The agreement between the United States and Iran will not be fulfilled.

 

mpr21
June 16, 2026 

 Whether it is signed or not, the agreement between the United States and Iran will not be fulfilled under any circumstances, leading to a permanent state of “low-intensity warfare.” The United States has not only lost the war but also its hegemony in a strategic region like the Middle East, a situation to which it will not resign itself.

Historical experience is conclusive on this point: after the Iran hostage crisis, the United States signed the Algiers Accords in 1981, which it never honored.

In that agreement, the United States committed to not interfering politically or militarily in Iran's internal affairs and to lifting the embargo on Iranian assets, as well as the sanctions.

Given this non-compliance, Iran has copied those agreements in the new ones, almost verbatim.

It is also doubtful that the sanctions will be lifted, although it is possible that some of them will be eased.

In any case, the memorandum of understanding confirms that the United States has not achieved any of the objectives it had in mind when it launched the war. Iran’s sovereign rights to continue uranium enrichment have been recognized, albeit with ambiguous wording: 30 days after the signing, 60 days of discussions on uranium will begin in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.

Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal will remain unrestricted. Its relations with Hezbollah and other forces of the “axis of resistance” have been strengthened and will continue. The Gulf Arab states are distancing themselves from their former protector and seeking to improve their relations with Iran.

Vice President J.D. Vance has confirmed that Iran will receive $300 billion for reconstruction. “It’s the kind of resources they could have access to, provided they fulfill their part of the obligation,” he commented.

More importantly, Iran has secured the right to jointly control the Strait of Hormuz with Oman through an addition to Article 5 of the memorandum.

In an attempt to sabotage the agreement, Israel launched an attack on Beirut, and Iran immediately withdrew from the memorandum of understanding and announced retaliatory attacks against Israeli territory.

In turn, Trump publicly condemned Netanyahu for the attack on Lebanon, and Iran called off its retaliatory strikes. Trump, who was extremely keen on the memorandum of understanding being signed, had to make additional concessions. One of these guaranteed “the sovereignty and respect for the territorial integrity of Lebanon,” which Trump had not accepted in previous versions.

The United Arab Emirates pays Iran $3 billion

In the final skirmishes of the Ramadan War, the United Arab Emirates, Israel’s most loyal pawn in the Gulf, had not suffered Iranian attacks, unlike Kuwait, Jordan, and Bahrain.

This was in exchange for a payment of $3 billion. The Gulf state had taken the most forceful stance against Iran, pressuring the United States to continue the war against Iran, but was simultaneously negotiating a price.

The payment could reach $10 billion, and some sources told Reuters that it will eventually pay $20 billion.

The disbursement illustrates the significant shift the Middle East war has brought about. The United Arab Emirates joined the United States and Israel in carrying out dozens of attacks against Iran. They also tried to prevent Pakistan from acting as a mediator to broker a ceasefire.

Saudi Arabia had to grant Islamabad a new loan after the UAE demanded repayment of its debt as a sanction for hosting the meetings.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard is Welcomed

Last week, the United Arab Emirates welcomed members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard for a meeting with Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE's national security advisor and deputy governor of Abu Dhabi.

This week, the UAE also sent diplomats to participate in face-to-face talks with senior Iranian officials to reduce tensions, according to Bloomberg. The meeting appears to have been held in Tehran to avert an attack on the UAE.

It is unclear whether the compensation paid to Iran came from accounts linked to Tehran, which Abu Dhabi had frozen, or from Emirati sovereign wealth funds. 

A Financial Hub for Iran

For decades, the UAE has been a financial hub for Iran, illustrating that business between the two countries transcended political rivalry. Iranians are major players in the UAE's real estate market.

After the start of the war against Iran, the United Arab Emirates threatened to freeze billions of dollars linked to Iran, but there was never any public confirmation that they carried out their threat.

The agreement between the two countries would allow Iran to secure the compensation it demanded in exchange for a ceasefire, while allowing Trump to pretend that he has not paid Iran a single cent.

Source: https://mpr21.info/el-acuerdo-entre-estados-unidos-e-iran-no-se-va-a-cumplir/

Iran-US MoU ‘great victory’ for Tehran as US failed to achieve war objectives: Former diplomat

 

Press TV Website Staff
15 June 2026 

 A former Iranian diplomat says the finalized memorandum of understanding (MoU) reached between Iran and the United States is a “great victory” for Tehran as Washington failed to achieve its war aims.

