NATO Expert Denounces Western Coverage Of The Ukraine Invasion

A Crime Against Humanity, Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians.
In May 2021, Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighbourhood in illegally-occupied East Jerusalem, began protesting against Israel’s plan to forcibly evict them from their homes to make way for Jewish settlers.
Many of the families are refugees, who settled in Sheikh Jarrah after being forcibly displaced around the time of Israel’s establishment as a state in 1948.
Since Israel illegally occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank in 1967, Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah have been continuously targeted by Israeli authorities, who use discriminatory laws to systematically dispossess Palestinians of their land and homes for the benefit of Jewish Israelis.
In response to the demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah, thousands of Palestinians across Israel and the illegally-occupied Palestinian territories held their own protests in support of the families, and against their shared experience of fragmentation, dispossession, and segregation.
These were met with excessive and deadly force by Israeli authorities with thousands injured, arrested and detained.
The events of May 2021 were emblematic of the oppression which Palestinians have faced every day, for decades.
The discrimination, the dispossession, the repression of dissent, the killings and injuries – all are part of a system which is designed to privilege Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinians.
Amnesty International’s new investigation shows that Israel imposes a system of oppression and domination against Palestinians across all areas under its control.
This amounts to apartheid as prohibited in international law.
Laws, policies and practices which are intended to maintain a cruel system of control over Palestinians, have left them fragmented geographically and politically, frequently impoverished, and in a constant state of fear and insecurity.
( Amnesty International, 01.02.2022 )  ..  amnesty.org

British governments have for decades sought to prevent a full inquiry into an horrifically abusive boys’ home in Belfast which helped promote their intelligence agenda.
Political and religious leaders in Northern Ireland apologised for the horrific sexual and emotional abuse young boys in care homes had suffered over many years.
But on one notorious home, the subject of a cover-up that remains unexplained, there was silence.
The public apology was recommended more than five years ago in the final report of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry, led by a former judge, Sir Anthony Hart.
Hart revealed shocking levels of abuse in state, church, and charity-run homes that first came to light more than 30 years ago.
However, in common with senior police officers investigating the care homes, Hart brushed aside damaging, and well-documented allegations of MI5’s knowledge of the abuse.
Crucial questions about why the abusive practices were ignored for so long remain unanswered.

Kincora, a boys’ home in East Belfast was run by William McGrath, founder of Tara, a shadowy far-right group.
McGrath, who died in 1992, was jailed for four years in 1981 for abusing young boys.
Kincora was not mentioned in the church and political leaders’ apology.
Hart’s report criticises MI5 officers for consistently obstructing police investigations by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and the destruction of MI5 files relating to Kincora.
But it fails to mention MI5’s successful pressure on the then Thatcher government against setting up a full public inquiry with witnesses bound by oath and subjected to cross-examination.
British ministers, state agencies, and government lawyers have repeatedly blocked attempts by the RUC and courts in Northern Ireland to question MI5 officers.
( Richard Norton-Taylor, 31.03.2022 )  ..  declassifieduk.org

Jeffrey Epstein Linked To Israeli Intelligence Sex Trafficking And Sexual Blackmail Operation.
Renewed attention has been brought to the allegations that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking and sexual blackmail operation was run on behalf of Israeli military intelligence.
Those claims revolve around statements made by a former Israeli military intelligence official turned public relations consultant Ari Ben-Menashe.
Ben-Menashe claimed to have seen Jeffrey Epstein in the office of Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, several times in the 1980s.
At the time, Ben-Menashe was in close contact with Robert Maxwell regarding their mutual work with Israeli military intelligence.
Maxwell, in addition to heading a media empire and being a one-time member of U.K. parliament, was a longtime operative for Israeli intelligence, so much so that his 1991 funeral was attended by no less than six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence as well as several high-ranking Israeli politicians and prime ministers.
Epstein was introduced to Ben-Menashe as having been pre-approved by leading figures in Israel’s military intelligence directorate, known as Aman.
In addition, Ben-Menashe revealed his understanding of why Epstein was eventually shepherded into acting as a professional sexual blackmailer on behalf of Israeli military intelligence.
Per Ben-Menashe, there were concerns among Israeli intelligence figures that, following the Reagan Era, a new president would push for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians, something those officials sought to avoid by any means necessary.
( Whitney Webb, 13.12.2019 )  ..  unz.com

