Iran and the Taliban exchanged heavy gunfire last week on the Islamic Republic's border with Afghanistan, killing and wounding troops while sharply intensifying rising tensions between the countries.  

Both sides accused each other of shooting first.

The clash came amid an escalating dispute between Kabul and Tehran over the Helmand River, which is a vital source of water for both sides, supporting agriculture, livelihoods and ecosystems in the region.

Afghanistan and Iran have been at loggerheads over the sharing of river water for over a century.

The Helmand is Afghanistan's longest river. It originates near Kabul in the western Hindu Kush mountain range and flows in a southwesterly direction through desert areas for a total of about 1,150 kilometers (715 miles) before emptying into Lake Hamun, which straddles the Afghanistan-Iran border.

Celebrity journalist A.J. Benza appeared on a recent episode of “Ask Dr. Drew,” during which he claimed that actor and comedian Jamie Foxx became seriously injured after getting “vaccinated” for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) – and his family is allegedly covering it all up.

Foxx allegedly became blind and partially paralyzed after taking a COVID injection that was forced on him by a film studio in order to work. Ever since then, it has been a coverup city as far as Foxx’s health is concerned.

“I lost a couple friends in the last couple of years who got the injection,” Benza told Dr. Drew during the segment. “One of my best friends died last Saturday – paratrooper, ex-special forces, 51-years-old, in the best shape of his life – just goes to sleep and doesn’t wake up, black guy.”

“I think that this ties into the Jamie Foxx theory. I worked my butt off to get a story about what happened to Jamie Foxx because it was all baloney what they were reporting – he’s playing Pickleball, he’s responding in Instagram – no he’s not, it’s all lies.”

A US media outlet has rolled footage of a building collapse in the state of Iowa while doing a segment about a recent Ukrainian drone strike against the Russian capital.

The attack occurred earlier this week when several Ukrainian UAVs managed to penetrate Russia’s airspace and reach Moscow.

However, the segment about that attack that aired on Newsmax’s "The Record With Greta Van Susteren" featured footage of a partially-collapsed building in Davenport, Iowa.

A large "Tow-Away Zone" sign (written in English) clearly seen in front of the building made this situation particularly perplexing: while signs written in both English and Russian are not uncommon in Moscow, an English-only sign would be a very unusual sight.

The United States will soon open a small diplomatic mission in Norway that will be its northernmost in the world and only such facility above the Arctic Circle, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Thursday.

The move, which Blinken announced at a news conference in Oslo after attending a NATO foreign ministers meeting, comes as competition over the high north’s resources with Russia intensifies.

Blinken said the U.S. would open what is known as an “American Presence Post” in Tromsoe, which sits 350 kilometers (217 miles) north of the Arctic Circle. The post will open later this year and be staffed by a single U.S. diplomat with the title of “consul.”

“We're here to work with like-minded allies to advance our vision of a peaceful, stable and cooperative Arctic,” Blinken said before meeting Norway's foreign minister whose country is preparing to assume the chairmanship of the Arctic Council, which is headquartered in Tromsoe.

More than 100,000 people have fled violence in Sudan to neighbouring Chad and the numbers could double in the next three months, the U.N. refugee agency said on Thursday.

The near seven-week conflict has pushed Sudan into a humanitarian crisis and turned one of Africa's greatest cities - the three-part capital of Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri on the confluence on the Blue and White Niles - into a war zone.

"As the rainy season is coming within the next few weeks, we require massive logistics to move refugees from border areas... We need to establish immediately new camps and extension of existing camps," UNHCR Chad representative Laura Lo Castro said.

One of the poorest countries in the world, Chad was already hosting close to 600,000 refugees before conflict broke out in Sudan in April.

Sanaa’s National Salvation Government (NSG) in Yemen accused the Saudi Arabian authorities of preventing Yemeni Muslims from performing their Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, Al-Mayadeen reported on 31 May.

Fouad Naji, the Deputy Minister of Guidance and Hajj Affairs, said that “the Saudi regime has used the Hajj as a pressure tool throughout the years of aggression and blockade.”

The Minister of Guidance and Hajj Affairs in Yemen, Najib Al-Ajji, also described the obstruction as politically motivated. He also disclosed that around 24,000 Yemenis had attended their pilgrimage this year, adding that Saudi Arabia and its coalition allies have created several obstacles for Yemeni pilgrims, such as increased costs.

