By Craig Murray | October 2, 2026

Rather than abandoning the plainly nuts Fairford narrative, Burnham and his government are doubling down on the claim it is an Iranian terror plot.

It remains quite possible the men were indeed fuel thieves, simply stealing fuel from farms. They appear to have been equipped for fuel theft and all they were carrying was petrol. It is worth a footnote that there is a very real history of US military personnel, and indeed British personnel, selling military fuel from bases. Stolen red diesel meant for HMS Bulwark fuelled fairground rides throughout England, which I think is rather lovely. But if the Fairford Five were fuel thieves, farms are more probable as the target.

We should pause here to acknowledge that USAF Fairford is falsely designated RAF Fairford, itself a propaganda lie, just like “RAF Lakenheath” or “RAF Mildenhall”. The UK is full of US military bases, on which US law applies. (My birth certificate gives my father’s occupation as “Clerk USAF”. He was employed at Mildenhall at the time).

It is a classic example of state propaganda that the petrol discovered in the Fairford vans was described by counter terror police as a potential accelerant for a bomb.

Well yes, petrol is that. It has however, rather more obvious uses too. The same technique was used at the height of the War on Terror propaganda in the Great Easter Bomb Plot, that never was. Police rounded up and arrested many young Muslims across the Manchester region, which was front-page news. They were all later released without charge.

But at the time of arrest the police announced they had found a potential bomb-making ingredient in a kitchen.

Well, they had. It was a bag of sugar. Sugar is indeed a potential bomb-making ingredient. Yet most of us have a bag in the kitchen. At least it did not take the police ten days to find the bag of sugar in the kitchen, unlike when they searched Charlie Rowley’s flat for a vial of novichok, and it took them ten days to “find” a bottle of perfume sitting on the kitchen counter.

For Fairford, on balance I think a false flag gone wrong is a little more likely than just fuel thieves. We know the men had no bombs and no guns, which makes the terrorist narrative rather hard for the government to sustain. But if they were patsies set up in a false flag, there would be plenty of things already on the base that go bang which could have been used to create the “terrorist incident” around them.

Two key points make me think this was a false flag. Firstly the lady farmer who called 999 was adamant there were more men that the five arrested and bailed. The others would have been the spycops – agents provocateurs – who would have been quietly spirited away from the scene. That also fits with the released information that it was one of the men who phoned in a warning about the “attack”.

It looks to me like a false flag spectacular had been planned, with US involvement as claimed by Trump and possibly Israeli knowledge as claimed by Netanyahu. This operation by the security services was viewed as over the pay grade of local police (who might be inconveniently honest) who were not in the picture. It all went horribly wrong for the government when an alert local farmer called the local police, and when a participant also called it in. That could have been one of the recruited “terrorists” who got cold feet, or one of the agents panicked they had lost contact with their line of command.

The use of recruited patsies to carry out false flags is now better understood. I have been writing about it since before the Newburgh bomb plot which was a particularly egregious example. In the United States there has been more awareness of and reaction to agent provocateur incited plots than in the UK.

For anyone sceptical, here is a summary of Newburgh:

In May 2009 the FBI arrested four poor men from Newburgh, New York, and announced it had foiled a plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes at Stewart Air National Guard base. The plot, the targets, the inert bombs and the disabled Stinger missile were all supplied by the Bureau. The recruiter was Shahed Hussain, a Pakistani fraudster who had become an informant to avoid deportation after a driving-licence scam. Paid nearly $100,000, he spent more than a year fishing at a Newburgh mosque, posing as a wealthy Jaish-e-Mohammed agent, before latching onto James Cromitie, a Walmart stocker and petty drug dealer.

Hussain offered heavenly reward and as much as $250,000. Cromitie brought in three others: Onta Williams, David Williams and Laguerre Payen. Hussain drove them across a state line to inspect the fake weapons, which federalised the charges and carried a 25-year minimum. They were convicted in 2010.

The sentencing judge, Colleen McMahon, said she believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that there would have been no crime except that the government instigated it, planned it and brought it to fruition. In 2023 she ordered the release of three of them, calling it an FBI-orchestrated conspiracy and writing that the real lead conspirator was the United States. She freed Cromitie in 2024 on the same basis, describing him as a small-time grifter with no history of violence and Hussain as a villain who had lured him with promises of both heavenly and earthly rewards.

The Golders Green ambulances arson was a classic of this false flag genre. Four young Muslims were recruited, in this case online rather than in person, by someone they never saw who was almost certainly a Mossad agent. They were offered money to attack the ambulances, which they did. The attack is then blamed on Iran through a claim on a Telegram channel on behalf of an “Iranian organisation”, Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, which is a Mossad fabrication.

