Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism

If Thomas Massie Was President…

By Alan Mosley | The Libertarian Institute | May 20, 2026

If Thomas Massie were president, there would be no American involvement in the war in Iran. Rep. Massie (R-KY) introduced a bipartisan resolution barring “unauthorized hostilities” against Iran and said flatly that, “The ongoing war between Israel and Iran is not our war.” Massie respects the Constitution: Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 grants Congress the exclusive power to declare war. A Massie presidency would not begin hostilities at the behest of a foreign nation and then pretend the War Powers Resolution clock never started when Iran didn’t turn out like Venezuela (which he also wouldn’t have started).

If Thomas Massie were president, Americans wouldn’t be funding Ukrainian oligarchs to the tune of billions of dollars. He said, “We shouldn’t send another penny to Ukraine,” and demanded an audit before another dollar moved. Congress, meanwhile, appropriated more than $174 billion for Ukraine-related purposes through FY 2024, passed another $60.84 billion package in April 2024, and oversight bodies documented serious tracking failures for sensitive equipment. A government that cannot account for what it sends abroad has not earned the moral right to demand more from taxpayers at home.

If Thomas Massie were president, there would be no more regime change wars, period. Years before Iran returned to the front page, Massie was already trying to block unauthorized aid to Syrian rebels, restrain intervention in Yemen, require congressional authorization for any action in Venezuela, and later withdraw the United States from NATO. The antiwar right is perfectly encapsulated by the non-interventionist foreign policy supported first by Dr. Ron Paul, and now by Massie. America First means supporting the troops, and supporting the troops means not sending them to police the world.

If Thomas Massie were president, a foreign government (Israel) wouldn’t control America. Massie voted against Israel’s 2024 supplemental, proposed forcing politically active organizations that principally advance foreign interests to register under FARA, and argued that federal officeholders should disclose dual citizenship and abstain from votes uniquely benefiting those countries. It was when Massie told Tucker Carlson about his colleagues in Washington having an “AIPAC Guy,” a handler to make sure they were always putting Israel’s interests first, that the Rubicon had been crossed. Israeli billionaires would then make the Republican primary in Kentucky’s 4th district the most expensive such race in America. To be Israel First is to be America Last.

If Thomas Massie were president, Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirators would be in jail. He forced the U.S. House to vote on releasing the full Epstein files, gathered the signatures to bring the measure to the floor, and said Americans deserve to know “who’s implicated, and how deep this corruption goes.” Massie said we would know the movement to release the Epstein Files was a success when “rich men… powerful men are being perp-walked to the jail.” Such men have faced consequences abroad, but not in America. The Epstein class is politically active in the States.

If Thomas Massie were president, there would be no FISA Section 702, no warrantless spying on Americans. He has spent a decade attacking the “backdoor” searches that let intelligence agencies rummage through Americans’ communications without a warrant, and he warned in 2025 that, “The intelligence agencies will use these loopholes to spy on Americans.” His Republican colleagues were urged to unite behind extending Section 702, and Congress promptly bought more time for the program. A President Massie would be among the first since the days of Jefferson to repeal and restrict executive power, even when (or especially when) that executive is himself.

If Thomas Massie were president, there would be no automobile kill switch mandates. Massie authored a 2026 amendment to block federal funding for the impaired-driving technology mandate born in the 2021 infrastructure law, and he argued that a car should not become “your judge, your jury, and your executioner.” Regulators may prefer cleaner language, but the civil-liberties dispute is obvious enough: should Washington require vehicles to monitor drivers and intervene? Massie’s answer is no, and instead of being celebrated for voting to defund the Biden-era legislation, it became yet another grievance of those who prefer safety over liberty.

If Thomas Massie were president, there would have been no federal COVID mandates. He sued to end the CDC’s air-travel mask order, introduced legislation to terminate the vaccine mandate for international travelers, and condemned the “faceless bureaucrats” behind edicts Congress never enacted. The courts later blocked OSHA’s vaccine-or-test rule for large employers, and CMS eventually withdrew its healthcare-worker vaccine mandate. Massie was right earlier than most, and louder than nearly everyone who later pretended the whole episode had simply been an understandable excess.

If Thomas Massie were president, there wouldn’t have been record federal gun control prosecutions. His legislative instinct runs in the opposite direction: national constitutional carry, repeal of the Gun-Free School Zones Act, and fewer federal crimes piled onto conduct that the Second Amendment was written to protect. That outlook is irreconcilable with a Justice Department mentality that boasts it will “pursue every firearms case referred.” A Massie administration would treat gun ownership as a liberty to be secured, not as a pretext for one more bureaucratic dragnet.

If Thomas Massie were president, the national debt wouldn’t be $39 trillion and rising by trillions each year. Massie has spent years voting against omnibus bills and continuing resolutions, and he now calls the continuing resolutions ritual a “fake fight,” because both parties preserve the machinery that drives borrowing higher. The Biden-era spending levels were not only cut, but refusing to rubber-stamp said spending created yet more friction between him and the supposed party of “fiscal conservatism.” The 2025 tax-and-spending package was projected to add roughly $3.8 trillion more over a decade. In Washington, insolvency is bipartisan, but a President Massie would veto such bills, challenging Congress to keep trying until it could either balance the budget, or embrace shutdown.

If Thomas Massie were president, gas prices would be cheaper. His politics point toward more supply, fewer regulatory affectations, and less willingness to destabilize oil-producing regions in the name of grand strategy. In Congress he backed cross-border energy infrastructure, while current inflation data show energy prices surging and gasoline costs jumping as the Iran war drove up oil. A government that constrains energy at home and jeopardizes it abroad should not affect surprise when the reckoning arrives at the pump.

If Thomas Massie were president, grocery store prices would be cheaper. He has long argued that Washington makes food needlessly dear by burdening local production and intrastate processing, backing the PRIME Act, interstate raw-milk legislation, and country-of-origin transparency. USDA still shows food-at-home prices above year-earlier levels, and Federal Reserve research has noted that modern food inflation is driven heavily by supply-chain and processing costs, not merely by raw commodities. Massie attacks the most important problem facing everyday Americans, cost of living, from multiple angles, be it tackling inflation or clearing the path between producers and consumers.

If Thomas Massie were president, the swamp wouldn’t be bigger than ever. He calls out the political theater of Washington, attacks taxpayer-funded censorship programs, presses for foreign-agent transparency, and treats debt monetization as a racket and a ponzi scheme. In his view, the swamp is manned from all corners of DC: lobbyists, bureaucracies, intelligence agencies, subsidy-seekers, and legislators. A Massie presidency would work to dismantle the managerial state which is full to bursting with progressive lifers who somehow manage to retain their positions with each passing administration, both Democrat and Republican alike.

But with Donald Trump as president, the opposite is true. Under Trump, America enjoys new wars along with its decades-long police actions. It features extensions for spying apparati, even those used against Trump. It stares at $40 trillion in debt, not only without tapping the brakes, but with calls for even more spending. It navigates an evolving narrative on Epstein from releasing the files, to calling them a hoax, to then attacking those who demand justice. Above all else, America under President Trump puts the needs of Israel before the needs of its own citizens. And should a single Congressman from rural Kentucky both say America First and mean it, then he is Public Enemy #1.

If only Thomas Massie were president and not exiting Congress.

May 20, 2026 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | Human rights, Israel, United States, Zionism | Comments Off on If Thomas Massie Was President…

Operation Geschäftsfreund: How West Germany Paid for Israel’s Nuclear Bomb

By Freddie Ponton | 21st Century Wire | May 19, 2026

In March 2026, an investigation in Haaretz argued that West Germany may have “secretly financed” much of Israel’s Dimona nuclear project through off‑the‑books loans worth roughly 2 billion Deutschmarks, funneled under the cover of “Negev development.” Historical clues indicate that Germany secretly funded Israel’s nuclear program and raise the questions about how much Dimona cost, who really paid for it, and what that says about Germany’s postwar “moral responsibility”.

This article picks up where that story stops. It goes back to Bundestag files, development‑bank records and declassified intelligence histories to show, in considerably sharper detail, how Bonn built a secret credit machine for Israel, who ran it, and how it locked Germany into a nuclear order it still refuses to name.

Germany did not just look away while Israel built the bomb. It helped pay for it, hid the money off the books, and then spent decades pretending that nothing of the sort had ever happened. Today, the same state that secretly bankrolled Dimona presents itself as a guardian of non‑proliferation and lectures Iran on the dangers of nuclear ambiguity.