Boris Johnson’s Tory Government Accept Donations From Oil And Gas Companies.
The UK Conservative Government face fresh sleaze allegations after it emerged MPs and the party have taken almost £1.5million in donations from the energy industry under Boris Johnson.
The Prime Minister has been warned his climate crisis credentials lie in tatters as his party has been “swimming in oil and gas money” since he took power.
An analysis of Electoral Commission records shows donations stretching back to 2019 linking the party with oil and gas magnates.
It comes as consumers are braced for massive hikes in their energy bills and as the PM attempts to lead efforts for the world to tackle climate change at the COP26 summit, while facing a flurry of sleaze claims levelled at his MPs since the resignation of Owen Paterson.
Donors to the Tories include Alexander Temerko, the Russian-born owner of Aquind.
The energy boss and his company handed various MPs, including former Cabinet ministers Liam Fox and Jeremy Hunt, and the current Chief Secretary to the Treasury Simon Clarke, and the party, more than £350,000.
Ian Taylor, the former chief executive of Vitol, who reportedly turned down a knighthood offered by former PM David Cameron, has also handed the party some £115,000 since 2019.
The company he led until 2018 is a major trader and supplier of North Sea crude oil.
Weeks before the general election in 2019, Mercantile & Maritime gave the party some £500,000.
The commodities trading firm was founded by oil broker and billionaire Murtaza Lakhani.
Matthew Ferrey, part of an elite group of Tory donors and a former executive with oil trader Vitol, has given the party £675,000.
It includes £15,000 to an individual MP, the former minister and “ Brexit hardman” Steve Baker.
( Rachel Wearmouth, 11.11.2021 )  ..  mirror.co.uk

Israel Accused Of Torturing Palestinian Children.
An Israeli human rights organisation has accused the government of torturing Palestinian children, after it was discovered that child prisoners were kept in outside cages during winter.
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel published a report saying children suspected of minor crimes were subjected to “public caging,” abusive interrogations, threats and sexual violence.
Israel is the only nation to automatically and systematically prosecute children in military courts that lack basic and fundamental fair trial guarantees.
( Al Arabiya News, 20.05.2020 )  ..  alarabiya.net

In Israel, Tens Of Thousands Of Pedophiles Operate On A Daily Basis.
Tens of thousands of pedophiles operate in Israel every year, leading to about 100,000 victims annually, according to an Israeli pedophile monitoring association.
The Matzof Association, an organisation that actively keeps track of reports on pedophiles in various media and centralises the data monthly, states that in July 2020 alone, 22 cases of pedophilia were reported in Israel and brought to the attention of the media.
The vast majority go unreported.
“In Israel, tens of thousands of pedophiles operate on a daily basis without any problem,” said Eliran Malki, head of the Matzof Association.
( Celia Jean, 04.08.2020 )  ..  jpost.com

Refugees Sent To Rwanda From Israel Flee To Europe.
Rwanda’s previous involvement in receiving African deportees from Israel raises serious concerns over whether – even with UK funding – it has the resources or even willingness to host deportations.
Of about 4,000 people estimated to have been deported by Israel to Rwanda and Uganda under a “voluntary departure” scheme between 2014 and 2017, almost all are thought to have left the country almost immediately, with many attempting to return to Europe via people-smuggling routes.
In addition, at least one deportee still in Rwanda, tracked down by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper in 2018, described being destitute and living on the streets of Rwanda’s capital, Kigali.
Critics at the time, including the rights group Amnesty International, also pointed out that Israel had a far smaller number of refugees than Rwanda, and was a much wealthier country.
Amnesty said Israel was “foisting its responsibility on countries who have only a fraction of the wealth and resources”, an argument that would also apply to the UK.
( Peter Beaumont, 17.01.2022 )  ..  the guardian.com