Ajji pointed out that Yemeni pilgrims are only allowed to attend Hajj if they enter the kingdom from areas in Yemen controlled by the Saudi-backed government, and that Saudi Arabia must facilitate Hajj pilgrimages without any politicized pushback.

The US and Saudi Arabia on Thursday announced a suspension of Sudan peace talks in the Saudi city of Jeddah, citing “repeated serious violations” of the short-term ceasefire agreement by Sudan’s warring parties.

In a joint statement, Washington and Riyadh criticised the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for their violations of the ceasefire, which have blocked the delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians.

"Once the parties make clear by their actions that they are serious about complying with the ceasefire, the facilitators are prepared to resume the suspended discussions to find a negotiated solution to this conflict," they added. 

The suspension is largely symbolic, given that Sudan's army announced earlier on Thursday that it was pulling out of ceasefire discussions with the paramilitary RSF. 

Former US President Donald Trump said Thursday he will "shift gears" and put the United States in order within six months if he is reelected in the 2024 presidential election.

"So I heard [Florida Governor Ron] DeSantis saying: 'Oh, I get eight years, I get eight years.' He gets what. You don't need four, and you don't need eight. You need six months. Within six months, I said, things can be done," Trump told an Iowa town hall when asked how much time he would need to deal with the border crisis, and get prices, inflation and crime rates in the country down.

"We gonna drill. We gonna get our energy down. When the energy comes down, other things come down. And we're gonna take care of things. We gonna immediately close up the border."

In Brief: This first-hand report on a major leak along the U.S.-Mexico border shows how thousands of illegals, many from hostile military regimes and fanatic jihadists, pass unchecked and unchallenged through a vast Indian reservation into the Biden Democrat election fraud capital of Maricopa County/Phoenix, Arizona. While the DHS-INS remains proudly certain of its air-tight border checkpoints, a gaping hole in the incomplete Trump border wall is allowing thousands of illegals, many from hostile dictatorships, to infiltrate into the United State along a 60-mile southern stretch of the autonomous Tohono O’odham (Indian) Nation, which proudly remains outside U.S. law while siphoning off American taxpayers dollars, and no doubt secretly collect “toll fees” from Cartel coyotes (smugglers of illegal migrants). To help readers get a feel for the desert terrain, this report is penned in the first person and is based on my Memorial Day weekend drive from California through Arizona to New Mexico.

In a move that has many folks scratching their heads, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has renewed its push for the People’s Garden Initiative which now includes registering vegetable gardens nationwide. According to the USDA, the move is to foster a "more diverse and resilient local food system to empower communities to address issues like nutrition access and climate change." But those who have been following the USDA closely for years know that they couldn't care less about your health and nutrition.

To register your garden with the USDA, one must meet several easily obtainable standards.

School gardens, community gardens, urban farms, and small-scale agriculture projects in rural, suburban and urban areas can be recognized as a “People’s Garden” if they register on the USDA website and meet criteria including benefitting the community, working collaboratively, incorporating conservation practices and educating the public.

Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s decision to send the police to quell the ethnic Serb demonstrations in three municipalities in the north of Kosovo—Zvecan, Leposavic, and Zubin Potok—was ill-advised at best for several reasons.

First, although the municipalities are a part of Kosovo and the mayors have the technical right to enter municipal buildings, doing so at this juncture when tensions with the north are so high is a provocative step that was neither necessary nor wise.

Second, sending the police force to quell the demonstrations was a completely unjustified measure, knowing that the mere presence of Kosovo’s police could instigate violent resistance, and Kurti should have known that the ethnic Serbs in the north will not be intimidated, especially given their dominance in that area.

Third, although technically the election was free and fair, the fact that the vast majority of Serbs—95 percent—announced in advance that they would boycott the election means the mayors were elected by a meager 3.7 percent, which by any standards is not legitimate and inconsistent with democracy, where a majority rules.

Having cast Kosovo’s lot with the EU and the US, for Prime Minister Kurti to send the police to the predominantly-Serb area in the north, without coordination with KFOR, has severely undermined his position with both the EU and the United States. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was very clear when he said

“We strongly condemn the actions by the Government of Kosovo that are escalating tensions in the north and increasing instability. We call on Prime Minister Kurti to immediately halt these violent measures and refocus on the EU-facilitated Dialogue.”

