Microsoft helping Israel spy on millions of Palestinians since 2021: Report
Israel’s notorious Unit 8200 was given access to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform for use in storing recordings of phone calls made by Palestinian civilians
AUG 7, 2025, https://thecradle.co/articles-id/32391
Israel has been using a
Microsoft cloud platform to store massive amounts of data and intelligence on Palestinians in both the occupied West Bank and Gaza, according to a new investigation carried out by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and The Guardian.
The investigation reveals that Microsoft’s chief executive met in 2021 with the commander of Israel’s notorious Unit 8200 – the military intelligence unit involved in the pager terror attacks against Lebanon and other covert operations across the region.
Unit 8200 chief Yossi Sariel convinced Microsoft’s Satya Nadella to grant Israeli military intelligence access to a “customized and segregated area” inside the Azure cloud platform, according to The Guardian.
It then began building “a sweeping and intrusive system that collects and stores recordings of millions of mobile phone calls made each day by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.”
Microsoft says its chief executive was unaware of what data would be stored on the platform. Yet the report cites a cache of leaked Microsoft documents and interviews with nearly a dozen employees of the company and of Unit 8200 – revealing the storage of everyday communications and data on the daily lives of regular Palestinian civilians.
Three Unit 8200 sources said the platform helped pave the way for many deadly airstrikes in Gaza, and Israeli army operations in the occupied West Bank.
Other sources say Tel Aviv needed Microsoft due to a lack of storage space and computing power to carry out its espionage plans.
Israel hoped to intercept, record, and store “a million calls an hour,” according to intelligence sources.
The system was designed to be placed on Microsoft servers under layers of security developed by the company with directives from Unit 8200.
According to the leaked documents, droves of sensitive information are inside the company’s data centers in Ireland and the Netherlands.
The Guardian reported earlier this year that Israel relied on Microsoft tech for its genocidal campaign against Gaza. An internal review carried out by the company claimed “no evidence” that its Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems or cloud platforms were used for harm.
“The company had held conversations with Israeli defense officials and stipulated how its technology should be used in Gaza, insisting Microsoft systems must not be employed for the identification of targets for lethal strikes,” a company source told The Guardian this week.
Unit 8200 sources confirmed, however, that “intelligence drawn from the enormous repositories of phone calls held in Azure had been used to research and identify bombing targets in Gaza.”
“When planning an airstrike on an individual located within densely populated areas where high numbers of civilians are present, officers would use the cloud-based system to examine calls made by people in the immediate vicinity,” they added.
Israel has relied heavily on western tech firms for mass surveillance and attacks on Palestinians.
In March, +972 Magazine and Local Call revealed that Unit 8200 developed a ‘Chat GPT-like’ tool programmed to compile massive collections of intercepted Palestinian communications.
The tool was trained to understand colloquial Arabic and uses large amounts of Palestinian phone calls and text messages obtained through surveillance.
“The IDF has become increasingly dependent on the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, and Google to store and analyze greater volumes of data and intelligence information for longer period,” Israeli sources told The Guardian in January this year.
Advanced facial recognition technology has also played a leading role in the forced disappearance and abduction of scores of Palestinians in Gaza by Israel.
Earlier this year, Google announced plans to acquire the Israeli cloud security startup Wiz in a $32 billion deal. The Israeli startup was founded by and consists of members of Unit 8200.
Last year, Google fired dozens of employees after they staged a series of sit-in protests across the US to oppose Project Nimbus, which aims to provide the Israeli army with advanced AI and cloud services.
Ukraine hacks Russian submarine as Moscow expands Arctic presence
Ukraine claims to have pulled off a major hacking operation, obtaining
classified data on a new Russian nuclear submarine and revealing potential
vulnerabilities as Moscow intensifies its military presence in the Arctic.
Times 3rd Aug 2025, https://www.thetimes.com/world/russia-ukraine-war/article/ukraine-hacks-russian-submarine-as-moscow-expands-arctic-presence-2tmwc8dn5
US, UK in secret talks with Ukrainian officials to ‘replace Zelensky’: Report
Three years into the war with Russia, the Ukrainian president has experienced his fortunes turn amid heavy human losses on the battlefield and intense Russian assaults.
JUL 29, 2025, https://thecradle.co/articles/us-uk-in-secret-talks-with-ukrainian-officials-to-replace-zelensky-report
Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has revealed that US and British officials recently held a meeting in the Alps with top Ukrainian officials to discuss “replacing” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
According to a statement made available to TASS, the meeting involved Andrey Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president’s office, Kirill Budanov, chief of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, and Valery Zaluzhny, the country’s ex-commander-in-chief who is now Ukraine’s ambassador to London..
“The Americans and the British announced their decision to propose Zaluzhny to the Ukrainian presidency. Yermak and Budanov ‘snapped a salute,’ while securing promises from the Anglo-Saxons to let them keep their present positions, as well as to take their interests into account in the course of making decisions over other personnel issues,” TASS reports.
The Ukrainian participants were reportedly promised they would retain their positions and influence over future personnel appointments following Zelensky’s ouster.
The SVR said Yermak helped prepare the ground for Zaluzhny by persuading Zelensky to weaken Ukraine’s anti-corruption bodies. Zelensky signed the new law, but Ukrainian MPs said the measure has not appeared on the parliament’s official website.
According to the SVR, the secret talks with UK and US officials aim to restructure Ukraine’s ties with the west, especially the US, and have established removing Zelensky as a prerequisite for continued western support in the war with Russia, after ceasefire talks between Moscow and Kiev in Istanbul last week ended without a breakthrough.
The SVR report comes a day after US President Donald Trump shortened his 50-day deadline for a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine to “10 or 12 days,” warning of stalled progress and approving expanded weapons shipments to Kiev, including US-made Patriot systems financed by European partners and coordinated through NATO.
Former Ukrainian prosecutor general’s adviser Andriy Telizhenko said the plan to replace Zelensky predated Donald Trump’s return to office, adding, “Once the strings are cut, the puppet must be replaced.”
Journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in The End of Zelensky? that Zaluzhny “is now being viewed as Zelensky’s most reliable successor,” citing “well-informed Washington sources” confirming the role could be offered to him.
Australia’s Senate launches inquiry into who is funding fake astroturf anti-renewables groups.
Rachel Williamson, Jul 31, 2025, https://reneweconomy.com.au/senate-launches-inquiry-into-who-is-funding-fake-astroturf-anti-renewables-groups/?fbclid=IwY2xjawL7lhVleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFYcTREaGZqTGVKTWZZSW15AR5cMmu1PBB20ZAr6159zOAR8q2xQnTPPQwVB8SWse9kOCEuKiGNiOnOwzpF3g_aem_zBcQMv8fwSb8s4qbxBk1uA
Australians have a right to know who is funding anti-climate campaigns and, if a new Senate inquiry can uncover those money trails, the findings could be shocking, says the Smart Energy Council’s Tim Lamacraft.
The new Senate committee was installed last night and tasked with investigating climate and energy mis- and disinformation campaigns and uncovering which foreign and local organisations are funding “astroturfing”, fake grassroots movements that are actually coordinated marketing campaigns.
“Australians have a right to know who’s really behind the clogging up of their social media feeds with anti renewables, anti climate, anti science propaganda. Rest assured, they’ll be shocked when they find out,” Lamacraft told Renew Economy.
“We saw from the last federal election campaign, where [conservative lobby group] Advance Australia had a $15 million warchest, $14 million of that was in dark money where we don’t know where it came from.
“The most important thing to do with shadowy networks like this is to shine a light. It’s extremely damaging to our democracy to allow millions of dollars from shadowy multinationals, and hidden domestic interests, to influence public policy for their personal gain, not the public.”
The inquiry, formally known as the select committee on Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy, will also question whether Australia’s laws preventing foreign interference in national politics are strong enough to fight off internationally-funded domestic political campaigns.
That work will encompass the role of social media in building astroturf campaigns through the coordinated use of bots and trolls, messaging apps and AI to spread fake ideas and news.
It will be the first step towards finding out who is financing sophisticated anti-renewable energy campaigns and misinformation, and whose interests they truly serve, says committee chair Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson.
“For decades, vested interests have been waging a global war of disinformation against the clean energy transition, including environmental and climate legislation, and these vested interests have recently achieved significant political success in nations such as the US,” he said in a statement.
“In the last parliament, evidence was provided to the Senate Inquiry into offshore wind industry that strategies such as establishing fake community groups – otherwise known as astroturfing – were being used in Australia to spread lies about renewable energy.
“It’s critical that parliament continues this work and now examines these interests for what they are and who they serve.”
Devastating impact of astroturfing
The inquiry comes on the back of years of sophisticated anti-climate campaigns masquerading as grassroots movements.
These seek to demonise a climate or renewable energy issue and rally support for nuclear power, a position known to be a cover for retaining a fossil fuel status quo.
Campaigns against everything from offshore wind to individual projects have polarised public opinion and are having a tangible impact.
Coordinated anti-offshore wind campaigns in 2023 peddled fears such as that offshore turbines kill whales and any in the waters around Wollongong would block out the sunrise.
As a result, the federal government reduced the Illawarra offshore wind zone by a third and pushed it 10km further offshore, while in Queensland the Stop Chalumbin Wind Farm claimed the scalp of the Wooroora Station proposal by claiming risks to the nearby world heritage rainforests.
Ark Energy, which was behind the Wooroora Station project, also scrapped the Doughboy wind project in NSW after the New England landowners involved in the project changed their minds.
Organised anti-renewables groups are weaponising NSW’s planning process by forcing projects into the Independent Planning Commission, the final arbiter of development applications if more than 50 opposing submissions are lodged during the regular planning process.
David and Goliath battles
For genuine activist groups, going up against well-funded, apparently grassroots campaigns that are peddling half truths and outright lies is “incredibly frustrating”, says Surfers for Climate CEO Joshua Kirkman.
“We simply do not have the financial resources as an advocacy group… against big forces like that which the Senate inquiry will actually find out about,” he told Renew Economy.
“I really hope this inquiry can put the spotlight on the realities of where the support for these voices in Australia comes from. I think the public have a right to know, and I think the public wants to understand how their democracy is being influenced by nefarious parties with ill-intent for the environment.”
Kirkman says climate change is a big enough problem without tactical misdirection and influence undermining the work being done.
Organisations such as Responsible Future (Illawarra Chapter) are what Kirkman is up against.
