed. And the idea that this was ever about clean air is beginning to look like a fig leaf for something else entirely.
ULEZ cameras were sold to the public as environmental guardians. But what they actually do is log your number plate, check it against a central database, and charge you if your vehicle doesn’t meet emissions standards.
It doesn’t matter if your car is powered by sunshine and tofu. You’re still being recorded, timestamped, location-mapped, and uploaded into Transport for London’s data system. And the longer it runs, the harder it becomes to believe this is just about exhaust fumes.
Let’s be blunt: if this were a police surveillance network, the civil liberties brigade would be chaining themselves to lampposts. But because it’s got a green sticker on it, few blinked. It’s surveillance by stealth, a policing movement dressed up as progressive policy.
And the worst part? The public is paying for it.
The expansion cost Londoners £155 million ($206M). Not for scrubbing the air. Not for planting trees. For cameras. Lots of them. The kind of city-wide, high-resolution, automatic number plate recognition system that intelligence agencies dream about.
Within a week of going live, it was generating £5.3 million in revenue. And unlike actual policing or healthcare, this system runs itself.
London’s government insists it’s working. They point to drivers upgrading vehicles before the expansion. Which is a bit like saying the fire alarm is a success because someone already put the fire out before it rang.
Even the study’s co-author, Dr Suzanne Bartington, admitted the current ULEZ setup fails to tackle the core public health risks like PM2.5 pollution, the stuff that actually gets into your lungs and bloodstream.
“The current ULEZ approach does not fully address significant traffic-related public health issues,” she said.
So if it doesn’t result in cleaner air, what does it do? It tracks people. Relentlessly. Quietly. In real time.
Let’s not kid ourselves. A surveillance grid this large, this well-funded, and this politically untouchable isn’t going to stay limited to emissions fines forever.
Privacy groups have already warned that the ULEZ system could be repurposed for just about anything.
From catching speeding drivers to enforcing low-traffic neighborhoods. From congestion pricing to vehicle bans. Or, if the mood strikes City Hall, tracking “suspicious patterns of movement.” After all, the tech’s already in place. It would be a shame not to use it.
And let’s not forget: this all happened without a real public debate. There was no referendum. No opt-out. No serious oversight. Just a green slogan and a lot of money.
“This is just further evidence that the ULEZ expansion was about raising money rather than improving air quality,” said Thomas Turrell, of the City Hall Conservatives.
“Yet again, Sadiq Khan is ignoring the evidence when it doesn’t suit his agenda.”
Even Bromley Council leader Colin Smith weighed in with a dose of brutal clarity:
“Had it been about air quality, Mayor Khan would have started where the air in London is dirtiest – in his own tube network. But no, there were no motorists to fleece there.”
So here we are. The air is still dirty. The cameras are still on. And millions of journeys are now quietly logged by a system that was never designed to turn off.
We were told this was about health and climate. It’s really about control. A system that tracks your car is a system that tracks you. And once it’s normal to be watched everywhere you go, it’s very hard to roll that back.
ULEZ may have been introduced as an environmental policy. But its real legacy will be this: the normalisation of mass surveillance, hidden behind a green curtain.
Because in the end, the emissions weren’t the target.
The people were.
Palestinian activist vows to keep fighting Trump administration’s bid to re-detain him
MEMO | October 22, 2025
Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil accused the Trump administration of seeking to silence pro-Palestine voices by trying to re-detain him, after his attorneys appeared Tuesday before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia to challenge the legality of his detention, Anadolu reports.
“We just finished a long hearing,” Khalil told reporters outside the court. “I feel confident, of course. The Trump administration is still trying to re-detain me. They’re trying to stop the federal court from looking at my case because they know they don’t have a case against me.”
Khalil, 30, a Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate, is a lawful permanent resident married to a US citizen. He was detained in March without a warrant by immigration officers in New York City and transferred to a detention facility in Louisiana, where he was held for months.
The Trump administration claimed his presence threatened US foreign policy without providing evidence, but a lower court ordered his release on bail in June and barred the government from detaining or deporting him.
“This case is not about Mahmoud Khalil,” he said. “This case is about every single person in this country, whether they are citizens or not — this case is about their freedom of speech and their ability to dissent, and their ability to speak up, especially about Palestine and the genocide that’s happening in Gaza.”
“They want to break me because they want to deport me to be out as soon as possible, so that others would fear speaking out. That’s why I’m continuing to fight,” he added.
