Russia Has Been Subsidising The Ukrainian Economy To The Tune Of Several Billion Dollars Each Year

The United Nations Condemns Israel’s Attack On Sleeping Children In School Building.

United Nations officials described the killing of sleeping children as a disgrace to the world and accused Israel of a serious violation of international law after a school in Gaza being used to shelter Palestinian families was shelled.
At least 15 people, mostly children and women, died when the school in Jabaliya refugee camp was hit by five shells during a night of relentless bombardment across Gaza.
More than 100 people were injured.
The UN said its officials had repeatedly given details of the school and its refugee population to Israel.

At the UN school the first shell came just after the early morning call to prayer, when most of those taking shelter were asleep, crammed into classrooms with what few possessions they had managed to snatch as they fled their homes.
About 3,300 people had squashed into Jabaliya Elementary A&B Girls’ School since the Israeli military warned people to leave their homes and neighbourhoods or risk death under intense bombardment.
Classroom number one, near the school’s entrance, had become home to about 40 people, mostly women and children.
The shell blasted through the wall, showering occupants with shrapnel and spattering blood on walls and floors.

Palestinians fled their homes after Israel warned that failure to do so would put their lives at risk.
Those at the Jabaliya school were among more than 200,000 who have sought shelter at UN premises in the belief that families would be safe.
Analysis of evidence gathered at the site by UNRWA led to an initial assessment that Israeli artillery had hit the school, causing “multiple civilian deaths and injuries including of women and children and the UNRWA guard who was trying to protect the site. These are people who were instructed to leave their homes by the Israeli army.”
( The Guardian, 31.07.2014 )  ..  theguardian.com

Cluster Bombs Used By Ukraine Kill Red Cross Employee.

A report drawn up by the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), based on interviews with witnesses and physical evidence, claims that cluster bombs have been used against the civilian population of Donetsk.
Use of this weapon is banned in 114 countries but not in Ukraine, Russia and the US, which did not sign the agreement banning its use in 2008.
According to information published on October 20, 2014 in the New York Times, which cites the aforementioned report, the Ukrainian army made ‘widespread use of cluster munitions in fighting in more than a dozen urban and rural locations’.
Human Rights Watch also claims that ‘evidence points to Ukrainian Government forces’ responsibility for several cluster munition attacks on Donetsk’, while also confirming that the International Red Cross employee killed on October 2, 2014 died as a result of being hit by cluster-bomb fragments.
( European Parliament, 07.11.2014 )  ..  europarl.europa.eu

Russia Has Been Subsidising The Ukrainian Economy To The Tune Of Several Billion Dollars Each Year.

The European Union is trying to bring Ukraine into the West without reference to economic reality or the willingness of European publics to bear the enormous costs involved, and at a time when the EU itself is in deepening crisis.
Russia is suffering badly as a result of Western economic sanctions – but Ukraine’s situation is far worse, with a predicted fall in GDP of 7% this year.
If this decline continues, the Ukrainian state will face collapse.

Throughout the 23 years since the end of the Soviet Union, too many members of the Western media and policy worlds have ignored or misrepresented key aspects of the Ukrainian-Russian economic relationship.
This allowed them in turn to ignore crucial features of the economic balance of power in Ukraine between Russia and the West.

In their zeal to denounce Russia for putting pressure on Ukraine over gas supplies, Western commentators usually neglected to mention that, through cheap gas and lenient payment terms, Russia was in fact subsidising the Ukrainian economy to the tune of several billion dollars each year, many times the total of Western aid during this period.

This allowed the same commentators not to address the obvious question of whether Western states would be willing to pay these billions in order to take Ukraine out of Russia’s sphere of influence and into that of the West.
Russia has also been responsible for preserving much of the Ukrainian economy.
Russia remains Ukraine’s largest partner, with trade in 2013 exceeding that with the whole of the EU.
( Anatol Lieven, 04.12.2014 )  ..  bbc.co.uk

Police Ignore Child Sex Abuse.

A senior police officer who warned that vulnerable children were being sexually groomed says she was ignored because her bosses were more interested in fighting car theft.
Detective Inspector Meriel Buglass, who headed a unit dealing with sex offences, claimed her superiors failed to act on her findings for eight months, during which girls continued to be abused.

Ms Buglass blames the ‘target driven culture’ that existed at Greater Manchester Police.
To meet performance targets, she says officers were urged to concentrate on ‘acquisitive’ crimes rather than sexual offences.
Details of how white children were groomed for sex by predominantly Asian gangs in Rochdale were included in a report Ms Buglass submitted in April 2010, which included a desperate plea for more resources.

Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk said, “The scandal of how police and other agencies failed children being raped on an industrial scale is getting worse every week. Police leadership have completely lost touch with ordinary people’s values”.
Ms Buglass, who ran Rochdale Police’s public protection unit, collated intelligence from many sources and sent her report to her superiors, who reported to Assistant Chief Constable Terry Sweeney.

The day after she submitted the report, she had a meeting with Superintendent Martin Greenhalgh.
But when she raised the subject, she claims he used words to the effect of, “If I choose to investigate it, we will”.
Ms Buglass claims she was told to concentrate on domestic violence because the crime ‘featured on performance targets’.
( Paul Cahalan and Ian Gallagher, The Mail on Sunday, 14.09.2014 )

Israeli Forces Accused Of Sexually Abusing Palestinian Children.