The anti-wind, pro-nuclear organisation was registered in April 2024 and claims to be funded by donations. Founder Alex O’Brien declined to comment on a series of basic questions about the organisation sent by Renew Economy last year.
Follow the money
The risks of foreign funding influencing Australian climate debates is not a conspiracy theory: the issue was raised in the Senate last year after an inquiry into offshore wind recommended the government act to stop foreign lobby groups from crowding out local community voices in public debates.
Last year, Walker published a submission which highlighted the similarities between US anti-wind campaigns and those targeting offshore wind in Australia.
He found similarities between the claims made by groups like Stop Offshore Wind, such as the same imagery and messaging in social media campaigns saying turbines kill whales, as used in campaigns overseas funded by conservative US lobby the Atlas Network.
But he was only able to guess at actual funding trails into Australia.
It’s known that deep-pocketed conservatives such as mining billionaire Gina Rinehart and the multimillion-dollar Liberal Party investment arm Cormack Foundation have been sponsors of the likes of the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), Menzies Research Centre and the ‘campaign group’ Advance Australia, all of which have strongly campaigned against renewable energy.
Walker has linked their campaigns with those of a global network of conservative think tanks.
The CIA Built Hundreds of Covert Websites. Here’s What They Were Hiding
August 1st, 2025, Alan Macleod, https://www.mintpressnews.com/cia-secret-network-885-fake-websites/290325/
The CIA didn’t just infiltrate governments; it infiltrated the internet itself. For over a decade, Langley operated a sprawling network of covert websites that served as global spy terminals disguised as harmless blogs, news hubs, and fan pages.
Beginning in 2004, the CIA established a vast network of at least 885 websites, ranging from Johnny Carson and Star Wars fan pages to online message boards about Rastafari. Spanning 29 languages and targeting at least 36 countries directly, these websites were aimed not only at adversaries such as China, Venezuela, and Russia, but also at allied nations, including France, Italy, and Spain, showing that the United States treats its friends much like its foes.
Covert Soccer Blogs and Cracked Passwords
Gholamreza Hosseini is a former CIA informant. In 2007, the Tehran-based industrial engineer contacted the agency and offered to pass them information about Iran’s nuclear energy program. His CIA handlers showed him how to use IranianGoals.com to communicate with them. Iranian Goals was a Farsi-language website that appeared to be dedicated to local soccer news. However, what appeared to be a search bar at the bottom of the home page was actually a password field. Typing the correct word into it would trigger a login process, revealing a secret messaging interface. Each informant had their own webpage, designed specifically for them, to insulate them from others in the network.
It seemed like an ingenious idea. However, Hosseini and the other spies were soon detected, thanks to some sloppy mistakes in Washington, D.C. An Iranian double agent revealed to the authorities their unique website, and some basic detective work led to the uncovering of the entire network.
The CIA purchased the hosting space for dozens, perhaps hundreds, of these websites in bulk, often from the same internet providers, or the same server space. That meant that the IP addresses of these websites were consecutive, akin to housing each informant in adjacent properties on the same street.
Thus, if you looked at neighboring IP addresses, you would see similarly designed websites and could easily put two and two together. Even with some relatively basic online searches, Iranian authorities were able to identify dozens of CIA-run websites. From there, they simply waited to see who would access them.
Spying on Allies and Adversaries Alike
The network of websites spanned a wide range of topics. Few would guess that Rasta Direct, a website dedicated to the relatively niche religion of Rastafari, had anything to do with U.S. intelligence. The CIA also created Star Wars Web, a fan page for the sci-fi franchise, and All Johnny, a page dedicated to late-night legend Johnny Carson. Sports, gaming and news blogs, however, were the most common topics for fake websites.
These websites served as cover for informants, offering some level of plausible deniability if casually examined. Upon close inspection, however, few of these pages provided any unique content and simply rehosted news and blogs from elsewhere, linking to already available resources.
Informants in enemy nations, such as Venezuela, used sites like Noticias-Caracas and El Correo De Noticias to communicate with Langley, while Russian moles used My Online Game Source and TodaysNewsAndWeather-Ru.com, and other similar platforms.
However, a vast network of informants in allied countries, such as France, Spain and Italy, was also uncovered, using financial news, mountaineering, and running websites to pass on vital information to the CIA.
Germany was another country Washington actively targeted. In 2013, it was revealed that the U.S. had been bugging the cellphone of Chancellor Angela Merkel for over a decade, sparking a major diplomatic rift. One year later, in 2014, Germany detained one of its own intelligence officials after catching him spying for the United States.
The Collapse of the CIA’s China Network
China, however, remains a top target for the CIA. The organization maintains an extensive network of informants across the country, who, when the network was active, used platforms such as eChessNews.com and SportsNewsFinder.com to transmit information back to the United States.
But, as in Iran, Chinese authorities began to dismantle the network. Starting in late 2010, the spying network was systematically dismantled by officials, likely using similar tactics to those of the Iranians. Unlike Iran, however, China simply executed those operatives. It is believed that the CIA lost around 30 informants in the purge. The affair is considered one of the worst intelligence failures in the agency’s nearly 80-year history.
Since then, the U.S. spying network in China has been severely diminished. Earlier this year, the CIA changed tack, publicly releasing two videos encouraging disaffected Communist Party officials to spy for them in exchange for money and the prospect of a new life in America.
“As I rise within the party, I watch those above me being discarded like worn-out shoes, but now I realize that my fate was just as precarious as theirs,” the narrator says in one. “Our leaders’ failure to fulfil repeated promises of prosperity has become a well-known secret… It’s time to build my own dream,” he says in another.
The CIA instructs would-be traitors to download the Tor Browser and contact the CIA via its website. While Tor is marketed in the West as a privacy tool, a previous MintPress News investigation revealed that it was created with funding from the U.S. government by a company with ties to the CIA. Last year, Washington passed a $1.6 billion bill to finance anti-China propaganda worldwide.
Weaponizing Apps and Platforms
This is not the only time that the U.S. national security state has created fake web platforms in order to stoke regime change around the world. In 2010, USAID—a CIA front organization—secretly created the Cuban social media app, Zunzuneo.
Often described as “Cuba’s Twitter,” Zunzuneo rocketed to prominence. The app had been designed to offer a reliable and affordable service, undercutting the competition, before gaining dominance and slowly disseminating anti-government messages to the island.
Then, at a given time, Zunzuneo would urge users to join protests coordinated by the U.S. in an attempt to foment a color revolution on the island.
In an effort to hide its ownership of the project, the U.S. government held a secret meeting with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey to encourage him to take it over. It is unclear to what extent, if at all, Dorsey contributed to the project, as he has declined to comment on the matter. In 2012, Zunzuneo was abruptly shut down.
Infiltrating Journalism and Big Tech
While the 885 fake websites were not established to influence public opinion, today, the U.S. government sponsors thousands of journalists worldwide for precisely this purpose. Earlier this year, the Trump administration’s decision to pause funding to USAID inadvertently exposed a network of more than 6,200 reporters working at nearly 1,000 news outlets or journalism organizations who were all quietly paid to promote pro-U.S. messaging in their countries.
Oksana Romanyuk, director of the Ukrainian Institute for Mass Information, warned that nearly 90% of her country’s media outlets rely on funding from USAID to survive. A survey of 20 leading media organizations in Belarus revealed that 60% of their budget came from Washington. In Iran, more than 30 anti-government groups came together for a crisis response meeting, while in Cuba and Nicaragua, anti-government press resorted to soliciting donations from readers.
The CIA has also successfully infiltrated the largest and most popular social media networks, giving the agency substantial control over what the world sees (and does not see) in their news feeds.
Facebook has hired dozens of former CIA officials to run its most sensitive operations. Perhaps the most notable of these individuals is Aaron Berman.
As the platform’s senior misinformation manager, Berman ultimately has the final say over what content is promoted and what is demoted or deleted from Facebook. Yet, until 2019, Berman was a high-ranking CIA officer, responsible for writing the president’s daily security brief. It was at that time that he jumped ship from Langley to Facebook, despite appearing to have little relevant professional experience.
Google, if anything, is even more saturated with former spies.
A MintPress News investigation revealed that dozens of former CIA agents hold top jobs at the Silicon Valley giant. Among these is Jacqueline Lopour, who spent more than ten years at the agency working on Middle East affairs before being recruited to become Google’s senior Intelligence, Trust, and Safety manager. The role gives her considerable influence on the direction of the company. This form of state censorship is how the agency prefers to shape the internet today.
The CIA continues to maintain a vast worldwide network of informants. Today, they use custom-built apps such as Tor or Signal to communicate. If they are caught by their own countries, they will likely be left to their fate, like Hosseini was. Being a spy or a stool pigeon for the CIA is as perilous as ever.
They Intend To Keep Lying About Gaza Until They’ve Emptied It Out
Caitlin Johnstone, Jul 27, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/they-intend-to-keep-lying-about-gaza?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=169369626&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
We’re back at the part of the news cycle where Israel tells the world it’s going to allow a bit more aid into Gaza in order to mollify its allies and reduce the public outcry as images of starving children draw objections from the west.
This is just Israel giving the Kier Starmers and Anthony Albaneses of the western world just enough of an excuse to go silent about the starvation of Gaza again. They will then continue starving Gaza. This psychopathic python-like suffocation tactic is how Israel has gotten Gaza to the point it’s at now.
And of course it’s worth noting that Israel’s announcement that it will allow more food into Gaza so people don’t starve completely debunks all its claims these last few days that people in Gaza are starving because of Hamas and the UN. They’re starving because Israel is starving them.
Israeli officials have told The New York Times that there has never been any evidence of Hamas stealing aid from UN trucks in any significant way, a claim Israel and its apologists have been falsely asserting for two years. They lie about everything. They never stop lying.
We’ve been asked to believe a lot of intensely stupid narratives throughout this genocide, but “it’s actually HAMAS who’s starving Gaza” has got to be the dumbest one yet. The fact that Israel and its supporters tried to blame the UN and Hamas for Israel’s extensively documented starvation campaign makes it clear that these freaks intend to keep lying about this thing until the last dying gasp of the last Palestinian.
Gideon Levy has a new article out titled “Denying Gaza’s Starvation Is No Less Vile Than Denying the Holocaust”. Personally I’d take it much further and say it’s vastly worse than denying the Holocaust, because it’s helping to kill people right this very moment.
I’m sorry if this is antisemitic but I think it’s wrong to deliberately starve thousands of children to death.
If you found out someone was trapping small children in a confined space and then intentionally starving them to death, what words would you use to describe that person?
