Foreign Minister Maksim Ryzhenkov has expressed hope that his country's membership application will be approved.

The next wave of BRICS expansion will be announced at the group's annual summit in the Russian city of Kazan in October, Belarusian Foreign Minister Maxim Ryzhenkov has claimed.

Speaking on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, Ryzhenkov predicted that BRICS could add at least ten new members, while expressing optimism that his own country's application for membership will be approved.

Ryzhenkov told RIA Novosti:

"The first wave of enlargement, as we all expect - those who have submitted such applications - will take place at the Kazan summit. Russia is formulating the list of these countries that will be in the first wave of enlargement."

As the current holder of the BRICS chairmanship, Russia will host the group's annual summit in Kazan from October 22 to 24. Earlier this month, Belarusian First Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Lukashevich said his country is in the first pool of BRICS candidates, along with Algeria, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Bolivia, Venezuela, Vietnam, Cuba, Honduras, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Morocco, Nigeria, Palestine, Senegal, and Thailand.

Iran has launched ballistic missiles toward Israel, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on Tuesday evening, instructing civilians to head to shelters when they hear alert sirens.

"A short while ago, missiles were launched from Iran towards the State of Israel," IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari announced in a video message. "Upon hearing a siren, you must enter a shelter and remain there until further notice."

The IDF sent out the same message on its Telegram channel, on X, and via the Israeli media.

Two weeks before the 2020 presidential election, Politico published a letter signed by 51 former intelligence officers falsely claiming that a New York Post story about the infamous Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. The letter was organized by Antony Blinken of the Biden campaign and former CIA Director Michael Morell. The CIA cleared it for publication.

Many Americans were outraged over this letter because it represented former intelligence officers, several with high-paid government contracts, misusing their profession to meddle in a U.S. presidential election and mislead the American public.

Undeterred by the considerable blowback generated by the 2020 Hunter Biden laptop letter, the Harris campaign has organized a similar letter against President Trump in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election that claims he is unfit to be commander-in-chief and endorses Kamala Harris.

Dugin argues that the assassination of the Hezbollah leader is the beginning of the End of the World.

The confirmed death of Hezbollah leader Sheikh Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is a colossal blow to the entire structure of the Axis of Resistance.

The term "Resistance" is used to refer to the most radically anti-Israeli forces in the Middle East. These include, primarily, the Yemeni Houthis (the Ansar Allah movement, which controls the northern part of Yemen), the Syrian forces led by Bashar al-Assad, the Palestinian movement as a whole (primarily Hamas), and the most radical, predominantly Shia, forces in Iraq.

The Axis of Resistance developed under the significant influence of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was its main pillar. The deceased Hassan Nasrallah, as the leader of Hezbollah, represented the vanguard of anti-Israeli resistance for the entire Islamic (primarily Shia) world. Therefore, the blows that Israel has dealt to Hezbollah in recent weeks, ultimately killing its leader, represent a powerful strike against the entire Axis of Resistance.

Why are we still asked to pretend Joe Biden is running the country? Every time he shows his face, he reminds the American people how much his cognition has declined and how he can't be trusted to finish a speech or remember which foreign leader he's introducing, let alone manage the daily affairs of running the country. The man was forced to bow out of his campaign after he embarrassed the national press corps and Democratic Party elites during his disastrous debate against Donald Trump in June.

But Democrats and political operatives in the corporate media aren't as concerned about Biden making us an international laughingstock until Jan. 20, 2025.

On Sept. 20, after not holding a Cabinet meeting for an entire year, Biden gave brief opening remarks and then made the unprecedented move to hand the reins over to his wife, leaving the world asking, "Who's in charge here, again?"

The next day, during a summit with the prime ministers of Japan, Australia, and India, Biden forgot the name of Indian PM Narendra Modi. An awkward moment ensued as Biden stood at the podium, confused and waiting to be told what to do next, while the world leaders patiently sat silent.

The news that the border-free Schengen Zone is unravelling is scary news for the 420 million citizens living within the passport-free zone. What's a hundred times scarier is the purposeful deconstruction of relations going on underneath. Most importantly, recent moves by Germany and proposals that remind us of past horrors will undoubtedly spell disaster.
Your PAYPERS Pleez

As unbelievable as it may seem, the German police are behind a movement to begin checking the social media accounts of Schengen visa applicants when processing their applications. Many readers will imagine stern men in knee-length leather coats demanding "papers" with thick Aryan accents. While the Germans claim the measures are meant to prevent fraudsters from entering the region/country, the Schengen News report tells us there is more going on than some affable cops hunting immigrants. The takeaway from the publication spills the beans:

It has also been recommended that risk profiles be created. [and] Such recommendations have been made to put an end to visa fraud and better verify applicants.

So, the EU, led by the Germans, has set out on a course to create an oligarchy or dictatorship. In the United States, the same movement is at hand

The report also discusses how so-called decision-makers would filter through social media and other open-source resources to determine if a person should face more "intensive examination." No, I am not joking, and the report goes on to reveal German police will gather information (data) on visa applicants without their permission. According to the Germans, everything will be legal and above board.

The various stories about European border control issues are focused on immigrants, most predominantly those entering certain countries in the wake of COVID-19. Nowhere is there any mention of the millions of refugees driven to Europe by American/NATO/EU actions to create and perpetuate the regime changes Arab Spring brought about. For some experts, this avalanche of refugees descending on Europe was part of a larger plan for rearranging our world. This is another issue, but it's clear the EU, the Eurozone, and the Schengen Zone are in big trouble. Actually, this means big trouble for us all, given the broader implications. There is some pushback within the European community of nations, however. Dr Saila Heinikoski, a senior research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA), told Euronews:

"I doubt these (Schengen) countries are willing to remove their border control soon due to the signal it would send. The checks are often random and not very invasive, and I think they are maintained also for symbolic purposes: showing citizens, other EU countries and potential migrants that there is an exceptional situation in Europe that the government is tackling."