Khalil’s legal team appeared before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, asking judges to uphold lower court rulings that found the government’s actions likely unconstitutional and ordered his release on bail.
His attorney, Ramzi Kassem, co-director of the CLEAR project, said the court heard oral arguments on the government’s appeal challenging both Khalil’s release and the lower court’s decision striking down the administration’s deportation order.
“We’re continuing to press forth — in this court behind me, in the district court in New Jersey, and in immigration court in Louisiana — to vindicate Mahmoud’s constitutional rights and his right to remain here with his family as a lawful permanent resident,” Kassem said.
“What’s at stake is not just his right to speak up in defense of Palestinian human rights and his ability to stay here in this country with his US citizen wife and child, but everyone’s First Amendment rights and due process rights.”
UK police arrest NHS doctor for denouncing Israel, supporting Palestine
Press TV – October 21, 2025
A British-Palestinian National Health Service (NHS) doctor has been arrested in the United Kingdom for denouncing Israel’s atrocities in Gaza and expressing support for Palestine.
Rahmeh Aladwan was taken into custody on Tuesday following her recent post on X, in which she criticized the Israeli occupation and voiced support for Palestine at a rally.
“The arrests relate to an ongoing investigation, led by the Met’s Public Order Crime Team, into allegations that comments made at a protest and online in recent months were grossly offensive and antisemitic in nature,” the Metropolitan Police spokesperson said.
During the demonstration held in Whitehall on July 21, Dr. Aladwan articulated the “Palestinian principles of liberation,” emphasizing the right to resistance, the right to self-determination, Al-Quds as the capital of Palestine, and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands in what is now the occupied territories.
She also described Israel as “a terrorist entity that sits on top of Palestine,” and committing genocide against the oppressed residents of Gaza.
In her X post, Dr. Aladwan stated, “October 7. The day Israel was humiliated. Their supremacy [was] shattered at the hands of the children they forced out of their homes … The children who watched [Zionists] execute their loved ones, rape their land, and live on their stolen soil.”
Before her arrest, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), a pro-Israel advocacy group, had accused Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan of anti-Semitism, claiming her social media posts and public appearances made her “unfit to practice medicine.”
However, on September 25, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) ruled that Dr. Aladwan is fit to practice, rejecting the anti-Semitism allegations.
Despite this, the UK General Medical Council (GMC) has referred her to another interim orders tribunal scheduled for Thursday, October 23, as it continues its investigation into the claims made by UKLFI.
The Al-Aqsa Flood operation, launched by Palestinian resistance groups on October 7, 2023, was a response to decades of oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli regime.
Following the operation, Israel launched a genocidal war on Gaza, killing at least 68,229 people and wounding 170,369.
Pashinyan’s war on the Armenian Church signals a deepening national crisis
By Lucas Leiroz | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 22, 2025
The authoritarian spiral of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has entered a dangerous new phase: a systematic campaign of repression against the Armenian Apostolic Church — one of the world’s oldest Christian institutions and the cornerstone of the Armenian national identity. In a desperate attempt to consolidate his crumbling political legitimacy and strengthen alignment with the Western liberal order, Pashinyan has now turned his sights on religious leaders and sacred institutions, undermining the spiritual and historical foundations of the Armenian state.
In recent weeks, state-led persecution of religious figures has reached alarming levels. The arrest of Bishop Mkrtich Proshyan, head of the Diocese of Aragatsotn, marks just the most visible example of a broader, coordinated crackdown. Alongside him, five other clergymen were detained on vague and politically motivated charges, including “fraud” and “abuse of power.” The allegations, notably lacking in credible legal grounding, reveal the instrumental nature of the operation — a political purge disguised as law enforcement.
This assault on the Church is not an isolated event. Months earlier, Archbishop Mikael Ajapahyan was sentenced to two years in prison for allegedly “inciting a coup” — a vague accusation increasingly used as a catch-all label for dissent. What is unfolding appears to be a deliberate campaign to silence religious voices that challenge the government’s ideological alignment with Brussels and its Western patrons.
Behind Pashinyan’s rhetoric of “fighting corruption” and “institutional modernization” lies a far darker reality: the calculated dismantling of Armenia’s last bastion of traditional resistance. With roots tracing back to the early 4th century, the Armenian Apostolic Church is not merely a religious authority — it is a symbol of moral unity, historical continuity, and cultural cohesion. For many Armenians, the Church is the guardian of the national soul — a role that naturally places it in opposition to a regime advancing policies that many view as anti-national and externally imposed.