Think about how fucked up you’d need to be inside to starve a baby, or to support someone who is doing so. Think how many millennia of evolutionary conditioning you’d have to override as a human, as a primate, as a mammal, to stifle the screaming you feel inside when you see a skeletal infant. You’d have to make yourself less of a human inside to support the inhumanity.
The worst thing Donald Trump has ever done is commit genocide in Gaza. Everything else pales in comparison. He could end the Gaza holocaust with a phone call just like Biden could have, and he hasn’t. For that reason alone he deserves to die in a cage.
Children’s Youtube star Ms Rachel has announced that she won’t be working with anyone who doesn’t publicly oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The thing I love about Ms Rachel is that nobody was pushing her to speak out about Gaza. Not one person was out here saying “Ms Rachel’s silence on Rafah is deafening!” She could’ve gotten away with being silent on Gaza forever and suffered no professional consequences, but she spoke out anyway because she’s a genuinely good person.
Today I got my first comment telling me I was wrong to oppose Israel in October 2023 but now I’m right because things have changed. I expect to receive many more such comments going forward as people navigate the difficult cognitive dissonance terrain of realizing they’ve been wrong this entire time.
Israel apologists love using circular reasoning to dismiss outlets and organizations which criticize Israel. If you’ve ever argued with them online you know what I’m talking about.
It’s basically this —
Normal person: Here’s evidence of Israel doing bad things.
Israel apologist: You can’t cite THAT outlet! That outlet is Hamas propaganda!
Normal person: What? What makes them Hamas propaganda?
Israel apologist: They’re always saying Israel does bad things!
Or this —
Normal person: Israel is committing genocide.
Israel apologist: Nuh-uh, that’s blood libel.
Normal person: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and UN human rights experts all say it’s genocide.
Israel apologist: Those groups are antisemitic!
Normal person: What? Why do you say that?
Israel apologist: They’re always spreading antisemitic lies about Israel!
Normal person: Such as?
Israel apologist: Such as saying Israel is committing genocide!
Everyone spreading lies today to help Israel carry out the final stages of its final solution knows exactly what they’re doing. We see you, you sick fucks. We’ll remember you forever.
Ed Miliband put up your energy bills (for Sizewell nuclear)– and hoped you wouldn’t notice
Miliband took the last day of term before MPs knocked off for a
six-week-long holiday – sorry, I mean “working in the constituency”
– to let slip that he was putting up your energy bills. This is to pay
for the ballooning cost of the Sizewell C nuclear plant in Suffolk.
Incidentally, another thing that the Energy Secretary let out the bag on
Tuesday was that the cost of this had almost doubled to £38 billion.
That is regrettable but Miliband did not want us to get too down about it. The
UK Government expects that it will be “limited to an average of around
£1 a month on a typical household bill”. Given the way that energy bills
have gone in recent years, I doubt that anyone feels anything less than
seething resentment at paying even another penny.
The National 25th July 2025, https://www.thenational.scot/politics/25342653.ed-miliband-put-energy-bills—hoped-wouldnt-notice/
Tory peer apologises for helping set up ministerial meeting for a nuclear firm he advises
Deputy speaker Ian Duncan found to have breached rules by providing parliamentary service for Terrestrial Energy
The former junior climate minister has been an adviser to Terrestrial Energy since 2020. When he joined he was given share options, which allowed him to buy shares in the company at a preferential rate if they became profitable.
The Guardian revealed that, in 2023, Duncan forwarded a letter to Andrew Bowie, the nuclear minister at the time, from Simon Irish, the firm’s chief executive who wanted a meeting with the minister at short notice. The peer signed off his email “Lord D of S”.
The chief executive of the company, which is developing a new type of nuclear reactor, secured the meeting with Bowie at which he lobbied for Terrestrial Energy to be given easier access to government funding.
In his response to the watchdog, Duncan said Bowie was a “friend of long standing” who had helped him get elected as a member of the European parliament in 2014 and had then worked in his Brussels office.
Margaret Obi, the Lords commissioner, decided that the rule prohibiting peers from providing “parliamentary services in return for payment or other incentive or reward” was absolute.
She added: “It did not provide an exemption in cases where there was an existing personal relationship.”
She ruled: “Although Lord Duncan stated he was not paid specifically for facilitating this introduction, he received an allocation of share options as consideration for his work for Terrestrial Energy.
“I consider that this can reasonably be understood to have been an incentive or reward for the various tasks he undertook for the company.”
Guardian 25th July 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/25/tory-peer-ian-duncan-apologises-for-helping-set-up-ministerial-meeting-for-firm-he-advises
They’re Starving Civilians To Steal A Palestinian Territory, And They’re Lying About It
Caitlin Johnstone, Jul 26, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/theyre-starving-civilians-to-steal?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=169279261&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Just so we’re all absolutely clear about what we’re watching here, Israel is intentionally starving civilians in order to bring about the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and steal a Palestinian territory. That’s all this is, and anyone who says otherwise is lying.
This isn’t a theory. This is what’s happening. The facts are in and the case is closed. Israeli officials aren’t even hiding it anymore.
Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu is telling the Israeli media that “the government is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out,” and that “all Gaza will be Jewish.”
Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is tweeting in Hebrew that a “complete halt of ‘humanitarian aid’” will allow “encouragement of migration” and “settlement” in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced earlier this month that the official plan is to build a giant concentration camp for Gaza’s population on the ruins of Rafah while working to deport the population to other countries.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself made it clear back in May that implementing Donald Trump’s plan for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza was a precondition to having peace in the enclave.
Trump made it clear back in February that his plan was for “all” Palestinians to be removed from the Gaza Strip on a “permanent” basis.
Within days of Israel’s assault on Gaza in October 2023, Israel’s Intelligence Ministry was circulating a plan for the entire population of Gaza to be moved to the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, and an Israeli think tank had drawn up a strategy for the “relocation and final settlement of the entire Gaza population.”
Indeed, Israel has been on record scheming to find a way to relocate the population of Gaza for many decades.
That’s what this is all about. That’s all this has ever been about. It’s not about hostages. It’s not about Hamas. It’s not about Israel defending itself. It’s about stealing a Palestinian territory, and anyone who says otherwise is lying.
And the lies have been erupting like a geyser in recent days. Israel and its apologists have been frantically pushing the narrative that Gaza is starving because the UN isn’t allowing aid in (swiftly refuted by Drop Site News), that Gaza is starving because Hamas is stealing the aid (swiftly refuted by Reuters), and that Gaza is starving because Hamas attacks people who try to go to aid sites (already refuted by Israeli soldiers telling the Israeli press that they’re the ones shooting the aid seekers).
The more evil Israel gets, the more frenetic its apologists need to get with their lies to justify its behavior.
Starvation deaths in Gaza are skyrocketing. Many of those still alive have already suffered permanent damage, and even with a massive influx of aid and complete reversal of Israeli policies it will be very difficult to undo the effects of the famine.
Western governments are beginning to speak out against the mass atrocity in Gaza, far too little and far too late. We can expect Israel and the United States to respond to this outcry by saying that Palestinians need to be evacuated out of Gaza as quickly as possible in order to rescue them from this deliberately manufactured humanitarian crisis. We can expect them to denounce anyone who opposes this ethnic cleansing operation as evil monsters who want to starve the poor Palestinians.
And it will all be lies. They lied this entire time.
It’s about the most evil thing you could possibly come up with, really. If this is not evil, then nothing is.
From hero to zero- When western leaders realised that Zelensky isn’t a corruption-fighting democrat –
Indeed, war has turbo-charged corruption to a new and more disgusting level.
it is impossible that British and European governmental agencies would not be aware of the huge graft within the Ukrainian state…… Having held up the ‘nothing to see here’ signs for so long, our political leaders may now be starting to worry about how they will account for and continue to justify the billions that western nations are pumping into Ukraine.
Ian Proud, The Peacemonger, Jul 25, 2025
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, in February 2022, Volodymyr Zelensky has been elevated to the status of a hero King, pure in thought and deed, interested only in saving humble Ukraine from the onrushing hordes of Russian Orcs. Like Aragorn from Lord of the Rings, but short, thin-skinned and with a gravelly voice.
Zelensky has been completely immune from criticism in the west, with allegations dismissed and labelled as Kremlin talking points, and accusers called out as Quislings.
Yet, in an instant, that illusion has been shattered.
For the first time since February 2022, Zelensky has been revealed as no different from every President of Ukraine since the country gained independence in August 1991; corrupt and authoritarian.
This comes as no surprise to most realists, but offers a devastating blow to the neo-liberal true-believers who invested their reputations and cash into defeating Russia.
This week, President Zelensky signed a law that stripped two important anti-corruption bodies – the National Anti-Courrption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) of their independence, making them report to the Prosecutor General, who he appointed.
In the face of widespread protest, Zelensky has been forced to backtrack, although it is not year clear what the new arrangements will be, or when they will be implemented, and the Verkhovna Rada has started its summer recess.
Let’s be clear, corruption is and has been a totemic issue in Ukraine, right back to the onset of the Maidan protests in late 2013 and, of course, before that. During my visits to Ukraine, while posted to Russia, it was clear that young people saw tackling corruption as a top priority for the government. This formed part of their desire for Ukraine to move towards European Union membership and for their country to integrate into a community more clearly governed by democracy and the rule of law.
Whether they might consider the European Union to be democratic today, as unelected Commission President Ursula von der Leyen centralises ever more powers, is another question. But that European and anti-corruption aspiration was real back in 2013.
Yet scant progress has been made in tackling corruption since that time. In February 2015, one year after the height of the Maidan protests, the British Guardian newspaper published a long piece entitled ‘Welcome to Ukraine, the most corrupt country in Europe’. The Ukrainian Prime Minister, Arseny Yatseniuk, who had been personally selected by Victoria Nuland at the U.S. State Department, was forced to resign in April 2016 in the face of allegations of widespread corruption within his government.
In 2021, the European Court of Auditors produced a report entitled Reducing Grand Corruption in Ukraine: several EU initiatives, but still insufficient results. It defined Grand Corruption as ‘the abuse of high-level power that benefits the few, and causes serious and widespread harm to individuals and society’.
In January 2023, an article in the Hill remarked on the need to defeat corruption as Ukraine’s ‘other enemy’. Shortly after that article, a piece, again in the Guardian, discussed the challenges faced by the Head of Ukraine’s National Agency for Corruption Prevention (NACP), which works closely with the now de-clawed NABU and SAPO.