Germany’s secret billions that built Israel’s bomb

Germany never tires of preaching its “historical responsibility” to Israel. Reparations. Moral duty, and postwar atonement, even though the archives expose a different reality. What actually happened was a cold-blooded, decade-long secret cash pipeline, codenamed Operation Geschäftsfreund (Business Friend)— that funnelled nearly two billion Deutsche Marks into Israel under the cover of “development” projects while Bonn kept parliament, the public and much of its own bureaucracy in the dark.

The key paper trail runs through the Bundestag’s own 2012 reply, Drucksache 17/10482. There the government finally acknowledged that Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion struck a confidential understanding at the Waldorf Astoria in New York on 14 March 1960: a special 2 billion DM credit line, paid out over roughly a decade and shielded from public scrutiny for “foreign-policy reasons.” The arrangement was implemented through the state development bank KfW and booked as bilateral capital aid for Israel’s economy, formally “development assistance,” in practice something far more sensitive.

DOCUMENT: Response to the parliamentary question submitted by Members of Parliament Ulla Jelpke, Jan van Aken, Eva Bulling-Schröter, other Members of Parliament, and the Left Party parliamentary group.– Printed Matter 17/10277 – Granting of loans to Israel and the “business associate” case in the 1960s – Translated from German to English using online translation tools (Source: Bundestag)

Publicly, Bonn clung to the safer script of reparations and “strategic partnership.” Even the 2012 parliamentary answer still tried to dress the arrangement up as generic infrastructure support. The numbers, the secrecy and the timing tell a different story. These were unusually soft loans, with long maturities, low interest, repeated reschedulings, and pushed through a development bank that, as later reporting and archival work show, never seriously monitored how Israel used the funds. The most explicit published account of that opacity remains Dirk Pohlmann’s reconstruction, together with reporting on KfW’s refusal to release historical files. They rolled out at precisely the moment Israel was pouring resources into Israel’s nuclear site known as Dimona, and surrounding it with an elaborate desert-development cover narrative.

The official reparations frame had been erected earlier with the 1952 Luxembourg Agreement. It gave West Germany the politically useful language of Wiedergutmachung (making good again), a soothing concept that never matched the scale or nature of the crimes. By the late 1950s, that façade was being quietly supplemented by military aid, intelligence cooperation and a far more dangerous credit line that crossed the line from restitution into nuclear partnership. The same state that lectured its own population and the world with “never again” rhetoric was now using the moral credit of Holocaust memory as diplomatic armour for a secret policy that helped move Israel into the nuclear club under U.S. tutelage. Public atonement and private collusion ran in parallel, and the latter depended on the credibility of the former.

The decisive political moment came at the Waldorf Astoria meeting of 14 March 1960. Adenauer and Ben-Gurion, the same Ben-Gurion who was driving Israel’s nuclear crash programme, sealed the understanding that became Operation Geschäftsfreund. Investigative work by Gaby Weber and Dirk Pohlmann has put that encounter at the heart of the covert financing, showing how the “Negev development” language agreed in New York later appears in German and Israeli files as the umbrella label for the loan scheme and its supposed civilian projects.

The Bundestag reply speaks vaguely of “support for the Israeli economy” and a “special project” for infrastructure. Other records echo the classic civilian fig leaves, including a nuclear-powered desalination plant in the Negev, textile factories, and industrial zones. In plain language, this is the veil that was wrapped around Dimona, the heavy-water reactor and reprocessing complex that anchored Israel’s plutonium production. On the Israeli side, security officials used the same talking points (hasbara) when foreign visitors asked about the huge earthworks in the desert, describing the site as a textile plant, and a water projects for arid regions, “Negev development.” On the German side, KfW approved transfers against project descriptions so vague, and so weakly checked, that nothing resembling normal development finance was ever set up.

Pohlmann’s documentary work ties the 2 billion DM commitment tightly to the nuclear programme’s time frame and to Negev projects that never materialised. Weber’s reconstruction is even more damning on the political climate in early 1960, with the Eichmann kidnapping, Cold War spy bargaining, Adenauer’s domestic fragility and Ben-Gurion’s nuclear ambitions all colliding in a narrow window of back-channel deals and mutual leverage. Link to Gaby Weber’s work Pdf Only: Eichmann wurde noch gebraucht

Weber also names the men who kept the mechanism running. Hans Globke, Adenauer’s iron-fisted chief of the Federal Chancellery and overseer of Germany’s foreign intelligence services or BND, was the gatekeeper, and a former commentator on the Nuremberg Laws who sat at the junction of Nazi-era continuities and anti-communist statecraft. Reinhard Gehlen, ex-Wehrmacht intelligence chief on the Eastern Front and founder of the BND, supplied the other half, providing an intelligence service built on recycled Third Reich networks, heavily penetrated by former SS and Gestapo cadres, and from the outset bound into American strategic planning. For the CIA, the key handler in this phase was James H. Critchfield, the former U.S. occupation officer who became Washington’s liaison to Gehlen between 1950 and 1955 and helped turn the “Org” into the official Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Service). Globke and Gehlen met almost daily. Together they formed the real power centre that turned West Germany’s public atonement script into a covert security architecture, including the secret nuclear alliance with Israel.

This German node did not act alone. France supplied the Dimona reactor, the initial uranium and the reprocessing know-how. Britain quietly moved heavy water and other sensitive materials. The United States, after a brief phase of resistance, chose to accommodate the emerging Israeli deterrent. Only one Western leader seriously tried to stop the project: John F. Kennedy. Throughout 1963, JFK pressed Ben-Gurion and then Levi Eshkol for regular American inspections at Dimona and warned that continued U.S. support would be at risk if Israel insisted on an opaque weapons programme. For the documentary trail, one of the cleanest public gateway remains the JFK Library’s correspondence holdings and the declassified material discussed in Avner Cohen’s work on Kennedy and Dimona. Six months after Kennedy was shot in Dallas, that pressure evaporated under Lyndon Johnson.

By that point, the ex-Nazi-staffed BND that had helped Adenauer and Globke manage Operation Geschäftsfreund was fully integrated into the U.S. intelligence ecosystem. Gehlen’s service maintained a close operational relationship with James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s counter-intelligence chief and one of Israel’s most committed protectors inside the American apparatus. The overlaps are hard to ignore. The same Western networks that quietly underwrote Dimona, namely German, French, British, American and Israeli, sat close to the levers of power in 1963, and they shared a clear strategic interest in making sure Israel’s nuclear project would not be strangled by an American non-proliferation crusade. For decades, a serious current of JFK research has pointed to this configuration of interests as one of the hidden backdrops to the president’s murder, even if decisive archival proof has never been declassified. The article does not claim to solve the assassination, but insists on something more basic—that any honest account of Kennedy’s fate has to reckon with the fact that he was the lone Western head of state pushing against a secret nuclear order that his own allies were busy constructing and protecting.

What remains is a German policy that cannot be prettified as remorse. Moral theatre, strategic secrecy, financial statecraft and raw power calculation all moved in lockstep. Bonn preached “historical responsibility” while helping to create and entrench a nuclear order it could never have defended openly before its own citizens, and then spent the next sixty years behaving as if none of it had ever happened. The vocabulary of atonement became the shield for a second-order crime, and not the original genocide, but the decision to turn its memory into political capital for clandestine nuclear collusion.

May 19, 2026 Posted by aletho | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | CIA, Germany, Israel, JFK Assassination, United States, Zionism | Comments Off on Operation Geschäftsfreund: How West Germany Paid for Israel’s Nuclear Bomb

Italian port authorities halt Israel-bound shipments of ‘military-grade steel’ from India

The Cradle | May 19, 2026

Italian authorities are holding three shipments suspected of carrying military-grade steel from India to Israel after activists from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and No Harbour for Genocide (NHB) exposed their contents, Middle East Eye (MEE) reported on 18 May.

According to the activists, the shipments amount to roughly 806 tonnes of military-grade steel and could be used to manufacture up to 17,458 artillery shells for the Israeli army.

They said the cargo originated from R L Steels & Energy Limited in Aurangabad and was destined for IMI Systems, now known as Elbit Systems Land, in Ramat Hasharon.

Three consignments transported by the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) are being held in Gioia Tauro and Cagliari, while another three were reportedly rerouted toward Sri Lanka after activists began tracking the vessels.

“We are seeing now a flood of military supplies from India to Israel,” Ilham Yaseen, military embargo coordinator with BDS, told MEE.