UK Invests In New Military Space Strategy.
The UK has released a new military space strategy and announced plans to invest $1.9billion in low Earth orbit satellites and other technologies over the next decade.
“This significant investment will help to ensure the U.K. remains at the forefront of space innovation and one step ahead of our competitors,” Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said.
The new space strategy calls attention to the threats of anti-satellite weapons and emphasises the role of the UK’s private space industry in developing capabilities for the military and fuelling economic growth.
The Minister for Defence Procurement Jeremy Quin said most of the new funding is for a global constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit that will provide surveillance and intelligence for military operations.
The program, called Istari, also will fund advanced laser communications technology for high-speed delivery of data from space to Earth.
In a related project called Minerva, the UK Space Command will experiment with a network of satellites that can autonomously collect, process and disseminate data from UK and allied satellites to support military operations, Quin said.
“Istari and Minerva will be the building blocks” of a future military space architecture, said Quin.
“We are starting with a small number of satellites, we’ll be looking to bring together packs of satellites that can work together, and learn how you control a formation of satellites,” he said.
UK military labs will launch small satellite experiments to test new designs and concepts such as software-defined spacecraft.
( Sandra Erwin, 01.02.2022 )  ..  spacenews.com

NATO Expert Denounces Western Coverage Of The Ukraine Invasion.
The problem is not so much who is right in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, but how our leaders make their decisions.
It starts with those who for the past eight years have been talking to us about “separatists” or “independence” from the Donbass.
It’s wrong.
The referendums conducted by the two self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in May 2014 were not ”independence” referendums, as some unscrupulous journalists claimed, but ”self-determination” or ”autonomy“.
The term “pro-Russian” suggests that Russia was a party to the conflict, which was not the case, and the term “Russian speakers” would have been more honest.
Moreover, these referendums were conducted against the advice of Vladimir Putin.
In fact, these republics did not seek to separate from Ukraine, but to have a statute of autonomy guaranteeing them the use of the Russian language as an official language.
Because the first legislative act of the new government resulting from the overthrow of President Yanukovych, was the abolition, on February 23, 2014, of the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko law of 2012 which made Russian an official language.
This decision caused a storm in the Russian-speaking population.
This resulted in fierce repression against the Russian-speaking regions (Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Lugansk and Donetsk) which began in February 2014 and led to a militarization of the situation and a few massacres (in Odessa and Mariupol, for the most important).
At the end of summer 2014, only the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk remained.
In 2014, NATO was responsible for the fight against the proliferation of small arms, and they were trying to detect Russian arms deliveries to the rebels in order to see if Moscow was involved.
The information that they received came practically all from the Polish intelligence services and did not “match” with the information from the OSCE: in spite of rather crude allegations, they did not observe any delivery of arms or supplies from the Russian military.
The rebels were armed thanks to the defections of Russian-speaking Ukrainian units which crossed over to the rebel side.
As the Ukrainian failures progressed, the entire tank, artillery and anti-aircraft battalions swelled the ranks of the autonomists.
This is what drives the Ukrainians to commit to the Minsk Accords.
But, just after signing the Minsk 1 Accords, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko launched a vast anti-terrorist operation against Donbass.
Poorly advised by NATO officers, the Ukrainians suffered a crushing defeat at Debaltsevo which forced them to commit to the Minsk 2 Agreements.
It is essential to recall here that the Minsk 1 (September 2014) and Minsk 2 (February 2015) Agreements provided for neither the separation nor the independence of the Republics, but their autonomy within the framework of Ukraine.
Those who have read the Accords (they are very, very, very few) will find that it is written in full that the status of the republics was to be negotiated between Kiev and the representatives of the republics, for an internal solution in Ukraine .
This is why since 2014, Russia has systematically demanded their application while refusing to be a party to the negotiations, because it was an internal matter for Ukraine.
On the other side, the Westerners – led by France – systematically tried to replace the Minsk Accords with the “Normandy format”, which brought Russians and Ukrainians face to face.
However, let us remember, there were never any Russian troops in the Donbass before February 23, 2022.
( Jacques Baud, NATO expert, 09.04.2022 )  ..  scheerpost.com