That report in particular talked about specific examples of corruption in President Zelensky’s inner circle. Occasionally, Zelensky has purged his cabinet, to show his commitment to governmental reform, for example, sacking his former Defence Minister, Oleksii Reznikov, in the face of widespread accusations that the Ukrainian Defence Ministry was siphoning off foreign donations on an industrial scale.
But the occasional show trial has never taken the whiff away that Zelensky’s administration is every bit as corrupt as those that preceded it.
This stripping of powers from NABU and SAPO took place as those organisations were closing in with investigations against senior members of the Zelensky administration. Zelensky has spoken about the need to deal with Russian influence, but most people have seen through that smoke screen.
Zelensky was voted into office in 2019 on a platform to eradicate corruption in Ukraine. He has not done so.
And, as I have pointed out often, war has held back real steps to address the problem.
Indeed, war has turbo-charged corruption to a new and more disgusting level. Money for infrastructure projects has been siphoned off, weapons’ orders have been falsified with officials skimming the profits. You’ll see as many hypercars tooling round Kyiv as might be witnessed at the Monaco Grand Prix. Want to get out of enlistment? We can make an arrangement for the right money. Need to cross the border? Just hand over the cash.
This has prompted the mother of all holy shit moments, in which European politicians are quickly waking up to the fact that their hero, Zelensky, is just a flawed human like everyone else. Although, from my personal experience, it is impossible that British and European governmental agencies would not be aware of the huge graft within the Ukrainian state.
Having held up the ‘nothing to see here’ signs for so long, our political leaders may now be starting to worry about how they will account for and continue to justify the billions that western nations are pumping into Ukraine. Two thirds of Ukrainian state expenditure is effectively paid for by us, non-Ukrainian citizens, through the donations of western governments.
And yet Ukraine has become more corrupt…………………………………………………………https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/from-hero-to-zero?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=169225133&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Dell’s complicity in Israel’s genocide
Omar Zahzah The Electronic Intifada 22 July 2025. https://electronicintifada.net/content/dells-complicity-israels-genocide/50824
In January 2023, Dell Technologies Inc, an American multinational, won a tender from the Israeli defense ministry to provide servers and related services to the Israeli military, other security bodies and the ministry itself.
The deal was valued at over $150 million.
Corporate watchdog WhoProfits.org reported on the tender and revealed that Dell subsidiaries like VMware and EMC Israel Advanced Information Technologies, along with Dell staff, provided technology and training to the Israeli military and partnered in occupation-linked initiatives such as the National Cyber Park in the Naqab, which Israel established after “a government decision to promote national capabilities in the cyber space as part of a concept of combined work between government, academia, industry and the military.”
However, internal documents obtained by The Electronic Intifada suggest Dell is more closely entwined with the Israeli military than previously known, particularly by supplying technology for Israel’s artificial intelligence (AI) -assisted genocide in Gaza.
Dell’s ties to Israel stretch back two decades: In 2006, it won a tender to provide 50,000 computers to the Israeli army and another to supply portable computers to the government.
In 2016, Dell rebranded to Dell Technologies after merging with software firm EMC Corporation, enabling greater focus on emerging cloud technologies.
Dell also absorbed EMC’s extensive Israeli presence – it had been active there since 1996, establishing its first research and development center in Ramat Gan in 2006.
In 2011, after acquiring several Israeli start-ups, the R&D center was rebranded “a center of excellence.”
“Deeply committed”
Michael Dell, founder and CEO of the company that bears his name, told the Dell Future Ready Conference in May 2016 that Dell is “deeply committed to Israel.”
“We want to be here, we want to be a partner in the incredible innovation that occurs here.”
He also met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, now wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, at the conference.
In January 2024, months into Israel’s Gaza genocide, Dell shared a photo of himself and Israeli President Isaac Herzog – whose words blaming “an entire nation” in Gaza for 7 October would be cited later that month in the International Court of Justice ruling ordering Israel to cease all genocidal acts in Gaza.
“It’s an honor to stand with @Isaac_Herzog and Israel,” Dell wrote.
As such, the company’s practice of technologically fortifying Israel’s oppressive policies is not exactly a secret. Still, scrutiny tends to focus primarily on how the company bolsters military occupation.
Nearly two years into the Gaza genocide, Google, Amazon and Microsoft have borne the brunt of criticism for their participation in Project Nimbus and Azure – tech projects which provide AI and cloud services that power the Israeli military’s surveillance of Palestinians and potentially help generate kill-lists.
“Mass assassination factory”
A November 2023 report by +972 Magazine and Local Call revealed that the Israeli military was using “The Gospel,” an AI program that generates infrastructure targets, including private residences, for the Israeli military to strike. One source described it as enabling “a mass assassination factory.”
In April 2024, a partner report found that the Israeli army was using another artificial intelligence program, “Lavender,” to generate kill- lists.
Lavender notoriously has a 10 percent margin of error. This is compounded by criteria the Israeli military gives the program to automate the identification of potential targets so broad, the kill lists are essentially arbitrary.
Another automated program, “Where’s Daddy,” allows the Israeli military to track Palestinians with the express purpose of carrying out bombings once the individual has gone home.
Mass casualties are guaranteed by these AI-assisted operations.
With such blatantly murderous applications, it is no surprise that there is growing protest against Big Tech’s role in Israel’s genocide.
A bombshell report from Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, exposes how Israel’s “forever-occupation has become the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and big tech – providing boundless supply and demand, little oversight, and zero accountability – while investors and private and public institutions profit freely.”
The report spells out the direct responsibility that corporate entities hold not to engage in potential violations of human rights nor undertake any endeavors that undermine the Palestinian right to self-determination. Corporate entities and executives found to be in violation can potentially be subjected to domestic and international legal action.
“AI is one of today’s weapons of mass destruction and Google is a willing war profiteer,” Mohammad Khatami, Zelda Montes, and Katie Sim, three Google employees fired for taking part in mass civil disobedience against Project Nimbus in April 2024, wrote in The Nation.
“Systems like The Gospel and Lavender are made possible through the kind of cloud computing infrastructure that companies like Google, [Amazon Web Services,] and Intel provide.”
Now, it seems that Dell is also implicated in this process.
Internal documents shared with The Electronic Intifada reveal that Dell technology is supporting a host of Israeli military operations, including AI used to monitor and target Palestinians. These materials show that Dell hardware is used when running Lavender and The Gospel to automate targeting decisions and minimize human oversight, increasing the speed of military assaults.
Israel’s notorious cyberwarfare force Unit 8200, uses Dell’s AI-powered Pro-Rugged 13 laptops for intelligence gathering, surveillance and military operations.
Dell also provides laptops and servers that enable Israeli AI company AnyVision’s facial recognition systems – which facilitate mass surveillance of Palestinians at checkpoints and other sites.
Paper thin
The technology that Dell provides to AnyVision, as well as to CISCO Israel (laptops, edge servers, VMware, networking solutions) and Cognyte Technologies Israel Ltd. (laptops, servers, networking solutions) all facilitate mass surveillance of Palestinians.
CISCO provides communication infrastructure for surveillance, enabling real-time monitoring of civilian populations and military activities. Cognyte Technologies Ltd. uses Dell tech for cyber-intelligence systems that track people in Gaza and the West Bank.
The documents also reveal that beneficiaries of Dell technologies include the Israeli army’s Golani Brigade – implicated in the murder of 15 paramedics and emergency workers in Rafah in April, the naval unit Flotilla 13 and the Israeli air force.
Elbit Systems Land & C41 – the Israeli arms manufacturer’s military communications technology arm – also reportedly receives laptops, servers and networking solutions from Dell Technologies.
When contacted for comment, Dell initially sent the following statement:
“Dell is committed to the highest standards and complying with local laws and regulations where we do business. Please refer to our Human Rights policy, provided below.”
That policy stipulates how: “Dell respects the human rights of all people as reflected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
It goes on to say that the company “will not be complicit in human rights violations, and we hold our suppliers and other business partners to this same standard.”
Finally, the policy asserts that the company complies with “local laws and regulations wherever we do business. If local law conflicts with the principles in this policy, within the bounds of local laws we seek ways to honor the principles of internationally recognized human rights and influence progress towards the highest standards.”
Then, bizarrely, the company, which uses Outlook for communications, apparently tried to recall the statement it sent this journalist (but since the message had already been opened, its contents were still available.)
Shortly after notification of the recall attempt, a final message from Dell’s media team was received, asking to “please hold on this statement. We may have an updated one for you.”
This “updated” statement has not come as of time of writing.
Dell’s close association with a state charged with genocide at the International Court of Justice surely undermines the company’s effort to portray itself as an ethical company.
Dell’s website boasts that it was recognized in 2025 as “One of the World’s Most Ethical Companies” for the 13th time by the for-profit Ethisphere Institute.
In May 2024, Dell even announced a partnership with governments around the world to address ethical concerns regarding AI.
But these gestures are paper-thin: Ethisphere charges for company ratings, and other recipients of the “Most Ethical Companies” title have included US weapons manufacturer Leidos and Elbit Systems America, a subsidiary of Israel’s Elbit systems.
Dell’s track record is distinctive, though not in the way it wants to be perceived:
By providing the technologies that power Israel’s racialized surveillance and killing machine from AI programs, Dell belongs right next to Google, Amazon, Intel and Microsoft as a corporate profiteer of occupation, apartheid and the first live-streamed genocide in history.
Omar Zahzah’s book, Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital Settler Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle will be published by The Censored Press and Seven Stories Press on 16 September, 2025.
Rotten Apple: Dozens of Former Israeli Spies Hired by Silicon Valley Giant
July 18th, 2025, Alan Macleod
Apple has made headlines in recent weeks for touting its commitment to privacy and human rights, rolling out tools to limit surveillance and spyware. But behind the corporate messaging lies a much darker reality.
The company has quietly brought in dozens of veterans from Unit 8200, Israel’s shadowy military intelligence unit known for blackmail, mass surveillance, and targeted killings.
Many of these hires took place as Israel escalated its war on Gaza, and as CEO Tim Cook publicly expressed support for Israel while disciplining employees for pro-Palestinian expressions. Apple’s deepening ties to Israel’s most controversial intelligence raise uncomfortable questions, not only about the company’s political loyalties, but also about how it handles vast troves of personal user data.
A MintPress News investigation has identified dozens of Unit 8200 operatives now working at Apple. The company’s hiring spree coincides with growing scrutiny of its ties to the Israeli government, including its policy of matching employee donations to groups such as Friends of the IDF and the Jewish National Fund, both of which play a role in the displacement of the Palestinian people. The intense pro-Israel bias at the corporation has led many former and current employees to speak out.
