Patrick Lawrence: The CIA in Ukraine — The NY Times Gets a Guided Tour
SCHEERPOST, By Patrick Lawrence February 29, 2024
The New York Times recently ran a story called “The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin.” Patrick Lawrence writes that these “secrets” only contained what the CIA “wanted and did not want disclosed,” and were “effectively authorized” by the agency.
f you have paid attention to what various polls and officials in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West have been doing and saying about Ukraine lately, you know the look and sound of desperation. You would be desperate, too, if you were making a case for a war Ukrainians are on the brink of losing and will never, brink or back-from-the-brink, have any chance of winning. Atop this, you want people who know better, including 70 percent of Americans according to a recent poll, to keep investing extravagant sums in this ruinous folly.
And here is what seems to me the true source of angst among these desperados: Having painted this war as a cosmic confrontation between the world’s democrats and the world’s authoritarians, the people who started it and want to prolong it have painted themselves into a corner. They cannot lose it. They cannot afford to lose a war they cannot win: This is what you see and hear from all those good-money-after-bad people still trying to persuade you that a bad war is a good war and that it is right that more lives and money should be pointlessly lost to it.
Everyone must act for the cause in these dire times…………………………………………………
you have Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s war-mongering sec-gen, telling Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty last week that it will be fine if Kyiv uses F–16s to attack Russian cities once they are operational this summer. The U.S.–made fighter jets, the munitions, the money—all of it is essential “to ensure Russia doesn’t make further gains.” Stephen Bryen, formerly a deputy undersecretary at the Defense Department, offered an excellent response to this over the weekend in his Weapons and Strategy newsletter: “Fire Jens Stoltenberg before it is too late.”
Good thought, but Stoltenberg, Washington’s longtime water-carrier in Brussels, is merely doing his job as assigned: Keep up the illusions as to Kyiv’s potency and along with it the Russophobia, the more primitive the better. You do not get fired for irresponsible rhetoric that risks something that might look a lot like World War III.
What would a propaganda blitz of this breadth and stupidity be without an entry from The New York Times? Given the extent to which The Times has abandoned all professional principle in the service of the power it is supposed to report upon, you just knew it would have to get in on this one.
The Times has published very numerous pieces in recent weeks on the necessity of keeping the war going and the urgency of a House vote authorizing that $61 billion Biden’s national security people want to send Ukraine. But never mind all those daily stories. Last Sunday it came out with its big banana. “The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin” sprawls—lengthy text, numerous photographs. The latter show the usual wreckage—cars, apartment buildings, farmhouses, a snowy dirt road lined with landmines. But the story that goes with it is other than usual.
Somewhere in Washington, someone appears to have decided it was time to let the Central Intelligence Agency’s presence and programs in Ukraine be known. And someone in Langley, the CIA’s headquarters, seems to have decided this will be O.K., a useful thing to do. When I say the agency’s presence and programs, I mean some: We get a very partial picture of the CIA’s doings in Ukraine, as the lies of omission—not to mention the lies of commission—are numerous in this piece. But what The Times published last weekend, all 5,500 words of it, tells us more than had been previously made public.
Let us consider this unusually long takeout carefully for what it is and how it came to make page one of last Sunday’s editions…………………………………………………………..
Adam Entous and Michael Schwirtz tell the story of—this the subhead—“a secret intelligence partnership with Ukraine that is now critical for both countries in countering Russia.” They set the scene in a below-ground monitoring and communications center the CIA showed Ukrainian intel how to build beneath the wreckage of an army outpost destroyed in a Russian missile attack. They report on the archipelago of such places the agency paid for, designed, equipped, and now helps operate. Twelve of these, please note, are along Ukraine’s border with Russia.
………………………..The CIA handed these two material according to what it wanted and did not want disclosed, and various officials associated with it made themselves available as “sources”—none of the American sources named, per usual.
……………………………..The narrative thread woven through the piece is interesting. It is all about the two-way, can’t-do-without-it cooperation between the CIA and Ukraine’s main intel services—the SBU (the domestic spy agency) and military intelligence, which goes by HUR
……………………… Sloppy, tiresome. But to a purpose. Why, then? What is The Times’s purpose in publishing this piece?
………………………………..The Times piece appears amid flagging enthusiasm for the Ukraine project. And it is in this circumstance that Entous and Schwirtz went long on the benefits accruing to the CIA in consequence of its presence on the ground in Ukraine. But read these two reporters carefully: They, or whoever put their piece in its final shape, make it clear that the agency’s operations on Ukrainian soil count first and most as a contribution to Washington’s long campaign to undermine the Russian Federation. This is not about Ukrainian democracy, that figment of neoliberal propagandists. It is about Cold War II, plain and simple. It is time to reinvigorate the old Russophobia, thus—and hence all the baloney about Russians corrupting elections and so on. It is all there for a reason. ………………………………………………..
more https://scheerpost.com/2024/02/29/patrick-lawrence-the-cia-in-ukraine-the-ny-times-gets-a-guided-tour/
More indictments for Ohio nuclear crimes
The mainstream national press has scarcely reported any of this. Maybe they view it as a local story. But this kind of nuclear corruption has also occurred in South Carolina and Illinois, culminating in multiple indictments and prison sentence
Why does the nuclear industry find itself mired in these kinds of criminal conspiracies? Because it has no chance of standing on its own financial feet.
Former executives face a judge — in their ankle monitors
By Linda Pentz Gunter, , beyondnuclearinternational
It was called “likely the largest bribery money-laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio.” And the shoes are still dropping. Or should that be ankle monitors? Because these latter belong to the three latest criminals indicted for their roles in a scheme that saw FirstEnergy hand over $61 million in bribes to Ohio politicians and their co-conspirators to secure favorable legislation.
That bill, known as HB6, guaranteed a $1.3 billion bailout to FirstEnergy in order to keep open its two failing Ohio nuclear power plants, Davis-Besse and Perry, as well as struggling coal plants. The nuclear portion of the bill has since been rescinded, but Ohio consumers are still paying to prop up two aging coal plants, to the tune of half a million dollars a day, amounting to an extra $1.50 a month on every ratepayer’s electric bill.
The $61 million bribery plot was the mastermind of then speaker of the Ohio House, Larry Householder, who is now a household name in Ohio for all the wrong reasons. He was sentenced last June to 20 years in prison for his part in the conspiracy. GOP Chairman Matt Borges, was also found guilty of racketeering conspiracy and sentenced to five years in federal prison. Both men say they will appeal.
Householder may have been the instigator, but in those earlier trials, FirstEnergy was described as a company that went “looking for someone to bribe them”. They found willing accomplices among politicians but also in the person of then Ohio Public Utilities Commission chairman, Samuel Randazzo.
So on February 12, yet more indictments were handed down, this time to Randazzo and the two FirstEnergy executives who corrupted him — former CEO Charles Jones, and former senior vice president of external affairs, Michael Dowling.
Their list of crimes, including a collective 27 felonies, was announced at a press conference by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost. But although the presence of their company had been requested, the accused were not there. ……………………………………………………………
The mainstream national press has scarcely reported any of this. Maybe they view it as a local story. But this kind of nuclear corruption has also occurred in South Carolina and Illinois, culminating in multiple indictments and prison sentences. It’s possible we could yet see something similar go down in Georgia as electricity rates there soar to pay for the two late-arriving and over-budget Vogtle reactors, the second of which just started fissioning earlier this month.
Why does the nuclear industry find itself mired in these kinds of criminal conspiracies? Because it has no chance of standing on its own financial feet. Meanwhile, cheaper, faster, more job-friendly renewable energy industry options are leaving nuclear power behind in a cloud of radioactive dust.
This economic collapse has, in turn, put pressure on politicians to make things right for their corporate nuclear friends, something Senator Joe Manchin and others are currently working hard to do on Capitol Hill.
So there may yet be more shoes (and ankle monitors) to drop and it’s going to be very interesting to see who’s wearing them.
Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/02/25/more-indictments-for-ohio-nuclear-crimes/
Ten years after Maidan: Why won’t the West admit that the coup was based on a lie?