The conflict is also ideological in nature. By attempting to reshape Armenian society in accordance with secularist, progressive values favored by the European Union, Pashinyan inevitably comes into conflict with the conservative and patriotic worldview still prevalent among the Armenian population. In such a context, any institution that resists this forced social transformation becomes a target — and the Church, as the most prominent voice of cultural continuity, is perceived as the primary obstacle.
The deeper backdrop to this crackdown is the widespread public disillusionment with Pashinyan’s leadership following the catastrophic military defeat to Azerbaijan and the total loss of Nagorno-Karabakh. The dissolution of the Republic of Artsakh not only represented a strategic failure but served as a powerful symbol of Pashinyan’s political project collapsing under its own contradictions. In the wake of that defeat, his administration has increasingly relied on authoritarian tactics and scapegoating internal “enemies” — including the conservative opposition and the Church — in an effort to deflect from its failures.
The arrest of Russian-Armenian businessman and vocal government critic Samvel Karapetyan further illustrates the broader context of political persecution. However, unlike typical political repression, the offensive against the clergy reveals something deeper: a systematic attempt to reengineer the Armenian national identity along foreign lines, disregarding the popular will and erasing centuries of religious and cultural continuity.
The mass demonstrations erupting in Yerevan since October 18 are a direct response to this rupture. Opposition movements like Mer Dzevov (Our Way) are channeling a growing national anger that transcends the arrests of individual figures — it reflects a public rejection of a government that has positioned itself as an adversary of Armenia’s historical institutions and spiritual heritage. The presence of thousands in the streets, demanding not only the release of political and religious prisoners but also the end of state hostility toward the Church, suggests that the divide between the regime and the population may now be irreversible.
Pashinyan continues to rely on international backers to maintain his grip on power, but even his Western sponsors may soon realize they cannot indefinitely prop up a government that has lost all domestic legitimacy. Meanwhile, the Armenian Apostolic Church retains the moral authority of history, faith, and national identity — forces that no imported ideology or political alliance can replace.
If internal stability is to be preserved, the Armenian government must immediately halt its campaign against the clergy and initiate dialogue with the legitimate representatives of civil and religious society. Failing to do so risks not only further loss of authority but a slide into institutional collapse — with unpredictable and potentially irreversible consequences.
The forced replacement of Armenian heritage with foreign ideological frameworks is a blueprint for national ruin — and in attacking the Church, Pashinyan is not merely repressing dissent; he is waging war on the very soul of his people.
‘Welcome to the war casino’: veteran German politician ridicules conscription plans
RT | October 21, 2025
Veteran German politician Sahra Wagenknecht has condemned Berlin’s plans to boost its army through a lottery-based recruitment system, ridiculing what she described as the government’s obsession with an imagined war against Russia.
German lawmakers have been debating ways to strengthen the Bundeswehr as Chancellor Friedrich Merz has called to turn it into the “strongest conventional army” in Europe. The government aims to expand the country’s armed forces by around 80,000 servicemen. Some have proposed activating a lottery-based selection system if not enough people volunteer. Continued shortfalls could trigger the return of compulsory conscription, which has been suspended since 2011.
In a TikTok post on Tuesday, Wagenknecht, who previously served as a member of the European Parliament and sat in the Bundestag from 2009 until earlier this year, mocked the lottery idea.
“Welcome to the war casino where the stakes are your life,” she said, going on to criticize the Merz government’s rhetoric that Germany is partly “at war” with Russia and its calls for an army “ready for battle, that prevails, that wins.”
“I have to be honest, this is all just too much to handle. Maybe someone should explain to our great chancellor that Russia is a nuclear power and a war with a nuclear power will not be decided by the number of soldiers,” she said.
She further stressed that the hysteria over a supposed Russian offensive was absurd given that NATO has three times more soldiers than Russia. “With these power dynamics, is Putin supposed to roll over us if we don’t conscript 80,000 young people for military service? They really want to sell us for fools,” Wagenknecht said.
Russia has consistently denied any hostile intent toward NATO or EU members and has described Western alarm over an impending war as baseless propaganda. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has accused European governments of pursuing dangerous militarization and claimed Berlin is “slipping into a Fourth Reich” through its rearmament drive.
Armenian opposition mayor detained in government crackdown
RT | October 20, 2025
Armenian law enforcement has detained the mayor of the country’s second-largest city along with several municipal staff and dozens of locals, sparking protests.
Gyumri Mayor Vardan Ghukasyan and seven others now face corruption charges. The arrests come amid an ongoing political standoff in the country between the government and opposition.