This investigation is part of a series examining the close collaboration between Unit 8200 and Western tech and media companies. Previous investigations examined the links between Unit 8200 and social media giants like TikTok, Facebook and Google, and how former Unit 8200 spies are now responsible for writing much of America’s news about Israel/Palestine, holding top jobs at outlets like CNN and Axios.
A Few (Dozen) Bad Apples
Israel’s international reputation has taken a severe hit amid multiple spying scandals and ongoing attacks against its neighbors. During this same period, Apple has ramped up its recruitment of former Israeli intelligence personnel.
The Silicon Valley giant has hired dozens of former agents from the controversial Israeli intelligence outfit, Unit 8200, raising questions about the corporation’s political direction.
Nir Shkedi is among the most prominent examples. From 2008 to 2015, he served as a commander and Chief of Learning at Unit 8200, leading a team of approximately 120 operatives who developed new artificial intelligence tools to perform rapid data analysis.
Unit 8200 is at the forefront of this technology, and is known to have used AI to auto-generate kill lists of tens of thousands of Gazans, including children. These tools helped the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) bypass what it called human targeting, “bottlenecks,” and strike huge numbers of Palestinians.
Shkedi has been a physical design engineer at Apple’s Bay Area campus since 2022.
Noa Goor is another senior Unit 8200 figure turned Apple employee. From 2015 to 2020, Goor rose to become a project manager and head of cybersecurity and big data development team at Unit 8200, where she, in her own words, “invent[ed] creative technological solutions for high priority intelligence goals” and “manag[ed] two strategically important cyber projects” for the IDF.
One of the most important cyber projects Unit 8200 has launched in recent times is the September pager attack on Lebanon, an act that injured thousands of civilians and was widely condemned as an act of international terrorism, including by former CIA Director Leon Panetta. While Goor was not personally involved in that operation, Unit 8200 has spearheaded similarly nefarious actions for decades.
In 2022, Goor was hired by Apple as a system-on-chip design engineer.
Eli Yazovitsky, meanwhile, was directly recruited from Unit 8200. In 2015, he left a high-powered nine-year career as a manager in the military unit to join Apple, where he rose to become an engineering manager. He has since moved on to tech giant Qualcomm.
Unit 8200 is Israel’s most elite—and most controversial—military intelligence unit. It serves as the backbone of both Israel’s burgeoning tech sector and its repressive surveillance apparatus. The unit has developed cutting-edge technology like facial recognition and voice-to-text software to surveil, repress, and target Palestinians.
The vast amounts of data gathered on the Palestinian population, including their medical history, sex lives, and search histories, have been used for coercion and extortion. If a certain individual needed to travel across checkpoints for crucial medical treatment, permission could be suspended until they complied. Information about extramarital affairs or sexual orientation, especially homosexuality, is exploited as blackmail material. One former Unit 8200 agent recalled that he was instructed during his training to memorize different Arabic words for “gay” so that he could listen out for them in intercepted conversations.
Internationally, Unit 8200 may be best known for its “former” agents who created the notorious Pegasus software, used by repressive governments around the world to spy on tens of thousands of prominent figures, including royals, heads of state, activists, and journalists.
Among them was Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was assassinated by Saudi operatives in Türkiye in 2018.
While military service is mandatory for Jewish Israelis, few end up in Unit 8200 by accident. Described as “Israel’s Harvard,” parents spend fortunes on STEM-based extracurricular lessons for their children in the hopes that they will be selected to join the IDF’s most elite and selective unit. Those chosen are rewarded with lucrative careers in the tech industry upon completion of their service.
Given Unit 8200’s documented history of violence, espionage, and surveillance, both domestically and internationally, it is worth asking whether tech giants should be hiring its alumni in such large numbers.
Shkedi, Goor, and Yazovitsky are the most high-profile examples, but they are from alone. A closer look reveals that dozens of other Unit 8200 veterans have also secured key roles at Apple.
Engineering and Hardware Design:
Natanel Nissan, formerly head of data analysis at Unit 8200, joined Apple’s Tel Aviv office in 2022. Ofek Har-Even, a longtime officer and manager in the unit, has been a design verification engineer at Apple since 2022. Gal Sharon, a former intelligence systems operator and data analyst, has also worked as a physical design engineer since that same year.
Mayan Hochler and Shai Buzgalo, both former Unit 8200 analysts and instructors, hold roles in physical design and validation engineering, respectively.
Software and Cybersecurity:
Ofer Tlusty, who served nearly six years in Unit 8200 as a security and intelligence analyst, has worked as a software engineer at Apple since 2021. Ofek Rafaeli, who served between 2012 and 2016 and rose to project manager during Israel’s 2016 assault on Gaza, became a software engineer at Apple in 2023.
Guy Levy, a former intelligence analyst, now also works as a software engineer.
AI, Machine Learning, and Validation:
Avital Kleiman, a six-year veteran of Unit 8200, is now a machine learning algorithm engineer at Apple. Niv Lev Ari, currently a validation engineer, notes in his LinkedIn profile that he received a letter of commendation from Unit 8200 commander Aviv Kochavi for his work in the unit.
Other Technical Roles:
Shahar Moshe, who worked as an intelligence specialist at Unit 8200 from 2012 to 2015, is now a design verification engineer. Gil Avniel, who spent over five years in the unit, currently serves as a network engineer.
An Apple Rots From the Core
The growing number of former Israeli intelligence operatives working at Apple does not seem to concern the company’s senior management. CEO Tim Cook is known to hold strongly pro-Israel views and has spearheaded the Silicon Valley giant’s collaboration with the Israeli state.
Apple has acquired several Israeli tech firms and now operates three centers in the country, employing around 2,000 people. In 2014, Cook invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the company headquarters in Cupertino, CA, where, in front of the cameras, the two openly embraced. The following year, Cook accepted an invitation from President Reuven Rivlin to visit Israel. “It is a great privilege to host you and your team here,” Rivlin said, “Even for me, as one who prefers to write with a pen and paper, it is clear what a great miracle you have created when I look at my staff, and my grandchildren.”
Effusive praise for the Apple CEO has also come in the form of honors from pro-Israel organizations. In 2018, the Anti-Defamation League presented Cook with its inaugural Courage Against Hate Award at its Never Is Now Summit on anti-Semitism and Hate, where the organization described him as a “visionary leader in the business community.”
In the wake of the October 7, 2023, attacks, Cook sent out a company-wide email expressing his solidarity with Israel. “Like so many of you, I am devastated by the horrific attacks in Israel and the tragic reports coming out of the region,” he wrote, My heart goes out to the victims, those who have lost loved ones, and all of the innocent people who are suffering as a result of this violence.”
Yet, according to Apples4Ceasefire—a group of former and current employees opposing Israeli actions in Gaza—he has yet to say anything publicly about the mass devastation caused by the Israeli response to October 7.
Indeed, the Silicon Valley corporation has a policy of matching employee donations to groups such as Friends of the IDF, which raises money to buy equipment for IDF soldiers, and the Jewish National Fund, an organization that participates in the theft and destruction of Palestinian land.
Under Cook’s leadership, Apple employees have been disciplined or even fired for wearing pins, bracelets, or keffiyehs in support of the Palestinian people. Nevertheless, groups such as Apples4Ceasefire continue to speak out about what they describe as Apple’s complicity in genocide.
The Unit 8200 Tech Takeover
To be fair, Apple is far from the only tech or media company to hire large numbers of former Unit 8200 operatives. A 2022 MintPress exposé revealed hundreds of Israeli intelligence veterans working at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon.
Perhaps the most notable of these is Emi Palmor, a former Israeli justice ministry official who sits on Facebook’s 21-person Oversight Board. Described by Mark Zuckerberg as his platform’s “supreme court,” the board ultimately decides what content is allowed or removed from the world’s largest social network. Facebook has worked closely with the Israeli government to censor or deplatform Palestinian content and accounts.
Even TikTok, often seen as a more open platform, has been hiring former Israeli spies to help manage its operations, according to a November investigation by MintPress. Reut Medalion, for example, served as a Unit 8200 intelligence commander and led its cybersecurity operations team.
In December 2023, during the peak of Israel’s attack on Gaza, Medalion moved to New York City to accept a job as global incident manager for TikTok’s trust and safety division. Considering the events going on in the world at the time, it’s worth asking what sorts of “global incidents” she was brought in to manage.
After MintPress exposed Medalion’s past to a worldwide audience, she deleted her entire digital footprint from the internet.
Former Israeli intelligence operatives have also found their way into American newsrooms, shaping coverage of the Middle East. A recent MintPress investigation uncovered a network of former Unit 8200 operatives working in some of the most influential newsrooms in the United States.
Among them is Axios correspondent Barak Ravid, whose Middle Eastern coverage won him the prestigious White House Press Correspondents’ Award. Until at least 2023, Ravid was a member of Unit 8200. CNN has also hired at least two former agents to produce their news coverage, one of whom, Tal Heinrich, now serves as the official spokesperson for Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Given this pattern, Silicon Valley’s partiality towards Israel should not come as no surprise. From tech giants like Google and Amazon to social media powerhouses like TikTok and Facebook, the field is filled with former Israeli spies. Apple is no exception, having hired dozens, if not more, Unit 8200 operatives to run its platforms and shape the company.
This investigation does not claim that the Israeli state is deliberately infiltrating Silicon Valley. However, what it does unquestionably suggest is that the outlook and general biases of these entities are strongly pro-Israel. What does it say about Silicon Valley’s culture that individuals with well-documented ties to a controversial foreign spy agency are considered ideal hires?
It is unthinkable that former intelligence agents of Hezbollah, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, or Russia’s FSB or GRU would be hired en masse, and trusted with our most sensitive data. Yet, when it comes to Israel (or U.S. surveillance agencies), the answer is different. Many of these employees are not even “former” agents, and are directly recruited from Unit 8200 while still in active service, despite Israeli law explicitly prohibiting the group’s members from identifying themselves or divulging their alliances.
Thus, in this light, it appears that those like Apples4Ceasefire struggling to end the company’s double standards are fighting an uphill battle.
Local website reveals city’s secret nuclear weapons programme
by Paul Linford , 18 Jul 2025, https://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2025/news/local-website-reveals-citys-secret-nuclear-weapons-programme/
A city news website has revealed a university’s role in a programme to develop a new nuclear warhead.