Felix Livshitz, RT, Sat, 24 Feb 2024, https://www.sott.net/article/489209-Ten-years-after-Maidan-Why-wont-the-West-admit-that-the-coup-was-based-on-a-lie
—
This feature was first published on February 6, 2023. On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the events that took place in Kiev on February 22, 2014, we are again posting it on the front page.
Political scientist Ivan Katchanovski – of the University of Ottawa – revealed last year, in a paper, that the February 2014 massacre of Ukrainian protesters by sniper fire, a defining moment of the Western-backed Maidan coup, was not published by an academic journal for “political reasons.”
Evidence that external forces were involved has been suppressed for ‘political reasons’
‘The evidence is solid’
In a lengthy Twitter thread, Katchanovski first laid out the circumstances behind the rejection of his article, and the bombshell evidence included in it. The paper was initially accepted with minor revisions after peer review, and the journal’s editor offered a glowing appraisal of his work, writing:
“There is no doubt that this paper is exceptional in many ways. It offers evidence against the mainstream narrative of the regime change in Ukraine in 2014… It seems to me that the evidence the study produces in favour of its interpretation on who was behind the massacre of the protesters and the police during the ‘Euromaidan’ mass protests on February 18-20, 2014, in Ukraine, is solid. On this there is also consensus among the two reviewers.”
As the editor noted, the massacre was a “politically crucial development,” which led to the “transition of powers in the country” from the freely elected Viktor Yanukovich to the illegitimate and rabidly nationalistic administration of Aleksandr Turchinov, a former security services chief. It was endlessly cited in Western media as a symbol of the brutality of Ukraine’s government and an unprovoked attack on innocent pro-WesternMaidan protesters, who allegedly sought nothing more than democracy and freedom.
Rumors that the killings were a false flag intended to inflame tensions among the vast crowds filling Maidan, and provoke violence against the authorities, began circulating immediately.
No serious investigation into what happened was ever conducted by the Western media, with all claims that the sniper attacks were an inside job dismissed as Kremlin “disinformation.” However, even NATO’s Atlantic Council adjunct admitted in 2020 that the massacre was unsolved and that this “cast a shadow over Ukraine.”
Ask the witnesses
It may not remain unsolved for much longer though, due to an ongoing trial of policemen at the scene on the fateful day. The legal action has been unfolding for well over a year and has received no mainstream news attention at all outside Ukraine. Katchanovski drew heavily on witness testimony and video evidence that has emerged over the course of the trial in his suppressed paper.
For example, 51 protesters wounded during the incident testified at the trial that they were shot by snipers from Maidan-controlled buildings, and/or witnessed snipers there. Many spoke of snipers in buildings controlled by Maidan protesters shooting at police. This is consistent with other evidence collected by Katchanovski, such as 14 separate videos of snipers in protester-controlled buildings, 10 of which clearly feature far-right gunmen in the Hotel Ukraina aiming at crowds below.
In all, 300 witnesses have told much the same story. Synchronized videos show that the specific time and direction of shots fired by the police not only didn’t coincide with the killings of specific Maidan protesters, but that authorities aimed at walls, trees, lampposts, and even the ground, simply to disperse crowds.
Among those targeted by apparently Maidan-aligned snipers were journalists at Germany’s ARD. They weren’t the only Western news station in town at the time – so too were Belgian reporters, who not only filmed Maidan protesters screaming towards Hotel Ukraina for snipers not to shoot them, but also participants being actively lured to the killing zone. This incendiary footage was never broadcast.
CNN likewise filmed far-right elements firing at police from behind Maidan barricades, then hunting for positions to shoot from the 11th floor of the Hotel Ukraina, minutes before the BBC filmed snipers shooting protesters from a room where a far-right MP was staying. The network opted not to report this at the time.
We needn’t rely purely on video footage. Over the course of the trial, no fewer than 14 self-confessed members of Maidan sniper groups testified they had explicitly received massacre orders, Katchanovski claims. By contrast, no police officer at the scene has said they were directed to kill unarmed protesters, no minister has come forward to blow the whistle on such a scheme, and no evidence Yanukovich approved of the killings has ever emerged.
Separate from the trial, leaders of the far-right Svoboda party have openly stated that Western government representatives expressly told them before the massacre that they would start calling for Yanukovich’s ouster once casualties among protesters reached a certain number. This figure was even actively discussed by both sides – were five enough, or 20? Or even 100? The latter was the final total reported, and indeed led to calls for the Ukrainian government’s abdication.
***
Katchanovski previously published a landmark study on the Maidan massacre in 2021, which has been referenced over 100 times by scholars and experts, already making him one of most cited political scientists specializing in Ukraine, according to Google Scholar.
Whatever the nature and source of the political pressure applied to the journal that led to the censoring of the dynamite paper, the move may well backfire massively, in the spirit of the Streisand Effect. Indeed, it could help the truth of what happened on those deadly days come out, and assist in those responsible for the killings being brought to justice.
It should also prompt a wider reconsideration of the nature of Maidan too, and the government it produced. The banning of opposition parties, attacks on the Orthodox Church, the closure of dissident media outlets, and the war on Russian culture and language are all consequences.
Comment: It is interesting that the West keeps claiming that Ukraine is fighting for European values for as the last paragraph shows, those values contain nothing democratic, just or fair in them. The West might be right though as European values in reality are getting closer and closer to those demonstrated in Ukraine, namely fascism and totalitarianism.
See also:
New Israeli report alleging ‘systematic and intentional rape’ by Hamas relies on debunked Western media reports
The Grayzone, MAX BLUMENTHAL·FEBRUARY 22, 2024
The contents of the Israeli Association of Rape Crisis Center’s paper alleging “systematic” Hamas rape derive largely from discredited second-hand testimonies and debunked media reports. Among its most heavily cited sources is a dubious NY Times article that triggered a staff revolt at the paper.
Western media outlets are hyping a new report by the Israeli government-affiliated “Association of Rape Crisis Centers” (ARCC) which maintains that Hamas combatants carried out a campaign of “systematic and intentional” rape on October 7.
“Israeli report finds evidence of ‘systematic’ rape and abuse during 7 October attack,” a Guardian headline blared. “Report shows systematic rapes, murder of women in Israel on October 7,” Germany’s DPA screamed. Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post shrieked, “Hamas terrorists forced families to watch loved ones get raped at gunpoint.”
Despite the AP’s acknowledgment that the report “did not specify the number of cases it had documented or identify any victims, even anonymously” and that its authors “declined to say whether they had spoken to victims,” dozens of mainstream outlets have presented its findings as incontrovertible fact.
Yet a close examination of the ARCC report reveals that the paper is short on new research, absent of hard evidence, and reliant instead on clips from factually-challenged articles by the same Western outlets promoting its publication. Among the paper’s most frequently cited sources is an infamously shoddy New York Times report by Jeffrey Gettleman purporting to detail “How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on October 7.”
Following an internal staff uproar prompted by a series of Grayzone exposés which highlighted major inconsistencies and demonstrable falsehoods by the paper’s sources, the Times canceled an episode of its “Daily” podcast about the article.
Despite the controversy surrounding the Times’ report, the ARCC cites it twelve times in its own paper, while sourcing testimony second-hand from many of the same discredited Israelis as the Times.
The ARCC also relies substantially on testimony from ZAKA, the ultra-Orthodox “rescue” group which introduced false allegations that Hamas beheaded babies, cut fetuses from pregnant women, and had lunch in an Israeli family’s home after killing and mutilating them. ZAKA has been lambasted in Israeli media for serially mishandling evidence from the October 7 attacks and even staging atrocity scenes for fundraising purposes.
At least one quarter of citations in the ARCC’s paper are drawn from the widely panned New York Times article and credibility-strained ZAKA volunteers. The rest of the paper relies on dubious self-proclaimed witnesses like the Israeli army reservist Shari Mendes, who falsely claimed that Hamas not only cut a fetus from a pregnant Israeli woman, but beheaded its mother.
In citing the NY Times to demonstrate systematic rape by Hamas on October 7, the ARCC points to “a video posted on social media” which shows “a woman in a torn dress, without underwear, injured and with her face burned. Police investigators ruled that she had been raped.”
