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Ukrainian Forces Used All Kursk Churches as Military Bases, Violating International Law

Sputnik – 08.06.2025

KURSK, Russia – The Ukrainian armed forces used all the churches in the part of Russia’s Kursk Region as military objects during the period of occupation, Ivan Kopyl, the head of the human rights defense project Verum, told Sputnik.

“Absolutely all churches were used as military facilities, which is not accepted under international humanitarian law,” Kopyl said.

He said that, according to the 1954 Hague Convention, the occupying party need to protect the cultural objects of the occupied territory.

“The occupying country should avoid, as far as possible, deploying its armed forces in cultural sites such as churches, and moreover not only in the sites themselves but also near them, unfortunately the Ukrainian armed forces did not do it,” Kopyl said.

In March, Russian forces launched a large-scale offensive in the Kursk Region that was attacked by the Ukrainian forces in August 2024. On April 26, Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov announced that the Kursk Region was fully liberated, as the last of the settlements had been cleared of Ukrainian military presence.

June 8, 2025 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Key Canadian Zionist body loses final appeal against revocation of its ‘charity status’

Press TV – June 8, 2025

The Canadian branch of the so-called Jewish National Fund (JNF), one of the country’s oldest Zionist organizations, has officially lost its status as a “registered charity” after a Canadian federal court rejected its final legal appeal.

The ruling, issued on May 30, confirmed the government’s decision to revoke JNF-Canada’s “charitable designation,” and effectively forced the organization to begin shutting down operations after 57 years of activity.

The decision marked a major legal and political setback for the JNF, which had faced growing scrutiny over its use of Canadian tax-exempt donations to fund projects tied to Israeli military activity and displacement of Palestinians.

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) first announced revocation of the body’s status in August 2024, citing violations linked to the organization’s overseas funding practices.

The JNF challenged the decision in court, but the May 30 ruling definitively upheld the CRA’s findings and cemented the group’s loss of its legal status.

With the court’s rejection of its appeal, JNF-Canada is now legally defunct as a “registered charity,” bringing an end to decades of financial support from Canadian donors for controversial programs inside the occupied Palestinian territories.

Human rights groups and pro-Palestinian advocates have long denounced the so-called fund for channeling donations into projects that support the Israeli military, saying the body’s activities contribute to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

Critics have also condemned the organization for “greenwashing” — planting forests over the ruins of depopulated Palestinian villages to obscure the history of displacement.

While the organization has marketed its self-proclaimed environmental and land development activity as “charitable,” rights groups and campaigners have argued that its activities in occupied territory served only to entrench illegal Israeli settlements and erase Palestinian identity.

Founded in 1901, the body has played a central role in the Zionist movement’s efforts to arrogate and settle land in historic Palestine.

In the years leading up to and following the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe), when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly displaced during a heavily-Western-backed war, the JNF was instrumental in appropriating territory for exclusive use by the Israeli regime’s illegal settlers.

In recent decades, the JNF has maintained a quasi-official role within the Israeli regime, while presenting itself abroad as a private “charitable entity.” This has allowed it to operate with fewer restrictions under international law, while advancing agendas aligned with Tel Aviv’s policies, including illegal settlement expansion and military education.

Internationally, the JNF has drawn criticism for its lack of transparency and its marked and aggressive pro-Israeli lean.

The JNF’s operations have come under investigation in the United Kingdom also. The UK Charity Commission has previously raised concerns about the organization’s military-linked activities and its political alignment with a foreign regime.

Senior figures associated with JNF-UK have also faced scrutiny for making Islamophobic remarks, leading to public backlash and investigations by regulatory bodies.

Despite these controversies, the organization has historically enjoyed support from prominent political figures in the West, including former British prime ministers and senior Israeli intelligence officers.

Observers, however, say the recent Canadian court decision represents one of the most significant legal challenges to the JNF’s international operations to date, potentially setting a precedent for other jurisdictions reviewing the activities of organizations with “charitable status,” but political agendas.

June 8, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Western media complicit in Kiev regime’s terrorism

Strategic Culture Foundation | June 6, 2025

Western news media have given up the pretense of being independent and impartial sources of information. American and European mainstream outlets are nothing but propaganda services for the NATO proxy war against Russia.

That observation is hardly new. Since the NATO-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, the Western media have systematically and relentlessly whitewashed the NeoNazi regime and its strategic purpose as a cat’s paw to embroil Russia in conflict. Russia’s inevitable military response to the decade-long proxy war has been distorted as “unprovoked aggression” against “democratic” Ukraine.

The Western “news media” have now outed themselves for the propaganda functionaries that they are. The veil is shredded.

Last weekend, the NATO-backed Kiev regime deliberately attacked a civilian passenger train in Russia’s Bryansk region. Seven people were killed and over 100 were injured after a bridge was blown up, crashing down on a train passing underneath. The death toll could have been much higher, given the hundreds on board.

Within hours of that heinous act, a second train was derailed when a bridge it was traveling over in Kursk was blown up. Mercifully, there were no deaths in the second attack despite several injuries.