HAYI first became known to the world through simultaneous press releases on 16 March by five Israeli government outlets in Israel, US and UK (including BICOM) and an article by the Israeli front “Foundation for Defending Democracy”. The FDD’s Nick Stewart travels with Kushner and Witkoff as part of the US negotiating team on the Middle East.

There are numerous reasons for doubting the real existence of HAYI. None of its material is in Farsi. All of its “attacks” have been minor arson attacks on pointless targets that hurt nobody. The grammar, calligraphy and imagery of its materials are all wrong.

The UK state itself has now debunked some of the Mossad HAYI narrative. On 29 April, when Essa Suleiman stabbed three men, the entire media blocked out the first Muslim victim and claimed an antisemitic terrorist attack on the two in Golders Green. The HAYI Mossad run “Iranian” Telegram channel immediately put out a statement claiming responsibility for the attack. But yesterday police and prosecution were forced to drop the claim it was a terrorist attack at all. The stabbing of the Muslim is charged as attempted murder, though still ignored by the media. So “HAYI” claimed responsibility for a non-existent terrorist incident.

A false flag can be, but is not necessarily, the state planting a bomb and then blaming someone else. It can be more complex – the state recruiting people to plant bombs. Those people may believe they are genuinely part of an ideological campaign, or may just be doing it for money.

The opaque Starmer rent-boy arson plot, in which Ukrainian male models burnt property associated with Keir Starmer, remains unclear, largely because any discussion of what lay behind the attacks was banned by the judge in the trial. But the media, with government encouragement, continually relays the story that the arsonists were recruited online by a man known as “El Money”. An interesting twist here is that the media constantly refer to him as Russian-speaking. But the evidence in court is that he spoke both Russian and Ukrainian.

Almost all adult Ukrainians can speak Russian. The number of Russians who speak Ukrainian is very small. Yet El Money is now routinely portrayed as Russian.

Which brings us to the whole question of Russian “hybrid attacks”, where we are asked to believe the narrative of the security services of states whose leaders are openly promoting war with Russia, about desultory and mysterious attacks. The rather sorry Leipzig drone is a good example. We have a more recent claim of Russian arson from Estonia, a state which has instituted massive discrimination against the 29% of its population who speak Russian.

Not only has Estonia closed Russian schools, libraries, theatres, churches, cinemas and university courses, it even refuses passports to people born and bred in Estonia, whose parents were born and bred in Estonia, if they cannot speak Estonian. That is totally contrary to numerous UN, Council of Europe and OSCE instruments on protection of minority linguistic rights.

It is one thing to insist on language qualification for citizenship for new immigrants. Many countries do. It is quite another thing to deny citizenship to a native linguistic minority. Estonia was part of Russia from 1721 to 1919 and of the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1991. It has Russian speakers.

So I decline to believe the Estonian government on Russian “hybrid attacks”.

Which brings us to the amazing “FlyDubai” hijacking and the heroic plumber who knew how to rescue a plane from a death dive because he watched Air Crash Investigation.

There are real problems with this narrative. One is that the plane is said to have dived approximately 15,000 feet in about 30 seconds. This is said to be confirmed by independent flight trackers.

The force was so enormous that the rudder ripped off the plane.

Picture a dive of 500 feet – that is more than a 40 storey building – per second. Picture that. 500 feet in a second. Imagine yourself falling that fast. The forces would be enormous inside the cabin. Anybody not strapped in would be lifted right out of their seats and probably hit the ceiling. Many would be injured. Any unfastened object, including major ones like food trollies, would be hurled about with great force. Baggage lockers would come unlocked as the weight of the bags inside was hurled up. Remember this dive ripped the rudder off. It would be impossible for anyone not strapped into their chair to keep their footing or seat.

We have a great many videos from on board the plane but nothing like this is shown. No video shows this kind of extreme situation, and the cabin at the end of the flight is remarkably undisturbed.

There is also a problem with that flight-tracking data. As pointed out by this commercial pilot on CNN, a plane can’t easily slow down in mid-air. He is disbelieving of how quickly the flight trackers show the plane returning to normal speed. He is also deeply sceptical of the ability to control the plane after the rudder came off due to loss of hydraulic fluid, and of the chances of the airframe staying together. Now compare that to the lack of cabin tumult.

I have seen it argued that if you entered the dive very gently and carefully without sudden change of pitch, and exited it similarly smoothly, then you would avoid extreme G-forces and the cabin might be relatively undisturbed. Even if so, it is hard to imagine the kind of smooth transition into the dive in the circumstances we are told were occurring in the cockpit, with the co-pilot deliberately putting the plane in a death dive while fighting with the pilot.