This section refers to Gal Abdush, a young woman killed on October 7 who features as a central character in the NY Times article. As The Grayzone reported, Abdush’s sister and brother-in-law both publicly denied that she was raped, with the former accusing the Times of manipulating her family into participating by misleading them about their editorial angle.
The ARCC later cites a NY Times account of “an IDF paramedic” who claimed to have entered a room in Kibbutz Beeri “where the bodies of two girls were found, one of whom was found with her pants rolled down and the remains of semen on her back.”
The Grayzone has exposed this source as well, revealing him as a reservist paramedic from Israeli Air Force Special Tactics rescue unit 669 who identifies himself to the media only as “G,” but whose real name is Guy Melamed. As we explained, no girls were found on Kibbutz Beeri in a condition remotely similar to Melamed’s description.
The closest match to the paramedic’s account were two teenage residents of Beeri, Yahel and Noiya Sharabi, who were killed on October 7. But according to the Times of Israel, the girls’ bodies were “found in an embrace” with their mother, and not “alone, separated from the rest of the family.”
Israeli media has also reported, “Lianne and Yahel [Sharabi] could only be identified through DNA samples. Noiya was identified through her teeth only two days ago.”
So how was Melamed able to find semen on one of the girls, and bruises on the other, and view their states of undress, if their bodies had been burned beyond recognition? The only answer is that he fabricated the entire scenario.
Before Melamed cooked up atrocities for the NY Times, which were later reheated by the ARCC, he appeared on a right-wing Indian news channel to invent an account of discovering a dead baby discarded into a trash can by Hamas. Given that only one baby was killed on October 7 – a one year old accidentally shot by a Hamas militant – the paramedic’s story could not have possibly been true.
Melamed was just one character among a motley collection of self-styled Israeli rescuers who fabricated October 7 atrocity tales to gain notoriety in the Western press. The most prolific fabulists emerged from an ultra-Orthodox Israeli state-affiliated group called ZAKA. This was the outfit responsible for “confirming” the bogus story of Hamas beheading babies on October 7 and spinning out the tale of a Palestinian militant slashing a fetus from a pregnant Jewish woman.
As The Grayzone reported, ZAKA is an infamously corrupt organization founded by a prolific sexual abuser. Before October 7, the group was nearly insolvent, but since it attracted international attention the lurid lies its volunteers spun out, it has raked in millions from wealthy Jewish diaspora donors including Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.
Yossi Landau, the ZAKA “commander” who invented an array of debunked October 7 horror stories, has said that those who question his credibility “should be killed.”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
ARCC paper paid for by Israel lobby bigwigs behind “10/7 Project” PR operation
Though released by an association seemingly dedicated to supporting sexual assault survivors in Israel, the ARCC’s paper alleging “systematic” rape by Hamas was paid for by Zionist pressure groups in the US. Its top sponsors include the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, which has donated millions to AIPAC-related initiatives, and the Jewish Federations of Greater Miami.
AIPAC and the Jewish Federations are also key pillars in the coalition of Israel lobby outfits behind a new propaganda initiative called the “10/7 Project.” According to Axios, the 10/7 Project comprises “a centralized communications operation that aims to provide newsrooms and policymakers with fact-based information on the [Gaza] war.”
In its bid to justify Israel’s blood-spattered assault on the Gaza Strip, which has left nearly 30,000 dead in over 130 days – most of them women and children – the 10/7 Project has contracted high-powered Democratic Party PR firms like SKDK to, in its words, “retell the story about the butchery of the Oct 7 attack and make outcasts of 10/7 deniers.”
Whether or not the 10/7 Project is responsible for the publicity blitz surrounding the ARCC’s new paper on “systematic” Hamas rape, it is clear Western media has become a laundromat for Israeli propaganda about October 7, recycling discredited allegations through a seemingly endless series of dodgy dossiers, and hyping each one as freshly obtained evidence of Palestinian savagery. https://thegrayzone.com/2024/02/22/israeli-hamas-debunked-western-media/
Pentagon investigating 50 cases of Ukraine military aid fraud
Rt.com 25 Feb 24
In one instance, shipping manifests were mysteriously changed before arms packages reached the country
The Pentagon’s inspector general has opened more than 50 cases into possible “theft, fraud or corruption, and diversion” of military aid to Ukraine. Allegations of graft surfaced almost immediately after the aid began flowing to Kiev and Inspector General Robert Storch has declared that more investigations are likely to follow.
Speaking at a briefing on Thursday, Storch said that though no allegations have been substantiated yet, “that may well change in the future,” according to Bloomberg. Additional investigations will be necessary “given the quantity and speed” of weapons being sent to Ukraine, he noted.
One case highlighted by Storch involved unidentified items arriving in Poland as part of a wider weapons shipment, before disappearing from a shipping manifest when they were sent across the border into Ukraine in June.
While the case of the disappearing equipment was highlighted in a report by Storch’s office last year, the inspector did not say at the time whether the items had been lost or stolen. Instead, his office stated that Pentagon personnel “did not have required visibility and accountability of all types of equipment during the transfer process.”
None of Storch’s reports to date have identified any outright criminality. However, Thursday’s announcement marks the first time he has acknowledged that his office is probing potential cases of “procurement fraud, product substitution, theft, fraud or corruption, and diversion.”
…………………………………………………………….. Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov was dismissed from his post over graft allegations in September. His successor, Rustem Umerov, announced in January that an audit had revealed $262 million in theft-related costs in weapons procurement. https://www.rt.com/news/593080-pentagon-ukraine-aid-fraud/
Wikileaks Reveals Alexei Navalny’s US Funding as Washington Exploits His Death
21 Feb 2024- Alexei Navalny’s political activities were funded by the US government through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as part of an effort to repeat US-backed 2014 Ukraine regime change inside Russia itself; – The Western media had previously (and reluctantly) revealed Navalny as far-right, racist, and xenophobic despite efforts to pass him off as a progressive pro-democracy activist; – US government-funded polling agencies consistently found Alexei Navalny extremely unpopular in Russia with single digit approval ratings; – After an alleged 2020 “Novichok” poisoning, Navalny’s popularity “surged” to 20% as the Western media accused Moscow of being behind the incident;
– The US is now exploiting the death of Navalny to advance its anti-Russia policy while the Western media collective omits all relevant context regarding Navalny’s background and US funding;
References:
NYT – Navalny’s Death Raises Tensions Between U.S. and Russia (February 16, 2024): https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/wo…
CNN – Putin saw an existential threat in Navalny, the opposition leader whose name he dared not mention (February 16, 2024): https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/17/eu…
Al Jazeera – Alexey Navalny: An archenemy Putin wouldn’t name and Kremlin couldn’t scare (February 16, 2024): https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2…
Reuters – Putin critic Navalny’s approval rating surges in wake of poisoning (October 2020): https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ru…
The New Atlas – CNN + Bellingcat’s Latest Russian Novichok Lies | 12/16/2020 Review (December 2020):
Shielding US Public From Israeli Reports of Friendly Fire on October 7
FAIR, BRYCE GREENE, 23 Feb 24
Since October, the Israeli press has uncovered damning evidence showing that an untold number of the Israeli victims during the October 7 Hamas attack were in fact killed by the IDF response.
While it is indisputable that the Hamas-led attackers were responsible for many Israeli civilian deaths that day, reports from Israel indicate that the IDF in multiple cases fired on and killed Israeli civilians. It’s an important issue that demands greater transparency—both in terms of the questions it raises about IDF policy, and in terms of the black-and-white narrative Israel has advanced about what happened on October 7, used to justify its ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip.
Indeed, IDF responsibility for Israeli deaths has been a repeated topic of discussion in the Israeli press, accompanied by demands for investigations. But the most US readers have gotten from their own press about the issue is a dismissive piece from the Washington Post about October 7 “truthers.”
Implementing the Hannibal Directive?
In the wake of October 7, after Israel began its genocidal campaign against Gaza, reports began to emerge from the Israeli press of incidents in which Israeli troops made decisions to fire on Hamas targets regardless of whether Israeli civilians were present.