Speaking to the Press TV website on Monday, hours after the MoU was finalized, Seyyed Jalal Sadatian, a veteran Iranian diplomat, reflected on the agreement that brought an end to months of war following the unprovoked US-Israeli aggression on Iran.

"This is, in my view, a great victory, achieved through the unity of the people, their serious support, battlefield strength, and the alignment of diplomacy and media with that effort," said Sadatian.

The MoU, finalised in the early hours of Monday and set to be officially signed in Geneva on Friday, followed intensive negotiations in Islamabad mediated by Pakistan and Qatar.

It mandates an immediate and permanent halt to war on all fronts, including Lebanon, and also ends the illegal US naval blockade against Iran.

Iran's top security body says MoU to end war on all fronts, lift US naval blockadehttps://t.co/Wx8F0eLaw3

— Press TV 🔻 (@PressTV) June 14, 2026

Sadatian noted that the document serves as a ledger of American failure in the face of indomitable Iranian resistance and resilience.

He outlined several dimensions of Iran's decisive win. Chief among them, Washington's core objective of using coordinated military aggression to engineer “regime change” and install a “puppet government” in Tehran, which failed to materialize.

"They were forced, under various pressures, to accept Iran's existing government and to agree not just to a ceasefire but to an end of war," the seasoned diplomat told the Press TV website.

Having been drawn into the war under Israeli pressure, Trump is now "ordering Israel not to make a wrong move," Sadatian noted, adding that this shift alone carries significant weight.

The former diplomat highlighted that the imposed war inflicted lasting damage on American “credibility, its global image and its posture as a superpower.”

✍️ Analysis - How Iran turned battlefield gains and regional power into strategic postwar leverage against US

By Press TV Strategic Analysis Desk

Read more: https://t.co/6OAI0n8FS8 pic.twitter.com/viswG0cwHI

— Press TV 🔻 (@PressTV) June 15, 2026

He noted that Trump's domestic popularity had fallen sharply, and that US economic pressure had spread across multiple continents, from American households to South Korea, Japan, India, and European nations.

"Taken together," Sadatian said, "despite his contradictory and agitated statements, he has ultimately been compelled to submit and accept these realities."

Leverage of the Strait of Hormuz

On the question of the Strait of Hormuz, Sadatian dismissed American claims of having secured its reopening as a diplomatic achievement, pointing out that the Strait was open before the war began. The framing, he argued, reveals more than it conceals.

"It shows how much pressure the Strait's status exerted on the global economy and on Trump personally," he said, referring to the closure of the waterway to US and allied hostile vessels.

Trump had campaigned on economic recovery and an "America First" agenda, but the war against Iran produced the opposite: fuel and energy price spikes drove up the cost of food and consumer goods for ordinary Americans, while allied governments in Asia and Europe lodged formal protests over rising prices.

Sadatian credited Iran with a calibrated strategy. Rather than closing the Strait outright, Tehran “controlled” the waterway, releasing daily figures on ship transits to signal controlled authority.

✍️ Analysis - The tide has turned: Iran’s strategic control of the Strait of Hormuz crushes American naval supremacy

By Press TV Strategic Analysis Desk

Read more: https://t.co/fpVqRHqVRD pic.twitter.com/e8dvKaHoYz

— Press TV 🔻 (@PressTV) June 7, 2026

He noted that Iran has consistently maintained that the strategic waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman is not international waters but a shared waterway with Oman, and that its management going forward must follow defined rules.

"It appears the United States has implicitly accepted this," he said, describing the current understanding in plain terms.

Washington has tacitly agreed that, while sanctions are being lifted and negotiations come to a gradual end, Iran will allow increased vessel traffic, but not a return to the pre-war status quo of unchecked passage. Full Iranian control, Sadatian suggested, is now the implicit baseline.

Israel may try to undermine MoU

The question of whether Israel will attempt to derail the MoU drew a measured but cautious response. Sadatian said Israeli regime officials, both within Netanyahu's war cabinet and in the opposition, are “furious” over the end to the war of aggression against Iran, insisting no objectives were achieved and that resistance to any Iran-US deal must continue.

He pointed to a recent Israeli strike on the southern suburb of Beirut as evidence of this disruptive intent. "The probability that they will try to undermine and upend the process must always be accounted for," he noted.