The smooth transition out of the dive in the official story was achieved by a plumber who knew what to do from watching Air Crash Investigation. I don’t think I need to comment on that.

We will never find out the truth about FlyDubai. The plane diverted to Saudi Arabia. The copilot who is being painted as an Islamic extremist will be isolated there and tortured by the Saudis. Netanyahu has already said Israel will join the interrogation. Do not believe any confession or evidence from the co-pilot.

The plane was a Boeing, so the USA will join the initial investigation alongside UAE, Saudi Arabia and Israel. A more potent coalition of Zionist evil does not exist. We will certainly have faked flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder evidence coming from that shower.

I do feel something has snapped in people’s willingness to believe official narratives. The Skripal narrative was even more crazy than any of these, but most people still trusted government. Thankfully that faith has been seriously shaken.

By Urs Maurer-Lambrou | Forum Geopolitica | October 1, 2026

Six million people. That is the total combined population of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—fewer residents than live in greater London. Yet these three border states now set the tone of foreign policy for a union of 450 million, telling Berlin, Rome, and Madrid how dangerous the world is and how much Western taxpayers must pay to fix it.

One Crown to Another

The Baltic national story likes to skip 1721, which is a shame, because it’s where the modern map starts. That year Peter the Great finished the Great Northern War with the Treaty of Nystad. Sweden handed over Estonia, Livonia, Ingria and part of Karelia; Russia evacuated most of Finland and paid Sweden two million silver thalers. Historians still argue about what the money was for. Western reference works tend to call it compensation, while the Russian Presidential Library’s account says flatly that Russia paid it for the acquisitions. Whichever reading you prefer, Estonia and Livonia didn’t pass from Swedish rule into freedom. They passed from one crown to another. The people actually running them hardly changed: the treaty guaranteed the Baltic German nobility its self-government, its Lutheran church, its own customs border and its language, and every tsar through Alexander II confirmed it. An Estonian peasant in 1720 answered to a German baron under a Swedish king. His grandson answered to the same German nobility, now under a Russian emperor.

Lithuania got there differently, as half of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, absorbed in the partitions. Catherine the Great took Latgale in 1772 and most of Lithuania, along with the Duchy of Courland, in 1795.

The point isn’t the borders; plenty of European states are young. The point is the story. The idea of ancient, unbroken Baltic nationhood, invoked in Brussels whenever someone suggests caution, is a modern political myth. Independent statehood lasted about twenty years between the wars. The current stretch began in 1990–91.

Not One Inch

The next chapter opens in Moscow on 9 February 1990. The Berlin Wall had been down for three months. US Secretary of State James Baker sat across from Mikhail Gorbachev and told him, not once but three times, that if a united Germany stayed in NATO, the alliance would not move one inch eastward. Helmut Kohl said much the same the next day. It wasn’t a slip of the tongue. Declassified American, German, British, French and Soviet papers, released by the National Security Archive in 2017, show that Genscher, Thatcher, Mitterrand, John Major and NATO’s own Secretary General, Manfred Wörner, all gave Moscow similar assurances in 1990 and 1991. None of it went into a treaty.

That turned out to be very convenient. In 1990 NATO had 16 members. In 1999 it took in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. In 2004 it swallowed seven more countries in one go, among them Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, three former Soviet republics. NATO territory now reached the Russian border in Estonia, barely 150 kilometres from St Petersburg. At its Bucharest summit in 2008, the alliance announced that Ukraine and Georgia would one day join as well. Finland and Sweden followed after 2022. Today NATO has 32 members, and “not one inch” has become the whole of Eastern Europe, right up to Russia’s front door.

The Baltic Grip on Brussels

Three small countries shouldn’t be able to set the tone for a union of 450 million. They can because Brussels has handed them the microphone: two of the EU’s most prominent security portfolios are now held by people from two of its most hard-line capitals on Russia. Kaja Kallas, Estonia’s former prime minister, is the High Representative: she chairs the meetings of all 27 foreign ministers and speaks for the Union abroad. Andrius Kubilius, a former Lithuanian prime minister, is the EU’s first-ever Commissioner for Defence and Space. No voter anywhere in Europe chose either of them for those jobs.