She called for pressure “to stop these supplies from reaching Israel and to hold the far-right Indian government and any complicit Indian company accountable for their complicity in Israel’s atrocity crimes.”

A spokesperson for NHB said the steel was heading to “the Ramat Hasharon ammunition plant, which has no civilian output. It’s all military production. We know this 100 percent.”

Activists say the deliveries underline India’s growing role in supplying Israel during its wars in Gaza and Lebanon, particularly as demand for 155mm artillery shells has surged.

The activists also accused shipping firms of obscuring routes and destinations to avoid scrutiny, after Spain reportedly blocked one vessel from docking, Greek dockworkers refused to unload cargo, and Italian authorities later detained three shipments for possible inspection.

On 6 February, dockworkers from more than 20 ports across Italy, Greece, the Basque Country, Morocco, and Turkiye carried out coordinated action under the banner “Dockworkers Don’t Work for War,” aiming to disrupt arms shipments and oppose the use of civilian ports for war logistics.

Italy’s Unione Sindacale di Base said the action sought to “ensure that European and Mediterranean ports are places of peace, free from any involvement in war.”

Francesco Staccioli of USB warned, “If we don’t take this step, all our other demands will be crushed under war.”

Across Europe, since the genocide in Gaza was launched in October 2023, court rulings, national bans, dockworker actions, and rail blockades have worked to obstruct Israeli military shipments.

Despite this, many European states continue to facilitate arms transfers to Israel, with Germany approving $7.8 million in arms exports during the first weeks of the US-Israeli war on Iran, despite lawyers pursuing German officials for aiding Israel’s genocide in Gaza through weapons deliveries.

Most recently, Israeli media reported that dozens of cargo planes transported ammunition through US military bases in Germany, as Washington and Tel Aviv intensified preparations for possible renewed attacks on Iran.

May 19, 2026 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Germany, Greece, India, Israel, Italy, Middle East, Palestine, Spain, Zionism | Comments Off on Italian port authorities halt Israel-bound shipments of ‘military-grade steel’ from India

Kata’ib Hezbollah warns Jordan over allowing US-Israeli reconnaissance missions against Iraq

Press TV – May 19, 2026

The Kata’ib Hezbollah resistance movement has warned the Amman government against ongoing reconnaissance missions launched by the United States and Israel from Jordanian soil against Iraqi resistance fighters, particularly the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU).

“In the wake of unfolding developments across the region and US-Israeli actions against Iraq’s security and stability, the enemies are aggressively seeking to escalate tensions against the (Iraqi) resistance front and the PMU,” Abu Mujahid al-Assaf, the security chief of the group, said in a statement on Monday evening.

He warned that the patience of heroic resistance fighters in the face of blatant Israeli violations of ceasefire agreements and recurrent acts of aggression against Iraq’s national sovereignty is about to run out.

Assaf noted that the bulk of US and Israeli surveillance missions are being launched from Jordan, warning that this serves as a prelude for attacks against Iraq.

The Jordanian government, therefore, is strongly advised to take lessons from missile and drone operations conducted in retaliation for the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran, as “patience is starting to run out,” the senior Kata’ib Hezbollah official emphasized.

He further said that the US and Israel, based on received information, are preparing for a fresh round of strikes against commanders of Iraqi resistance groups and the PMU, commonly known by its Arabic name Hashd al-Sha’abi.

Assaf warned Washington and Tel Aviv against any strikes on Iraq, stressing that the response to such a folly would be comprehensive, and the United States would have to shoulder responsibility for all serious repercussions in such a case.

The remarks come as US military aircraft have been scrambling over the past few days to transfer personnel and munitions from one military installation to another across Iraq.

May 19, 2026 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | Iraq, Israel, Jordan, United States, Zionism | Comments Off on Kata’ib Hezbollah warns Jordan over allowing US-Israeli reconnaissance missions against Iraq

General strike across Italy in solidarity with Gaza and in protest against the attack on Sumud Flotilla

Palestinian Information Center – May 18, 2026

ROME – Italy witnessed a nationwide general strike on Monday, affecting transportation, education, and logistics sectors, following calls by labor unions protesting military rearmament programs, rejecting Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, and expressing solidarity with the “Global Sumud Flotilla” attempting to break the blockade on the Gaza Strip.

The strike coincided with demonstrations in several Italian cities under the slogan “Stop Everything,” organized by labor unions and civil society groups to protest rising living costs, military policies, and increased spending on weapons at the expense of healthcare and education, while also demanding an end to what protesters described as the genocide against Palestinians and supporting the flotilla heading to Gaza.

In the capital, Rome, protesters gathered in one of the city’s main squares, carrying banners urging the Italian government not to continue what they called “complicity in crimes” alongside Israel.

Demonstrators also waved Palestinian flags and chanted slogans, including “Free Palestine,” expressing outrage over the Israeli attack on the Global Sumud Flotilla.

The strikes disrupted several metro lines, including Rome’s Line C and Naples’ Line 1, while some suburban train services in Milan were suspended. Port workers in the city of Livorno also staged similar protests.

Among the participants in Rome was Spanish-Palestinian activist Saif Abu Kishk, one of the activists detained by Israel during the April 29 attack on the flotilla in international waters near the island of Crete.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Abu Kishk said some of the boats had been seized during the latest attack, but participants remain determined to continue toward Gaza while solidarity movements for the flotilla continue across European cities.

He described the Israeli attack as another violation of international law and maritime law, saying it forms part of a broader pattern of ongoing abuses against Gaza.

Abu Kishk also argued that the continuation of such operations is tied to the complicity of Western governments, including the Italian government, which continues to allow arms trade through ports and airports. He called for sustained public pressure to end that complicity and stop the war on Gaza.

He added that participants were fully aware of the risks before setting sail but said morale remains high, noting that many people responded to the call to support Palestine through the flotilla.

Italian protester Andrea Ziccaro said he joined the strike to express support for the Global Sumud Flotilla and opposition to militarization policies.

He added that the latest Israeli attack on the flotilla represents a dangerous escalation, criticizing governments for prioritizing military spending over healthcare and education in what he described as a “war economy.”

Meanwhile, protester Natalia Mancini said the attack on the flotilla was “another humiliation,” arguing that repeated incidents of this kind expose contradictions within Western democratic discourse.

Earlier Monday, Israeli naval forces began seizing boats from the “Global Sumud Flotilla” in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea and detaining activists onboard.

With the participation of 54 boats, the flotilla had sailed Thursday from the Turkish city of Marmaris in a renewed attempt to break the Israeli blockade imposed on Gaza since 2007.

On April 29, Israeli forces attacked flotilla boats in international waters near Crete. The flotilla included 345 participants from 39 countries, including Turkish citizens.

Israeli authorities then seized 21 boats carrying around 175 activists, while the remaining boats continued toward Greek territorial waters.

May 18, 2026 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | Gaza, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism | Comments Off on General strike across Italy in solidarity with Gaza and in protest against the attack on Sumud Flotilla

More Wars and Rumors of Wars

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • May 16, 2026

President Donald Trump is back from his business trip to China which had a lot of ambiguity over issues like Taiwan without having done either much discernible damage or benefit to American interests. The trip ended with the American participants dropping all the gifts that they had received from the Chinese into a large garbage bin on the tarmac before they boarded their plane. And while the president was gone Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to everyone’s surprised announced that he was canceling plans to deploy an additional 4,000 Texas-based US soldiers to Poland for a long-planned nine month rotation that includes training with NATO allies. The assignment was also originally intended to serve as a possible resource should the situation with Russia-Ukraine happen to spill over into adjacent NATO countries. The troops were already moving to establish themselves and their equipment in their new Polish bases when the surprise cancelation order was issued, possibly as a follow-up to Trump’s threats against NATO for failure to support the US war against Iran. As the situation in Eastern Europe stands, Russia has warned that an increasing level of NATO involvement in the conflict through its provision of weapons, intelligence and even some boots on the ground is already crossing several red lines which might quite plausibly be regarded as acts of war.

It might be possible to regard the decision not to add American soldiers to a region already awash with bellicosity as positive, but it could possibly be premature to regard it as so. The Trump Administration has been admittedly nearly always inclined to go for the most aggressive option whether it be in what adversaries regard as foreign policy “negotiations” or in terms of supporting even more violence prone allies like Israel. Indeed, two other foreign policy issues that are currently on the news front pages are renewed drives to send more soldiers to Greenland, presumably as another step forward to annexation, and the apparent desire to invade Cuba before too long and remove its Communist government.