Yet he assessed Israeli room for manoeuvre as limited. "Israel knows that if it makes a wrong move and it attacks Iran and does not have American backing in the face of Iran's response, it will not have the capacity to withstand it."

US must cut military, intelligence assistance to Israel to protect Iran deal: Ex-Trump official https://t.co/HNLe8GykIE

— Press TV 🔻 (@PressTV) June 15, 2026

"Netanyahu tried to encourage all previous presidents to participate in an attack on Iran," he said, "but it was Trump who fell for it."

Trump, he added, has since grown visibly regretful, recognising the scale of the diplomatic and political damage done, and the absence of any meaningful gain.

The MoU brokered through Pakistani and Qatari mediation has been widely welcomed by world leaders, from the Arab world to Europe and beyond.

 

Source:  https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2026/06/15/770516/iran-us-mou-great-victory-Tehran-us-failed-achieve-war-objectives-diplomat

Lebanon files UN complaints over Israeli herbicide use, army killing

 

Shells that appear to be white phosphorus from Israeli artillery explode over a road leading to Chamaa village, as it is seen from Tyre city, south Lebanon, Friday, March 27, 2026 (AP)

Lebanon has formally referred two Israeli violations to the UN Security Council: the spraying of glyphosate herbicide over southern border villages and the targeting of a Lebanese Army vehicle on June 6.

Al Mayadeen English
June 14th

Lebanon's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has sent two separate letters to the UN Security Council and Secretary-General António Guterres documenting recent Israeli violations, one addressing the spraying of the herbicide glyphosate over southern border villages and the other condemning the targeting of a Lebanese Army vehicle that led to the martyrdom of three servicemen.

In the first letter, dated June 10, 2026, the Ministry lodged a formal complaint based on a report prepared by the National Council for Scientific Research against the occupation army's spraying of glyphosate over several southern Lebanese border villages on February 1, 2026, noting that the Chemical Weapons Convention prohibits the use of herbicides as a method of warfare.

Laboratory tests and chemical analyses conducted on soil samples from Ayta al-Shaab, Ras al-Naqoura, and al-Dhayrah confirmed the presence of glyphosate at concentrations reaching up to 22,750 micrograms per gram, levels far exceeding those typically recorded in agricultural soil following direct use by farmers.

Attacks on the Lebanese Army

A second letter, sent on June 11, detailed the IOF's deliberate targeting of a Lebanese Army military vehicle on June 6, on the Kfar Tebnit–al-Khardali road. The attack led to the martyrdom of two officers, a brigadier general and a captain, and one soldier, while they were carrying out their national duty in southern Lebanon.

The Ministry called on the United Nations to condemn the attack and take immediate measures to halt repeated Israeli violations, urging full compliance with the UN Charter and relevant international resolutions, including Resolution 1701 (2006).

'Undermining the diplomatic track'

The Foreign Ministry noted that the attacks are occurring against the backdrop of ongoing talks between Lebanese authorities and the Israeli regime in Washington under US sponsorship, "aimed at consolidating a cessation of hostilities and laying the groundwork for a peaceful and sustainable solution."

The fifth round of negotiations between Lebanese and Israeli officials will begin in Washington on June 22, a Lebanese official source told Al Mayadeen, describing the upcoming discussions as "particularly significant" for resolving outstanding issues related to Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon.

Source: https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/lebanon-files-un-complaints-over-israeli-herbicide-use--army

"The Genetic Deception (2026)", a New Book by the Author of "Unbekoming" Substack

 

Sasha Latypova
June 5, 2026 (Leer en castellano)

Dear Readers,

I am a fan of Unbekoming Substack, and recommend that you subscribe and follow this author. I have provided a written interview for their publication in the past. I would like to draw your attention to the recent book published by the author - “The Genetic Deception”. The book is kindly made available by the author to my subscribers as a free download:

Download "The Genetic Deception" pdf

Below is the introduction to the book and the Map of Work post which you can follow to learn about their other books and research articles.

Introduction to The Genetic Deception (2026)

The Genetic Deception is a book about the fifth and most formidable wall of modern medical extraction. The first four walls — vaccination, allopathic medicine, bacteriology, and virology — have all been seen through by some readers, some of the time. The genetics wall captures even those who have seen through the rest, because the genetics wall is the wall that wears your face. To question a genetic diagnosis can feel like questioning your own existence.