Ghukasyan, elected from the Communist Party of Armenia in April 2025, is a known critic of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s pro-Western foreign policy shift. Pashinyan previously threatened to “throw him out of the politics,” vowing to “resolve” the issue.
Video circulating online showed Ghukasyan being escorted by security forces into a vehicle, reportedly bound for questioning in the capital, Yerevan. When his supporters blocked the exit, armed police used force in an operation involving over 100 officers.
The situation prompted an immediate public backlash, with angry residents gathering outside the city hall, whistling at police and chanting “shame.” Law enforcement effectively locked down the area, blocking streets and dispersing the crowds. Twenty-three people were detained, among them a member of the opposition Mer Dzevov (Our Way) movement, led by jailed businessman Samvel Karapetyan. The movement had expressed unconditional support for Ghukasyan.
Pashinyan has been previously accused of targeting his opponents. In June, Russian-Armenian billionaire Karapetyan was arrested on charges of inciting a coup and money laundering. The businessman had publicly condemned the prime minister’s crackdown on the clergy of the Armenian Apostolic Church, which the government accuses of corruption and political meddling.
Tensions between Pashinyan and the church began in 2020 when the nation’s top cleric, Catholicos Garegin II, called on the prime minister to resign amid mass protests over territorial concessions to Azerbaijan.
Last week, police detained Bishop Mkrtich Proshyan, the head of the Diocese of Aragatsotn, and five other clergymen on charges of abuse of power and fraud. Earlier this month, Archbishop Mikael Ajapahyan was sentenced to two years in prison for inciting a coup, a case he described as politically motivated.
The Strange Definition of “Free and Fair” Elections
By Jeffrey Silverman – New Eastern Outlook – October 15, 2025
Recent elections across Eastern Europe and the Caucasus—in Moldova, the Czech Republic, and Georgia—reveal deepening tensions between Western-backed elites and nationalist, often anti-Western movements challenging EU and US influence in the region.
It has been a full week of elections in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, with a highly contested election in Moldova on the 28th of September, the Czech parliamentary elections held on the 3rd and 4th of October, and the Georgian municipal elections on Sunday, 4th of October.
What is rather interesting is the rhetoric surrounding each of these election processes. In Moldova, western governments and media have lauded the “convincing win” of the incumbent President, Maia Sandu’s PAS party, which “won” 50.16% of the vote, with, contrary to the EU narrative, a severely reduced majority in Parliament.
Needless to say, Sandu and her EU backers blamed the party’s relatively poor performance on “Russian interference,” conveniently ignoring the massive expenditure of state resources and EU influence intended to ensure her party remained in power. It should be noted that the “pro-Russian” opposition block won 49.84%, so “convincing win” is a bit of a stretch.
On the other hand, the results in the Czech Republic and Georgia delivered quite different results from those desired by the EU and US, with former Prime Minister Andrej Babis set to return to power in the country. Babis, a long-time critic of military support for Ukraine, is set to join Hungary and Slovakia in refusing to allow the supply of military aid to Ukraine using EU funds, as well as by dismantling the current Czech initiative to provide artillery shells.
Needless to say, Babis has been widely smeared as a “populist,” “Trumpist,” “pro-Russian,” etc. Having won 37% of the vote against the 23% of his pro-Western rivals in the pro-Western coalition of the current prime minister, Petr Fiala, Mr. Babis is expected to be called upon to begin negotiations with the other minor parties amongst whom the remainder of the vote was split in order to form a coalition government.
Finally, in Georgia, the municipal elections delivered a resounding victory to the ruling Georgian Dream party, with Georgian Dream sweeping the board, winning in every municipal race, receiving just over 70% of the vote in a clear rejection of the pro-Western opposition by Georgian voters. Needless to say, before the election even took place, Western embassies, particularly the EU Mission to Georgia, were decrying the process, claiming Russian “interference” and encouraging street protests.
It is interesting to compare the EU and other Western claims of “election interference” by Russia in Moldova and Georgia with the facts of each case.
In Moldova, the election was clearly interfered with, but not by Russia. As with the recent presidential elections, Sandu’s PAS party actually lost the election INSIDE Moldova but was saved by the diaspora vote, which itself was rigged strongly in her favour. Again, there was a massive disparity in the number of polling stations for the diaspora.