That the IDF’s initial reaction was chaotic at best is well-documented. Much of the early military response came from the air, with little information for pilots and drone operators to distinguish targets but orders to shoot anyway (Grayzone, 10/27/23). Citing a police source, Haaretz (11/18/23) reported that at the Supernova music festival site, “an IDF combat helicopter that arrived to the scene and fired at terrorists there apparently also hit some festival participants.” But there are also mainstream Israeli media reports that credibly suggest the IDF may have implemented a policy to sacrifice Israeli hostages.
Supernova music festival attendee Yasmin Porat had escaped the festival on foot to the nearby village of Be’eri, only to be held hostage in a home with 13 others. One of the captors surrendered and released Porat to IDF troops outside. She described how, after a prolonged standoff, Israeli tank fire demolished that home and killed all but one of the remaining Israeli hostages. Her account was verified by the other surviving hostage (Electronic Intifada, 10/16/23; Haaretz, 12/13/23). One of the Israeli victims was a child who had been held up as an example of Hamas’s brutality (Grayzone, 11/25/23).
Yedioth Ahronoth (1/12/24; translated into English by Electronic Intifada, 1/20/24)—one of Israel’s most widely read newspapers—published a bombshell piece that put these revelations in context. The paper reported that the IDF instructed its members.
to stop “at any cost” any attempt by Hamas terrorists to return to Gaza, using language very similar to that of the original Hannibal Directive, despite repeated promises by the defense apparatus that the directive had been canceled.
The Hannibal Directive—named for the Carthaginian general who allegedly ingested poison rather than be captured by his enemies—is the once-secret doctrine meant to prevent at all costs the taking of IDF soldiers as hostages, even at the risk of harming the soldier (Haaretz, 11/1/11). It was supposedly revoked in 2016, and was ostensibly never meant to be applied to civilians (Haaretz, 1/17/24).
Yedioth Ahronoth reported:
It is not clear at this stage how many of the captives were killed due to the operation of this order on October 7. During the week after Black Sabbath [i.e., October 7] and at the initiative of Southern Command, soldiers from elite units examined some 70 vehicles that had remained in the area between the Gaza Envelope settlements and the Gaza Strip. These were vehicles that did not reach Gaza because on their way they had been hit by fire from a helicopter gunship, a UAV or a tank, and at least in some of the cases, everyone in the vehicle was killed.
Reports that the IDF gave orders to disregard the lives of Israeli captives have caused great consternation in Israel (Haaretz, 12/13/23). An author of the IDF ethics code called it “unlawful, unethical, horrifying” (Haaretz, 1/17/23). Yet any mention of the reports, or the debates they have inspired in Israel, seems to be virtually taboo in the mainstream US media.
The only mention of “Hannibal directive” FAIR could find in a major US newspaper the since October 7 came in a New York Post article (12/18/23) paraphrasing a released hostage who
claimed that Hamas told them the Israel Defense Forces would employ the infamous “Hannibal Directive” on civilians, a revoked protocol that once allegedly called on troops to prioritize taking out terrorists even if it meant killing a kidnapped soldier……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
How many Israeli civilians were actually killed by Hamas, and how many by Israel? Was the Al Aqsa Flood a terrorist attack designed to kill as many civilians as possible? These are important questions that have yet to be conclusively and independently answered, but the Washington Post seems to want to dissuade people from even asking them. In evoking the specter of Holocaust denial, Dwoskin and the Post are not defending the truth, but attempting to protect readers from it. https://fair.org/home/shielding-us-public-from-israeli-reports-of-friendly-fire-on-october-7/—
Buried trial verdict confirms false-flag Maidan massacre in Ukraine
Oligarchic and far-right leaders and organizations, including neo-Nazis, who were involved in this false-flag mass killing to seize power in Ukraine, were hailed by Western and Ukrainian politicians, media, and even many academics as heroes and defenders of democrac
Ukrainian-Canadian political scientist and professor Ivan Katchanovski on the hidden origins of the Russia-Ukraine war
Ivan Katchanovski / February 20, 2024
A nearly one-million-word verdict from Ukraine’s Maidan massacre trial has recently confirmed that many Maidan activists were shot not by members of Ukraine’s Berkut special police force or other law enforcement personnel but by snipers in the far-right-controlled Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled locations a decade ago today. The verdict, handed down on October 18, 2023, states specifically that this hotel was controlled by Maidan activists and that an armed, far-right-linked Maidan group was in the hotel and fired from it. It also confirms that there was no Russian involvement in the massacre and that no massacre orders were issued by then President Viktor Yanukovych or his ministers. The verdict concludes that the Euromaidan was at the time of this massacre not a peaceful protest but a “rebellion” that involved the killing of Berkut and other police personnel.
This is an important official acknowledgement, not only because the violence represented the most significant case of mass murder, violent crime, and human rights violations in independent Ukraine to that point, but also because of the subsequent conflicts to which it has led or contributed. Notably, the massacre precipitated the violent overthrow of Yanukovych and his government, who were falsely blamed for carrying it out. It then spiralled into the Russian annexation of Crimea, the subsequent civil war and Russian interventions in the Donbas, and the conflicts between Ukraine and Russia, and between Russia and the Western powers, which Russia dramatically escalated with its illegal invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
There has been, however, a blackout of the verdict’s confirmation of the Maidan snipers in the Ukrainian media and, with a few notable exceptions, the Western mainstream media. Moreover, in an op-ed piece in The Bulwark, an online neoconservative magazine, author Cathy Young misrepresented the verdict, falsely claiming that it had found the Berkut police responsible for the deaths of 40 of the 48 protesters killed. Young also denied and openly whitewashed the existence of Maidan snipers and the far-right’s involvement in the Maidan massacre, labelling it a “conspiracy theory” despite clear and overwhelming evidence to the contrary in the verdict, the trial, and the investigation, as well as in academic studies of the event. Such deliberate omission and misrepresentation has been perpetrated in spite of the fact that the verdict’s Ukrainian text, as well as automatic English translation of the relevant excerpts, are publicly available, and in spite viral tweets describing and quoting from it.
The verdict by the Ukrainian Sviatoshyn District Court in Kyiv, along with the findings of the investigation by the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office (GPU), comprise a de facto official admission—on the part of Ukraine’s justice system no less, which cannot be called independent—that on February 20, 2014, at least 10 of the 48 Maidan activists killed, and 115 of the 172 wounded, were shot not by Berkut or other law enforcement personnel firing from government-controlled areas but by Maidan snipers operating in Maidan-controlled locations. The government investigation admitted that one dead protester and 77 wounded Maidan activists were not shot from Berkut-controlled sectors, and therefore did not charge anyone for those crimes. Of course, it stands to reason that if these activists were not shot by government personnel, they must have been shot by the Maidan snipers.
The verdict, issued by the Kyiv court shortly before the tenth anniversary of the Euromaidan, shows that the Maidan massacre narrative that has been propagated by governments, the mainstream media, and a variety of info-warriors in the West and in Ukraine is false. The proponents of this narrative have called the Maidan a peaceful protest and presented the massacre of the Maidan protesters as a crime perpetrated by government snipers on the orders of Yanukovych and his government. The prosecution, the victims’ lawyers, the New York Times and other mainstream media (with some notable exceptions), Wikipedia, self-proclaimed experts, and info-warriors denied the presence of snipers in the Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled buildings, the shooting of Maidan protesters by these snipers, and the far-right’s involvement in this mass killing, and claimed instead that such ideas comprise a “conspiracy theory” and “Russian disinformation.” The exceptions included reports by ARD, BBC, The Nation, Jacobin, Court House News, Ekathimerini (Greece), Jyllands-Posten (Denmark), Weltwoche (Switzerland), Il Fatto Quotidiano (Italy), and El Nacional (Spain)—in addition to Canadian Dimension, which has published some of my other writing on this subject………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Wikipedia editors who deliberately and literally misrepresent and whitewash the false-flag Maidan massacre also systematically misrepresent and whitewash the far-right in Ukraine and its involvement in the Holocaust. These editors include Wise2, also known as Prohoshka, who has also propagated “scientific anti-Semitism” and whitewashed the involvement of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in the 1941 Lviv pogroms during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, justifying it on the basis of “Jewish collaboration.” Another Wikipedia editor, who uses the handle My Very Best Wishes, brazenly whitewashed the fact that monuments in Canada to the Galicia Division and Roman Shukhevych are in fact commemorating a division of the Waffen-SS and a Nazi collaborator. A scholarly article by a noted historian at the University of Ottawa also listed My Very Best Wishes as one of the editors involved in an intentional distortion of Wikipedia’s history of the Holocaust in Poland. This editor also recently wrote, falsely, on Wikipedia’s biographical page on Elon Musk about the latter’s supposed “involvement in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.” Various publications and websites have identified Wise2/Prohoshka as a far-right Svoboda activist named Svyatoslav Gut, and My Very Best Wishes as Andrei Lomize, a biophysics researcher at the University of Michigan.