Three more explosions have been reported on Russia’s railways this week: another in Bryansk and two in the Voronezh and Belgorod regions.

These calculated acts to cause maximum civilian casualties by the Ukrainian regime and its NATO enablers are nothing short of state terrorism. They are war crimes of the first magnitude.

Yet the Western media, like the Western governments, have maintained a shameful and damning silence on these crimes. One can imagine the outpouring of condemnation if Russia were to carry out such attacks, deliberately targeting civilians in Ukraine.

Instead, the Western “news” outlets gave prominent coverage of the drone attacks on Russia’s airfields. Certainly, the targeting of five airbases where Russian nuclear-capable bomber aircraft are stationed was big news.

However, Western media reports let their colors show by being ecstatic in tone about an “audacious” operation, amplifying unverified Ukrainian claims that 40 aircraft were destroyed. Britain’s Daily Telegraph and other Western outlets shared video of one plane exploding, headlining with glee that “Putin’s bombers” were knocked out.

For its part, the Russian military said that most of the drones were intercepted and only a few aircraft were damaged.

None of the Western outlets reported on the obvious role that NATO intelligence must have played in such a recklessly provocative attack on Russia’s strategic defenses. As such, the Western media is covering up for what could be deemed an act of war on Russia.

The gloating propagandist reporting on the airfield raids was in stark contrast to the relative silence over the terrorist attack on the passenger train.

U.S.-based ABC headlined with “Ukraine targets Russian airfields in major drone attack” and relayed dramatic details of the operation. It was only much further down in the report that ABC mentioned the deadly train explosion, as if it were a minor incident.

It reported: “Elsewhere, at least seven people were killed and 66 injured when a railway bridge collapsed and a train derailed in Russia’s western Bryansk region overnight.”

Note how ABC makes out that a bridge collapsed as if by gravity without explosive sabotage. It goes on to distort the terror attack by quoting a Ukrainian regime propagandist who insinuates that the wreckage was somehow carried out by Russia. The warped logic dignified by ABC was that the Russians carried out a fiendish false-flag ploy to scuttle negotiations that were due to take place the following day in Istanbul between Russian and Ukrainian delegates.

The British BBC deployed the same reprehensible disinformation. Its headline was: “At least seven dead after two Russian bridges collapse.”

Again, according to the BBC, bridges just collapse on passenger trains. Like ABC, the BBC buries important Russian information implicating Ukrainian responsibility for detonating explosives in the mass murder of civilians.

Significantly, the BBC also quotes the same Ukrainian regime propaganda source, Andriy Kovalenko, aired by ABC, who is described as “head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council’s Centre for Countering Disinformation.” He is also permitted by the British outlet to accuse Russia of self-inflicted terrorism, allegedly “laying the groundwork to derail the negotiations” in Istanbul.

With blatant distortion, Western media are minimizing what are outrageous acts of terrorism by the NATO-weaponized regime. Sickeningly, deliberate acts of murdering civilians by the NATO-backed regime are twisted upside down as Russian dirty tricks.

Of course, Western media are obliged to tell lies to cover up crimes by their governments and their proxies. In that case, they have lost their pious and pretentious claims of being “independent media”. They are abject propaganda tools, dressed up with self-ordained virtue. And still they have the arrogance to accuse other nations’ media of being state-run propaganda. This charade by Western media has been running for a long time, decades and indeed centuries. It has always been a charade. It’s now flagrantly obvious. No wonder so many Western citizens have contempt for their mainstream media.

The peace talks in Istanbul – the second round was held earlier this week – to try to find an end to the proxy war in Ukraine have largely come about because of Moscow’s initiative. American President Donald Trump’s declared wish to end the conflict has brought the Kiev regime to the table. It is not clear if the talks will succeed.

In the meantime, it is abundantly clear that the NATO axis on both sides of the Atlantic wants the proxy war to continue.

Carrying out provocations and terrorist crimes against civilians is aimed at sabotaging any diplomatic effort.

Russia responded in recent days to the terror assaults last weekend with massive bombardments on Ukraine’s military sites.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Trump in a phone call mid-week that retaliation was imminent.

Western media reported Russia’s air strikes by giving prominence to the deaths of five civilians, according to Ukrainian officials. Russia claims it is not deliberately targeting civilian centers. That is an important distinction compared with the NATO-backed regime.

As usual, the latest Russian strikes were reported without a single mention of the terrorist murders of civilians in Russia. It is an all-too-familiar and deplorable pattern of bias. Russian lives are worthless, evidently from the Western perspective.

The one-sided Western media dereliction of journalism is seen over and over again throughout the proxy war in Ukraine. In another notorious distortion this week, the nuclear power plant in Zaporozhye – the biggest in Europe – came under drone attack from the Kiev regime. There were no reports in the Western media of this nuclear terrorism to contaminate Europe. When Western media reported on previous attacks on the ZNPP (by the Kiev forces), it absurdly claimed that Russia is doing the sabotage on a power plant under its control. Just like supposedly blowing up its own trains and citizens.

Western media silence and distortion are not merely disgraceful false propaganda. It is complicity in war crimes by giving cover and license for more.