Cuba is currently being blockaded by the US and has completely run out of fuel, leading to unrest which is being cynically exploited just as the White House manipulated the situation in Iran where riots among the public due to shortages were cited as sign that the government would easily fall. And the Trump administration is about to pull another rabbit out of its hat concerning Cuba, preparing to indict former Cuban President Raúl Castro on charges in connection with shooting down planes 30 years ago, a move similar to the indictment of now deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro before his recent kidnapping by US Delta Force commandos.

Negotiations with Cuba were in fact launched after Trump suggested a “friendly takeover” of what he called a “failed nation,” while Secretary of State Marco Rubio, himself a Cuban refugee, said the country would need to change not just its economic policies but move away from the current regime, which he has called both “incompetent,” which admittedly sounds like the Trump Cabinet, as well as being Communist.

And as if that were not enough, there is even talk in Washington about making Venezuela the fifty-first state, though it should be observed that the Venezuelans, already on the receiving end of Yankee largesse when Maduro was kidnapped, have not been consulted on that possible development.

But the biggest issue confronting the returning Trump is what to do about the Iran War monster that has been confronting him since before he departed for Beijing, leading many observers to believe that he may have been looking for a way out of the situation with the help of China, which in the event only advised him to “end the war.” That the conflict was entered into by choice with considerable prodding and lying coming from his “best friends” the Israelis is, of course, the background to what developed. Trump returned to the confusion generated by negotiations that go nowhere wrapped around a ceasefire that is generally being regarded as only a pause in the action.

Trump may have gone to China with expectations that the Chinese government would suggest to him some face saving way to extricate the US from the Iran quagmire, but if that was so he was mistaken and China did not offer an acceptable off ramp for Trump to extricate himself. China, for its part, and like Russia, is undoubtedly delighted that the United States is finally knocked down from its pedestal as the world’s preeminent superpower. President Xi Jinping, to cite only one example of how China clearly regards itself as a major power equal to the US, made clear to Trump that Beijing will tolerate no US interference with Taiwan, which the Chinese consider an integral part of their country. Trump could not push back on that assertion.

There has been considerable news concerning Iran while Trump was gone, most notably in the United States due to the release of several articles in the mainstream media suggesting that the politically powerful neoconservatives, who normally delight both in global dominance by Washington as well as in any conflict directed against Israel’s enemies, are now calling the Iran war an unmitigated disaster, a “checkmate” by Iran and a “humiliation.” They are even arguing that there is no way to move forward with it. And there is more than that with the Saudi Arabians also chiming in on what a disaster the war has been to themselves and also to the other Gulf States. The Arabs now believe that the assumption that they were protected by a US security umbrella proved to be absolutely worthless. Beyond that, they also have observed that they were without any consultation dragged into an unnecessary and unwanted war against Iran by the US and Israel.

American neoconservatives have been a major force in support of US military dominance policies since the nineteen nineties, when they launched the international side of their movement with the A Clean Break: A New Strategy For Securing the Realm document in 1996, a policy statement that was prepared by a study group led by prominent Jewish neocon Richard Perle for then-as-now Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The report argued that Israeli security would be served best by regime change in surrounding countries brought about with the aid and assistance of the US. The “clean break” was a rejection of the Oslo Accords that actually sought to develop a modus vivendi between Israel and the Palestinians. This was followed by the Project For The New American Century (PNAC) in 1997, which had as its stated goal “to promote American global leadership.” The organization stated that “American leadership is good both for America and for the world” which it described as “a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity. ” Both Clean Break and PNAC fit together nicely to promote a policy of political and military dominance for the United States. And, as most of the neocons were Jewish, one of the principal arguments made by them was that a confident and aggressive United States would be better able to support and protect Israel as it moved to establish dominance over the Middle East.

One of the founders of Neoconism (and of the PNAC) was Robert Kagan, who has now written a lengthy May 10^th piece in the Atlantic Magazine entitled Checkmate in Iran: Washington can’t reverse or control the consequences for losing this war. He begins with: “It’s hard to think of a time when the United States suffered a total defeat in a conflict, a setback so decisive that the strategic loss could be neither repaired nor ignored. The calamitous losses suffered at Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and throughout the Western Pacific in the first months of World War II were eventually reversed. The defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan were costly but did not do lasting damage to America’s overall position in the world, because they were far from the main theaters of global competition. The initial failure in Iraq was mitigated by a shift in strategy that ultimately left Iraq relatively stable and unthreatening to its neighbors and kept the United States dominant in the region… Defeat in the present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character. It can neither be repaired nor ignored. There will be no return to the status quo ante, no ultimate American triumph that will undo or overcome the harm done… Far from demonstrating American prowess, as supporters of the war have repeatedly claimed, the conflict has revealed an America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started. That is going to set off a chain reaction around the world as friends and foes adjust to America’s failure.”

Another neocon godfather Max Boot set the stage by preceding Kagan in an April 8^th Washington Post opinion piece entitled The Iran ceasefire was a TACO Tuesday, and thank goodness: Trump gets to act like his bloodcurdling threats worked, but he’s giving up far more than Tehran did. Both Kagan and Boot are well known and respected in the neocon movement. Kagan is the husband of the deplorable Victoria Nuland who, as a US Diplomat, did so much to create the political crisis in Eastern Europe that has led to the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Kagan and Boot are not particularly regarded as fans of Donald Trump, but they are reliable supporters of Israel and all its works, which should be considered when examining their writings and speeches on Iran, which they would be quite pleased to see destroyed.

The Kagans in particular are enamored of stirring up conflict when other options are available. Robert’s brother Frederick is a resident scholar at the neocon American Enterprise Institute. His wife Kimberly is founder and head of the aptly named Institute for the Study of War. And, to be sure, the Kagan hearts belong only to Israel…

One might reasonably consider what Kagan might be trying to accomplish by dissing Trump’s war. In my opinion he is of course deliberately depicting and over-emotionalizing the consequences of a “worst case” outcome to come into play if Trump panics and actually ignores Israel’s demands and decides to pull the plug on the war. By taking an adversarial position he is instead playing the Trump personality card by focusing on the president’s clear vulnerability when it comes to rationally considering policy options. In this case Kagan as well as Boot are seeking to humiliate Trump by emphasizing how the status quo is a disastrous defeat because the real objective is to take advantage of an insane T’s limited mental capability and non-existent moral code to shame him into changing the narrative on his personal failure by pursuing the “worst course” of action in the viewpoint of many observers, i.e. total war against Iran using all available weapons including nuclear to utterly destroy it!

Other neocons are also recognizing that the Iran war is going disastrously bad but are less ambivalent about the options they see, namely being openly and clearly focused on doubling down for victory. Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute sees success coming from a change in personnel in and around the White House coupled with a stiffening of Trump’s will to win. The-Iran focused neocon Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) also wants more war no matter what it takes to destroy the Persians.

Overall, I think that some neocons like Kagan and Boot are calling for not going back to a mismanaged and pointless war because they believe an embarrassed and ego driven Trump will seek to repair and reverse course on his damaged reputation and do precisely that. That is exactly what they want him to do! And bear in mind that Trump is being heavily pressured by the Israel Lobby and its billionaire donors like Miriam Adelson to continue war. And then there are the near daily phone calls from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has the same objective, i.e. to keep America in the fight to eliminate Iran. So one might assume that if indeed Trump would like to escape from the Iran quagmire there are a lot of reasons why he will not opt to do so. In fact, Trump has already declared that he does not care about the sinking US economy and upcoming midterm elections. He told reporters “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation — I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.” And he has also declared that the “clock is ticking” and has vowed that there will be “nothing left of Iran if it does not come to terms.” Those threats, unfortunately, open the door to what comes next. Dare one mention that madmen like Trump and Netanyahu might well consider that if they can get away with an endless war that is damaging the whole world’s economy they can go one step further with their nukes to finish the job!

May 18, 2026 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | Iran, Israel, Middle East, United States, Zionism | Comments Off on More Wars and Rumors of Wars

UAE fuelling African conflicts while evading accountability, SWP finds

Al Mayadeen | May 17, 2026

A newly published report by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) has delivered a critical assessment of the United Arab Emirates’ role in African conflicts, describing Abu Dhabi as a systematic spoiler that arms proxy forces, manipulates diplomatic processes, and bears significant responsibility for some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, all while facing virtually no political consequences from its Western partners.

The report, authored by researchers at one of Europe’s most influential foreign and security policy think tanks, which directly advises the German government and Bundestag, calls on Berlin and its European partners to fundamentally reassess their relationship with the UAE.