At least 600 Palestinian children were arrested in Jerusalem since June 2013.
Of these chlidren, nearly 40% were reportedly exposed to sexual abuse during arrest or investigation by the Israeli authorities, according to a report by the Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS).
The PPS says that the daily arrest campaigns constitute a collective punishment against Palestinian residents of Jerusalem.
Attorney with the PPS, Mufeed al-Haj, said that other violations were reported during the apprehension of children, including but not limited to night and predawn raids on family homes, physical and sexual abuse.
( IMEMC News, 21.11.2014 )  ..  imemc.org

The Prison System Is In Chaos After Government Cut Officer Numbers By 41%.

The number of officers at public-sector prisons in England and Wales has been cut by 41% in less than four years, figures obtained by the Howard League for Penal Reform reveal.
Research published by the charity shows that there were only 14,170 officer grade staff working in prisons run by the state at the end of June 2014.
There were more than 24,000 at the end of August 2010.
Cuts include 1,375 officer posts that were lost when 15 public-sector prisons were closed during the period.
The drop in officer numbers nationwide has coincided with a deepening prison overcrowding crisis and an alarming rise in the number of self-inflicted deaths in custody.

Frances Crook, Chief Executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said:
“The prison system is in crisis, and these figures reveal why. While the prison population has grown, officer numbers have been cut without any thought for the consequences. A shortage of governors makes matters even worse, because officers are being taken off the wings and asked to ‘act up’ to fill vacancies. Having made prison officers redundant, the Ministry of Justice is now apparently struggling to recruit. These are desperate times, and ministers are resorting to desperate measures.”

In July 2014, the Howard League warned that prisons were at breaking point as it revealed figures showing officer numbers had been cut in all prisons – public and private – by 30% in three years.
The charity’s findings were supported by the Prison Governors’ Association and the prison officers’ union, the POA, who urged the government to act.
Since then, the damaging impact of staff cuts has been highlighted in a series of inspection reports published by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons.
Safety concerns were raised in reports on Ranby, Glen Parva, Hindley, Isis, Wormwood Scrubs, and Swaleside prisons.
Today’s figures show how staffing levels are getting worse, not better, and how public-sector prisons have borne the brunt of the cuts.
( Howard League For Penal Reform, 20.10.2014 )  ..  howardleague.org

Virtually The Entire U.S. News Media Cooperated In Playing Down The Neo-Nazi Role In Ukraine.

Throughout the Ukraine crisis, the U.S. State Department and mainstream media have downplayed the role of neo-Nazis in the U.S.-backed Kiev regime, an inconvenient truth that is surfacing again as right-wing storm troopers fly neo-Nazi banners as they attack in the east.
The New York Times reported almost in passing that the Ukrainian government’s offensive against ethnic Russian rebels in the east has unleashed far-right paramilitary militias that have even raised a neo-Nazi banner over the conquered town of Marinka, just west of the rebel stronghold of Donetsk.
That might seem like a big story, a U.S.-backed military operation, which has inflicted thousands of mostly civilian casualties, is being spearheaded by neo-Nazis.

But the consistent pattern of the mainstream U.S. news media has been, since the start of the Ukraine crisis, to white-out the role of Ukraine’s brown-shirts.
Only occasionally is the word “neo-Nazi” mentioned and usually in the context of dismissing this inconvenient truth as “Russian propaganda”.
Yet the reality has been that neo-Nazis played a key role in the violent overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 as well as in the subsequent coup regime holding power in Kiev and now in the eastern offensive.

The brutality of these Ukrainian neo-Nazis surfaced again on May 2, 2014, when right-wing toughs in Odessa attacked an encampment of ethnic Russian protesters driving them into a trade union building which was then set on fire with Molotov cocktails.
As the building was engulfed in flames, some people who tried to flee were chased and beaten, while those trapped inside heard the Ukrainian nationalists liken them to black-and-red-striped potato beetles called Colorados, because those colours are used in pro-Russian ribbons.
“Burn, Colorado, burn” went the chant.

As the fire worsened, those dying inside were serenaded with the taunting singing of the Ukrainian national anthem.
The building also was spray-painted with Swastika-like symbols and graffiti reading “Galician SS,” a reference to the Ukrainian nationalist army that fought alongside the German Nazi SS in World War II, killing Russians on the eastern front.
The death by fire of dozens of people in Odessa recalled a World War II incident in 1944 when elements of a Galician SS police regiment took part in the massacre of the Polish village of Huta Pieniacka, which had been a refuge for Jews and was protected by Russian and Polish partisans.
Attacked by a mixed force of Ukrainian police and German soldiers on Feb. 28, 1944, hundreds of townspeople were massacred, including many locked in barns that were set ablaze.

As extraordinary as it was for a modern European state to hand ministries over to neo-Nazis, virtually the entire U.S. news media cooperated in playing down the neo-Nazi role.
Stories in the U.S. media delicately step around this neo-Nazi reality by keeping out relevant context, such as the background of coup regime’s national security chief Andriy Parubiy, who founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine in 1991, blending radical Ukrainian nationalism with neo-Nazi symbols.
Parubiy was commandant of the Maidan’s “self-defence forces.”
( Robert Parry, 11.08.2014 )  ..  commondreams.org