June 7, 2025 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Lebanese army may partially ‘freeze cooperation’ with US-led ceasefire committee

The Cradle | June 6, 2025

The Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) released a statement on 6 June warning it could potentially “freeze cooperation” with the US-led ceasefire monitoring committee regarding site inspections, due to constant Israeli violations.

The statement came the morning after Israel carried out a large-scale attack on Beirut’s southern suburb.

In the statement, the LAF condemned Israel’s “daily aggression” against Lebanon and its continued occupation of Lebanese territory. “Immediately after the Israeli enemy announced its threats, it began coordinating with the Cessation of Hostilities Monitoring Committee to prevent an attack. Patrols also headed to a number of sites to inspect them, despite the enemy’s rejection of the proposal,” the statement added.

“The Israeli enemy’s persistent violation of the Agreement and its refusal to cooperate with the Cessation of Hostilities Monitoring Mechanism only weakens the role of the Committee and the Army, and could lead the military establishment to freeze cooperation with the Cessation of Hostilities Monitoring Mechanism regarding site inspections,” the LAF went on to say.

Following the attacks on Thursday evening, Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam released statements condemning the Israeli airstrikes.

The president said the attack was a “blatant violation of an international agreement” and served as “conclusive evidence” of Israel’s rejection of regional peace.

Salam also condemned the “systematic and deliberate assault on Lebanon’s security, stability, and economy” and called on the international community to “shoulder its responsibility to deter Israel and ensure its full withdrawal from Lebanese territories.”

The Israeli airstrikes on Beirut took place on the eve of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

Thousands of civilians were displaced from their homes after Israel issued evacuation orders for eight residential buildings in the southern suburb on Thursday night.

Israeli drones carried out over a dozen “warning strikes” before warplanes struck and destroyed the targeted buildings, marking the largest attack on Lebanon’s capital since the ceasefire was reached last year.

Tel Aviv claimed the buildings were located above underground drone production facilities belonging to the Lebanese resistance movement, Hezbollah.

“After Hezbollah extensively used drones as a key component of its attacks on Israel, the terrorist organization is expanding its drone production industry in preparation for the next war with Israel,” an Israeli army spokesman said.

Lebanese security sources who spoke with several local media outlets said the Lebanese army requested via the US-led ceasefire committee that it enter the buildings and inspect them to refute Israel’s claims.

The sources said the army entered one of the buildings and found no evidence of any weapon facilities. However, Israel rejected the request and began carrying out drone strikes, forcing the army to withdraw.

“In the (ceasefire) agreement, there is a mechanism for inspections if there is a complaint. Israel in general, and Netanyahu in particular, wants to continue the war in the region,” a Hezbollah official told Lebanese media, denying the presence of any drone facilities at the locations targeted by Israel.

As the final round of airstrikes took place, Israeli warplanes also bombed the village of Ain Qana in southern Lebanon, citing the presence of Hezbollah facilities.

Hundreds of people have been killed since the ceasefire agreement, which Israel has so far violated over 3,000 times, was reached in November last year. Israeli forces also maintain an occupation of five locations inside Lebanon, which they established themselves in after the ceasefire, in violation of the deal.

Lebanese diplomatic efforts have so far failed to make progress in forcing Israel to stop its attacks and withdraw its forces from the five points in southern Lebanon, which are separate from the other areas in the south that the Israeli army has been illegally occupying for years.

Lebanon’s continued coordination with the US-led monitoring committee has yielded no results.

Israel’s Channel 14 said on Thursday evening that the latest Israeli strikes on Beirut were carried out in full coordination with Washington.

June 6, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

US once again blocks UN push for immediate Gaza ceasefire, humanitarian aid access

MEMO | June 5, 2025

The US yesterday vetoed a UN Security Council draft resolution that called for an “immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip.

The draft resolution expressed “grave concern over the catastrophic humanitarian situation, including the risk of famine,” and stressed all parties’ obligations to abide by international humanitarian and human rights law.

Slovenia proposed the draft resolution on behalf of the Security Council’s ten elected members – Algeria, Denmark, Greece, Guyana, Panama, Pakistan, South Korea, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Slovenia – and received 14 votes.

US Charge d’Affaires ad interim Dorothy Shea said before the vote that “US opposition to this resolution should come as no surprise.”

“It is unacceptable for what it does say, it is unacceptable for what it does not say, and it is unacceptable for the manner in which it has been advanced,” she added, accusing the Palestine resistance group Hamas of rejecting ceasefire deals.

“Any product that undermines our close ally Israel’s security is a non-starter,” Shea said.

She once more argued that “Israel has a right to defend itself” and claimed that “it is unconscionable that the UN still has not labelled and sanctioned Hamas as a terrorist organisation.”

The US previously vetoed four Security Council draft resolutions that called for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza, marking yesterday’s resolution the fifth veto.

The US vetoed resolutions in October 2023, December 2023, February 2024 and November 2024 while abstaining in votes on other draft resolutions.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US sent a “strong message” by vetoing a “counterproductive” UN Security Council resolution on Gaza targeting Israel.