The countries with the most polling stations were Italy (75), Germany (36), France (26), the United Kingdom (24), Romania (23), the United States (22), Spain (15) and Ireland (12), with only two being opened in Russia. It should be noted that there are an estimated 400,000 Moldovans in Russia, while Italy has 100,000, something hardly reflected by the number of polling stations in each.
In addition, Moldovan citizens in the separatist region of Transnistria were also disenfranchised, with polling stations shut by Moldovan officials, moved across the river, and the bridges “shut for maintenance” or by “mining threats,” severely limiting the ability of voters to reach them. The bridges were only opened 20 minutes before the polling stations closed. The same story is true for the Gaugaz autonomous region, where the population has seen its political leadership targeted by politicised arrests and sham court proceedings. In this case, however, Sandu’s repressions had the opposite result, with Gaugaz voters giving only 3.19% to Sandu’s PAS and 82.35% to the Patriotic Bloc.
Very “free and fair”
In Georgia, where most Western governments still refuse to recognize the results of the 2024 parliamentary elections, the EU, through its puppet NGOs and media, has even been going so far as to defend the throwing of Molotov cocktails as “peaceful protests.” The hypocrisy of the EU position regarding the Georgian police handling of violent protests, contrasted with the extreme violence meted out by, for example, French, German, and British police against actual peaceful demonstrators, where incredible brutality has become the norm.
As with the previous anti-government protests in Georgia, in stark contrast to their European counterparts, Georgian police do not use force unless the opposition protesters use violence first.
Furthermore, the violence used by the protesters appears to have the full support of European officials, including the EU ambassador to Georgia, Paweł Herczyński, with the Georgian prime minister directly accusing the EU ambassador, saying:
“You know that specific people from abroad have even expressed direct support for all this, for the announced attempt to overthrow the constitutional order,” Kobakhidze said. “In this context, the European Union ambassador to Georgia bears special responsibility. He should come out, distance himself, and strictly condemn everything that is happening on the streets of Tbilisi.”
Needless to say, the EU has remained silent.
What is obvious is that despite all the money poured into Georgia through NGOs, the EU attempt to destabilize Georgia has failed, with the EU doing little more than offending the majority of the population of this socially conservative Orthodox Christian country. The same thing can be seen in Moldova, where the pro-EU candidate was only able to win through blatant vote rigging and exclusionary actions that disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters.
Needless to say, the hypocrisy of Moldova’s president, Maia Sandu, was on full display as she posted on X:
My thoughts are with the people of Georgia, who stand for freedom and their European future.
Democracy cannot be silenced. Moldova is by your side.
Which, given her arrest of opposition politicians, banning of rival parties, and suppression of voters, is chutzpa indeed.
More ominous is the revelation by the Georgian government that the State Security Service had intercepted a large number of weapons and explosives that had been purchased on the orders of the Georgian Legion, the mercenary unit fighting on the Banderist side in the ongoing fighting in the eastern part of Ukraine. The first deputy chief of Georgia’s State Security Service, Lasha Magradze said:
“On the basis of intel information, the State Security Service found a large quantity of firearms, munitions, explosives, and detonators. According to investigators, Georgian citizen B. Ch., acting on orders from a Georgian representative of an armed unit operating in Ukraine, purchased a great quantity of firearms, which is proved by a lot of evidence. According to intel information, acts of sabotage with the use of the above-mentioned weapons were supposed to be staged along with massive violence and the attempted seizure of the presidential residence in Tbilisi on October 4,” he said, adding that security officers “neutralized a number of individuals who presumably were to bring munitions and explosives to downtown Tbilisi.”
Given that the Georgian Legion is tightly bound to the Ukrainian intelligence service, which is controlled by Western intelligence agencies, particularly British MI6, the American CIA, and the French DSGE, it is almost certain that this attempted armed coup was planned in the West.
Luckily for the people of Georgia, it has failed, at least so far.
With the rapidly rising risk of war with Iran, not to mention the US and European desire to spread fires along Russia’s borders in the hope of stretching Russian resources thin, unfortunately I doubt this will be the last attempt, however.
What is certain is that the EU and US have a very strange definition of “free and fair” elections, in that if the Western-supported candidate wins, they are “free and fair,” but if, God forbid, Joe Public elects someone the globalists in Washington and Brussels can’t accept, they are “unfair” or “rigged” by “Russian interference.”
As Europe fractures over the proxy war in Ukraine and the rise of nationalist governments, understanding the manipulation of “democracy talk” is critical. These elections are not just local contests; they are proxy battles in a much larger fight over who controls the narrative of legitimacy in the 21st century.