Foreign Secretary David Lammy launched into a weird rant against Russia, accusing it of the crimes Britain has committed.

There are intriguing and disappointing - though not surprising - continuities between Great Britain under the conservative Tories and the current iteration under a hardly less rightwing version of the Labour party. Crony corruption scandals that reveal the British political elite as comically greedy and petty are already erupting again. Ordinary people still face an unforgiving search for "austerity"; indeed, given recent Labour moves on the budget, for instance on the winter fuel allowance, affecting over ten million frequently vulnerable pensioners, the so-called "Left" is now outdoing the Right in cruelty toward the common man and woman. And the fairly new prime minister, Keir Starmer, is already as deeply unpopular as his predecessor Rishi Sunak was when he called the elections that predictably finished him off.

And then there is foreign policy. There as well, it is hard to spot a difference. It is true, we have just learned that, once, former Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson was seriously considering an "aquatic raid" (say that with a Churchill growl, please) on the Netherlands, a NATO ally, to seize Covid vaccines. We have not yet heard of similarly exotic plots laid by Starmer. But otherwise, same old, same old. The UK elite remains fatally addicted to a blind loyalty toward its special relationship with the US that sometimes could make even the Germans blanch with envy. And they know a thing or two about absolute submission.

Washington gave Israel the green light to mount an offensive, in contrast to its public calls for a ceasefire, sources have claimed

The US government quietly approved Israel's military campaign in Lebanon, despite publicly urging the Jewish state and militant group Hezbollah to seek a ceasefire, Politico has reported, citing insider sources.

Israel has waged a week-long bombing campaign in Lebanon, assassinating most of the Hezbollah leadership, and is in the process of what it describes as a "limited incursion" into its northern neighbor. Over 1,000 people, including many civilians, have been killed and over one million displaced.

Prior to the bombing and invasion, thousands of people in Lebanon were targeted by simultaneously exploding devices, which Israeli intelligence allegedly planted in preparation for an attack on Hezbollah.

US President Joe Biden on Monday reiterated his public calls for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, telling reporters at the White House: "I'm comfortable with them stopping."

However, Israel outlined its military strategy to Washington in broad terms in mid-September and received approval via senior US presidential advisers, Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk, Politico reported on Monday, citing two Israeli and four American officials.

In the contemporary world, as we all know, conflicts have lost the linear character of kinetic clashes between opposing armies. This phenomenon hasn't disappeared, but it has ceased to constitute the primary part of confrontations between opposing forces. In fifth-generation conflicts, even when there are clashes between armed forces, they are always preceded and accompanied by a myriad of other types of operations — psychological, cyber, and others — which facilitate the achievement of objectives by conventional forces. These other operations can even replace conventional forces when psychological operations achieve absolute success.

The U.S. would not be the unipolar hegemon if it had not long since mastered the subtleties of these forms of confrontation, which only in recent years have been better understood by counter-hegemonic forces.

This is why it is extremely curious when U.S. authorities indignantly denounce the "psyops" carried out by "malicious actors like Russia and China" against the U.S. population. Yet, it is a remarkable phenomenon, because, in fact, initiatives, projects, and departments focused on "combating disinformation by malicious actors" have been growing in recent years.

A symbol was shattered. A legend is born. The Resistance, more than ever, won't back down.

That was framed not by a Shi'ite, but by a Lebanese Christian leader, encapsulating how a true Political Islam icon is capable of transcending all - artificial - borders.

This decade, that I defined as The Raging Twenties, started with a murder: the - all-American - targeted assassination of Quds-Force leader Gen Soleimani and Hashd al-Shaabi commander Abu Mohandes just outside Baghdad airport.

Gen Soleimani, more than a symbol, was the conceptualizer of the Axis of Resistance. For all its setbacks, especially in the past few weeks, the Axis of Resistance is much stronger now than in January 2000. Soleimani - the martyr, the legend - left an unparalleled legacy that will never cease to inspire all the West Asian nodes of the Resistance.

The same will happen to Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. More than a symbol, he was the Face of the Axis of Resistance, extraordinary popular and respected all across the Arab street and the lands of Islam. For all its setbacks, especially in the past few weeks, the Axis of Resistance will be much stronger in the next few years than in September 2024.

Nasrallah - the martyr, the legend - leaves a legacy comparable to Soleimani's, to whom, incidentally, he was always in awe in military matters, and always learning. As a politician though, as well as a fatherly, spiritual source of wisdom, Nasrallah was peerless.

Now let's descend from the stars to the gutter.

An unredeemable serial war criminal and psychopathic genocidal, violating scores of UN resolutions, popped up at the UN General Assembly in New York and then ordered, from inside the building, yet another war crime: wiping out an entire block in southern Beirut with dozens of American bunker buster bombs, including the BLU-109 with a JDAM precision guiding system - leaving countless civilians still unaccounted for under the rubble, including Sayyed Nasrallah.

As the war criminal addressed the UN General Assembly, over half of the delegates staged a mass walkout: the hall was de facto nearly empty of real Global South diplomats. The remaining audience was presented with yet another trademark display of IQ-impaired "maps" featuring the "blessed" - Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt, Jordan, UAE - and the "cursed" - Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen.

A rabid, lowly interloper from Polish extraction - a complete fake - passing judgment on ancient civilizations does not even qualify as gutter-level trash.

History is replete with instances of entities which cannot be really qualified as proper nation-states. They are more like severe bacteriological infections. The only thing they specialize in is kill, kill, kill. Preferably unarmed civilians - as a terrorist tactic. Terribly dangerous, of course. History also tells us the only way they must be dealt with.