“We will not support any measure that fails to condemn Hamas, does not call for Hamas to disarm and leave Gaza, draws a false equivalence between Israel and Hamas, or disregards Israel’s right to defend itself,” he said in a statement.

Rubio noted that Hamas could end “this brutal conflict immediately” by laying down its arms and releasing all remaining hostages, including the remains of four Americans.

“Many members of the Security Council still refuse to acknowledge this reality and performative efforts like this resolution undermine diplomatic efforts to reach a ceasefire. This resolution would have only empowered Hamas to continue stealing aid and threatening civilians,” he added.

“The United States will continue to stand with Israel at the UN. The United Nations must return to its original purpose – promoting peace and security – and stop these performative actions,” he said.

Neither Israel nor the US has provided proof that Hamas is stealing aid in Gaza, while the UN has refuted claims such actions have occurred, saying it has robust systems to ensure aid reaches its intended targets.

June 5, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

How world leaders stand with genocide

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | June 5, 2025

Do world leaders really want the genocide in Gaza to end? Israel’s arms sales record for 2024 paints a clearer picture of where the international communities’ loyalties lie.

For the fourth consecutive year Israel broke its arms sales record, totalling $14.8 billion in 2024. Israeli media reports note that European countries were the largest purchaser of arms exports at 54 per cent, surpassing Asia-Pacific which amounted to 23 per cent of total sales, down by 2 per cent for 2024. Notably, countries that signed the Abraham Accords and normalised relations with Israel increased their weapons purchases from 3 per cent in 2023, to 12 per cent in 2024.

According to Yair Kulas, head of Israel’s International Defence Cooperation Directorate, there is political pressure on countries to refrain from purchasing Israeli weapons. “The militaries want our top-tier products, but political forces are blocking them. I hope necessity outweighs politics.”

Judging from the record sales, the politics of genocide are reaping profits for Israel and instability in the rest of the world. Between these looming dangers, Palestinians are experiencing the might of Israel’s weapons first-hand. And what does the world do? Encourage further genocide by purchasing more weapons from Israel.

Diplomatically, Israel is far from isolated. Israel will be participating in the EU-Southern Neighbourhood ministerial meeting in which governance, climate change, migration, economic development and energy will be discussed. An unnamed EU official has already stated that “the ongoing war in Gaza” will not be discussed during the meeting. There is also no fixed date for the review of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

The EU cannot even pretend that there is a rift in diplomatic relations between the bloc and Israel. It is merely stalling for time, even though genocide is by now acceptable within diplomatic circles that have made a mockery out of international law.

The same governments that feign concern over humanitarian aid in Gaza are supporting the genocidal framework that bans humanitarian aid and causes humanitarian devastation in Gaza. Maybe the international community can articulate which part of genocide it specifically opposes? Not bombs, surely.

It is not necessity that will outweigh politics, to use Kulas’s words. Necessity is created by politics, in this case the politics of colonialism and genocide.

While Israel gloats in its successive terror narrative and its profits, Germany, for example has reiterated its commitment to delivering weapons to Israel. “Germany must know where it stands and say it clearly: alongside Israel,” German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul stated. But what if Germany clearly stated the meaning of this diplomatic jargon – that it stands with Israel’s genocide in Gaza? Since October 2003, Germany approved over $550 million of arms exports to Israel.

Only a few weeks ago, the EU attempted to give the impression that the tide is turning for Israel. Of course, no one believed the statements. Since then, the Gaza Humanitarian Fund is obstructing aid by killing Palestinians and closing its hubs. More Palestinians have been burnt to death. More Palestinians have starved to death. Just mere hours ago, the US vetoed a resolution for an unconditional and permanent ceasefire because the text is unacceptable, according to the US Ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea.

World leaders have only left one gap in their narrative – an unequivocal statement that they stand with genocide.

June 5, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Netanyahu does not deny arming ISIS-affiliated group to fight Hamas

Al Mayadeen | June 5, 2025

Former Israeli Security Minister Avigdor Liberman has accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of secretly authorizing the transfer of weapons to an armed criminal group affiliated with the terrorist so-called “Islamic State” in Gaza without cabinet approval.

In remarks to the Kan public broadcaster, Liberman, who leads the opposition Yisrael Beytenu party, said the weapons were supplied to a group of militants near the Karem Abu Salem crossing, in an area currently under Israeli military control.

“The Israeli government is giving weapons to a group of criminals and felons, identified with Islamic State, at the direction of the prime minister,” he stated.

“To my knowledge this did not go through approval by the cabinet,” he added.

Abu Shabab clan’s reputation and recent activity

While Liberman did not name the group directly, he appeared to be referencing the Abu Shabab clan, an armed faction in Gaza reportedly opposed to Hamas.

According to Tel Aviv University researcher Michael Milshtein, the group is known in Gaza for drug trafficking, theft, and looting humanitarian aid convoys.

Footage published online in recent days, including by clan leader Yasser Abu Shabab, shows members wearing military-style uniforms emblazoned with the Palestinian flag and the label “Counter-Terrorism Mechanism.”