Jeffrey K. Silverman is a freelance journalist and international development specialist, BSc, MSc, based for 30 years in Georgia and the former Soviet Union
West weaponizing laws to silence pro-Palestine activism: Study
Al Mayadeen | October 14, 2025
The right to protest is facing increasing restrictions across the West, The Guardian reported on Monday, citing a new study by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), which accuses governments of criminalizing pro-Palestine activism and using counter-terrorism and antisemitism laws to stifle dissent.
The report focuses on the UK, US, France, and Germany, accusing authorities in these countries of “weaponizing” national security and anti-hate legislation to silence criticism of “Israel” and suppress demonstrations supporting Palestinian rights in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
“This trend reflects a worrying shift towards the normalization of exceptional measures in dealing with dissenting voices,” Yosra Frawes, head of FIDH’s Maghreb and Middle East desk, told The Guardian.
Compiled from open-source data, witness accounts, and institutional reports gathered between October 2023 and September 2025, the study was released just one day after a US-brokered Gaza ceasefire that secured the release of all living Israeli captives and around 2,000 Palestinian detainees.
According to FIDH, restrictions on speech and assembly have extended beyond protests, impacting journalists, academics, and public officials who express solidarity with Palestinians.
In the United Kingdom, the organization found that protest rights have eroded under both Conservative and Labour administrations. The report points to the 2024 anti-protest law introduced by the Conservatives, later deemed unlawful, and to what it calls the Labour government’s continuation of “official narratives” justifying support for “Israel”.
It highlights former Home Secretary Suella Braverman‘s branding of pro-Palestine rallies as “hate marches”, arguing that this rhetoric “stigmatized support for Palestine and Palestinian resistance movements” and “worked to discriminate against Muslims and other racialized groups in the UK.”
FIDH says the change in government in July 2024 “did little to change official government narratives,” claiming Labour has linked criticism of “Israel” with “violent antisemitism” while continuing to target Muslim and racialized communities.
The tensions have been further inflamed by the Labour government’s ban on the activist network Palestine Action and its proposal to expand police powers at protests.
FIDH draws parallels across the Atlantic, where US authorities have detained demonstrators and pursued legal actions against individuals expressing solidarity with Palestine. In France, the government has faced criticism for banning pro-Palestine demonstrations in several cities and for dissolving the rights group Urgence Palestine.
Meanwhile, in Germany, protests have drawn thousands, but police tactics and restrictions on slogans deemed antisemitic, for the mere criticism of “Israel”, have been widely condemned as excessive. The report argues that Germany’s actions reflect a “collective discomfort” in balancing free expression with its postwar responsibility to combat what it classifies as “antisemitism”.
Freedom crisis
The federation recommends that the UK establish an independent oversight body for policing demonstrations and amend key legislation, Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and Section 11 of the Public Order Act 2023, to protect political speech and prevent arbitrary searches.
“Ultimately, the crackdown on solidarity with Palestinians reveals a profound crisis, not only of human rights in the occupied territories but of freedom itself, in societies that claim to be democratic,” the report concludes.
FIDH says that while legal frameworks vary among the UK, US, France, and Germany, the trend toward restricting Palestinian solidarity movements represents a global pattern of shrinking civic space, one that calls into question the credibility of Western nations as defenders of democratic freedoms.
The EU isn’t at war with Russia – it’s at war with the minds of its own citizens
European leaders are trying to gaslight their populations into believing that it’s Moscow that wants a fight, not them
By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | October 14, 2025
Among other things, this particular moment in history will be remembered – whether in whole books, mere chapters, or (if we are lucky) forgotten footnotes – as the Great European Drone Scare. For weeks now, the populations of NATO-EU Europe have been subjected to a barrage of vague but scary reports about drone sightings. The drones have appeared – seemingly – over various places and installations, prominently including airports in Denmark and Germany.
They are of unknown origin and unknown purpose. And, quite often, it is actually also unknown whether they are even real. Indeed, there is no proof of Russia being responsible for any of these incidents, as even Western media admit. We are once again asked to simply trust our politicians and “experts.”
That is, the same ones who took months to stop pretending that Russia – absurdly – blew up its own Nord Stream pipelines in 2022. As late as spring 2023, Germany’s Carlo Masala, for instance, who also believes “Girkin” and “Strelkov” are two different individuals (just like “Santa” and “Claus”), was still spreading groundless speculation – really, a conspiracy theory – about a “false flag attack” on Nord Stream, that is: Russia, Russia, Russia.