Sudan: The clearest case

The report presents Sudan as the most devastating example of Emirati interference. The UAE is identified as the most important military, logistical, and financial backer of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary group whose war against the Sudanese Armed Forces has produced what the UN reports as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with 33.7 million people dependent on aid, over 15 million displaced, and widespread extreme hunger.

The RSF’s conduct has been particularly brutal. The report details targeted violence against non-Arab minorities, including sexual violence, mass killings, attacks on medical facilities, and hostage-taking, primarily directed at groups such as the Masalit and Zaghawa.

When the RSF captured El-Fasher in North Darfur in October 2025, a UN fact-finding mission described its actions against the civilian population as bearing the hallmarks of genocide.

Emirati support for the RSF continued even after Iranian strikes on the UAE, with numerous cargo flights departing from Emirates airports to Ethiopia, apparently to ferry supplies across the border to RSF positions.

A UN panel of experts documented 458 flights involving heavy transport aircraft from Emirati military airports or the transhipment hub of Bosaso to eastern Libya between October 2024 and the end of 2025, 239 of them bound for Kufra, a key hub for RSF resupply, in likely violation of UN arms embargoes on both Libya and Darfur.

A proxy model built on plausible deniability

The UAE rarely deploys its own forces. Instead, it operates through a carefully constructed network of local proxies, private military contractors, and logistical intermediaries. Beyond the RSF in Sudan, its partners include Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan Arab Armed Forces, the Puntland Maritime Police Force in Somalia, and, in a departure from the pattern, the Ethiopian government during its war against the Tigray people.

The report details how the UAE recruited and deployed hundreds of Colombian mercenaries to Sudan via an Emirati security firm, with the US government noting in 2025 that these fighters had served as infantry, artillery personnel, drone pilots, and even trained children for combat.

Supplies to the RSF have been routed through LAAF-controlled Libya, Chad, Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda, with Abu Dhabi deploying financial leverage to secure cooperation, including a 1.5 billion dollar loan to Chadian President Idriss Déby in 2023.

The UAE also profits from gold smuggling networks in conflict zones, with members of the ruling family reported to have personal ties to both Haftar and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

Why the UAE intervenes

SWP identifies several overlapping motives. Economic interests are central, as state-owned logistics giants DP World and AD Ports Group have port and infrastructure projects across the continent, and military interventions serve to protect access to trade routes and strategic resources.

But economics alone do not explain the pattern. The report points to the UAE’s drive to outcompete Saudi Arabia for regional influence, a rivalry that has only sharpened since Riyadh forced Abu Dhabi out of southern Yemen.

Ideological opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood also shapes policy, with the UAE consistently backing actors who suppress Islamist movements. Personal enrichment through resource networks and ruling family ties to conflict actors adds a further layer.

Diplomatic manipulation

The report scrutinises the UAE’s use of diplomatic engagement as cover, whereby Abu Dhabi participates in international peace processes while simultaneously intensifying support for belligerents.

In September 2025, the UAE joined the Sudan Quad format alongside Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United States, signing joint commitments to end external support for conflict parties. According to US intelligence reporting, however, the UAE was actively intensifying support for the RSF at the same time.

The UAE also pledged 200 million dollars at a February 2025 humanitarian conference and a further 500 million dollars at a US conference in 2026, while contributing only around 33 million dollars to the UN-coordinated humanitarian plan.

In November 2025, Emirati Minister of State Lana Nusseibeh spent four days meeting with Members of the European Parliament in Brussels. Nusseibeh’s endeavor was successful, as a Parliament resolution on Sudan adopted at the same time made no mention of the UAE’s support for the RSF, following opposition from the European People’s Party to amendments tabled by left-wing parliamentary groups.

The same pattern played out during the Berlin Libya Process in 2019-20, when the UAE pledged to halt arms transfers to Libyan conflict parties but continued them regardless. Transport aircraft flew from the Emirates to eastern Libya on the very day of the Berlin conference in January 2020.

European silence, eroded accountability

The report stresses that Western governments, including Germany, have consistently refused to name the UAE publicly in international forums, despite substantial documented evidence of its role in fuelling conflicts. No UN Security Council member has explicitly raised Emirati support for the RSF in formal meetings, either.

This reluctance, SWP argues, is not incidental but reflects a broader calculation in which trade ties, security cooperation, the UAE’s close relationship with “Israel,” and the strategic goal of preventing Abu Dhabi from drifting further toward China or Russia have consistently outweighed accountability concerns.

The UAE’s open disregard for the UN embargo on Libya from 2014 onward, the report notes, likely encouraged other states to adopt a similar approach, with the same dynamic now being repeated in Sudan.

Five recommendations

SWP outlines five concrete steps for Germany and its European partners:

First, Abu Dhabi should be named explicitly in international forums rather than referenced in vague language about “external actors.”
Second, EU financial sanctions should be expanded and applied more consistently where Emirati actors have documented embargo violations.
Third, German arms export policy toward the UAE requires a fundamental review, given the documented transfer of German-chassis military equipment to conflict zones.
Fourth, anti-money-laundering enforcement should be tightened, with greater focus on Emirati financial centres as hubs for conflict economies and sanctions evasion.
Fifth, the strategic partnership Germany has maintained with the UAE since 2004 should, at a minimum, be suspended unless Abu Dhabi demonstrably reorients its policy toward de-escalation.

The report concludes that the war on Iran, mounting tensions with Saudi Arabia, and growing reputational vulnerabilities have made the UAE more susceptible to European pressure than at any previous point, and that this window should not go unused.

May 17, 2026 Posted by aletho | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | Africa, Chad, European Union, Germany, Kenya, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, UAE, Uganda, Zionism | Comments Off on UAE fuelling African conflicts while evading accountability, SWP finds

Raffi Berg: BBC Middle East Editor Exposed as CIA, Mossad Collaborator

By Alan Macleod | MintPress News | January 3, 2025

A senior BBC editor at the center of an ongoing scandal into the network’s systematic pro-Israel bias is, in fact, a former member of a CIA propaganda outfit, MintPress News can reveal. Raffi Berg, an Englishman who heads the BBC’s Middle East desk, formerly worked for the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a unit that, by his own admission, was a CIA front group.

Berg is currently the subject of considerable scrutiny after thirteen BBC employees spoke out, claiming, among other things, that his “entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel” and that he holds “wild” amounts of power at the British state broadcaster, that there exists a culture of “extreme fear” at the BBC about publishing anything critical of Israel, and that Berg himself plays a key role in turning its coverage into “systematic Israeli propaganda.” The BBC has disputed these claims.

Our Man in London

Berg came to public attention in December after Drop Site News published an investigation based on interviews with 13 BBC staffers who present him as a domineering figure, systematically blocking coverage critical of Israel and manipulating stories to suit pro-Israel narratives.

The 9000-word report, written by popular journalist Owen Jones, is extensive and well-researched. However, one aspect of the story it almost completely avoids is Berg’s connections to the U.S. national security state, which MintPress News can now reveal.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Berg was an employee of the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) three years before joining the BBC. The FBIS is understood the world over to be a CIA front group known for gathering intelligence for the agency.

As the first two lines of its Wikipedia entry read:

The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) was an open source intelligence component of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Directorate of Science and Technology. It monitored, translated, and disseminated within the U.S. government openly available news and information from media sources outside the United States.

In 2005, the FBIS was subsumed into the CIA’s new Open Source Enterprise.

Berg does not dispute that he was, in fact, a CIA man. In fact, according to a 2020 interview with The Jewish Telegraph, he was “absolutely thrilled” to be secretly working for the agency. Berg said, “One day, I was taken to one side and told, ‘you may or may not know that we are part of CIA, but don’t go telling people.’” He was unsurprised by this news, as the application process was extremely long and rigorous. “They went through my character and background with a fine tooth comb, asking if I had ever visited communist countries and, if I had, did I form any relationships while I was there,” he said.

Mossad Collaborator

The CIA, however, is not the only clandestine spy organization with which Berg has a long history of collaborating. He also has a rich professional relationship with Mossad, Israel’s premier intelligence agency.

In 2020, for instance, Berg published “Red Sea Spies: The True Story of Mossad’s Fake Diving Resort,” a book that tells the story of the Israeli operation to clandestinely smuggle Ethiopian Jews into Israel. That the 320-page account lionizes Israel and its spies is perhaps unsurprising, considering how much input Mossad had in its creation. Berg said that he wrote the book “in collaboration” with Mossad commander Dani Limor, whom he relied on extensively, as he, in his own words, knew “next to nothing” about the story and its background before writing it. Limor opened numerous doors and was able to secure “over 100 hours of interviews” with Israeli military and intelligence officials, including with the head of Mossad.