Fabricated evidence against Berkut, no massacre order by Yanukovych
The trial verdict also confirms the absence of evidence for any order by Yanukovych or his government to massacre the Maidan protesters. This is a crucial official acknowledgment, since Yanukovych and his government were overthrown on the basis of accusations of having ordered the massacre. Joe Biden, then US vice-president, wrote in his memoirs that during the Maidan massacre, he called Yanukovych and told him that “it was over; time for him to call off his gunmen and walk away,” that he “had lost the confidence of the Ukrainian people … and he was going to be judged harshly by history if he kept killing them.”
In addition to acquitting two Berkut policemen for killing and wounding the Maidan activists, the verdict states that all five accused Berkut officers had been blamed, baselessly, for killing 13 Maidan protesters and wounding another 29. This is further evidence of trumped-up, politically motivated charges.
The decision to convict in absentia three Berkut officers, who had been transferred by Zelensky to the Donbas separatists in a 2019 exchange, is a political one. The charging of these officers for the murders of 31 of 48 Maidan protesters killed, and the attempted murders of another 44 of 80, was based on a single, fabricated forensic examination, not to mention posited on the notion of collective responsibility. This single forensic examination of bullets, undertaken five years after the massacre, reversed the results of some 40 earlier forensic bullet examinations, including a computer-based examination which showed that bullets taken from the bodies of killed Maidan protesters did not match the Berkut Kalashnikov rifles.
The three Berkut policemen were convicted in absentia based on this single, fabricated forensic examination as well as on their presumed collective responsibility for the murders of 31 protesters and the attempted murders of 44 more. On the same basis and contrary to all other evidence, a Berkut commander was also convicted of the manslaughter of four protesters and the wounding of another eight, for supposedly having ordered his officers to fire indiscriminately during the evacuation of internal troops by the Berkut company, and its subsequent retreat after one Berkut officer was killed and another wounded……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The verdict means that a decade since this crucial massacre—one of the most documented cases of mass killing in history—nobody is in prison for the murders and attempted murders of Maidan activists and police officers, or for shooting at foreign journalists. The silence on the part of those who deny the false-flag Maidan massacre, who call these claims a “conspiracy theory” and thereby whitewash the mass murderers of the far-right, is both deafening and revealing.
Media blackout and whitewash
All Ukrainian media reports omitted the verdict’s confirmations of the false-flag massacre. The Western media (with a few notable exceptions) also omitted this information. Moreover, writer Cathy Young, mentioned above, deliberately misrepresented the Maidan massacre trial verdict, branding the revelations about Maidan snipers operating in the Hotel Ukraina a “conspiracy theory” and claiming, falsely, that the verdict did not indicate that Maidan protesters were shot from the hotel or other Maidan-controlled locations, and that it did not disprove involvement by Russian snipers. ………………………………………………………………………………
Oligarchic and far-right leaders and organizations, including neo-Nazis, who were involved in this false-flag mass killing to seize power in Ukraine, were hailed by Western and Ukrainian politicians, media, and even many academics as heroes and defenders of democracy. They were invited for government visits and talks at universities, including in Canada. Government leaders, journalists, investigators, Maidan lawyers, NGO activists, partisan researchers, and info-warriors who branded the reports of the Maidan snipers and their false-flag massacre a conspiracy theory and propaganda were hailed as defenders of justice and human rights, and given grants by Western governments, foundations, and universities, including even a Nobel Peace Prize.
It is doubtful that any of the above parties will suffer any consequences for such fraud and whitewashing of mass murderers, in particular those of the far-right. Ukraine and Ukrainians continue to suffer the consequences of this massacre, which has spiralled into major conflicts, including the ongoing and devastating Russia-Ukraine war, which is also a dangerous, unwinnable proxy war undertaken by the West against Russia.
Ivan Katchanovski teaches at the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. He is the author of Cleft Countries: Regional Political Divisions and Cultures in Post-Soviet Ukraine and Moldova and co-author of Historical Dictionary of Ukraine (Second Edition) and The Paradox of American Unionism: Why Americans Like Unions More Than Canadians Do, But Join Much Less. https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/buried-trial-verdict-confirms-false-flag-maidan-massacre-in-ukraine-2024
How British Intelligence Framed Julian Assange As Russian Agent
KIT KLARENBERG FEB 19, 2024
February 20/21st could mark WikiLeaks founder-and-chief Julian Assange’s final opportunity to avoid extradition to the US. London’s High Court has scheduled two days of arguments over whether he can ask an appeals court to block his transfer Stateside. If unsuccessful, he could be sent across the Atlantic, where he faces prosecution under Washington’s draconian Espionage Act, and penalties ranging from 175 years in a “supermax” prison, to death, for exposing the lies and crimes of US global empire.
It is the most important press freedom case of all time. Yet, at no point during Julian’s seven years of arbitrary detention in London’s Ecuadorian embassy, or five years at His Majesty’s Pleasure in Belmarsh Prison, Britain’s “Gitmo”, have the mainstream media or international human rights groups taken a serious interest in his plight. Many Western citizens – including those who had hitherto full-throatedly supported WikiLeaks, and Julian’s crusade against official secrecy – were also indifferent over, if not outright supportive of, his violent explusion from the Ecuadorian embassy.
Much of this conspiracy of silence and apathy can be attributed to a concerted campaign of calumny, incubated in London and Washington DC, designed to extinguish public sympathy for Julian. As Nils Melzer, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, wrote in a June 2019 op-ed Western media refused to publish, he was “systematically slandered to divert attention from the crimes he exposed,” and once he’d been “dehumanized through isolation, ridicule and shame, just like the witches we used to burn at the stake, it was easy to deprive him of his most fundamental rights without provoking public outrage worldwide.”
A prominent libel against Julian was that he operated upon the orders, and in the interests, of the Kremlin. Built up as an omnipotent villain on the world stage following the February 2014 Western-sponsored Maidan coup in Ukraine, and all manner of domestic political upheaval in Europe and North America small and large framed as somehow Moscow-orchestrated ever after, anyone and anything branded as even vaguely sympathetic to Russia automatically became an FSB and/or GRU chaos agent.
When British police forcibly hauled Julian handcuffed out of the Ecuadorian embassy, many mainstream outlets – and a great many Russiagaters – cheered, believing he would soon be indicted for his GRU-assisted role in subverting the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election. No such charges have been forthcoming. And in September 2021, Yahoo News inadvertently let an incongruous cat out of the bag. The outlet revealed the CIA had explored plans to surveil, kidnap, and even kill Julian while he was ensconced in the Ecuadorian Embassy.
The explosive report was almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media – although one fundamental aspect of the article even its advocates and promoters largely overlooked was the disclosure that the CIA possessed no evidence Julian or WikiLeaks had any ties whatsoever with Russia. “Difficulty” in proving he or his organization had operated “at the direct behest of the Kremlin” was reportedly a “major factor” when, in April 2017, Mike Pompeo, then-C.I.A. director, designated WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service.” That unfounded assertion opened the floodgates for the Agency’s untrammeled surveillance, harassment, and persecution of Julian and his collaborators. It also served as justification for its assassination plots.
There is another dimension to this mephitic myth that has largely remained unexplored. Integrity Initiative, a covert British intelligence information warfare operation, was pivotal to perpetuating the narrative of Julian as Kremlin asset. This sordid tale reveals just how flimsy Western propaganda campaigns are concocted and then disseminated through compliant media. Now, with Julian facing extradition to the US, it has never been more urgent to expose.