Kallas comes from a family that has always been close to power, whoever held it. Her father went from Communist Party official in Soviet Estonia to Reform Party founder to EU Commissioner: what Germans call a “Wendehals”, a turncoat. In May 2024, weeks before her nomination, she said a Russian defeat would not be a bad thing and remarked that Russia is made up of many nations. Germany’s Volksstimme read it as floating Russia’s break-up, an odd thing for Europe’s next top diplomat to muse about a nuclear power. Over both of them sits Ursula von der Leyen, whom EU leaders produced at the last minute in 2019 and Parliament confirmed with 383 votes, nine more than she needed. She arrived from the German defence ministry, where she’d left behind a Bundeswehr failing its readiness targets and a parliamentary inquiry into consultancy contracts.

Barking on Command

It would flatter the Baltic governments to think they run the show. They don’t. They bark because it suits the people holding the leash. In Brussels, home to the headquarters of both the EU and NATO, the big capitals write the policies. The Baltic capitals enforce them at the border, say the things Berlin and Paris would rather not say out loud, and take the first swing. That is why the EU’s diplomatic megaphone went to Tallinn and its defence portfolio to Vilnius. Nobody appointed Kallas and Kubilius to calm things down.

Kaliningrad in 2022 showed how it works. Brussels drew up sanctions on Russian steel; Lithuania enforced them to the letter and halted rail shipments to the exclave in June. Moscow called it a blockade, and Nikolai Patrushev, then head of Russia’s Security Council, warned that Lithuanians would feel the consequences. Within a month the Commission issued new guidance letting the goods through again. Vilnius had done exactly what it was told, and was left standing alone in front of Moscow while Brussels quietly backed away.

Three years later it was Estonia’s turn. Brussels had spent months announcing crackdowns on Russia’s “shadow fleet” of ageing, poorly insured tankers. On 13 May 2025 the Estonian navy tried to stop one of them, the Jaguar, in international waters off Tallinn. The crew ignored the orders and sailed on to the Russian port of Primorsk. Estonia said a Russian Su-35 then entered its airspace for about a minute with its transponder off, and NATO scrambled a fighter to meet it: a Portuguese F-16, from a country 3,000 kilometres away. Nobody fired, this time.

Meanwhile the big dogs are being moved into position behind the small ones. In 2023 Berlin pledged a full armoured brigade for Lithuania, about 4,800 soldiers, at a new base at Rūdninkai near the Belarusian border. It formally began operating in 2025 and is due at full strength by 2027. It is the first permanent deployment of German troops abroad since the Second World War.

European Values, Baltic Edition

After 1991, Latvia and Estonia gave automatic citizenship only to pre-1940 citizens and their descendants. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet-era residents, most of them Russian speakers and many born in the country, became “non-citizens” with alien passports and no vote in national elections. Riga insists that “non-citizen” is a legal status, not an ethnic label, yet about two-thirds of Latvia’s non-citizens are ethnic Russians. UN and OSCE bodies criticized the system for years. At the start of 2026, non-citizens were still 8.7% of Latvia’s population, by the Latvian government’s own figures.

It has got tighter since 2022, not looser. Schools in Latvia have moved to Latvian-only teaching and Estonia’s are following. Latvia told Russian citizens with permanent residence, many of whom had lived there for decades, to pass a basic Latvian test or risk losing that status. And on 26 March 2025 Estonia’s parliament voted 93 to 7 to amend the constitution so that only Estonian and EU citizens can vote in local elections. On paper it covers all non-EU nationals. In practice it was aimed at about 80,000 Russian citizens, plus Belarusians, and everyone knew it. Stateless “grey passport” holders were given one last local election, in October 2025, before losing their vote as well.

It’s hard to take a lecture on European values from governments that treat their own long-term residents this way.

Who Pays the Bill

Vilnius loves to talk in percentages, because percentages flatter small countries. Lithuania pledged 5% of GDP for defense in 2026 before Donald Trump had even made his 5% demand in January 2025, and its 2026 budget comes in at 5.38%. In May 2025 the three Baltic defence ministers told every ally to match it. In June, at The Hague, NATO made 5% its target for 2035.

Forget the percentages. Look at the money. Lithuania’s entire 2026 defense budget is €4.79 billion. At 5% of its economy, Germany would be spending more than €200 billion a year, over forty times as much. Even the core 3.5%, before the extra 1.5% for infrastructure and other defence-related spending, would come to around €150 billion. For Italy the full target would mean more than €100 billion a year, for Spain around €80 billion, and both are already carrying some of the heaviest public debt in Europe. The Baltic states set the bar; the big economies get the bill.

Spain, at least, had the nerve to say no. Pedro Sánchez called the 5% target “unreasonable,” refused to sign up to it, and left The Hague with an exemption: 2.1% of GDP and not a cent more. Trump called Spain “a very low payer.”