And – oh, coincidence! – also recently, Moscow, we are told, has had nothing better to do than oblige Western information warriors with three further sort-of incidents: a purported electronic-warfare attack on the plane of EU despot and de facto US proconsul Ursula von der Leyen over the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv, an alleged incursion into Estonian airspace, and low fly-overs over the German frigate Hamburg during a recent NATO exercise.
In reality, those three stories share only one thing with the great drone saga: They don’t hold up to scrutiny. The case of the alleged Plovdiv GPS attack is so shoddy and cratered so badly so quickly that it’s been consigned to oblivion. The incursion into Estonian airspace did not happen either. Due to an agreement that Estonia itself signed in 1994, it cannot claim a 12-mile but only a 3-mile zone in the relevant area. Estonia’s case is hysterical to begin with; the 1994 agreement deprives it of even the flimsiest pretext of legality. Regarding the so-called buzzing of the Hamburg, finally, even Western military officials admit that it was not “imminently dangerous.” Instead, they complain, it was “unfriendly and provocative.” Frankly: Boohoo. What do you expect holding exercises on Russia’s doorstep while fighting an indirect war against it in Ukraine? A friendly chat among sailors over a stiff grog?
And yet everyone in NATO-EU establishment politics and its mainstream media has been singing the same old tired song, once again, sotto voce: Russia is coming, Russia is already here, Russia is everywhere. The new head of Germany’s spy agency – the Bundesnachrichtendienst – seems to believe that his job is not to do secret things quietly but to join the chorus of the panic-mongers: He also has sleepless visions of the Russians attacking just any day now. Maybe from right under his bed or out of his cupboard, one must suppose.
It is almost as if they were all reading from the same hymn sheet, that is, memo. And, of course, the new wave of self-induced hyper-ventilation has been milked for all it’s worth – a lot, as in billions of Euros – for yet more money to be spent on armaments, including but not limited to a “drone wall,” while ordinary people are subjected to ever more brutal austerity. Even more disturbingly, there is a clear drive to concentrate ever more powers with those same political establishments that can’t stop ruling by frightening and confusing their own citizens.
That the drone stories are already crumbling makes no difference: A dramatic French attempt – special forces and all – to pin nefarious drone activity on a tanker, for instance, has failed miserably. In Germany, a recent sighting has actually been cleared up quickly. The culprit? A hapless German drone amateur who must be living under a rock.
And perish the thought that Ukraine itself might have anything to do with those mystery drones! Its regime has plenty of motive, and, by now, even the West has been compelled to acknowledge that it is perfectly capable of massive sabotage operations and lies to manipulate its European backers. Because that is now even the official story of the Nord Stream terror attack. But: thinking logically – verboten!
Instead, let’s pretend that we know what we don’t know (Russia, Russia, Russia!) and start overreacting, again, based on our ignorance and panic at best, on a malevolent, deliberate strategy of cognitive warfare against our own countries at worst. In Germany, for instance, both Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius have made the bizarre claim that while the country is not (yet?) at war, it is also no longer at peace. And the-Russians-are-coming head of the BND? He feels the current peace is “icy” at best and – drum roll – “could turn into heated confrontation at any moment.”
What is that even supposed to mean? Is there a backhanded admission, finally, that Germany has made a deliberate and awfully self-harming choice to fight Russia through Ukraine? If so, thank you, Hauptmann Obvious: during last year’s Ukrainian Kamikaze offensive, German tanks got shredded once again in the vicinity of Kursk – at the 1943 site of the largest tank battle in history. (And guess who lost?) We have noticed that much. How about you, our supposed leaders, stop playing with fire?
Or are these fear-mongering statements meant to prepare the ground for a concrete power grab? That is what Roderich Kiesewetter, an ultra-Russophobe and war fantasist from Merz’s own center-right CDU party has already suggested explicitly: he wants the German parliament to declare the so-called “Spannungsfall,” literally “situation of tension.” In the mainstream media, for instance the important newspaper Welt, the usual information warriors are already amplifying Kiesewetter’s message. And – yet another striking coincidence – a recent military exercise called “Red Storm Bravo,” in Hamburg, one of Germany’s biggest cities, was dedicated to cosplaying the “Spannungsfall” – with maximum publicity.
The consequences of initiating a “Spannungsfall” – a kind of official pre-war – are complex and severe: Open-ended, compulsory, and universal military service is only one of them; the army can be used domestically; citizens can be drafted for work; civil rights are painfully restricted; those critical of government policy, NATO, or the “Spannungsfall” itself can be cajoled even worse than usual.