The book documents what the genetic framework conceals.

It examines what the Human Genome Project actually delivered after thirty years and billions of dollars: more than seven hundred genome-wide association studies across approximately eighty diseases, all converging on the same finding — the genetic contribution to common disease is at most five to ten percent of risk. The architects of the field have themselves abandoned the predictive ambitions that justified the original investment. Francis Collins, who led the Project, scanned his own genome and found his risk estimates for almost every disease were within population averages. The architect of the field looked at his own results and found them clinically useless.

It examines the foundations of the molecule itself. The iconic image of the double helix has never been directly observed. The 2001 announcement that the human genome had been “sequenced” was made on the basis of computer-assembled composites with eight to ten percent gaps. The first truly complete human genome was not published until 2023. Standard DNA extraction protocols applied to protein powder produce the same precipitate the protocols produce when applied to actual cells.

It examines forensic DNA testing. When NIST was finally forced to conduct a blinded study, only six percent of one hundred and eight accredited forensic laboratories reached the correct conclusion on a three-person mixture. Seventy percent incorrectly indicated that the test suspect “might be in the mix.” The technology has been used in courtrooms claiming 99.8 percent accuracy for decades and has put people in prison.

It examines specific conditions. Familial hypercholesterolemia, presented as a genetic death sentence requiring lifelong statin compliance, has been tracked across two centuries of Dutch mortality data showing no significant elevation in all-cause mortality compared with the general population. BRCA1, the foundation of an entire industry of preventive mastectomies, was launched on a 1994 paper that itself documented every studied family containing at least one woman with the “cancer-causing mutation” who lived to age 80 without cancer. Between thirty-five and fifty-five percent of those who test positive for BRCA1 or BRCA2 sequence differences never develop the disease. Down syndrome was linked in 1964 to parental radiation exposure — to excess X-rays given to pregnant women and to fathers working near radar — research that the establishment has chosen not to integrate into present screening protocols.

It examines the institutional lineage. Francis Galton published Hereditary Genius in 1869, the same year Friedrich Miescher scraped pus from surgical bandages and called the precipitate “nuclein.” The Rockefeller Foundation funded the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes through the 1920s and 1930s, the institutions whose researchers wrote the Nazi sterilisation laws. After the Second World War, “eugenics” became a dirty word; the institutions did not disappear but renamed themselves. The Eugenics Quarterly became Social Biology. The British Eugenics Society became the Galton Institute, then the Adelphi Genetics Forum. The American Eugenics Society moved its headquarters into the New York offices of John D. Rockefeller III’s Population Council. The personnel and the project continued under the new names. What has reached your doctor’s office is the descendant of this lineage.

The book follows the evidence across all of this and arrives at the same picture from every direction. The genetic framework, as currently constituted and applied, does not deserve the authority it has claimed.

The Appendices | Reference Material the Reader Returns To

The book closes with six appendices that function as reference material for paid subscribers.

The Vocabulary of Genetic Deception decodes the eighteen terms that perform the framework’s argumentative work in every medical conversation. Variant, mutation, carrier, predisposition, heritability, penetrance, de novo, polygenic. Each entry shows what the term sounds like, what conclusion it smuggles in before the argument begins, and what plain-language equivalent describes the same observation without preloading the verdict.

What to Say When the Doctor Says “It’s Genetic” is a plain-language script for the consultations the framework is not designed to accommodate. Eight common doctor statements — You have the BRCA mutation, Your child has a genetic disorder, This runs in families, There’s nothing we can do — it’s genetic — each paired with the questions that move the conversation toward the evidence the doctor’s framework rules out. Including, in each case, the documented data the patient is entitled to and rarely receives.

The Four Real Causes is a diagnostic checklist for any condition labelled genetic. The four categories of insult — toxic exposure, nutritional deficiency, electromagnetic radiation, chronic stress — broken into specific lines of inquiry. Pharmaceutical history, dental amalgams, water source, wireless density, sleep architecture, occupational exposures. What can be removed, what can be restored. The investigation the diagnosis forecloses.

The Conditions Currently Labelled “Genetic” is a field guide to seventeen conditions — cystic fibrosis, sickle cell, Huntington’s, BRCA, familial hypercholesterolemia, Down syndrome, Dravet, Alzheimer’s, autism, schizophrenia, type 1 diabetes, MS, lupus, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, Alpha-1, hereditary cancers, birth defects. For each: the genetic story, what the evidence shows, what is ignored.