Nobody Asked the Voters

Were Western Europeans ever asked if they wanted this? Only by pollsters. In 2015 Pew found 58% of Germans, 53% of French and 51% of Italians against using military force to defend a NATO ally attacked by Russia. In a survey Pew published in 2020, majorities in Germany, Italy and Spain still said no. Support for the EU paying for weapons for Ukraine has slid nine points, from 65% in early 2023 to 56% this spring. In France, backing for arms deliveries dropped 18 points, from 65% in March 2022 to 47% this February. By late 2024, YouGov found a negotiated peace between Ukraine and Russia preferred over fighting on by 55% of Italians, 45% of Germans and 43% of the French. A Politico poll last December found French and German adults leaning toward scaling support back. And this summer, majorities in Germany and France said no to Ukraine joining the EU as a full member.

That isn’t Germany, France, Italy or Spain itching for a wider war. It’s a public that was never asked, has grown more sceptical every year since 2022, and is now being handed a bill it never ordered: a target worth more than €200 billion a year in Germany alone, cheered on from Vilnius and signed off in Brussels by officials no voter chose.

When the Money Runs Out

The Hague deal has a review built in for 2029. My prediction: by then, Spain won’t be the only country saying no. The money ran out years ago; what’s being spent now is borrowed. Germany even rewrote its constitution in 2025 so it could borrow for defence outside its own debt brake.

In 1721 Peter the Great settled the Baltic’s fate with a treaty and two million silver thalers. Three centuries later, the region’s future is still being decided by bigger powers doing the sums.

So, are Europe’s smallest nations dragging the continent into war? Not on their own. They do the barking; Brussels holds the leash. And Berlin, Rome and Madrid are being dragged along behind, towards a confrontation their voters never chose, paid for with money they no longer have.

Maybe that is the one hopeful part. The sooner the money runs out, the sooner voters in the big countries will force a change of course, and the sooner Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius go back to being what their size always made them: footnotes in European foreign policy. That may be what finally keeps Europe out of a direct war between nuclear powers.

 Al Mayadeen | October 2, 2026

The European Union has begun assessing contingency scenarios in case German Chancellor Friedrich Merz leaves office or becomes increasingly focused on domestic political difficulties, Politico Europe reported Friday, citing diplomats and European officials.

According to the report, governments in two European countries have held internal discussions on how a possible end to Merz’s chancellorship could affect EU policymaking.

The discussions reportedly reflect growing concern in Brussels over political instability in Germany following major electoral setbacks for Merz’s governing conservatives and renewed tensions within the coalition.

Recent regional elections have weakened Merz politically. Reuters reported that the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffered its worst-ever result in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in September, failing to clear the threshold to enter the state parliament, while the Alternative for Germany (AfD) made further gains.

Berlin’s Political Turmoil Raises EU Concerns

Politico Europe reported that officials consider two scenarios particularly disruptive: Germany being left without an effective leader or a right-wing government emerging in Berlin. However, the report said both scenarios are viewed as unlikely in the short term.

Under Germany’s constitutional system, a chancellor cannot simply be replaced by a successor appointed by the governing party. The Bundestag elects the chancellor, meaning any leadership change would require the necessary parliamentary majority.

For Brussels, the political uncertainty matters because Germany remains the EU’s largest economy and a central actor in negotiations over major bloc-wide policies.

Reuters reported Thursday that Merz is facing growing domestic pressure, while speculation about possible successors has emerged within the CDU. Merz has nevertheless rejected calls to step aside and continues to pursue his government’s policy agenda.

EU Budget Dispute Adds Pressure

Merz’s domestic political position could also affect negotiations over the EU’s next seven-year budget.

According to Politico Europe, Germany is part of a group of member states, including the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, and Finland, seeking substantial reductions to the proposed long-term EU budget. The report said officials believe domestic political pressure could encourage Berlin to take a tougher negotiating position in Brussels.

The budget dispute comes as EU governments debate competing priorities, including defense, industrial investment, infrastructure, and support for Ukraine.

Military Buildup Remains Central to Merz’s Agenda

Despite the political pressure, Merz’s government continues to prioritize strengthening Germany’s armed forces. Reuters reported that Berlin’s debt-financed investment drive is supporting both infrastructure and military expansion, while the government has committed hundreds of billions of euros to rebuilding the armed forces.

Merz has also reaffirmed Germany’s support for Ukraine and called for stronger European military capabilities, while accusing Russia of conducting hybrid attacks against Europe. Moscow has rejected such accusations.

Any change in Berlin’s political leadership would therefore carry implications beyond Germany, potentially affecting EU budget negotiations, defense policy, relations with Russia, and the bloc’s wider strategic direction.