Last but not least, the “Spannungsfall” allows the government to postpone or otherwise influence elections. In Germany, it would be an ideal vehicle for the traditional parties to at least stall the consequences of their own failure, unpopularity and decline, on one side, and the rise of challengers on the so-called “populist” new right and left, on the other.
Carl Schmitt, Germany’s 20th-century version of Niccolo Machiavelli – brilliantly smart, ruthlessly realistic, and morally badly questionable – defined ultimate political power as the ability to declare a state of exception. In essence, Schmitt’s logic was simple: we live together by having rules; hence, the power that trumps all others is to decide when those rules do not apply.
Schmitt explained extremes. In reality, governments don’t raze all rules in one fell swoop. Why should they? To unshackle themselves and become even less accountable than usual they proceed stealthily and gradually. No need to trumpet a state of exception in its pure, all-or-nothing form. Why needlessly scare the subjects and, perhaps, provoke resistance?
Instead, what usually happens is the invocation of an emergency – either simply made-up or greatly exaggerated – to justify chipping away at citizens’ rights, first a little then a lot, while boosting the unchecked powers of the rulers and their bureaucrats. Call it the salami-slicing tactics of Western liberalism.
Dialing up the state of exception in handy instalments – that is also the most plausible explanation of the recent great drone scare in NATO-EU Europe. Yet another phase in the years-long Putin-is-gonna-get-you cognitive warfare campaign that Western establishments and mainstream media have been waging on their own fellow citizens, the great drone scare serves the general purpose to promote even more panic over an allegedly impending Russian attack on NATO states.
The techniques for escalating the war scare are dishonest and repetitive, but highly developed. As a high-ranking NATO general has told us, their aim is not simply to manipulate “what people think.” That, in NATO-speak, would be mere propaganda and just so old-hat. Rather, the state-of-the-art approach is to “exploit vulnerabilities of the human mind” to influence “the way” people think. Targeting “human capital” – yes, that’s us, all of us – “from the individual to states, to multinational organizations, across everyday life.”
Of course, the official pretense is that all of the above is what the enemy – read: Russia (and China) – does or, at worst, what NATO will do to that enemy. But is in the nature of the cognitive warfare shtick that it easily allows for turning the psychological disruption guns on the West’s own populations. Because – so the pretext – those populations are already under cognitive attack by the enemy. So what can you do, except fight back on the battlefield you claim is under attack: their minds? We have seen and experienced the results of this nifty little sleight of hand for years already.
But there also is something special. In the words of Jonas Togel, one of the few Western experts daring to notice Western information warfare, “it is worse than it has ever been.” Indeed, but there is no guarantee that things won’t get even worse again. The real question is how much longer our cognitive warriors-in-chief will have a free hand to drive us all mad with fear.
Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.
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From the Archives
Sugar: Killing us Sweetly
Staggering Health Consequences of Sugar on Health of Americans
By Dr. Gary Null | Global Research | February 3, 2014
In September 2013, a bombshell report from Credit Suisse’s Research Institute brought into sharp focus the staggering health consequences of sugar on the health of Americans. The group revealed that approximately “30%–40% of healthcare expenditures in the USA go to help address issues that are closely tied to the excess consumption of sugar.”[1]The figures suggest that our national addiction to sugar runs us an incredible $1 trillion in healthcare costs each year. The Credit Suisse report highlighted several health conditions including coronary heart diseases, type II diabetes and metabolic syndrome, which numerous studies have linked to excessive sugar intake.[2]
Just a year earlier in 2012, a report by Dr. Sanjay Gupta appearing on 60 Minutes featured the work of Dr. Robert Lustig, an endocrinologist from California who gained national attention after a lecture he gave titled “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” went viral in 2009. Lustig’s research has investigated the connection between sugar consumption and the poor health of the American people. He has published twelve articles in peer-reviewed journals identifying sugar as a major factor in the epidemic of degenerative disease that now afflicts our country. The data compiled by Lustig clearly show how excessive sugar consumption plays a key role in the development of many types of cancer, obesity, type II diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. His research has led him to conclude that 75% of all diseases in America today are brought on by the American lifestyle and are entirely preventable.[3]
Until the airing of this program, no one in the “official” world acknowledged anything wrong with sugar, here is a sampling of some the latest research available to them if they chose to look… continue
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- New Study: A 4°C Warmer Beaufort Sea Had ‘No Sea Ice’ 11,700 – 8200 Years Ago
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