Security establishment kept in the dark?

Liberman added that the head of the Shin Bet is aware of the weapons transfers but questioned the level of involvement or knowledge within the Israeli occupation military.

“I don’t know how much the IDF chief of staff was in on it,” he said, referring to the Israeli military.

Netanyahu’s office does not deny Liberman allegations

In response to Liberman’s claims, Netanyahu’s office issued a statement defending the government’s multi-pronged approach to defeating Hamas.

“Israel is working to defeat Hamas through various means, based on the recommendations of all the heads of the security establishment,” the statement read.

However, it notably did not deny the allegations raised by Liberman.

June 5, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Risk of Escalation with Russia ‘Going Way Up’ Due to Ukrainian Attacks

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | June 4, 2025

President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Ukraine conflict said that recent Ukrainian attacks on Russian air bases have created a significant risk of escalation in the war.

“I’m telling you, the risk levels are going way up – I mean, what happened this weekend,” Trump’s envoy, Keith Kellogg, told Fox News. “People have to understand in the national security space: when you attack an opponent’s part of their national survival system, which is their triad, the nuclear triad, that means your risk level goes up because you don’t know what the other side is going to do. You’re not sure.”

On Sunday, the Ukrainian intelligence service, the SBU, launched a major attack on Russian airbases thousands of miles from the front lines. Kiev claims to have disabled one third of Moscow’s fleet of strategic bombers.

Washington and Moscow each possess the ability to conduct nuclear attacks via bombers, submarines, and land-based ballistic missiles, known as the nuclear triad. The White House claims that it was not informed of the attack by Kiev. However, the CIA is deeply tied to the SBU.

The SBU has conducted other provocative attacks in recent days, hitting Russian railways and bridges and reportedly killing seven civilians.

Trump said he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the attacks on Wednesday. “I just finished speaking, by telephone, with President Vladimir Putin, of Russia. The call lasted approximately one hour and 15 minutes,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “We discussed the attack on Russia’s docked airplanes, by Ukraine, and also various other attacks that have been taking place by both sides. It was a good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace. President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields.”

June 5, 2025 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

More signs of Britain grooming Syria’s Al-Qaeda-rooted government

The Cradle | June 4, 2025

When Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa (previously known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani), the former Al-Qaeda emir who led the Nusra Front, was affiliated with ISIS, and later headed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), visited Saudi Arabia to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) in February, he was accompanied by a surprising figure: Razan Saffour, a 32-year-old British-Syrian activist who had never set foot in Syria before the fall of former president Bashar al-Assad’s government in December.

Saffour also joined Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani on his trip to the Munich Security Conference that same month. Her presence in Syria’s new ruling circle highlights Britain’s outsized role in shaping the conflict – bringing Al-Qaeda to power, whitewashing its leadership, and embedding UK operatives within its political infrastructure.

Her presence alongside Julani on official state visits signals not just personal ascension, but the triumph of Britain’s long war to launder extremist power through western-groomed proxies.

Razan Saffour was born and raised in London, studied at SOAS, and emerged as a high-profile Syrian opposition voice during the early years of the war, when she was only in her early 20s. Platformed by major western and Arab media outlets from the Persian Gulf, she was a familiar figure on the regime-change circuit. Her father, Walid Saffour, a leading Muslim Brotherhood (MB) dissident, had fled Syria in 1981 during the MB’s armed uprising against the state.

Walid Saffour would later become the Syrian opposition’s ambassador to the UK, representing the Syrian National Council. Academic Dr Dara Conduit notes that this gave “the Brotherhood an important formal diplomatic link to the UK through an undeclared member.”

Engineering regime change

By the mid-2000s, the British government had aligned with US neoconservatives and MB-linked activists to prepare a full-blown insurgency in Syria.

In October 2006, several members of an MB front group, the National Salvation Front (NSF), traveled to Washington to meet with Michael Doran, a member of the US National Security Council, to discuss plans for regime change in Syria. Doran was a close associate of prominent Jewish neoconservative and former US president George W. Bush’s administration official Elliott Abrams.

In 2009, former French foreign minister Roland Dumas was told by top British officials that “they were preparing something in Syria … Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria.” When asked why, Dumas responded, “Very simple!” because “the Syrian regime makes anti-Israeli talk.”

The covert US-UK effort to topple Assad involved training young, media-savvy Syrian activists to organize anti-government protests, as well as flooding Syria with Al-Qaeda militants from Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, and dozens of other countries to carry out false flag attacks against Syrian police and security forces.

Many were UK nationals and members of the Al-Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). They had been allowed by British authorities to travel to Libya to topple late Libyan president Muammar al-Gaddafi, before being funneled into Syria via Turkiye.

US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford served as the operation’s field coordinator. As former US Naval officer Wayne Madsen reported in 2011, Ford was recruiting death squads from Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Chechnya. His previous role as political officer in Iraq involved implementing the El Salvador Option: organizing Shia death squads to crush Sunni insurgents under Ambassador John Negroponte.