The Sheffield Tribune, part of Mill Media, found evidence of a secure cell established at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre – part of the University of Sheffield.
The unit was set up by the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) – an MoD body responsible for developing nuclear weapons — with the purpose of helping develop a new warhead for the UK’s nuclear arsenal, known as Astraea.
Data journalist Daniel Timms pieced together the story from documents already in the public domain, including a set of minutes from a meeting of parish councillors in Berkshire.
Danie spent four months working on the story and has written a first-person piece about how he uncovered the scoop.
Local website reveals city’s secret nuclear weapons programme
by Paul Linford Published 18 Jul 2025
A city news website has revealed a university’s role in a programme to develop a new nuclear warhead.
The Sheffield Tribune, part of Mill Media, found evidence of a secure cell established at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre – part of the University of Sheffield.
The unit was set up by the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) – an MoD body responsible for developing nuclear weapons — with the purpose of helping develop a new warhead for the UK’s nuclear arsenal, known as Astraea.
Data journalist Daniel Timms pieced together the story from documents already in the public domain, including a set of minutes from a meeting of parish councillors in Berkshire.
Daniel, pictured, spent four months working on the story and has written a first-person piece about how he uncovered the scoop.
The key breakthrough came when he read a set of minutes from a meeting of Berkshire parish councillors around the AWE’s Aldermaston HQ in November 2023 which was addressed by an AWE director, Andrew McNaughton.
Wrote Daniel: “Unsurprisingly, AWE publishes very little. But they do have occasional meetings with local parish councillors around their Berkshire site. And in the published minutes, I finally find what I’d been searching for.
“It was the 108th meeting of the committee, in November 2023. Andrew McNaughton, the executive director for infrastructure on the fissile programme, explained that AWE had not had to design new warheads for decades, and taking this on will require new buildings and facilities.
“But in the meantime, they were doing some work elsewhere. And this was where the key admission was made.
“‘We already have a secure cell in Sheffield (part of Sheffield University) where we have some of the equipment we have been using… where we are going to be trialling the processes and training some of our employees,” McNaughton said.”
The Tribune gave both the Ministry of Defence and the university the opportunity to dispute its reporting, but they did not.
Added Daniel: “I’ve been working on this story for four months. I have no previous experience with the defence sector, and I assumed it would be an interesting diversion that would ultimately lead nowhere.
“Instead, largely by relying on freely available documents, I’ve been able to reveal where a significant aspect of the UK’s nuclear weapons programme is taking place — in a building with apparently minimal security just outside Sheffield.
“It’s possible that others with more of a headstart — and with less benign motives — have been able to do the same. But, given the lack of pushback (we haven’t been asked not to publish) perhaps the parties involved aren’t too concerned.”
A spokesperson for the university told The Tribune: “Our work at the AMRC involves developing and testing new technologies and processes for manufacturing companies and does not involve production of components for deployment.
Local website reveals city’s secret nuclear weapons programme
by Paul Linford Published 18 Jul 2025
A city news website has revealed a university’s role in a programme to develop a new nuclear warhead.
The Sheffield Tribune, part of Mill Media, found evidence of a secure cell established at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre – part of the University of Sheffield.
The unit was set up by the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) – an MoD body responsible for developing nuclear weapons — with the purpose of helping develop a new warhead for the UK’s nuclear arsenal, known as Astraea.
Data journalist Daniel Timms pieced together the story from documents already in the public domain, including a set of minutes from a meeting of parish councillors in Berkshire.
Daniel, pictured, spent four months working on the story and has written a first-person piece about how he uncovered the scoop.
The key breakthrough came when he read a set of minutes from a meeting of Berkshire parish councillors around the AWE’s Aldermaston HQ in November 2023 which was addressed by an AWE director, Andrew McNaughton.
Wrote Daniel: “Unsurprisingly, AWE publishes very little. But they do have occasional meetings with local parish councillors around their Berkshire site. And in the published minutes, I finally find what I’d been searching for.
“It was the 108th meeting of the committee, in November 2023. Andrew McNaughton, the executive director for infrastructure on the fissile programme, explained that AWE had not had to design new warheads for decades, and taking this on will require new buildings and facilities.
“But in the meantime, they were doing some work elsewhere. And this was where the key admission was made.
“‘We already have a secure cell in Sheffield (part of Sheffield University) where we have some of the equipment we have been using… where we are going to be trialling the processes and training some of our employees,” McNaughton said.”
The Tribune gave both the Ministry of Defence and the university the opportunity to dispute its reporting, but they did not.
Added Daniel: “I’ve been working on this story for four months. I have no previous experience with the defence sector, and I assumed it would be an interesting diversion that would ultimately lead nowhere.
“Instead, largely by relying on freely available documents, I’ve been able to reveal where a significant aspect of the UK’s nuclear weapons programme is taking place — in a building with apparently minimal security just outside Sheffield.
“It’s possible that others with more of a headstart — and with less benign motives — have been able to do the same. But, given the lack of pushback (we haven’t been asked not to publish) perhaps the parties involved aren’t too concerned.”
A spokesperson for the university told The Tribune: “Our work at the AMRC involves developing and testing new technologies and processes for manufacturing companies and does not involve production of components for deployment.
“Our collaboration with partners in the defence sector helps them to overcome sustainability and productivity challenges, and support UK security and sovereign capabilities.”
Joshi Hermann, proprietor of Mill Media commented: “This is a fantastic story from Daniel Timms, revealing the existence of a secret nuclear weapons programme in Sheffield.
“If he can work this out from sources and the minutes of a parish council meeting in Berkshire, then the Russians/Chinese can too.”
Francesca Albanese: “A revolutionary shift is underway”
Remarks of Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, at the Hague Group Emergency Conference of States in Bogotá, Colombia.
By Francesca Albanese / Progressive International, https://progressive.international/wire/2025-07-16-francesca-albanese-a-revolutionary-shift-is-underway/en
Excellencies, Friends,
I express my appreciation to the government of Colombia and South Africa for convening this group, and to all members of the Hague Group, its founding members for their principled stance, and the others who are joining. May you keep groing and so the strength and effectiveness of your concrete actions.
Thank you also to the Secretariat for its tireless work, and last but not least, the Palestinian experts—individuals and organisations who travelled to Bogota from occupied Palestine, historical Palestine/Israel and other places of the diaspora/exile, to accompany this process, after providing HG with outstanding, evidence-based briefings.
And of course all of you who are here today,
It is important to be here today, in a moment that may prove historical indeed. There is hope that these two days will move all present to work together to take concrete measures to end the genocide in Gaza and, hopefully, end the erasure of the
Palestinian for what remains of Palestine—because this is the testing ground for a system where freedom, rights, and justice are made real for all. This hope, that people like me hold tight, is a discipline. A discipline we all should have.
The occupied Palestinian territory today is a hellscape. In Gaza, Israel has dismantled even the last UN function—humanitarian aid—in order to deliberately starve, displace time and again, or kill a population they have marked for elimination. In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, ethnic cleansing advances through unlawful siege, mass displacement, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, widespread torture. Across all areas under Israeli rule, Palestinians live under the terror of annihilation, broadcast in real time to a watching world. The very few Israeli people who stand against genocide, occupation, and apartheid—while the majority openly cheers and calls for more—remind us that Israeli liberation, too, is inseparable from Palestinian freedom. .
The atrocities of the past 21 months are not a sudden aberration; they are the culmination of decades of policies to displace and replace the Palestinian people.
Against this backdrop, it is inconceivable that political forums, from Brussels to NY, are still debating recognition of the State of Palestine—not because it’s unimportant, but because for 35 years states have stalled, refused recognition, pretending to “invest in the PA” while abandoning the Palestinian people to Israel’s relentless, rapacious territorial ambitions and unspeakable crimes. Meanwhile political discourse has reduced Palestine to a humanitarian crisis to manage in perpetuity rather than a political issue demanding principled and firm resolution: end permanent occupation, apartheid and today genocide. And it is not the law that has failed or faltered—it is political will that has abdicated.
But today, we are also witnessing a rupture. Palestine’s immense suffering has cracked open the possibility of transformation. Even if this is not fully reflected into political agendas (yet), a revolutionary shift is underway—one that, if sustained, will be remembered as a moment when history changed course.
And this is why I came to this meeting with a sense of being at a historical turning point —discursively and politically.
First, the narrative is shifting: away from Israel’s endlessly invoked “right to self-defence” and toward the long-denied Palestinian right to self-determination—systematically invisibilised, suppressed and delegitimised for decades. The weaponisation of antisemitism applied to Palestinian words, and narratives, and the dehumanising use of the terrorism framework for Palestinian action (from armed resistance to the work of NGOs pursuing justice in international arena), has led to a global political paralysis that has been intentional. It must be redressed. The time is now.
Second, and consequentially, we are seeing the rise of a new multilateralism: principled, courageous, increasingly led by the Global Majority it pains me that I have yet to see this include European countries. As a European, I fear what the region and its institutions have come to symbolize to many: a sodality of states preaching international law yet guided more by colonial mindset than principle, acting as vassals to the US empire, even as it drags us from war to war, misery to misery and when it comes to Palestine: from silence to complicity.
But the presence of European countries at this meeting shows that a different path is possible. To them I say: the Hague Group has the potential to signal not just a coalition, but a new moral center in world politics. Please, stand with them.
Millions are watching—hoping—for leadership that can birth a new global order rooted in justice, humanity, and collective liberation. This is not just about Palestine. This is about all of us.
Principled states must rise to this moment. It does not need to have a political allegiance, color, political party flags or ideologies: it needs to be upheld by basic human values. Those which Israel has been mercilessly crushing for 21 months now.
Meanwhile I applaud the calling of this emergency conference in Bogota to address the unrelenting devastation in Gaza. So it is on this, that focus must be directed. The measures adopted in January by the Hague Group were symbolically powerful. It was the signal of the discursive and political shift needed. But they are the absolute bear minimum. I implore you to expand your commitment. And to turn that commitment into concrete actions, legislatively, judicially in each of your jurisdictions. And to consider first and foremost, what must we do to stop the genocidal onslaught. For Palestinians, especially those in Gaza, this question is existential. But it really is applicable to the humanity of all of us.
In this context my responsibility here is to recommend to you, uncompromisingly and dispassionately, the cure for the root cause. We are long past dealing with symptoms, the comfort zone of too many these days. And my words will show that what the Hague Group has committed to do and is considering expanding upon, is a small commitment towards what’s just and due based on your obligations under international law.