Former intelligence officer Jeffrey Prather has warned that the Deep State intelligence community (DSIC) is again conducting false flag operations. He issued the warning during the May 26 episode of his Brighteon.TV program “Prather Point.”

Prather himself disclosed that he has been a victim of the DSIC, which is made up of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It is part of the global cabal trying to run the world by means of the Pilgrim Society, Bilderberg Group and the United Nations. (Related: FBI admits collusion with CIA and NSA to spy on Americans.)

According to Prather, Americans are now seeing the victimization and fake racial hatred and division script being played out by the Deep State together with the Left and the Republicans in name only.

Prather also touched on the supposed “Nazi supporter” who rammed the White House security barriers. According to a May 23 report by POLITICO, 19-year-old Sai Varshith Kandula was arrested for “intentionally” crashing a U-Haul truck into a barrier on the evening of May 19. Officers from the Secret Service and the U.S. Park Police took him into custody.

Western countries openly support the Ukrainian authorities' policy to physically exterminate ethnic Russians, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a commentary on Thursday.

"On the whole, the West openly supports Kiev's policy of physical extermination of ethnic Russians. It tacitly nods in approval when Ukrainian functionaries promise to exterminate the population of Crimea. Now the Westerners themselves have begun to talk openly about the extermination of civilians in Russia," Zakharova said.

She noted that "neo-Nazi sentiment and the desire to contribute to an escalation of the Ukrainian conflict are stronger than ever in Europe."

"It is to be regretted that Westerners, including, paradoxically enough, Germans, do not learn anything from history," she said.

In this connection, she recalled the "blatantly fascist statement" by US Senator Lindsey Graham: "Russians are dying… Best money we’ve spent."

US advocacy group America First Legal (AFL) has released a new package of emails that challenge US President Joe Biden's prior statements that he knew nothing about his son Hunter's ties with foreign business people.

The emails are dated from December 2009 to June 2010, the group said, adding that they had been provided by the National Archives at its request. They include emails sent by Hunter's ex-business partner Eric Schwerin to top assistants of Joe Biden, then vice president in Barack Obama's administration.

"Hunter's business partner, Eric Schwerin, emailed the Office of the Vice President about a 'China Lunch' a couple of months before [former Chinese President Hu Jintao's] official visit to the United States. Despite Joe Biden’s denial that he was aware of Hunter’s business dealings with China, the National Archives redacted this email because its 'Release would disclose confidential advice between the President and his advisors, or between such advisors,'" AFL said.

Ron DeSantis faces a tough fight to beat Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. Attorney, pundit, and writer Tyler Nixon said that the DeSantis campaign's weaknesses were his lack of charisma and his image as the anti-Trump establishment candidate.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' presidential run is cursed by endorsements from Republican 'Never-Trumpers' says an attorney.

The outspoken conservative announced his entry into the Republican primary race last week in a glitch-plagued Twitter webcast that was widely mocked.

He faces an uphill battle to overcome former president Donald Trump's hugely overwhelming poll lead among registered Republican voters for a shot at challenging Democrat President Joe Biden in 2024.

House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer moved to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in criminal contempt of Congress on Tuesday after the agency refused to provide a subpoenaed document potentially implicating US President Joe Biden.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has refused to provide a form that "describes an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions," as per James Comer, R-Ky.

According to Larry Johnson, a veteran of the CIA and the State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism, the information in the FD-1023 form would require criminal charges to be filed against the incumbent president.

"It's just that simple," Johnson told Sputnik. "I think the evidence is conclusive that [Joe Biden and his son Hunter – Sputnik] have been involved with bribery and with activities that are taking advantage of Biden's position in government. It is corruption on a scale that is frankly astonishing. (…) [The FBI is] doing everything they can to try to cover for the president."

The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a creation of former Republican Pres. George W. Bush’s regime, is setting the stage for the next major false flag attack on the nation, which will more than likely be blamed on Russia.

CBS Mornings, a corporate media fake news program, suggested in a recent broadcast that the scapegoat will probably be Russia-supporting “right-wing extremists” targeting the country’s energy grid – even though we know that the actual culprit will be the U.S. government.

DHS documents are already framing the narrative that mythical right-wing extremists “adhering to a range of ideologies will likely continue to plot and encourage physical attacks” on the nation. Or perhaps it will be Russia directly that takes down the American power grid to create widespread chaos.