Among those released from the US-run Bucca prison in Iraq and dispatched to Syria was none other than Abu Mohammad al-Julani. He would go on to found the Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, after orchestrating a series of suicide bombings in Damascus.

The Powell connection 

While Al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise grew, British intelligence cultivated parallel assets to manage the political front. In 2011, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, founded the NGO Inter Mediate, a Foreign Office-funded project designed to open secret channels with insurgent groups.

In March 2012, Powell wrote to Hillary Clinton’s advisor Sidney Blumenthal seeking US support: “We are setting up secret channels between insurgents and governments.” He boasted that his group worked “closely with the FCO (the Foreign and Commonwealth Office), NSC (National Security Council) and SIS (Special Intelligence Service, or MI-6) in London.”

“We are starting work in Syria,” Powell added, suggesting that he was communicating with the Nusra Front and other Al-Qaeda linked groups.

By this time, Walid Saffour had assumed his UK ambassadorial post for the Syrian opposition. He lobbied hard for the arming of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) – a cover or “weapons farm” for transferring NATO-grade weapons to Nusra.

His appointment gave “the Brotherhood an important formal diplomatic link to the UK through an undeclared member,” academic Dara Conduit wrote in her book detailing the history of the MB in Syria.

Armed with CIA-supplied TOW missiles and led by Julani’s suicide battalions, Nusra captured Idlib in 2015. A year later, it declared an Islamic emirate in the province, modeled on ISIS’s Raqqa. Brett McGurk, the US envoy to the anti-ISIS coalition, would later call Idlib “the largest Al-Qaeda safe haven since 9/11.”

While McGurk claimed “Idlib now is a huge problem,” the US and UK were quietly working with the Nusra, which was soon rebranded as HTS.

Arab media outlet Jusoor wrote that the “attempts of [Hayat] Tahrir Al-Sham for polishing itself began in the summer of 2017, with a campaign of contacts with the west.”

Jusoor added that HTS media official Zeid Attar had a meeting with the former UK diplomat Powell, “who manages many back channels for negotiating with designated terrorist groups either internationally or nationally.”

From terrorist to statesman

In 2019, US envoy James Jeffrey openly described HTS as an “asset” to Washington’s Syria strategy. The goal: preserve an Al-Qaeda-controlled buffer in Idlib to pressure Damascus.

Russian media later revealed that Powell had met Julani near the Bab al-Hawa crossing with Turkiye, coaching him on how to rehabilitate his image. Julani was advised to grant a western media interview to soften his profile.

PBS journalist Martin Smith soon arrived in Idlib. His April 2021 interview with Julani aired in the US, casting the Salafist extremist leader as a reformed figure who posed no threat to western interests.

In May 2024, Robert Ford revealed at a conference that he, too, had met Julani in Idlib. “In 2023, a British non-governmental organization specializing in conflict resolution invited me to help with their efforts to get this man out of the terrorist world and into regular politics,” Ford told attendees.

That NGO, according to Independent Arabia, was Powell’s Inter Mediate. In a revealing twist, Powell was appointed UK National Security Advisor on 8 November 2024 – just weeks before Julani’s HTS launched its final offensive on Damascus. By 8 December, Julani, who now goes by his government name Ahmad al-Sharaa, had assumed power.

London’s ‘post-Assad’ playbook

As Sharaa settled into the presidential palace, western and Arab media launched a PR blitz to sell him as a modern, diversity-friendly ruler. This was difficult given his previous pledges to carry out a genocide against any of Syria’s minority Alawites who refused to convert to Sunni Islam, and his role in dispatching car and suicide bombers, killing tens of thousands in Syria and Iraq over more than a decade.

An image facelift ensued nonetheless: Military fatigues gave way to tailored suits; his nom de guerre was dropped in favor of his alleged birth name. Time magazine listed Sharaa as one of the year’s 100 most influential people – at Ford’s behest, no less. And the US lifted its $10 million bounty on his head for terrorism.

Sharaa pledged to protect minorities, including the Alawites – even as Syria’s new HTS-led security forces began targeting them under the guise of counterinsurgency. HTS-led Syrian government forces were carrying out brutal massacres against Alawite civilians on the Syrian coast, during an operation to quell an armed uprising against the authorities. During a four-day period of massacres, at least 1,700 Alawite civilians, including scores of women and children, were killed.

The following February, after Razan Saffour accompanied Julani to meet MbS, The National reported that Powell had recently held a “low-key meeting” with Syria’s new government in his new role as National Security Advisor, “boosting suggestions he will play a leading role in relations.”

Syrian analyst Malek Hafez told the Syrian Observer that Powell’s team even runs a media office inside the presidential palace, “reportedly run by two women – one British, the other of Lebanese-British heritage.”

As Hafez concludes, “The rise of Ahmad al-Sharaa was not spontaneous – it was carefully engineered through a long-term, western-backed strategy, in which Britain played a disproportionately influential role among western powers.”

While London has not yet officially expressed its support for Sharaa and Syria’s new government, the UK’s “fingerprints” are increasingly visible, the Observer added.

When weighed against the hundreds of thousands of Syrians killed, the millions displaced, and the wreckage of a nation, the UK’s central role in bringing Julani to power should not be forgotten.