Killing Hope
A major component of the Integrity Initiative scandal was the organisation’s construction of cloak-and-dagger “clusters”. These were – and may well remain today – clandestine networks of journalists, scholars, politicians and military and intelligence operatives, which the Initiative could mobilise to disseminate black propaganda, therefore influencing policy and perceptions, targeting domestic and overseas adversaries. One little-known example of the potency of clusters was an aggressive campaign to falsely connect Julian with the Kremlin.
The Initiative’s Spanish cluster was particularly instrumental in this regard. The largest and most influential of any Initiative cluster outside the UK, its ranks include a number of prominent journalists, academics, think tank representatives, lawmkaers from several parties, government ministers, and military officials.
Initiative documents leaked in November 2018 by Anonymous, the “hacktivist” collective, detail how this nexus has successfully subverted the Spanish political process. There is, for instance, the case of Pedro Baños, a colonel in the Spanish army and formerly chief of counterintelligence and security for the European Army Corps. His fate is highly relevant to the Initiative’s role in framing Assange as a Russian asset.
In June 2018, the spook-staffed Initiative learned Madrid’s governing Socialist Workers’ Party was to appoint Baños director of Spain’s National Security Department, roughly the equivalent of the US Department of Homeland Security. Baños had repeatedly appeared on RT and Sputnik in the months prior, and publicly called for constructive, harmonious relations between the European Union and Moscow.
The Initiative couldn’t tolerate his appointment to such an influential post. Within hours of learning this confidential information, the Spanish cluster covertly passed dossiers on the colonel to local and international media outlets and activated its overseas clusters to publish negative comments about the proposed move on social media, to “generate international support” for its blockage.
The Initiative’s London-based team also set up a dedicated WhatsApp group “to coordinate Twitter response, get contacts to expand awareness and get people retweeting the material.”
The cluster, moreover, sent material to El País and El Mundo, leading Spanish dailies. Representatives of the People’s Party—which has cluster operatives within its ranks—and Ciudadanos, another centrist party, publicly called for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to block the appointment, while some Spanish diplomats also expressed their “concerns.” As the day drew to a close, it was confirmed Baños was no longer in the running for the post……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The cluster, moreover, sent material to El País and El Mundo, leading Spanish dailies. Representatives of the People’s Party—which has cluster operatives within its ranks—and Ciudadanos, another centrist party, publicly called for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to block the appointment, while some Spanish diplomats also expressed their “concerns.” As the day drew to a close, it was confirmed Baños was no longer in the running for the post.
Even more damningly, McGrath found Julian featured in just 17 of 596 stories about Catalonia published by RT and Sputnik from September – December 2017. Meanwhile, of the 1,508 tweets shared by the pair’s English- and Spanish-language Twitter accounts on Catalonia within this timeframe, a mere 22 – 1.46% – mentioned him. Ironically, El País published considerably more stories referencing Julian than Sputnik and RT combined during this period. McGrath concluded:
“Claims about fake news, especially those published in the media and brought before legislative bodies, need to be more thoroughly scrutinized. It is important to conduct further research to understand how widespread of an issue fake news about fake news is and how these unfounded allegations come about. It is necessary to explore how claims of fake news can themselves be used as a manipulative tactic and understand the impact this has on society.”……………………………………………………………………………………..
This egregious saga is a particularly pitiful example of the ease with which Western intelligence agencies can flood corporate media with outright fiction on the flimsiest of bases, in the knowledge credulous, pliable “journalists” will peddle their fallacious lies as fact in the manner of religious conviction, and never face consequenceso.
If and when their lies are exposed, they can pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened, safely clinging to their legitimizing awards, sanitised Wikipedia entries, and plaudits. Meanwhile, Julian is approaching the fifth anniversary of his arrival in “Britain’s Gitmo”. Each and every day since, his mental and physical health has deteriorated.
Now, his only path to liberation from that hellish structure may be a 175–year sentence in a supermax prison, situated not far from the headquarters of a spying agency that not long ago drew up elaborate plans to murder him in cold blood. https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/how-british-intelligence-framed-julian-088?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=552010&post_id=141816575&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&utm_medium=email
South Korea’s nuclear mafia
Japan’s corrupt ‘nuclear village’ gave us the Fukushima disaster and there’s every reason to be concerned about South Korea’s corrupt ‘nuclear mafia’.
JIM GREEN, FEB 18, 2024, Substack,
Zion Lights’ latest substack post is a vacuous puff-piece about South Korea’s nuclear power industry. Therefore I’ve copied below a few articles I wrote for Nuclear Monitor about South Korea’s corrupt and dangerous nuclear industry.
Literally everything in Lights’ post could have been lifted from a nuclear industry promotional piece. Just one thing caught my eye: the three countries with the best record for building reactors relatively quickly are Japan, South Korea and China according to a table included in Lights’ post. Those three countries all have seriously corrupt nuclear industries. Correlation, causation, coincidence?
Lights is a British nuclear power advocate who previously worked for self-confessed liar, climate denier and MAGA lunatic Michael Shellenberger. You can read more about Lights here, Shellenberger here, and you can read Extinction Rebellion’s important statement about both of them here.
This is an excerpt from a 2017 Nuclear Monitor article, with some light editing to update the content.
In 2009, a KEPCO-led consortium won the contract to build four power reactors in the United Arab Emirates. In 2010, boosted by the UAE contract, South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy set a target of winning contracts to build 80 power reactors overseas by 2030, and in 2015 KEPCO had a target of winning overseas contracts for six reactors by 2020.6 But all those targets have come to absolutely nothing ‒ KEPCO and KHNP haven’t won any reactor construction contracts since the 2009 UAE contract.
South Korea has signed nuclear cooperation agreements with at least 27 countries8 but those agreements aren’t leading to reactor contracts……………………………………………………………………
Nuclear corruption and the partial reform of South Korea’s nuclear mafia
The corrupt behavior of Japan’s ‘nuclear village’ ‒ and the very existence of the nuclear village ‒ were root causes of the March 2011 Fukushima disaster and a string of earlier accidents.1 In the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, academic Richard Tanter identified a worldwide pattern of nuclear corruption:2
“During the eighteen months from the beginning of 2012 to mid- 2013, major corruption incidents occurred in the nuclear power industry in every country currently seeking to export nuclear reactors: the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Russia, France, and China. A number of other countries that operate or plan to have nuclear power plants also had major corruption cases, including Lithuania, Bulgaria, and Pakistan; moreover, serious allegations of corruption were raised in Egypt, India, Jordan, Nigeria, Slovakia, South Africa, and Taiwan.
“In the Korean case, systemic nuclear industry corruption was found; in Canada, deep corporate corruption within the largest nuclear engineering corporation was one matter, and bribery of nuclear technology consuming countries’ senior ministers was another. In Russia, the issue was persistent, deep seated, and widespread corruption in state-owned and private nuclear industry companies, with profound implications for the safety of Russian nuclear industry exports.
…………………………………………………………………………………………….. Corruption scandals are partly responsible for the massive downgrading of South Korea’s nuclear power ambitions.21 A detailed article on the scandals by Philip Andrews-Speed from the National University of Singapore has recently been published in the Journal of World Energy Law & Business.22 Importantly, Andrews-Speed notes that the problems only partially been resolved.
……………………………………………………………
, a much broader pattern of corruption began to come to light:
“Investigations of 101 companies revealed a wide range of illegal activities including bribery, overpaying, preferential treatment and favouritism, limiting competition in bidding, accepting parts with fraudulent or even no certificate, and collusion by parties in the falsification of testing reports.”
An investigation by the Korea Institute for Nuclear Safety showed that 2,114 test reports had been falsified by material suppliers and equipment manufacturers; that a further 62 equipment qualification documents (environmental and seismic qualification) were falsified between 1996 and 2012; and that a further 3,408 test reports and 53 qualification reports could not be verified or were unclear.22,23 Over 7,000 reactor parts were replaced in the aftermath of the scandal.23
Andrews-Speed details the corruption that probably had the greatest consequences for reactor safety:22………………… https://jimkgreen1.substack.com/p/south-koreas-nuclear-mafia
Absence of Evidence: Israel’s Case Against UNRWA
We got hold of Israel’s dossier against UNRWA – why did the donors including the UK withdraw funding on such flimsy unproven allegations before an investigation?”
the summary did “not provide evidence to support its claims.”