The Eugenics Continuity traces the institutional lineage from Galton (1869) through Cold Spring Harbor (1904), Buck v. Bell (1927), the Rockefeller funding of the German programmes (1920s-1930s), Watson and Crick (1953), the post-war rebranding, the Human Genome Project (1990), and the present-day “personalised medicine” apparatus.

The Curated Resource Library is an annotated guide to the primary sources — Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson, Dr. Marizelle, Jamie Andrews, Tom Cowan, Toby Rogers, Malcolm Kendrick, Lester and Parker, the Baileys, and the wider terrain medicine tradition. Where to begin with each, what to read first, and what each source is best for.

 

 

Source:  https://sashalatypova.substack.com/p/the-genetic-deception-2026-new-book

When the lights go out, the rats come out

 

Palestinian infant Adam al-Ustaz receives treatment at Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital in Gaza City after being bitten by a rat inside a displacement tent, 28 March 2026. (Moiz Salhi/APAimages)

 

Shojaa al-Safadi

20/05/2026 

Around two months ago, my family and I returned home to our apartment on Tal al-Hawa street in Gaza City after a day of visiting relatives. The apartment was lit only by a small battery-powered lamp that cast a dim glow over the space.

Later that night, when I went to the bathroom to wash up, I opened the door and a large rat, about 5 inches long, was staring back at me from behind the sink.

I shut the door immediately behind me and killed it with a small bucket.

There was blood on the floor. I put the body in a plastic bag and cleaned the tiles with diluted bleach, the only disinfectant we had. A few meters away, our two-month-old son, Amjad, was sleeping. He came to us after nearly 16 years of waiting.

That night, the sounds began. Scratching behind the walls, rustling movement in the ceiling. Something alive, something in there. My wife and I did not sleep that night, and on subsequent nights would take turns staying awake to keep an eye out for rodents.

The next morning I went to al-Zawiya market in central Gaza to find poison. The market is 5 kilometers from our home, and I walked half the way because it is so difficult to find transportation.

The market I remember, though, is now gone.

Most of the original shops and narrow covered alleys have been severely damaged or reduced to rubble. Sewage runs through the streets, and flies hover over stagnant water.

Makeshift stalls of crates and plastic sheets have replaced the shops; instead of organized rows, the market now comprises scattered clusters of vendors. Some of the stalls are set up beside or even inside tents where displaced families live.

A vendor, who asked to be identified by his initials only, M. H., sold me a 10-gram bag of poison for about $7.

He said that the most effective poisons are blocked from entry by Israel.

“What we’re selling now came from damaged warehouses,” he said.

Once that stock is gone, there will be no alternative.

“Families are buying what is available at four times the previous price,” he said.

I took the poison home, mixed it with a tin of sardines and placed it near the openings in our walls.

For two days, the rats disappeared.

Then they came back.

Purchasing some rubble

In Arabic, there is a saying: Many causes, one death.

In Gaza, we are witness to these many causes of death: airstrikes, hunger and contaminated water, to name a few.

And now, we see prospective death in the rats that move through the dark toward sleeping children.

They come out when the battery dies on the lamp and the apartment goes dark.

They come out when we are not around.

That is when they feel safe.

Our apartment building on Tal al-Hawa street was bombed just one week before the so-called ceasefire, in October 2025. Israel bombed the top three floors of the building, and the remaining three lower floors sustained partial damage.

We are on the third floor, and our apartment is missing some walls, the entire kitchen, all the windows and doors and most of the furniture.

Giant piles of rubble surround us on every side, and this is where the rats live.

Protecting our apartment from rats would be a monumental task.

With the poison not doing the job, I sought out construction materials myself, along with the help of friends, to repair and seal any openings in our house.

Yet, given the Israeli blockade on materials needed to repair or insulate homes – cement, timber and other “dual-use” items – this would not be an easy task.

All supplies have to be found through unofficial channels, so neighbors smuggle and sell cement and cinder blocks to each other, ripping what they can from collapsed walls and bombed-out homes.

My friend Islam Bakr, 55, helped me search for materials for days.

His own seven-story building, home to 30 apartments, in Gaza City’s al-Daraj neighborhood, had suffered damage from Israeli strikes as well. The stairwell is cracked, and parts of the upper floors remain exposed after nearby strikes.