June 4, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Foreign-made explosives used in railway terrorist attacks – Russian prosecutors

RT | June 4, 2025

Explosives used to blow up two railway bridges in Russia over the weekend were foreign-made, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee Aleksandr Bastrykin has announced. The attack, which claimed the lives of seven civilians, was organized by Ukrainian intelligence, he added.

Speaking at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and government officials on Wednesday, Bastrykin said that the “evidence collected by the investigators directly points to [the fact] that all three terrorist attacks [in Bryansk and Kursk regions] were beyond any doubt arranged by Ukrainian special services.”

According to Bastrykin, the bombs used in the attacks “were composed of foreign-made plastic explosives equivalent to 15kg of TNT,” and set off by a Ukrainian-made detonator.

He added that the probe into the blasts is still underway, with the authorities working to identify all those responsible.

Bastrykin reported that between May 20 and May 25, Russian security services were conducting an operation in Bryansk Region against a group of Ukrainian saboteurs. He revealed that during the raid, the authorities uncovered a cache containing 13kg of similar plastic explosives and Ukrainian-made remote detonators.

The official estimated the material damage caused by the explosions at over 1 billion rubles ($13mn).

On Saturday evening, debris from a bombed bridge fell in front of, and derailed, an inter-city passenger train in the Bryansk Region. Seven people were killed and over one hundred seriously injured in the crash.

Early on Sunday, a railway bridge was blown up as a freight train passed over it in neighboring Kursk Region, wounding the driver and two assistants.

Later on Sunday, a stretch of railroad in a different part of Bryansk Region was damaged when a bomb went off in front of a switcher locomotive. No casualties have been reported from the third incident.

The attacks were carried out the day before the second round of direct Russia-Ukraine talks in Istanbul. While no breakthroughs were achieved in Türkiye, the two sides agreed to conduct a prisoner swap as well as to exchange the bodies of thousands of fallen soldiers.

Russia and Ukraine also exchanged memorandums containing drastically different visions for ending the conflict. Both sides have indicated that dialogue would continue.

June 4, 2025 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine’s Rail and Bridge Attacks Literally the Textbook Definition of Terrorism: Intel Analyst

Sputnik – 04.06.2025

For starters, defensive operations are “carried out on one’s own territory,” says retired Russian military intelligence colonel Rustem Klupov, commenting on President Putin and the Russian Investigative Committee’s statements on the terror attacks targeting Russian infrastructure in Bryansk and Kursk.

If the targeted objects, including bridges and rail lines, were clearly delineated as Russian military forces or supply lines, perhaps Ukraine would be able to get away with justifying them to its foreign sponsors. But the fact is, in both Bryansk and Kursk, it was civilian infrastructure that was targeted, Klupov said.

Even the “dual use” excuse doesn’t fly in this case, the observer emphasized.

“When a civilian train is traveling along a route, when civilians are killed, when an explosion occurs with the aim of causing maximum harm to the ordinary civilian population, it cannot be interpreted as anything other than a terrorist act aimed at intimidating the civilian population and changing the policy of the leadership,” Klupov said.

In short, these were terrorist acts, pure and simple, the analyst stressed.

June 4, 2025 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Former German top diplomat and Zionist cheerleader rewarded with top UN job

By Ivan Kesic | Press TV | June 3, 2025

Former German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, a well-known Zionist cheerleader and warmonger, has been elected as the new president of the United Nations General Assembly (UNSC), raising eyebrows worldwide.

Human rights activists and pro-Palestine advocates see it as an affront to the Palestinian victims of the ongoing Israeli-American genocidal war that has claimed more than 54,000 lives since October 2023, most of them children and women.

Craig Mokhiber, a human rights lawyer and former United Nations human rights official, in a post on X, slammed the appointment of Baerbock by the world body to “oversee its accelerating decline.”

“The United Nations was born in opposition to German war criminals. Today, it has elected a German war criminal to oversee its accelerating decline,” he wrote.

“80 years later, the Reich takes its revenge with Annalena Baerbock as UNGA President, in the midst of a genocide that she has enthusiastically abetted.”

He was referring to the Nazi Germany’s horrendous war crimes in the World War II, which prompted world leaders to form a body called United Nations in the aftermath of the war.

The United Nations (UN) was established in 1945 with the signing of the UN Charter by 51 countries, replacing the ineffective League of Nations, and essentially against German war criminals.

Annalena Baerbock, a prominent Green Party politician in Germany, will serve as the president of the United Nations General Assembly for its 80th session, starting in September 2025.

The election took place on June 2, 2025, where she ran unopposed and secured the position with a simple majority of 167 votes. Her inauguration is scheduled for September 9, 2025, just before the UN General Assembly’s general debate.

The role, which lasts one year, is primarily ceremonial and involves organizing and presiding over plenary sessions of the 193 member states, ensuring all voices are heard, and facilitating diplomatic consensus.

Baerbock’s nomination by the German government, led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, came after the Green Party’s exclusion from the new German coalition government following the February 2025 elections.