Reports suggest that all it would take to cause a nationwide blackout is the destruction of just nine key power substations, which could be targeted simply through hacking – no physical attack necessary.

An Ohio police chief has expressed concern about the alarmingly high number of children who have gone missing in Cleveland recently.

As many as 27 children were reported missing in the area over just two weeks at the beginning of May, according to John Majoy, chief of police of Newburgh Heights, a suburb about five miles south of Cleveland.

Majoy, who also serves as board president for the organization Cleveland Missing, called the year 'extraordinary' in terms of the unprecedented levels of reported missing children.

Speaking to Fox News Digital, Majoy said the cases of missing children between the ages of 12 and 17 remained unusually high through the month of May.

'For some reason, in 2023, we've seen a lot more than we normally see, which is troubling in part because we don't know what's going on with some of these kids, whether they're being trafficked or whether they're involved in gang activity or drugs,' he told the outlet. 

Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga has warned that the European Union has become a stumbling bystander of history and is increasingly unable to resolve the challenges of its citizens. Varga blames the malaise partly on the absence of political leadership. She believes that the bloc is run by think tanks and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which dictate how it should be led. Meanwhile, Clare Daly – an Irish MEP – similarly stated recently in the EU Parliament that “the paranoid imaginations of the security sector think tanks that parade here day after day” are able to dictate policies based on the “flimsiest of evidence.”

NGOs have long been used as an instrument to gain influence in the civil society of various nation states. The US has been an innovator in developing cutouts which it funds and ensures are often also staffed by people linked to official Washington. Eventually, the EU adopted the same practice, albeit in a different way, mainly focused on Europe itself. As a result, state-funded NGOs are now increasingly manipulating Western policies.

As think tanks and NGOs increase their influence over EU policymaking, it begs the question: What are the consequences of outsourcing political leadership to these entities?

Time is running out on truth, the telling of which is being criminalized.

In his Introduction to the 1946 edition of Brave New World, Aldous Huxley noted that the greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by dong something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects, by lowering what Mr. Churchill calls an ‘iron curtain’ between the masses and such facts or arguments as the political bosses regard as undesirable, totalitarian propagandists influence thought more effectively than by lying.

Churchill was speaking of the Iron Curtain being lowered over the Soviet Empire by Stalin. Today the Iron Curtin is being lowered over the “free” Western peoples by their “democratic” governments, their “democratic” media, and their “democratic” universities and school systems.  If you are not permitted to know the truth, you cannot speak it.

Elon Musk spent a large part of his fortune to free Twitter from censorship only to find that the EU will ban Twitter from EU member states unless Musk accepts EU censorship of truths unwelcome to the EU’s agendas.

The dark money network led by conservative Supreme Court architect Leonard Leo financed the nonprofit that bankrolled a misleading text message campaign pretending a Kansas ballot measure would “give women a choice,” when it actually would have eliminated state abortion protections.

New tax documents hint at how Leo’s network has been quietly working to influence abortion policy in the states utilizing his historic $1.6 billion dark money fund, in the wake of the Supreme Court decision last year overturning Roe v. Wade and ending federal protections for abortion rights. As President Donald Trump’s judicial adviser, Leo helped select three of the six justices making up the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority.

Leo’s network donated $1.7 million to CatholicVote Civic Action, a conservative Catholic advocacy group, between July 2021 and June 2022, according to a new tax return obtained by The Lever.

While the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation trial is now over, the mission to achieve justice over alleged war crimes committed by Australian service members in Afghanistan is still in its infancy.

The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times won a landmark defamation case on Thursday brought by Roberts-Smith after the court found they had proven he was a war criminal, murderer and bully.

Neil James, the executive director of the Australia Defence Association, says the damning defamation judgment against Roberts-Smith would “help clear the air in the public debate” about war crimes in Afghanistan.

“A lot of people have been in denial, promoting the nonsense that because no one has been convicted we can’t say whether war crimes occurred,” James said.

The wheels of justice and public debate have ground on, well beyond the confines of the Federal Court at Sydney’s Queens Square, where the defamation action was fought.

China’s special envoy for Eurasian affairs Li Hui wrapped up a 12-day European tour that took him to Ukraine, Poland, France, Germany, Brussels and Russia on a mission to make clear Beijing’s position on the Ukraine war.