As we searched for construction materials, he told me how the rats had invaded his family’s food stockpiles: flour, rice, cheese, yeast and dried legumes. This is food the family had obtained from aid trucks and markets and then stored because Gaza’s food supplies are scarce and unstable.

The rats nibbled away at their stockpile, contaminating the food. He found droppings in nearly every bag.

He recalled how a four-year-old child in a nearby tent was bitten; the family got treatment and the child recovered. But Islam said that it seems like most families do not seek medical attention unless injuries are severe, because getting to a hospital is its own ordeal.

Later that day, we found a group of people selling cement blocks and bricks that had been salvaged from destroyed homes. The blocks were displayed right in the middle of the street, amid piles of rubble.

The sellers had cleaned the blocks of any cement residue (typically, a clean brick fetches a higher price than a damaged, unclean brick). The seller would not negotiate on price, and he tacked on an extra fifty cents to cover transport costs.

I bought the used concrete blocks for about $2.50 each.

The ideal conditions for rats

The rodent infestation in Gaza is not a story of one statistic or figure, but of several of them combined: the 57.5 million tons of rubble that fill the streets; the approximate 3,000 cubic meters of solid waste that accumulate each day; and the inaccessible landfills and destroyed sewage treatment infrastructure.

In Gaza City, this collapse is visible along every street, especially in the piles of waste that are heaped along the street. At night, the smell intensifies, and it gets worse when residents burn garbage.

Rubble, waste and standing water have created ideal conditions for rodents.

Then, at night, they move into homes and shelters.

My friend Alaa Abu Sharkh, 45, lives in Beach Camp, a few kilometers from my home. His family had sought shelter in a house with an asbestos roof. When Israel bombed a nearby mosque, stones were blown outward and then fell through the roof, creating holes large enough for rats to simply walk through, into the house.

They framed the holes with wood and laid plastic sheeting over top, taping and then double-taping until the plastic held.

So far, this has worked to keep the rats out. But the problem remains outside.

During the night, Alaa sees clusters of rats moving through the rubble and waste piled along the road, scattering and then regrouping in the dark.

“This is not something individuals can solve,” said Alaa. “It requires [municipal] bodies with real resources.”

When we discuss the rodent crisis, it can at times feel absurd; we have survived the bombs of this war only to be living in the disaster that the bombs created.

Rat bite in the night

Over 80 percent of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged by Israel’s bombardment over two-and-a-half years.

Even if Israel did not ban so-called dual-use items (like construction materials) that would enable us to repair our homes and protect them from rodents, nearly all of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents have been displaced, and many of them live in tents with no walls to patch up or cracks to seal.

Inside the tents, rodents are a part of daily life. For rats, every shelter is accessible.

I spoke with Yousef al-Ustaz on the phone after seeing a video on social media of his newborn son Adam, who had been bitten by a rat.

The family lives in a tent in the al-Maqousi area west of Gaza City, and at around 1 am, al-Ustaz woke to his son crying – not unusual for a newborn.

“As I got closer, I saw blood covering my baby’s face, and a rat running out of the tent,” al-Ustaz told The Electronic Intifada. “At that moment, I was thinking of nothing but saving his life.”

Adam was rushed to Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital, where doctors treated the wound and monitored him for infection. He is now recovering from the bite.

I asked my nephew Omar al-Safadi, who is a doctor at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis and at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, whether he was seeing more rat-related admissions.

He said that medical centers in Gaza are receiving about one or two cases of bites or scratches each day, mostly involving children. Some develop infections requiring antibiotics.

“Around ten percent of cases develop infections that need close monitoring,” Omar said. “Most of what we’ve seen has been managed with disinfection and antibiotics. But the irregular availability of medicines is a major obstacle.”

What next?

When I got home, I began to fill in the cracks and holes where the rats were entering the apartment.

Instead of using the expensive and poor-quality cement available, I used a mixture of lime and sand, working by hand to fill any gaps in the walls with the used blocks I purchased.

It was crude, but it worked.

For now, the rats have stopped getting in.

Yet my wife and I sleep in the living room together with Amjad, surrounding him on all sides, in case they return.

Every night I go to sleep thinking about how I cannot make sure my son is safe. We survived the bombs, the displacement, the hunger, and now I am losing sleep over rats.