The decision sparked controversy, as Germany had initially nominated diplomat Helga Schmid for the role. Schmid, a former OSCE Secretary-General, had been preparing for the position for nearly a year, meeting over 100 UN ambassadors.

Baerbock’s last-minute nomination was criticized by many, including former German UN ambassador Christoph Heusgen, who called it a “self-serving” move that undermined Germany’s credibility.

Polls indicated 57% of Germans viewed her nomination negatively, which is reflected by social media posts calling her the “dumbest minister ever.”

“German woman Annalena Baerbock, who can’t even speak German properly, let alone English, who was the dumbest minister ever, and even her university degree is fake, now gets the top UN job, proving the West to be a declining entity,” wrote journalist Sonja Van Den Ende.

Zionist cheerleader

In addition to her home country, Baerbock’s nomination and election have drawn criticism around the world, particularly for her approving views of the Zionist regime and its no-holds-barred genocidal war against the Palestinians in Gaza.

As German Foreign Minister from December 2021 to early 2025, she faced significant condemnation for her statements and positions from activists, academics, and political commentators.

Baerbock’s staunch support for the Israeli regime, rooted in Germany’s post-WW2 Zionist policy and the concept of Staatsräson (Israeli “security” as a German national interest), drew sharp criticism for bias and disregard for Palestinian rights.

Her statements often emphasized the so-called Israeli “right to self-defense” while offering limited critique of its genocidal actions, particularly after the events of October 7, 2023.

She legitimized Israeli attacks on civilians and on October 10, 2024, stated in the German Bundestag that “civilian sites in Gaza could lose their protected status if used by Hamas,” which drew widespread backlash.

A letter from 300 academics, organized by the Palestine Academic Group, accused her of “parroting Israel’s old narrative of human shielding,” a Zionist claim that has repeatedly been debunked as a pretext for targeting civilians in Gaza.

They argued that Baerbock disregarded international law, under which the Israeli regime, as an occupying power, cannot claim “self-defense,” and demanded she retract her statement and apologize to Palestinian civilians.

Protests in Berlin on October 21, 2024, echoed this sentiment, with demonstrators chanting, “Annalena Baerbock, shooting pregnant women in the stomach is not self-defense,” accusing her of justifying Israeli genocidal attacks on civilian infrastructure like hospitals and schools.

Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, criticized Baerbock’s October 2024 speech, noting that while civilian sites can lose protected status under international law if used militarily, disproportionate harm to civilians remains illegal, a nuance Baerbock’s statements overlooked.

Journalist Afshin Rattansi said she was “enthusiastically backing Israel’s bombing of schools and innocent Palestinians in Gaza, justifying it as targeting Hamas.”

“The fact that this war criminal is allowed to assume the title of President of the UN General Assembly, instead of spending the rest of her days locked away in The Hague, is proof that the ‘rules-based order’ was nothing but a codeword for colonial barbarism,” he wrote on X.

British activist Sarah Wilkinson also took to her social media handle to decry her appointment.

“A disaster for the UN & Int’l Law, if Annalena Baerbock, who funded, armed & endorsed the #GazaGenocide is set to be UNGA’s President,” wrote Wilkinson.

Enabler of genocide in Gaza

Activists worldwide have highlighted Baerbock’s hypocrisy in supporting Israel’s genocidal actions while offering limited humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza.

Protesters in Berlin accused Germany of “feeding Israel with weapons and money” while sending aid to Palestine to “wash your bloody hands.”

Baerbock was denounced for failing to balance Germany’s support for the Israeli regime with equal concern for Palestinian suffering, with many calling her a “Zionist cheerleader” who led the Green Party to reactionary policies.

Media outlets reported that her six solidarity visits to the occupied Palestinian territories, contrasted with her minimal critique of Israeli genocidal actions, ignored diplomatic decorum and international law, in which she is supposed to hold an academic degree.

MERA25 and DiEM25, two German political parties, launched a petition on October 22, 2024, demanding Baerbock’s resignation, accusing her of complicity in “genocide and apartheid” through Germany’s diplomatic and military support for the Israeli crimes.

They cited her failure to address findings by the Lemkin Institute and UN experts on Israeli genocidal actions in Gaza, where over 42,600 people were killed by October 2024, mostly women and children.

Her “feminist foreign policy” was deemed a mockery, as she dehumanized Palestinian victims, tarnishing Germany’s international reputation.

In March 2024, the US-based Carnegie Endowment noted that Germany’s unconditional support for the Israeli regime under Baerbock isolated it globally, contradicting its stated commitment to international law and democracy.

Critics also accused her of a “Täter-Opfer-Umkehr” (perpetrator-victim reversal), showing little understanding of international security while ignoring Palestinian rights.

Her mild criticism of Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank, calling for prosecution but not imposing sanctions, was seen as insufficient, especially as Germany increased military exports to the Israeli regime tenfold from 2022 levels.

Baerbock’s approach to Iran, particularly her support for the Israeli stance against Iran and the Axis of Resistance, also drew scrutiny. Her critics argued her policies risked fueling a regional war.

June 3, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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