February 11, 2024 by: Dr Binoy Kampmark,
https://theaimn.com/absence-of-evidence-israels-case-against-unrwa/
Statistics are often given lanky legs that take their user far. But how they are used, and how they are received, is striking. The current figure of 27,500 dead is a blighting, grotesque fact. But as they are Palestinians, the issue is less significant to certain parties than, say, 140 Israeli hostages being held in Gaza.
As with much in the noisy clatter of Middle Eastern violence, the value attributed to numbers alters in the shade of ideology and self-interest. Massacres become acts of self-defence; acts of self-defence become unconscionable inflictions of murder. It also follows that an organisation of 30,000 employees, working in the field of humanitarianism, aid and salvation, can be plastered as terrorist sponsors for having 12 individuals in their service allegedly involved in a murderous assault on Israel on October 7, 2023. Despite the relative smallness of this figure, the entire organisation itself becomes a target.
Israel was initially adamant that 12 such individuals in UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) had participated in the October 7 attacks by Hamas, sharing the details on January 29 with several media outlets. The accusations were made via a thin dossier amounting to no more than six pages. Little by way of evidence was supplied, though Israel was content to make further claims that almost 10% of the agency’s staff had ties to Hamas. As UN Crisis Group expert Daniel Forti writes, “Thus far, Israel has not provided evidence in writing to the UN to substantiate its allegations.”
For a gaggle of Western states and donors, that hardly mattered. The mere mention of the Satanic Twelve had made their way into public and political consciousness, and something had to be done about it. Funding to the aid body was swiftly suspended by the United States, Germany, the European Union, Sweden, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. The organisation was smeared and threatened with functional incapacity and prospective oblivion, an outcome that would also, inevitably, doom Palestinians. Unchallenged accusations that the agency had long been a Hamas front – an article of faith among Israeli nationalists – were bandied about with abandon.
The United Nations, for its part, was unusually fleet footed in responding to the dossier. Contracts were terminated. Inquiries were announced, along with promises of stern self-examination, purging and cleansing. On February 5, the UN Secretary General António Guterres announced that an independent panel had been created with the specific purpose of assessing “whether the agency is doing everything within its power to ensure neutrality and to respond to allegations of serious breaches when they are made.” The panel will be chaired by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, who will work alongside a Scandinavian complement of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden, the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway and the Danish Institute for Human Rights.
With the setting up of such heavy machinery, the picture started getting foggier. Then a smiting report from the British news outlet Channel 4 took issue with the scanty material supplied in the document. As the network’s Lindsey Hilsum stated, “We got hold of Israel’s dossier against UNRWA – why did the donors including the UK withdraw funding on such flimsy unproven allegations before an investigation?”
Channel 4 goes on to reveal that the dossier “contains no evidence to support Israel’s explosive new claim other than stating, ‘From intelligence information, documents, and identity cards seized during the course of the fighting, it is now possible to flag around 190 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihadi terrorist operatives who serve as UNRWA employees. More than 10 UNRWA staffers took part in the events of October 7.”
Even the usually less than critical CNN network reported that it had “not seen the intelligence that underlies the summary of allegations”, going on to mention that the summary did “not provide evidence to support its claims.”
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When Ophir Falk, an advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was asked by CNN anchor Anna Coren to provide evidence of the claims, he refused to do so. When asked why the alleged culprits had not been arrested, he merely replied that “the first step is for them to be fired.”
Outlets such as The New York Times and Wall Street Journal were less than concerned by the gaping lacunae and skimpiness of Israel’s case. Instead, the latter could even go so far as to claim that the dossier provided “the most detailed look yet at the widespread links between the UNRWA employees and militants.” The ABC World News Tonight was clumsy enough to suggest that the UN had “not denied the claims”, implying a veneer of veracity.
Now, other countries are finding absence of evidence from the Israeli side more than awkward. Australia’s Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, had to also admit that she had not been furnished with much in the way of evidence. “We have spoken to the Israelis and we have asked for further evidence,” she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s 7.30. When asked why she did not ask UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini about the subject, she simply reiterated the point that she had asked the Israelis directly and was not aware if Lazzarini had evidence. “He may, I don’t know what he has.”
With trademark oiliness, Wong countered that the allegations were what mattered. “I think it is clear from UNRWA’s own actions that they regard these allegations as serious.” They had done so by “terminating the employment of a number of employees and putting in place an inquiry – in fact, there are two inquiries.” Effectively, the agency was to be punished for its own enterprising efforts to investigate the claims, leaving the accusers free to level whatever charges they saw fit.
In the meantime, Lazzarini has been scrambling to fill the funding void, making visits to the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait. The dying and starvation in Gaza continue with the prospect of even more horror as Israel’s armed forces prepare their offensive on Rafah. A fine thing, then, to see donor countries for UNRWA, some of whom continue funding Israel’s military efforts, to moralise about terrorists and the agency.
UK steps up war on whistleblower journalism with new National Security Act
KIT KLARENBERG, ·FEBRUARY 9, 2024, The GrayZone
Under a repressive new act, British nationals could face prison for undermining London’s national security line. Intended to destroy WikiLeaks and others exposing war crimes, the law is a direct threat to critical national security journalism.
It was the afternoon of May 17 2023 and I had just arrived at London’s Luton Airport. I was on my way to the city of my birth to visit my family. Before landing, the pilot instructed all passengers to have their passports ready for inspection immediately upon disembarking the plane. Just then, I noticed a six-strong squad of stone-faced plainclothes British counter-terror officers waited on the tarmac, intensely studying the identification documents of all travelers.
As soon as the cops identified me, I was ordered to accompany them into the airport terminal without explanation. There, I was introduced to two officials whose names I could not learn, who subsequently referred to each other using nondescript callsigns. I was invited to be digitally strip searched, and subjected to an interrogation in which I had no right to silence, no right to refuse to answer questions, and no right to withhold pin numbers for my digital devices or sim cards. If I asserted any rights to privacy, I faced arrest and up to 48 hours in police custody.
I chose to comply. And so it was that over the next five hours, I sat with a couple of anonymous counter-terror cops in an airless, windowless, excruciatingly hot back room. They fingerprinted me, took invasive DNA swabs, and probed every conceivable aspect of my private and professional life, friend and family connections, and educational background. They wanted to know why I write, say and think the things I do, the specifics of how I’m paid for my investigative journalism, and to which bank account.
I had been detained under Britain’s 2019 Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act, which the UN has branded draconian and repressive. Under its Schedule 3 powers, anyone entering British territory suspected of “hostile activity” on behalf of a foreign power can be detained, interrogated for six hours, and have the contents of their digital devices seized and stored. “Hostile acts” are defined as any behavior deemed threatening to Britain’s “national security” or its “economic well-being.”
More disturbingly, Schedule 3 is suspicionless. Under its terms, “it is immaterial whether a person is aware that activity in which they are or have been engaged is hostile activity, or whether a state for or on behalf of which, or in the interests of which, a hostile act is carried out has instigated, sanctioned, or is otherwise aware of, the carrying out of the act.” It must be quite an elaborate conspiracy when conspirators do not even know they’re conspiring.
It turns out the British state wrongly believed The Grayzone had a relationship with Russia’s notorious FSB security service. They based their assumption not on any evidence, but on our knack for producing factual investigative journalism based on documents passed to this outlet anonymously, via burner email accounts. Such activity is common practice for Western media outlets, rights groups, and much venerated “open source” investigative outfits like the US-government sponsored Bellingcat. If I and the rest of The Grayzone made any mistake, it was in publishing material the US-UK national security state does not want in the public domain.
Now, the British government is taking its war on investigative journalism to a new level through its little-known National Security Act. Under this law, authorities in London have granted themselves the power to surveil, harass, and ultimately imprison any British citizens they wish on similarly suspicionless grounds. Dissidents of every stripe must now worry that everything they do or say could land them in jail for lengthy terms, simply for failing to toe London’s rigid national security line.