Limor and Berg became extremely close friends. In 2020, he posted a picture of himself with his arm around the ex-Mossad commander. The first page of “Red Sea Spies” is simply a glowing recommendation from Efraim Halevy, former director of Mossad, a group Berg describes as “the world’s greatest intelligence service.”

Berg has aggressively promoted his book and has, on multiple occasions, expressed his delight that Benjamin Netanyahu has shown interest in it. In August 2020, for example, he shared a picture of Netanyahu at his desk in front of a copy of his book. “First time I’ve been on a prime minister’s bookshelf” I know I’ve got one of Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu’s on mine – but wow!” he exclaimed, tagging Mossad, the Israeli Likud Party, and the Israeli Embassies in the United Kingdom and United States.

The following year, he messaged Netanyahu’s son, Yair, stating, “Your dad has my book, ‘Red Sea Spies: The True Story of the Mossad’s Fake Diving Resort,’ and sent me a lovely letter about it.” That letter can be seen on the wall of Berg’s office in his many public posts and videos, framed and placed beside pictures of him meeting a Mossad commander and meeting Mark Regev, the former spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office.

That a BBC Middle East editor would not only frame these images and documents and put them pride of place in his office but also choose to display them while talking publicly and in an official role is telling. The BBC sells itself as an impartial distributor of news on the Middle East and beyond. And yet, Berg, who, by most accounts, calls the shots when it comes to the network’s Israel-Palestine coverage, clearly believes that this is acceptable and unremarkable behavior.

If the opposite were true – that even a low-level BBC employee was openly sharing pictures of themselves embracing Hamas commander Yahya Sinwar or displaying a glowing letter from Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei – it is clear that there would be serious repercussions. The BBC suspended six of its reporters for simply liking pro-Palestine tweets. And yet, in Berg’s case, his overt pro-Israel advocacy has been treated as entirely unproblematic.

Relentlessly Pro-Israel

Of course, it is entirely possible that a pro-Israel stance would help one climb the ladder at the BBC, an organization long known to display a strong bias in favor of the country and its interests.

Born and raised in England, Berg always took a keen interest in Israel, moving there to study Jewish and Israel Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He worked at the FBIS between 1997 and 1998 and joined the BBC in 2001, starting as a world news writer and producer.

One of his first BBC articles profiled the Israeli military and its recruits, presenting the IDF as brave protectors of their homeland and as a “source of national pride” and framed women serving as a win for sexual equality.

In 2009, at the height of Operation Cast Lead – the Israeli attack on Gaza that killed more than 1,000 people – Berg attended a pro-Israel demonstration in central London. Moreover, he even chastised the Israeli newspaper, The Jerusalem Post, for noting that only 5,000 people showed up to the event. In Berg’s opinion, there were three times as many in attendance. The BBC would later change its guidelines to prevent its newsroom employees from attending controversial demonstrations.

During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli military was found to have indiscriminately targeted and killed civilians, used Palestinians as human shields, and used banned chemical weapons, such as white phosphorous, on civilian areas.

Three years later, in November 2012, Israel launched Operation Pillar of Defense, a high-profile, bloody assault on Gaza that made worldwide headlines. As Israel bombarded the densely-populated civilian area, Berg went on his own internal offensive, telling his BBC colleagues to word their stories in a way that does not blame or “put undue emphasis” on Israel. Instead, leaked emails show, he encouraged journalists to present the attack as an operation “aimed at ending rocket fire from Gaza,” thereby framing Hamas as the aggressor.

Another Berg email instructed his coworkers to “Please remember, Israel doesn’t maintain a blockade around Gaza. Egypt controls the southern border” – a highly contestable opinion not shared by the United Nations, which declared that Israel was the occupying power besieging the strip.

Extraordinary Revelations

Shortly after Operation Pillar of Defense, Berg was promoted, becoming head of the BBC’s Middle East desk. This position gives him enormous influence in shaping the platform’s presentation of Israel’s current war on Gaza. In this role, he has helped turn the network into “systematic Israeli propaganda,” according to one journalist quoted by Jones in his Drop Site investigation. “This guy’s entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel,” said another.

The BBC staff Jones talked to painted a picture of a pro-Israel zealot systematically suppressing any content or information that would paint Tel Aviv in a negative light. A micromanager, numerous journalists reportedly attempted to notify management of their issues with Berg, but their complaints fell on deaf ears. “Almost every correspondent you know has an issue with him,” one staffer stated. “He has been named in multiple meetings, but [management] just ignore it.”

“How much power he has is wild,” another journalist told Jones, who explained that essentially every story or segment featuring Israel would have to be signed off by Berg first, even leaving other editors in “extreme fear” of commissioning anything without his approval.

Berg is alleged to have made extensive pre-publication edits to others’ stories, changing the framing of news events to shield Israel from blame. One example of this is the whitewashing of the Israeli attack on the funeral of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. In May 2022, Israeli snipers shot the Al Jazeera anchor in the head and proceeded to lie about their culpability. Israeli forces subsequently attacked the public funeral, beating mourners and firing tear gas. The BBC’s text, allegedly penned by Berg himself, read:

Violence broke out at the funeral in East Jerusalem of reporter Shireen Abu Aqla, killed during an Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank.

Her coffin was jostled as Israeli police and Palestinians clashed as it left a hospital in East Jerusalem.

Thus, Abu Akleh’s murder by Israeli forces was downgraded to a mere death during an operation (with no perpetrator mentioned), while a police attack on a funeral procession was presented as a “clash” between rival factions, presumably of roughly equal responsibility.

A more recent example of this, Jones claims, comes from a July story about IDF soldiers setting an attack dog on Muhammed Bhar, a severely disabled Gazan man, and letting him bleed to death. Under Berg’s supervision, the original headline ran: “The Lonely Death of Gaza Man with Down’s Syndrome.” Only after a gigantic worldwide outcry did the BBC change its framing to note anything about how Bhar met his end. “There has to be a moral line drawn in the sand. And if this story isn’t it, then what?” one BBC journalist said, commenting on the affair.

Since the investigation was published, Berg has remained silent, although he has hired defamation lawyer Mark Lewis, the former director of U.K. Lawyers for Israel.

The BBC, meanwhile, has offered unequivocal support for him and his work, rejected any suggestion of a lenient stance towards Israel, and alleges that the Drop Site article “fundamentally misdescribe[s] Berg’s power, influence, and how the network works.

A Worldwide Network

Whatever the veracity of the Drop Site allegations, the undisputed fact that a former U.S. State Department and CIA operative is calling the shots at the BBC for its Middle East coverage is undoubtedly of public interest.

It also bears a striking resemblance to the accusations of journalist Tareq Haddad. In 2019, Haddad resigned in frustration from Newsweek, claiming that the outlet systematically stymied him from covering important Middle East news stories that did not align with Western objectives. Perhaps most strikingly, though, he claimed that Newsweek employed a senior editor whose only job was seemingly to vet and suppress “controversial” stories, in the same vein as Berg. This editor also had a similar background with state power. As Haddad concluded:

The U.S. government, in an ugly alliance with those the [sic] profit the most from war, has its tentacles in every part of the media — imposters, with ties to the U.S. State Department, sit in newsrooms all over the world. Editors, with no apparent connections to the member’s club, have done nothing to resist. Together, they filter out what can or cannot be reported. Inconvenient stories are completely blocked.”

When contacted by MintPress News for comment, Haddad said he found the BBC, State Department and CIA links to be “staggering,” adding:

When I resigned from Newsweek, I did so because all reporting on foreign affairs went through a particular editor, who, in my case, turned out to be connected to the European Council on Foreign Relations. That prevented me from writing truthfully when it came to a number of sensitive issues.”

CIA-Affiliated Media

The implications of former U.S. national security state operatives dictating global media output are profound. This is not least because the State Department and CIA are among the world’s most notoriously dishonest and perfidious institutions, regularly injecting lies and false information into public discourse to further Washington’s ambitions. As Mike Pompeo, former Director of the CIA and then-Secretary of State, said in 2019:

When I was a cadet, what’s the cadet motto at West Point? You will not lie, cheat, or steal or tolerate those who do. I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses [on] it!”