As if Gaza’s people had not already been asked to endure enough.

 

Shojaa al-Safadi is a Palestinian writer and poet, a member of the Palestinian Writers Union, and a founder and director of the Friendship Cultural Forum from 2004 to 2014.

Originally published in Electronic Intifada

Sourced via: https://countercurrents.org/2026/05/when-the-lights-go-out-the-rats-come-out/

Palestine Action activists sentenced as 'terrorists'

 

JOHN McEVOY and DANIA AKKAD
12 June 2026

Four Palestine Action activists have been sentenced to a combined total of more than 25 years in prison, after a judge ruled that they could be treated as terrorists.

Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio, and Fatema Zainab Rajwani were convicted of criminal damage last month in relation to a raid against an Israeli arms factory in Bristol in 2024.

At their sentencing hearing at Woolwich Crown Court today, Judge Johnson agreed to apply a “terrorism connection” to the case under the Sentencing Act. 

Head and Kamio were given six years, Rajwani received five years and eight months, and Corner was sentenced to eight years and eight months. 

Gasps could be heard from the public gallery as the sentences were delivered, as some family members cried. They pounded the windows of the gallery as the defendants were led out.

Hundreds of protesters were also gathered outside, and could be heard chanting throughout the day from inside the courthouse. 

During the hearing, defence lawyers accused the prosecution of submitting key evidence “at the 59th minute of the 11th hour”.

That evidence related to how the defendants allegedly smashed 40 military assets including over a dozen drones, causing over £1.2m worth of damage.

Defence counsel said the submission allowed no time to review the report and admitting it as evidence would amount to “a gross affront to the integrity of the criminal justice system”.

What the court heard

That evidence – a witness statement from a consultant who assessed what Elbit’s insurance company was required to pay after the raid – was submitted to the court just eight days before the hearing.

It marked the first time that an assessment of the damage at the factory was submitted from a witness that was not anonymous and was, therefore, potentially admissible.

Defence counsel Tom Wainwright explained that the report had been submitted so late that he had not even had the opportunity to discuss it with his client, Samuel Corner.

“It would be wholly wrong and unfair for my Lord to allow the prosecution to rely on this highly contentious evidence for sentencing purposes and admit it for the purposes of determining the value of the damage caused”, said lead defence counsel Rajiv Menon.

Judge Johnson nonetheless accepted the evidence as admissible but said he would only use it to form a narrow view of the damage incurred at the factory.

The latter half of the hearing focussed on how the word “serious” is properly defined with reference to the “serious damage to property” clause of the Terrorism Act.

Defence lawyers argued that the term “serious” was intended by parliament to imply something “sinister” such as causing “excessive fear” or “harm” towards persons.

Menon also raised concerns that there is a pattern of courts finding “terrorism connection” in cases involving minorities or those supporting them, but not white supremacists.

Neither Thomas Mair, the neo-Nazi murderer of British MP Jo Cox, nor Thomas McKenna, who was procuring firearms to provoke a “race war” were given criminal convictions with a “terrorism connection”, he noted.

“So apparently, stockpiling weapons in preparation for a race war against Muslims and immigrants does not amount to an act of terrorism”, Menon declared to the court.

Verdict

Judge Johnson’s ruling was made with reference to the statutory definitions of terrorism in the Terrorism Act.

They include causing “serious damage to property” for political reasons with the aim of influencing a government, international organisation, or sector of the public.

He found that “serious damage to property” was caused to Elbit’s factory in Bristol.

This damage extended to “very many individual items of advanced technological equipment as well as to the fabric of the building”, Johnson said, adding that the evidence provided late to the court shows “more than £1m paid out by insurers”.

It was unnecessary to determine “precise economic value of damage” as he was “sure it amounted to serious damage”, he continued.

Johnson further ruled that the protest action was not designed to influence the Israeli government.

However, he said it was intended to influence the UK government as well as a sector of the public defined as employees of and companies linked to Elbit Systems.

There was a “strategy of carrying out actions against Elbit and businesses linked to it in order to intimidate it into ceasing operations or cause the government to prevent it from operating”, Johnson said.

He was also “sure” that the action was for the purpose of “advancing a political or ideological cause” in line with the defendants’ beliefs surrounding Israel and Palestine.