Obligations, not sympathy, not charity.
Each state immediately review and suspend all ties with Israel. Their military, strategic, political, diplomatic, economic, relations – both imports and exports – and to make sure that their private sector, insurers, banks, pension funds, universities and other goods, and services providers in the supply chains do the same. Treating the occupation as business as usual translates into supporting or providing aid or assistance to the unlawful presence of Israel in the OPT. These ties must be terminated as a matter of urgency. I will have the opportunity to elaborate on the technicalities and implications in our further sessions but lets be clear, I mean cutting ties with Israel as a whole. Cutting ties only with the “components” of it in the oPt is not an option.
This is in line with the duty on all states stemming from the July 2024 Advisory Opinion which confirmed the illegality of Israel’s prolonged occupation, which it declared tantamount to racial segregation and apartheid . The General Assembly adopted that opinion. These findings are more than sufficient for action. Further, it is the state of Israel who is accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, so it is the state that must be responsible for its wrongdoings.
As I argue in my last report to the HRC, the Israeli economy is structured to sustain the occupation, and has now turned genocidal. It is impossible to disentangle Israel’s state policies and economy from its longstanding policies and economy of occupation. It has been inseparable for decades. The longer states and others stay engaged, the more this illegality at its heart is legitimised. This is the complicity. Now that economy has turned genocidal. There is no good Israel, bad Israel.
I ask you to consider this moment as if we were sitting here in the 1990s, discussing the case of apartheid South Africa. Would you have proposed selective sanctions on SA for its conduct in individual Bantustans? Or would you have recognised the state’s criminal system as a whole? And here, what Israel is doing is worse. This comparison— is a legal and factual assessment supported by international legal proceedings many in this room are part of.
This is what concrete measures mean. Negotiating with Israel on how to manage what remains of Gaza and West Bank, in Brussels or elsewhere, is an utter dishonor to international law.
And to the Palestinians and those from all corners of the world standing by them, often at great cost and sacrifice, I say whatever happens, Palestine will have written this tumultuous chapter—not as a footnote in the chronicles of would-be conquerors, but as the newest verse in a centuries-long saga of peoples who have risen against injustice, colonialism, and today more than ever neoliberal tyranny.
Australia obstructed probe into deadly ‘Rainbow Warrior’ bombing
David Robie, July 10, 2025 , https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/07/australia-obstructed-probe-into-deadly-rainbow-warrior-bombing/
France’s ‘Operation Satanique’ bombing of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, 40 years ago this month, was state-sponsored terrorism – and Australia had a part in helping French secret agents to escape.
A DECLASSIFIED AUSTRALIA SPECIAL REPORT
The French Government terror bombing of Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior, 40 years ago in Auckland harbour backfired on the French disastrously. It added to mounting Pacific and global pressure to force France 11 years later to abandon nuclear testing on its Pacific island colonies.
Australia’s obstruction of the New Zealand police investigation of the French secret agents who conducted the terror bombing still rankles, 40 years on.
David Robie, the only journalist on board the ship in the weeks leading up to the bombing, looks back on the event and on the legacy of this sordid act of state terrorism in a New Zealand port.
Was dubbed “Blunderwatergate”. This was an apt epithet for the Jacques Tati-like farce marking the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior by French secret agents on 10 July 1985.
And the bungled attempts to cover up the murky trail leading back to the highest levels of government, the military and intelligence in Paris.
It was tragic too. The killing of Greenpeace’s photojournalist Portuguese-born Fernando Pereira that night at Auckland’s Marsden Wharf was a shock to the crew – and to me as a journalist who had been on board documenting the ship’s voyage for 10 weeks.
But we had no illusions about French involvement. The Greenpeace ship had just arrived in Auckland and was preparing for a protest voyage to Moruroa Atoll, in the French Pacific territory of Tahiti, to highlight the French nuclear testing.
A combination of a swift investigation by New Zealand police, and curious bystanders, led to the arrest and charging with murder of two French secret agents from France’s secret service, the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE). The arrested agents had been posing as Swiss honeymooners in the days that followed the bombing.
A lack of co-operation and actual obstruction by Australian authorities stymied an attempt to arrest four more French DGSE agents who had fled to Australian territory of Norfolk Island.
French terror in Opération Satanique
In a sense it was lucky that the death toll on board the Rainbow Warrior that night wasn’t a lot higher. Fernando had gone below deck after the first blast looking for a missing crew member and to rescue his camera gear.
In their appropriately titled “Opération Satanique”, the French spies used a deadly double detonation to bomb the ship twice, precisely seven minutes apart. This technique has similarities to the now-familiar “double tap” bombing that often results in first responders and rescuers being targeted, and has been described as a war crime as it violates the Geneva Convention by targeting civilians and the wounded.
Fernando died when the second bomb exploded, rapidly flooding the ship further and crippling the propellor shaft just behind his cabin – and next to my own.
Ten other crew members on board scrambled off, some thrown into the water. More people could have died, as several had been asleep after the lively 29th birthday party for campaign co-ordinator Steve Sawyer earlier in the evening.
Some were still chatting in the mess when the first French Naval limpet mine went off, blasting a massive hole the size of a garage door in the hull at the engine room, at 10 minutes to midnight.
There had been no warning from the French to the crew or others on board in this worst case of state terrorism ever to happen in New Zealand. And no warning of the second blast to come.
The final voyage
The man killed in the blast, Fernando Pereira, aged 36 and the father of two young children, was on the Rainbow Warrior’s Pacific voyage almost by chance.
At the beginning of the voyage, co-ordinator Steve Sawyer had been seeking a wirephoto machine for transmitting photographs to the world of the campaign voyage to the Marshall Islands.
He phoned Fiona Davies, then heading the Greenpeace photo office in Paris. But he wanted the machine and a photographer separately.
“No, no – I’ll get you a wire machine,” replied Davies. “But you’ll have to take my photographer with it.”
So Fernando Pereira joined the Rainbow Warrior in Hawai’i and he covered the voyage to Rongelap Atoll in the Marshall Islands The islanders there wanted help to leave their contaminated ancestral home, and in May 1985, Greenpeace’s ship, the Rainbow Warrior, set out to help them.
They suffered serious health problems because of radioactive fallout that had dusted their island home from at least five “dirty” US nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s. Marshall Islands, 3500kms north-east of Australia, had been occupied by US forces since WW2, and in 1979 voted to exercise sovereignty in a Compact in Free Association with the United States.
The 15-megaton “Bravo” test on 1 March 1954, a thousand times more powerful than the US atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima, was the most lethal to the islanders. Hundreds of people were living on the downwind atolls of Rongelap, Rongerik and Utirik, barely 150km to the east. They are left with a deadly legacy of thyroid tumours, cancers, still births, and a host of other illnesses.
Neglected by both the US and Marshall Islands authorities, and despite losing their homes and much cultural heritage, the islanders urged the Greenpeace flagship to evacuate them to Mejatto on Kwajalein Atoll, 120km away.
It took four return voyages for the Rainbow Warrior to move about 320 Rongelapese with their dismantled homes and belongings — some hundreds of tonnes — to their new atoll.
Their future and their health remain uncertain four decades after Greenpeace helped them. But the media spotlight on the humanitarian voyage helped pressure the US to partially make amends.
The US did provide US$150 million as part of the agreement for the Compact of Free Association, to establish a Nuclear Claims Tribunal to deal with health claims over the testing. Established in 1988, the Tribunal ran out of funds in 2011 and ceased to function.
It also provided US$45 million to the Rongelap people to “clean up” the atoll – but so far just one of 60 islands has been cleaned up. The islanders are debating a return to their homeland of Rongelap, but many are not convinced that their atoll is safe yet.
Australian involvement in Opération Satanique
One aspect of the police investigation that rankled with New Zealanders was the lack of co-operation verging on obstruction by Australian authorities. This was the pursuit of the DGSE agents posing as the crew of the yacht Ouvéa that had been chartered in New Caledonia and was suspected of smuggling the explosives into New Zealand.
On 15 July, five days after the deadly bombing, a team of eight New Zealand detectives — including two French speakers — and a forensic scientist on the hunt for the fleeing French agents, were flown in a New Zealand Air Force plane to Australia’s Norfolk Island.
They interviewed the three crew on board (they missed the leader Dr Xavier Maniguet, who had earlier managed to fly to Sydney) – DGSE agents Chief Petty Officer Roland Verge, 32; Petty Officer Gerald Andries, 32; and Petty Officer Jean-Michael Barcelo, 33. They all claimed to be “tourists”.
The next day the detectives searched the Ouvéa, took scrapings from the yacht’s bilges to check for explosives, and seized documents. They also found a map of Auckland with a near-harbour Ponsonby address of a Greenpeace member handwritten on it – later shown to be a map sent by the French spy Christine Cabon, who had infiltrated Greenpeace, to the DGSE. She later fled to Israel, but managed to elude a New Zealand detective who tracked her down.
The 11-metre yacht the Ouvéa had been secretly chartered by the “covert action” arm of the DGSE French spy agency, to carry the two limpet bombs, the diving gear, a zodiac dingy, and radios and other gear to Auckland harbour.
The information collected after analysis produced enough evidence to charge the three agents with murder on the same basis as the two DGSE agents already arrested, but the New Zealand police needed time for the analytics, and even the passport checks took five days.
However, the Australian police and immigration officials on Norfolk Island, without doubt operating under instructions from Canberra (where the Bob Hawke Labor Government was in power), would not allow extra time for holding the suspects.
They gave New Zealand police just one day — an impossible deadline of 2pm on 16 July — and after that the yacht crew and their boat were free to depart, unimpeded by Australian authorities.
By the time the New Zealand police had obtained arrest warrants for the arrest of the Ouvéa crew on 26 July on charges of arson and murder, they and their boat had already sailed away from Australian territory.
Australian assistance to the French may have been more than mere obstruction.
A former head of DGSE in his memoir admitted to many covert sabotage and espionage operations against Greenpeace. He described how its “traditional allies” had ”on several occasions” been informed of plans for covert operations and had either lent a hand or “turned a blind eye on such-and-such a day”.
Whether Australia’s intelligence agencies also directly assisted the French with intelligence, surveillance, or preparations for carrying out the bombing, or in the escape of their agents, is unclear.
Tahitian sources said the DGSE agents, after being released by Australian authorities from Norfolk Island, had rendezvoused with the French Navy’s nuclear-powered attack submarine Rubis which was used for Special Forces deployment and surveillance, and had been conveniently deployed to the Coral Sea area.