Furthermore, both organizations have a long history of organizing invasions of and coups against foreign countries, drugs and weapons smuggling and operating a worldwide network of “black sites,” where thousands are tortured.

The CIA, in particular, has an extensive record of penetrating media outlets. As far back as the 1970s, the Church Committee unearthed the existence of Operation Mockingbird, a secret project to infiltrate newsrooms across America with secret agents masquerading as journalists. Investigative reporter Carl Bernstein’s work found that the agency had cultivated a network of over 400 individuals it considered assets, including the owner of The New York Times.

John Stockwell, former head of a CIA task force, explained on camera how his organization infiltrated media departments across the planet, establishing fake outlets and news agencies that worked to control global public opinion and spread false information demonizing Washington’s enemies. “I had propagandists all over the world,” he admitted, adding:

We pumped dozens of stories about Cuban atrocities, Cuban rapists [to the media]… We ran [faked] photographs that made almost every newspaper in the country… We didn’t know of one single atrocity committed by the Cubans. It was pure, raw, false propaganda to create an illusion of communists eating babies for breakfast.”

This process continues to this day, as the CIA continues to promote dubious stories about so-called “Havana Syndrome” and Russia putting bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan.

Cable networks routinely employ a wide range of former State Department or CIA officials as personalities and trusted experts. Former CIA director John Brennan is employed by NBC News and MSNBC, while his predecessor, Michael Hayden, can be seen on CNN. Top anchors such as Anderson Cooper and Tucker Carlson have their own connections to the agency.

Meanwhile, in 2015, Dawn Scalici, a 33-year CIA veteran, left her job as national intelligence manager for the Western hemisphere at the Director of National Intelligence to become the global business director of the international news conglomerate Reuters. That this was a political hire was barely hidden; in Scalici’s official announcement, the company declared her primary responsibility would be “advancing Thomson Reuters’ ability to meet the disparate needs of the U.S. government.”

Social media, too, is full of former U.S. national security state agents. A previous MintPress News investigation uncovered a network of dozens of ex-CIA officials working at Google. Most of these individuals work in highly politically sensitive roles such as security and, trust and safety, effectively giving them control over the algorithms that decide what content gets seen and what is suppressed worldwide. Some were even directly recruited from the CIA, leaving the agency to join the Silicon Valley giant.

Competing with Google for the crown of employing most former CIA agents is Facebook. The company’s senior product policy manager for misinformation, Aaron Berman, the man most responsible for deciding what the world sees (and does not see) in its news feeds, was directly parachuted in from Langley, Virginia. Berman was one of the agency’s highest-ranking officers, writing the president’s daily brief for both Obama and Trump until July 2019, when he made the switch from big government to big tech.

And since it became a target of Washington’s ire, TikTok has been on a hiring spree, recruiting large numbers of U.S. State Department officials to run its internal affairs. The company’s head of data public policy for Europe, for example, is Jade Nester, who was previously the State Department’s director of internet public policy. These connections were explored in a MintPress investigation entitled, “TikTok: Chinese “Trojan Horse” Is Run by State Department Officials.”

Cheering on a Genocide

In recent years, Washington has shown considerable interest in influencing the British press. The National Endowment for Democracy—another unofficial branch of the CIA—has spent millions of dollars funding a wide range of media outlets in the U.K. The NED’s sister organization, USAID, is the third-largest funder of BBC Media Action, the company’s charitable arm, donating over $2 million annually.

The BBC itself has faced repeated accusations of pro-Israel bias, not only from the public but also internally. Their headquarters are a common start or end point for numerous pro-Palestine marches, including an upcoming national rally in London on January 18. In November, over 100 BBC staff signed an open letter to the corporation’s director-general, Tim Davie and Chief Executive Officer Deborah Turness. The letter admonishes the company for consistently providing “favorable coverage to Israel,” failing to uphold even “basic journalistic tenet[s]” when covering its war on Gaza, and aiding in “systematically dehumanizing Palestinians.”

Haddad agreed that much of the network’s coverage had been subpar, telling MintPress :

The BBC, of course, like many institutions, has fallen way short of their coverage in documenting what Israel has done in a densely populated strip of land we know as Gaza over the last 14 months and prior.”

Partially as a result, public confidence in the broadcaster has fallen to an all-time low. By July 2023, just 38% of Britons said they trusted the BBC to tell the truth – down from 81% 20 years previously. Since October 7, its biases have been put under even more scrutiny.

Israel’s actions, Haddad said, are “growing harder to ignore.” Officially, the death toll from the Israeli attack on Gaza stands at almost 50,000, although credible estimates put the likely figure at many times that. International organizations, such as the United Nations and Amnesty International, have described the onslaught as “genocidal.”

Israel could not sustain its attack without vital military, logistical, economic, and political support from Western powers. It is, therefore, vital for Washington, London and the E.U. that public opinion does not turn too far in favor of Palestine to the point where widespread public rebellion forces a change in policy. The BBC, with its deeply misleading and one-sided coverage of the events, therefore, plays an important role in the perpetuation of crimes against humanity. That this is being driven from the top down by overtly pro-Israel editors, including one with a history in both the State Department and CIA, is perhaps unsurprising but no less shocking, nonetheless.

To be clear, this article does not claim that Berg or anyone at the BBC is a plant. Nor is it accusing him of any specific wrongdoing beyond working at a distinctly biased network. What it is stating is that it is telling that the person in charge of its Middle East reporting has framed pictures and letters of Mossad commanders and high Israeli officials on the wall, as if they are rock stars and he is a teenage fan. That someone such as this rose the ranks is a clear indication of the kind of culture that exists at the BBC – one that has systematically demonized Palestinians and manufactured consent for genocide.

May 17, 2026 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | BBC, CIA, Israel, Palestine, UK, Zionism | Comments Off on Raffi Berg: BBC Middle East Editor Exposed as CIA, Mossad Collaborator

US tech firm Cisco has deep ties with Israeli military, leaked documents show

Press TV – May 16, 2026

Leaked documents have revealed the US tech firm Cisco Systems’ deep relationship with the Israeli regime in its continuous wars in West Asia, which the United States backs.

The papers leaked by Drop Site News on Friday reveal that Cisco has a deep illegal relationship with the Israeli regime and supported Tel Aviv forces in their atrocities against the people of Palestine, and beyond.

The Silicon Valley-based company, which produces hardware, software, telecommunications equipment, and other high-technology services used in networking, cybersecurity, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, provided support and infrastructure to Israel in its genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and also ran unlawful operations in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The leaked papers provided to Drop Site by whistleblowers show Cisco’s deep and growing collaboration with the Israeli military and intelligence communities for its genocide in Gaza and continued regional wars.

The San Jose-based networking giant, with a market capitalization in excess of $270 billion and annual revenue of $56.7 billion in 2025, manufactures the routers, switches, firewalls, and communications platforms that run the internet’s infrastructure, as well as many of its worldwide corporate, government, and military networks.

Cisco’s aggressive pursuit of contracts with the Israeli regime has led to the conclusion that the networking giant condones profiting from genocide.

Its collaborations with the Israeli regime have been documented in public news reports and new business announcements in the country. But the internal documents, including presentations, purchase and revenue records, and schedules, shed light on the rapidly expanding list of services that Cisco has been providing directly to the Israeli regime forces over the past several years, particularly since October 7, 2023, when Tel Aviv launched war on Gaza.

However, an update report by Cisco employees reveals that, as early as 2021, Israeli sources estimated that the US tech company was earning $40-50 million a year from computing contracts with the regime’s military forces.

The report highlights an agreement to provide a new list of itemized services to the Israeli forces, including enterprise and data center networking, cybersecurity, and classified network support.

On March 25, 2025, Cisco management instructed employees to focus on ways “to drive Cisco business, and one example specifically would be the ongoing conflict in [West Asia].” The executive added that, “We have made the decision that this topic cannot be discussed, cannot be debated in company or organization-wide meetings.”

May 16, 2026 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | Israel, Israeli settlement, Palestine, Zionism | Comments Off on US tech firm Cisco has deep ties with Israeli military, leaked documents show

Palestinian families forced to demolish homes for Israeli theme park

Al Mayadeen | May 16, 2026

Residents of the al-Bustan neighbourhood in Silwan, located in occupied al-Quds just below the walls of the Old City, are being forced to demolish their own homes to make way for “Israel’s” expansionist project in the area, The Guardian reports.

Palestinians have been forced to demolish their own homes for decades as a form of “collective punishment” in an effort for the Israeli entity to continue its settlement expansion.