In concluding his verdict, Johnson said: “I am sure each of the defendants’ offences involved serious damage to property, was designed to influence the UK government and to intimidate a section of the public, and was for the purpose of advancing a political cause”. 

Major concerns

The ruling comes amid major concerns surrounding the weaponisation of terrorism laws against pro-Palestine activists.

One of the UK’s leading human rights lawyers, Michael Mansfield KC, said before the hearing that sentencing protesters as terrorists would be a “constitutional threat”.

Mansfield was among a group of 50 lawyers and legal experts to write an open letter which stated: “It’s particularly insidious for the obvious reason that they weren’t allowed to explain their motivation to a jury – that was denied them.

“And yet the state says ‘we’re actually going to elevate what the offences are’ when a jury might well not have convicted had they known they were going to be treated as terrorists”.

The letter continued: “The fundamental principle is you should not be convicted on any statutory offence for which you have not been charged”.

Former Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell also signed a letter condemning this “unjust” and “cruel” use of terrorism laws in advance of the hearing.

Defence lawyers are expected to appeal this decision.

 

Source: https://www.declassifieduk.org/palestine-action-activists-will-be-sentenced-as-terrorists/

BioNTech Shuts Down Its Biggest mRNA Plant in Asia - Because Nobody Wants the Jab Anymore

Aussie17
Apr 02, 2026

Well, well, well… look who’s quietly closing the doors on their shiny new mRNA empire.

Remember when Singapore was going to be the gleaming hub of the “mRNA revolution” in Asia? Yeah, that dream just got quietly euthanised.

BioNTech, the same German outfit that partnered with Pfizer to push the experimental genetic shots we were all forced to take, has announced it is shutting down its flagship Singapore vaccine production plant by early 2027.

This was their biggest mRNA manufacturing bet in Asia. Acquired in 2022 from Novartis in Tuas Biomedical Park, it was supposed to be their Asia-Pacific regional headquarters. Fully built-out, state-of-the-art, ready to churn out several hundred million doses of mRNA vaccines per year.

They hyped it hard. Singapore’s Economic Development Board cheered. Jobs were promised. The future was bright. The jab was going to “save the world” and make them billions.

Fast forward four years.

The plant is being closed.
The workers are being shown the door.
The reason? Massive, catastrophic collapse in COVID-19 vaccine sales.

No more boosters. No more demand. Lots of damaged heart. 300% increase in ALS Drug sales on a post vaccinated population. The public finally got the message that the “Safe and Effective™” miracle was nothing but a snake oil scam.

And just in case you thought this was some isolated Singapore problem… think again.

This week, Pfizer and BioNTech quietly halted a massive U.S. clinical trial for their updated COVID-19 vaccine targeting healthy adults aged 50 to 64. The study, which aimed to recruit 25,000 to 30,000 participants, was shut down because they simply couldn’t get enough people to sign up.

Recruitment struggles? That’s putting it mildly. Over 80% of people who showed even slight interest failed pre-screening. The companies admitted they couldn’t generate the “relevant post-marketing data” they needed. No safety issues, they claim, just nobody showing up for another round of the jab even if you’re paying them.

 

This isn’t some small side study. It was meant to support approval and recommendations for a huge chunk of the adult population. Now? No data for the upcoming FDA advisory meeting. No clear path forward for this age group. The mRNA machine is literally running out of willing guinea pigs.

Just like the ALS drug sales spiking 300% and the stroke drug sales jumping 200% that I showed you in Part1 and Part 2, the data from Singapore never lies. High vax rates, excellent tracking, perfect little petri dish for spotting what the jab is really doing long-term.

And now even BioNTech itself is admitting, in the coldest possible way, that the party is over, both in the factory and in the clinic.

The mRNA cash cow that made them tens of billions during the pandemic has dried up. The “excess capacity” they built in Singapore is now… well… excess. Because nobody in their right mind wants another shot of whatever that DNA Contaminated stuff actually was.

Singapore, the same country that ranked #1 in the world for excess deaths while boasting 92%+ vaccination rates, now watches another pillar of the mRNA fantasy quietly fold.

The jab that keeps on giving… just keeps on taking.

Taking lives.
Taking jobs.
Taking manufacturing plants.
Taking the last scraps of credibility from the entire “this is the future of medicine” narrative.

What a triumph!

Signing off for now
A17

 

Source: https://www.aussie17.com/p/breaking-biontech-shuts-down-its