The Ouvéa yacht was then scuttled. An empty life raft was detected in the area shortly after by a New Zealand Air Force P-3 Orion surveillance plane dispatched to hunt for the yacht and for the French submarine known to be in the area. The DGSE agents were landed ashore from the submarine at the French Pacific territory of Tahiti.
Four other French agents remained undetected in New Zealand. One of the agents nonchalantly flew out unimpeded through Sydney, while the others laid low under cover for two weeks before quietly slipping out of the country.
French state violence against Greenpeace
So why was the Rainbow Warrior bombed? Many in the French military were blinded by an intense paranoia over Greenpeace and other activists working to highlight nuclear testing in the South Pacific and in supporting independence struggles in their Pacific colonies.
The French secret service, the DGSE, was given a free hand by Defence Minister Charles Hernu to “neutralise” the environmental organisation.
The French prime minister at the time, Laurent Fabius, claimed in a TVNZ interview in 2005 that he had been “betrayed” by his defence minister. Hernu died in 1990 – still popular in France over the bombing.
The sabotage attack on the Rainbow Warrior certainly wasn’t out of character with many other brutal actions taken by French authorities against Greenpeace vessels protesting against nuclear testing in the Pacific.
In 1973, for example, French commandos boarded the Greenpeace yacht Vega off Moruroa Atoll and savagely beat two of the crew, including one of the founders of Greenpeace, David McTaggart, who almost lost an eye.
McTaggart filed a civil action against the French Navy, accusing it of piracy. The Paris court found the Navy guilty of having deliberately rammed the Vega.
In 1995, Greenpeace led another flotilla to Moruroa. Ten years after the lethal bombing in Auckland, French commandos boarded the Rainbow Warrior II, smashed equipment, fired tear gas at crew on the ship’s bridge, arrested Greenpeace activists, and seized the ship.
France only returned the vessel to Greenpeace several months later.
And I also had my personal run-ins with French authorities as a journalist covering environmental and independence issues in the 1980s.
In January 1987, a year after the first edition of my book, Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior, was published, I was arrested at gunpoint by French troops in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia /Kanaky, near the New Caledonian village of Canala.
The arrest followed a week of being tailed by secret agents in the capital, Nouméa. When I was handed over by the military to local gendarmes for interrogation, accusations of my being a “spy” and questions over my book on the _Rainbow Warrior_bombing were made in the same breath.
After about four hours of questioning by the gendarmes, I was released.
Greenpeace, after being awarded $8 million in compensation — but no apology — from France by the International Arbitration Tribunal, finally towed the Rainbow Warrior to Matauri Bay and scuttled her off Motutapere, in the Cavalli Islands in northern New Zealand on 12 December 1987, to create a living reef.
Her namesake, the Rainbow Warrior II, formerly the Grampian Fame, was launched in Hamburg exactly four years after the bombing, to continue the environmental advocacy work
Cutting a deal
The diplomatic pressure from France heaped upon New Zealand to release the DGSE agents was huge. A deal was finally agreed but it sparked almost as much anger in New Zealand as the bombing itself, when France threatened to block trade access to New Zealand’s European markets.
The compensation deal for New Zealand, mediated in 1986 by then UN secretary-general Javier Perez de Cuellar, awarded the government $13 million. The money was used to fund anti-nuclear projects and the Pacific Development and Conservation Trust.
The compensation agreement and an apology by France was in exchange for the deportation of the two jailed DGSE secret agents, Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur (“the honeymooners”), after they had served less than a year of their 10-year sentences for manslaughter and wilful damage of the bombed ship.
They were transferred to Hao Atoll in French Polynesia to serve three years in exile at a “Club Med”-style nuclear and military base.
But the bombing scandal didn’t end there. The same day as the “burial at sea” of the Rainbow Warrior in 1987, the French government told New Zealand that Mafart had a “serious stomach complaint”.
French authorities repatriated him to France – in defiance of the terms of the UN agreement and protests from David Lange’s Labour Government.
It was later claimed by a Tahitian newspaper, Les Nouvelles, that Mafart was being smuggled out of Tahiti on a false passport hours before New Zealand was even told of his “illness”.
The other French agent, Prieur, was also repatriated to France in May 1988 because she was pregnant. France ignored protests by the New Zealand Government, and the secret agent pair were honoured, decorated and promoted in their homeland.
A supreme irony is that such an act of terrorism should be publicly rewarded, given the past two decades efforts against terrorism in the so-called “war on terror”.
Satanique mea culpa
In May 2005, the French agents’ lawyer, Gerard Currie, tried to block footage of their 1985 guilty pleas in the New Zealand High Court — shown on closed circuit to journalists, including myself, at the time but not seen publicly — from being broadcast in TVNZ’s Sunday program.
Losing the High Court ruling, the DGSE ‘s lawyer appealed against the footage being broadcast. But the two former agents had lost any spurious claim to privacy over the act of terrorism by publishing their own memoirs – Agent Secrete (Prieur, 1995) and Carnets Secrets (Mafart, 1999).
More than three decades after the bombing, in September 2015, the French secret agent who planted the French Naval limpet mines on the hull of the Rainbow Warrior, “outed” himself and apologised to Greenpeace, the Pereira family, and the people of New Zealand, describing the operation as a “big, big failure”.
Retired colonel Jean-Luc Kister (alias Alain Tonel), revealed in simultaneous interviews with TVNZ’s Sunday program reporter John Hudson and French investigative journalist Edwy Plenel, publisher of _Mediapart_, his role in the sabotage.
Colonel Kister revealed that an early French proposal to merely damage the ship’s engine in Auckland Harbour was rejected.
“There was a willingness at a high level to say: ‘This has to end once and for all. We need to take radical measures’.
“We were told we had to sink it,” Kister said in the interview.
“I have the blood of an innocent man on my conscience, and that weighs on me. We are not cold-blooded killers. My conscience led me to apologise and explain myself.”
The legacy of nuclear resistance
Bengt Danielsson, a Swedish anthropologist, and his French wife, Marie-Thérèse, were an inspiration to the nuclear-free and independent Pacific movement, especially in the Cook Islands, New Zealand and Tahiti.
Along with Elaine Shaw of Greenpeace Aotearoa, they played a vital role in raising public awareness of the plight of Tahitians harmed by the years of French atmospheric nuclear tests.
While the Danielssons published several scientific studies and popular books on the islands, including _Moruroa, Mon Amour_ and Poisoned Reign, they constantly campaigned to expose French nuclear colonialism.
They were honoured for their commitment and achievements with Bengt being awarded the Right Livelihood Award, an alternative Nobel Peace Prize-style international recognition, “exposing the tragic results of and advocating an end to French nuclear colonialism”.
However, Bengt Danielsson’s health deteriorated after this honour and he died in July 1997, barely a year after French nuclear testing in the Gambier Islands ended for good. Marie-Thérèse died six years later in 2003.
France agreed to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty after a swansong package of eight planned nuclear tests to provide data for simulation computer software.
However, such was the strength of international hostility and protests and riots in Pape’ete that Paris ended the nuclear program after just six tests. France officially ratified the CTBT on 10 September 1996.
Elaine Shaw worked for Greenpeace Aotearoa for 16 years and developed it with a core group into the small but lively movement it had become by the time of the bombing.
But she was not comfortable with the changes and rapid growth of the organisation after the bombing. She worked tirelessly for the people of Rongelap as well as “French” Polynesia, the victims of nuclear testing until she died of cancer in 1990.
“I sensed that her interest stemmed from her concern for the people rather than any political ideology,” said Tahitian activist Tea Hirshon. “She went to many islands and saw for herself what people in the Pacific wanted.”
Still other Greenpeace stalwarts have died since the Rainbow Warrior bombing, including Warrior of the Rainbow author and journalist Robert Hunter (2005), founding president of Greenpeace; and David McTaggart (2004), for many years the inspirational chairman of Greenpeace International.
Kawhia-based Owen Wilkes, who had joined a Vega voyage to the Cook Islands in mid-1986, and Fijian nuclear-free and independent Pacific campaigner Amelia Rokotuivuna, both also died in 2005.
The campaign co-ordinator of the fatal voyage, Steve Sawyer, died of pneumonia caused by lung cancer in 2019. One of the crew members on the Rongelap mission, the Rainbow Warrior’s chief engineer Davey Edward, also died of cancer in 2021.
The best possible memorial for Elaine Shaw, Amelia Rokotuivuna, Owen Wilkes, the Danielssons and other Pacific campaigners came in 2004 when Tahitians elected Oscar Temaru as their territorial President.
He had established the first nuclear-free municipality in the Pacific Islands when he was mayor of the Pape’ete suburb of Faa’a.
Since the Temaru coalition came to power, demands increased for a full commission of inquiry to investigate new evidence of radiation exposure from the atmospheric tests in the Gambiers in French Polynesia from 1966-1974.
Altogether France carried out 193 nuclear tests in the South Pacific, 46 of them dumping more than nine megatons of explosive energy into the atmosphere – 42 over Moruroa, and four over Fangataufa atolls.
It was recently revealed that the French Atomic Energy Commission has spent at least €90,000 in a vain campaign to undermine the research by an investigative journalism unit called Disclose and revealed in the book _Toxique,_ published in 2021 and an associated website “The Moruroa Files“.
The investigators trawled some 2000 pages of declassified documents and carried out scores of interviews, concluding that French authorities consistently underestimated the scale of the impact on the environment, geology and the health of the islanders of the French nuclear testing in Polynesia.
The CEA produced its own booklet, “Nuclear tests in French Polynesia: why, how and with what consequences”, printed 5000 copies, and distributed these around Pacific countries.
However, the pressure on France to atone for its actions will continue.
From death springs life
The sordid Rainbow Warrior affair was a diplomatic debacle for the French, and it has taken years for Paris to recover some mana — spiritual power and authority — in the South Pacific region.
Greenpeace and the general environmental movement have grown dramatically and matured over the past four decades. Greenpeace is currently operating Rainbow Warrior III as its campaign flagship.
Campaigns have broadened from the dangers of nuclear power, into issues such as the climate crisis, driftnet fisheries, genetic engineering, glacier retreat, the illegal rainforest timber trade, and now the growing threat of deep sea mining industry.
The original Rainbow Warrior’s last voyage and the death of Fernando Pereira were not in vain. The struggle lives on.
Republished from Declassified Australia , 1 July 2025
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