Among the top lobbyists for these authoritarian measures is Paul Mason, the celebrity journalist who posed as a leader of the British left until The Grayzone unmasked him as a security state collaborator hellbent on destroying the antiwar movement from within.
Inspired by the US Espionage Act, designed to criminalize whistleblowing
In December 2023, after processing for 18 months through parliamentary procedures, the British National Security Act came into force. Under the aegis of protecting Britain from the threat of espionage and sabotage by hostile actors at home and abroad, the law introduces a number of completely new criminal offenses with severe penalties — and wide-ranging consequences for freedom of speech. Indeed, the law’s terms are so broad, individuals will almost inevitably break the law without wanting to, intending to, or even knowing they have.
Because no one has been prosecuted under the Act to date, its full ramifications remain unclear. However, London’s security and intelligence apparatus now enjoy far-reaching powers to police what can be said about the British government’s activities abroad.
Given the frightening implications of the Act, UK journalists, press rights groups, and civil liberties organizations should be up in arms. Yet serious criticism of the law was largely absent from mainstream publications throughout various phases of debate in parliament.
Scrutiny of the anti-free press Act has been left almost entirely to independent journalists like Mohamed Elmaazi. Writing for Consortium News in July 2022, Elmaazi noted that it “shares many elements” with Washington’s “draconian 1917 Espionage Act,” which is currently being used to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange…………………………………………
Act specifically intended to criminalize WikiLeaks threatens whistleblowers
During the 2022 House of Commons debate, knighted Conservative MP Sir Robert Buckland led the charge against WikiLeaks. Buckland, who was responsible in his former role as Secretary of State for Justice for “upholding the rule of law and protecting judicial independence,” argued that the National Security Act was a vital tool to prosecute “those such as Julian Assange who dump data in a way that has no regard for the safety of operatives and other affected people.” He later remarked, “none of us [in Parliament] wants to see Julian Assange and his type carry sway here.”
The UK Supreme Court expressed a very different view when, in 2018, it held in a unanimous decision that cables published by WikiLeaks are admissible as evidence in court proceedings…………………………………………………………………………
Should authorities in London merely suspect someone might in some way benefit from possessing “information” provided to them by an unknown “foreign” power, that they may have stumbled across on the internet or been provided one way or another without their express request or consent, they could be branded as a criminal and locked away.
British journalists more compliant to authoritarian measures than ever
The British state’s campaign to muzzle dissenting voices draws on London’s operation of a little-known but devastatingly effective censorship mechanism known as the Defense and Security Media Advisory (DSMA) Committee.
Comprised of representatives of the security and intelligence services, military veterans, high-ranking government officials, press association chiefs, editors and journalists, the committee determines behind closed doors which national security related-issues can be covered by the press, and in what fashion.
On occasion, the Committee issues what are known as “D-notices.” Theoretically, these are voluntary requests for news outlets to not broadcast particular pieces of information, or to omit details deemed harmful to national security. While recipients are not legally obliged to comply, they are fully aware that a refusal could mean prosecution under the Official Secrets Act 1989, especially if the information in question results from an “unauthorised disclosure.” Alternatively, an offending journalist might simply be blacklisted, losing access to on and off-the-record briefings and privileged information from officials, which would then threaten their employment. As a result, examples of outlets ignoring “D-notices” are few and far between…………………………………………………………………………………….
Paul Mason suggests The Grayzone be prosecuted for exposing him
In June 2022, The Grayzone exposed British reporter Paul Mason for his collusion with a senior British Foreign Office intelligence officer in a clandestine campaign to brand the British antiwar left as a vehicle for the Russian and Chinese governments. The publication of the material, which was sent to this outlet via anonymous burner accounts, was clearly in the public interest………………………………… more https://thegrayzone.com/2024/02/09/uk-national-security-act-wikileaks/—
Pushing Gazans Into Rafah And Then Attacking Rafah, Killing UNRWA Funding Without Evidence
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, FEB 10, 2024, Caitlin’s newsletter.
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Israel is reportedly preparing to launch a ground assault on Rafah, the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip where Gazans have been pushed to flee to. Israel has instructed the 1.4 million refugees sheltering there to evacuate, along with the hundreds of thousands of people who were already living there before, but there doesn’t seem to be anywhere for them to go. This could wind up being the single deadliest phase of Israel’s onslaught to date.
So to summarize, the IDF has been packing the population of Gaza into the southernmost part of the enclave like toothpaste toward the end of a tube, and now they’re going to attack that southernmost part, but it’s totally not genocide and you’re an evil Nazi if you say it is.
This genocide is not a genocide. Ceci n’est pas une pipe.
Can we all just stop and marvel at how successful Israel and its allies have been at moving the conversation from “The ICJ ruled that Israel needs to immediately cease killing Palestinians” to “Is it right or wrong to starve two million people based on unevidenced claims?”
Australian foreign minister Penny Wong has acknowledged that Canberra joined the US, UK and other allies in cutting off UNRWA funding without having seen proof of Israel’s claims against the organization. Empire managers are now openly admitting they suspended aid to Gaza without having seen evidence of the claims that call was based on; they cut the aid because they were told to, then waited for narratives to be provided to them as to why this was a good and righteous decision.
If you’re going to say that a bad thing happened and we therefore need to cut off aid to the most aid-dependent population on earth, then you’d better at least be able to prove the bad thing actually happened. If evidence exists, then show it. If you insist on starving two million people, you can’t do it on vibes alone.
How is this not obvious to everyone? How was it not immediately obvious the instant it came up? Time and time again we are asked to consent to the empire doing the most heinous things to the most vulnerable populations on secret, invisible evidence. We are expected to trust their secret evidence without getting to look at it, even though they’ve been caught lying about things like this over and over and over again.
They think we’re idiots……………………………………………………………….. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/pushing-gazans-into-rafah-and-then?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=141542598&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email—
European Union now promoting the lie that nuclear power is “green”
Nuclear power officially labelled as ‘strategic’ for EU’s decarbonisation, By Paul Messad | EURACTIV.fr | translated by Anne-Sophie Gayet, 7 Feb 24
The Council of EU member states and the European Parliament agreed on Tuesday (6 February) to label nuclear power as a strategic technology for the EU’s decarbonisation, following months of intense negotiations in Brussels over the Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA).
…………….. The agreement encompasses tried and tested nuclear technologies as well as future third and fourth generation ones, i.e. small modular reactors (SMRs) and advanced nuclear reactors (AMRs). Their fuel cycles are also included in the text.
“The message is clear: the EU recognises that we need nuclear power to achieve the objectives of the Green Deal,” the French MEP told Euractiv. https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/nuclear-power-officially-labelled-as-strategic-for-eus-decarbonisation/
Over $1 Billion in Weapons Missing In Ukraine
Real Clear Wire, By Adam Andrzejewski, February 07, 2024
Topline: The Department of Defense has failed to properly track $1 billion worth of weapons provided to Ukraine, according to an internal audit released on Jan. 10 by the DOD Inspector General.
Key facts: The DOD is supposed to use special “enhanced end-use monitoring” techniques” to “safeguard” key weapons such as smaller, high-tech weaponry provided to Ukraine, which are likely targets for theft.
The audit says these monitoring procedures are not properly being followed in Ukraine, due to staffing shortages, poor internal logistics and more.
The audit found that $1 billion of the $1.7 billion — or 59% — in enhanced end-use monitoring designated weapons provided to Ukraine as of June 2023 are “delinquent,” meaning they can’t be accounted for in inventory reports.
Maybe the weapons are being used properly; maybe they have been stolen by Russian forces. No one can be completely sure…………………………….
The report also found that inventory databases were not regularly updated and that the Ukrainian Armed Forces failed to properly report missing weapons……………….
Background: The Biden administration has sent over $75 billion to Ukraine since February 2022, including $44 billion in military aid.
Some Republican leaders are already trying to block Biden’s request for additional funds for Ukraine. The missing weapons could strengthen their arguments.
This is not the first time weapons have gone missing during Biden’s administration……………………………………………………
Summary: While there is no direct evidence that weapons in Ukraine have actually been misused, the $1 billion inventory error calls into question the White House’s constant assurances that any aid would be carefully tracked.
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