Observers said the main purpose of Li’s trip, which concluded on Friday, appeared to be a search for common ground between China and Europe in their approaches towards the war, and while his talks were unlikely to bring about a ceasefire, the tour had raised Beijing’s profile as a peace broker in the conflict.

Li’s first stop was Kyiv, where he met Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky and other key officials. He told them there was no panacea for the war and urged all parties to create conditions for peace talks.

The South Korean government will overhaul the country's emergency alert system, news agency Yonahp reported on Thursday, after an erroneous message tied to North Korea's satellite launch this week led to confusion and complaints.

The Office for Government Policy Coordination, the interior ministry and the Seoul metropolitan government will discuss improvements, the report said, citing a senior government official.

The warning system will be updated to provide information such as "who, when, where, what, how and why" so as to allow a calm response from the public, a presidential official was quoted as saying.

NATO has prepared a secret action plan in case of a military confrontation with Russia, Responsible Statecraft columnist Ian Davis wrote.

Thousands of pages of secret military plans are to be offered for approval at the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius, Davis said.

The documents were developed behind closed doors by permanent military representatives at NATO headquarters in Brussels. No preliminary coordination works were conducted.

The North Atlantic Alliance is guided by a whole "family" of military plans, the publication said.

After the drone attacks on Moscow and the Moscow region, Russia has obtained a full legal right to deliver a strategic or tactical nuclear blow on Ukraine. This right is enshrined in the foundations of Russia's state policy in the field of nuclear deterrence. Simply put — in Russia's nuclear doctrine.

"In the heat of discussions of the Ukrainian UAV attack on Moscow many missed out a very important point. The media reported about an attempted drone attack on a target in the village of Vlasikha,” military experts of Mayday expert project said.

The central command post of ground-based strategic nuclear forces and headquarters of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces are located in Vlasikha.

The document "On fundamentals of the state policy of the Russian Federation in the field of nuclear deterrence" (Paragraph 19) refers to "enemy's impact on critical state or military facilities of the Russian Federation, the failure of which will lead to the disruption of retaliatory nuclear forces."

It goes without saying that an attack on the headquarters of strategic nuclear forces is an action that may lead to "the disruption of retaliatory nuclear forces."

The recent G7 summit should be understood as firstly, the shaping of a battlespace in the ‘War of Narratives’ whose principal ‘front’ today is the Team Biden insistence that only one ‘reality’ — the US-led ‘Rules’ ideology (and it alone) – can predominate. And, secondly to underline pointedly that the West is ‘not losing’ in this war against the other ‘reality’. This other reality is the multivalent ‘otherness’ that self-evidently is attracting more and more support around the world.

Many in the West are simply unaware of how fast the geopolitical tectonic plates are shifting: The original plate bifurcation (the failed financial war declared on Russia), already has led to a building wave. Anger is growing. People now no longer feel alone in rejecting western hegemony – they “no longer care”.

In just the week that preceded the G7 summit, the Arab League literally ‘went multi-polar’; It quit its former pro-US automaticity. The embrace of President Assad and the Syrian government was both the logical consequence to the secondary tectonic-plate shift set in motion by China with its Saudi-Iranian diplomacy — a revolution which Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) then logically extended to the entire Arab sphere.

Sanctions!

Officially, it is ”acknowledged” by the US and the EU that it is “not possible” to decouple China.

Neocons don’t think so.

It may be costly to decouple China, but definitely not impossible. And Neocons don’t care about heavy costs, not even for their own Western societies. That is the Blinken concept of “Trade Denial” from Blinken’s 1987 book “Ally vs. Ally”. The cost paid by trade denial for the West’s own societies will be worth it to bring down the enemy.

The US enemy back in 1987 was the Soviet Union, today it is China. Neocons don’t care that Germany with Mercedes, BMW, and Audi will lose billions on sanctions. Weakening Germany will only be a side-benefit for US Neocons.

Neocons also don’t care that Qualcomm will lose sales in China and that Apple will have to get their phones produced in India or elsewhere.

As for Chinese rare minerals and solar cells, the equivalence to Russian oil is obvious – make exceptions to embargo and put a price cap on Chinese exports. Sanction China completely and make a few exemptions only where strictly necessary.