The coercive mechanism that “Israel” is employing in Silwan is not only meant to dehumanise the families, but is laced with financial threats as well. The Guardian reports that residents are being told that if municipal workers demolish the homes, the cost would reach approximately 280,000 shekels.

One resident, Jalal al-Tawil, described to The Guardian the feeling of watching a hired tractor dismantle the home built by his father, which itself stood on the foundations of his grandparents’ house. “This is something really hard. This is something bitter,” he said, noting that it meant erasing multiple generations of family history in a single act.

He also left the remains of a 35-year-old grapevine until the end, recalling that it once produced fruit for the entire neighbourhood. The vine, like the house, was ultimately destroyed as part of the demolition.

The Guardian reports that residents described the situation as both physically destructive and psychologically draining, as entire family histories are reduced to rubble in front of them.

‘Kings Garden’ as tool of occupation

The demolitions are taking place in preparation for the planned “King’s Garden” project, a biblical-themed development intended to be built on cleared land in al-Bustan.

The project is promoted as a heritage and archaeological initiative, which Israelis claim links to the historical narrative of King Solomon. It is also presented as part of a wider archaeological-tourism network centered on the nearby “City of David” site.

However, the project is not merely cultural or recreational as the Israeli occupation claims, but forms part of a broader strategy of spatial reconfiguration in occupied al-Quds, where archaeological interpretation is used to reshape the urban landscape and occupy land inhabited by Palestinian families.

That said, the transformation of residential neighbourhoods into curated heritage zones is a mechanism for displacing existing communities while embedding a singular historical narrative over a multi-layered living city.

Systematic targeting of al-Bustan homes

More than 57 homes in al-Bustan have been demolished over the past two years, with at least eight additional structures designated for demolition in the coming weeks.

Municipal Israeli bodies allege that the homes were built without permits and that the area was never zoned for residential use. But residents rejected this false claim, arguing that many homes were built decades ago, including structures that predate the occupation of Palestine.

They also point to a broader pattern of unequal planning enforcement in occupied al-Quds, where Palestinian construction is frequently targeted while other forms of unauthorized building elsewhere by settlers in the city are treated differently.

Life under demolition orders and economic strain

The demolition campaign is also increasing severe financial pressure on residents.

Fakhri Abu Diab, the al-Bustan community leader, had his home demolished in 2024. He is still paying a municipal fine of approximately 43,000 shekels, which is being repaid in monthly instalments of around 4,000 shekels.

Abu Diab also reported being charged an additional 9,000 shekels for costs that are associated with police operations during the demolition process.

Following the destruction of his home, he and his wife now live in a portable cabin placed amid the rubble of the original structure. Only a portion of the former kitchen remains standing.

Contesting narrative of ‘public development’

Israeli authorities, in attempts to hide the brutality of their project, told the media that the “Kings Garden” project is intended to serve all city residents and address a shortage of public green space. However, the reality is that it serves as another expansionist project of the Israeli regime to push Palestinians out of their ancestral homes.

Residents and community representatives of Silwan dispute the claims made by the Israelis, stating that they themselves proposed a comprehensive master plan for the neighbourhood that included green space and regulated development, but that it was rejected at the political level.

They argue that enforcement is inconsistent, pointing to the expansion of unauthorised settlement structures in other parts of occupied al-Quds and the West Bank that do not face the same level of demolition enforcement.

May 16, 2026 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Jerusalem, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism | Comments Off on Palestinian families forced to demolish homes for Israeli theme park

Al-Qassam leader Ezzeddin al-Haddad martyred in Israeli attack on Gaza

Al Mayadeen | May 16, 2026

The al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, announced the martyrdom of its Chief of Staff, Ezzeddin al-Haddad “Abu Suhaib,” stating that he was killed alongside his wife, daughter, and several Palestinians in an Israeli assassination in central Gaza City.

In its statement, al-Qassam slammed the killing of its senior commander as a “cowardly assassination” carried out by the enemy in a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement, adding that targeting him would only reinforce the Resistance’s determination to continue its path of struggle.

Al-Qassam stated that his martyrdom would further strengthen the resolve of the steadfast Palestinian people to continue confronting the occupation, reaffirming their commitment to the path of resistance despite continued assassinations and ongoing Israeli escalation in the Gaza Strip.

Sources within the Palestinian Resistance had confirmed to Al Mayadeen that al-Haddad was martyred in an Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip earlier today.

The Israeli occupation forces had carried out a massacre in the al-Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City, killing eight Palestinians and wounding over 40 others by targeting a residential building. Local sources reported that the attack struck a populated residential area, causing significant destruction and casualties among civilians.

Who was Ezzeddin al-Haddad?

Martyr Ezzeddin al-Haddad was born in Gaza in 1970 and joined Hamas when the movement was established in the 1980s. He was nicknamed the “Ghost of the Gaza Strip” due to his operational secrecy and his privacy in Gaza.

He succeeded Martyr Mohammad al-Sinwar following his assassination in 2025, and had been involved, during Operation al-Aqsa Flood, in ensuring the well-being of Israeli captives.

Several released Israeli captives disclosed that they had met al-Haddad during their time in Gaza, and revealed that he insisted on speaking to them in Hebrew and asked them if they had any needs. One captive said that al-Haddad instructed Resistance fighters to bring the captive a book he had lost, according to Israeli media.

“Israel” attempted to assassinate al-Haddad six times and had placed a bounty worth $750,000 in return for information about his whereabouts.

He was martyred on May 15, 2026, in al-Rimal, alongside his wife and daughter. Thousands of Palestinians flooded the streets of Gaza during the funeral.

Ceaseless attacks on Gaza

The Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip continues unabated, with strikes targeting the Halawa refugee camp in Jabalia earlier today, despite the so-called ceasefire achieved almost a year ago.

The Health Ministry and hospitals across the enclave reported 13 martyrs over the past 24 hours, including one Palestinian who succumbed to injuries sustained in an Israeli attack, alongside 57 injuries.

The death toll in Gaza has risen to 72,757 killed and 172,645 injured since October 7, 2023.

May 16, 2026 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Zionism | Comments Off on Al-Qassam leader Ezzeddin al-Haddad martyred in Israeli attack on Gaza

AIPAC Favorite Ed Gallrein Wants to Bring Back the Draft

By Kurt Nimmo | Another Day in the Empire | May 15, 2026

Ed Gallrein is running against Thomas Massie in Kentucky. Trump hates Massie because he opposes the Iran boondoggle war. Massie has also demanded the release of the Epstein files. Ed has received a whopping $11,824,741 from the Israel lobby. That’s on the high end of donations, so you get an idea how important it is to defeat Massie and gain another voice for Israel in Congress.

There is one issue at the top of Gallrein’s list. Ed mentioned it during an interview with USA Cares, a veterans organization in Kentucky. The reimplementation of a military draft. Ed says we need it for “national security.” Considering the hefty sum donated by the lobby, it is natural to conclude much of that “national security” concerns Israel.

For 10 minutes, Ed Gallrein argued in favor of reimplementing the military draft.

Here are the excerpts:
pic.twitter.com/3Fn4ecaJkt

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) May 15, 2026

It is telling Gallrein complains about the slowness of the current system. The Selective Service system is inadequate for the sort of insta-wars the War Department is in the process of rolling out as of late. If you want to occupy a country the size of Iran, you need more than a million soldiers. For an occupation of Cuba, far less. Ed wants to take us back to days of the Vietnam War. Some of us remember how that turned out. Millions protested in the street and Lyndon Johnson refused to run for re-election. Nixon ran the war into the ground.

It will likely take a similar tactic to that used by the Ukrainian military when it hunts down reluctant draftees. Maybe that would become a task for ICE. Maybe there would be violent anti-draft riots like there were in northern cities during the War Between the States.

If Gallrein wins—and it is a close race—Kentuckians can look forward to having another bought-and-paid-for representative, this one ready to draft American kids and send them to help Zionist Israel become the undisputed hegemon of West Asia and realize its Greater Israel project.

May 15, 2026 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | Israel, Middle East, United States, Zionism | Comments Off on AIPAC Favorite Ed Gallrein Wants to Bring Back the Draft

« Previous Entries Next Entries »

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Featured Video

From the Archives

By Gilad Atzmon | March 13, 2010

Blog Roll

Subscribe to Aletho News

Visits Since December 2009

Looking for something?

Archives

Calendar

Categories

Tags

Contact:

Disclaimer

Site info