Missile
Russian media claim UK behind downed plane carrying Ukrainian POWs
Ria Novosti and others say ‘informed source’ close to events insists Britain pressured Ukrainian military to fire missile without checking identity of aircraft
Russian news agencies have claimed that an ‘informed source familiar with the situation’ has told it that pressure from UK military advisers in Kiev was responsible for the 24 January Ukrainian missile that brought down a Russian IL-76 aircraft carrying sixty-five Ukrainian prisoners to a prisoner exchange, along with three Russian officers and six crew members. All were killed.
Ria says that its source – it does not state whether it is a Russian, Ukrainian or British whistleblower – told it that:
The attack on the Il-76 was carried out under pressure from British advisers without the consent of the air defense headquarters in Kyiv and additional verification of information about the movement of aircraft over the Belgorod region.
Russia has claimed that US MIM-104A ‘Patriot’ missiles caused the crash.
US magazine Newsweek has carried the story, but the UK ‘mainstream’ media have ignored it, as they did Seymour Hersh’s investigation last year that concluded that the US was behind the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines that triggered an energy crisis in the UK and Europe.
Calls have been made for an international investigation, but so far nothing has been announced, at least publicly.
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Pro-Israel lawyer group tries to threaten Tower Hamlets to take down Palestine flags
UK Lawyers for Israel waves criminality threat at mayor Lutfur Rahman and council with claim local Jews feel threatened – a tactic seen and discredited before – but police already said in October no offence had been committed
Right-wing pro-Israel pressure group ‘UK Lawyers for Israel’ (UKLFI) has tried to force Tower Hamlets council and its mayor Lutfur Rahman to remove Palestinian flags put up by residents in solidarity with people facing occupation and genocide in Gaza – by threatening Rahman and his colleagues with criminalisation if they do not.
The group has form. Manchester University – to widespread outrage in the art world – pressured its museum director to resign for daring to host a display by Forensic Architecture, the science group that has criticised the Israeli regime for extrajudicial killings and other illegal actions, after UKLFI claimed the display was provocative. Forensic Architecture is also known for having debunked Israeli military lies attempting to blame the bombing of Al Ahli hospital in Gaza, which killed hundreds of refugees sheltering there, on a misfired Hamas rocket.
UKLFI also pressured Chelsea and Westminster hospital into taking down a harmless display of plates painted by Palestinian children by claiming Jewish patients had said they were distressed by them – but a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that not a single complaint had been made by patients or visitors.
The group was criticised by Jewish human rights group Na’amod for inviting an Israeli right-wing extremist group to speak in the UK and has been accused of links with the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs. The European Legal Support Centre accused UKLFI of using ‘lawfare’ as a ‘politically motivated’ weapon and said that the group “has been attempting to smear and disrupt the work of Palestinian human rights groups and their partners for years”.
UKLFI paid an out of court settlement to a Palestinian children’s charity it had libelled by claiming the charity gave “financial or material support to any terrorist organization” and admitted that UKLFI supported the ‘Ministry of Strategic Affairs’, an ‘Israeli black-ops department’ that tries to undermine the ‘Boycott Divestment and Sanctions’ campaign against the Israeli occupation and to delegitimise Palestinian solidarity actions globally. Broadcast regulator Ofcom rejected a UKLFI complaint that a Channel 4 video featuring Palestinian young people was unfair to it.
Tower Hamlets council appeared to call the group’s bluff. A council spokesperson said:
As one of the most diverse areas in the country, we are monitoring any community tensions closely with our tension monitoring group, which includes the police and representatives from a broad range of community organisations.
A number of Palestinian flags have been put up by the public in recent months. While we appreciate people want to express their support for Palestine, we have a routine responsibility to monitor and maintain council infrastructure. The situation is under regular review…
We are not aware of any criminal offences related to Palestinian flags not being removed, and we will continue to work closely with police partners to manage the situation.
And the council has reason to be confident. When attempts – not explicitly linked to UKLFI in reports – were made in October to us a similar tactic to force it to remove Palestinian, the Met Police said that as far as they were concerned, no criminal act had been committed.
Exclusive: Streeting uses NHS privatisation announcement to tout IDF-linked health firm
Health privatisation enthusiast ‘Labour’ health spokesman namechecks Israeli military-linked firm as glowing example of private involvement in NHS – and visited firm in Israel on LFI-paid junket
Image by ‘The Agitator‘
As the death toll of Israel’s genocide in Gaza climbed above 30,000 this week according to observers EuroMed Monitor, Wes Streeting used an Israeli private health data company as his shining example of successful ‘entrepreneurialism’ – ie privatisation – in the NHS as ‘a source close to Mr Streeting’ briefed the media about his plans to ‘throw open the doors’ of the NHS to more private corporate provision if Labour gets into government.
The ‘source’ told the i:
Labour will encourage the spread of new technologies so private sector “innovators” have a clearer route to get their product into the NHS…
The best example on the tech side of ‘opening the door to entrepreneurs’ is where you’ve got a company or innovator of a product which works really well on the NHS. There’s an example of some at home kidney tests made by Healthy.io which were first sold into the NHS in 2021
But the link – and the Labour trolling of those outraged by the Gaza slaughter – goes much further. Healthy.io is owned and run by Yonatan Adiri, former Chief Technology Officer for the whole of Israel and an adviser to then-Israeli PM Shimon Peres. Adiri’s interests are not limited to private healthcare tech. His published works include Terror in the Court: Counter-Terrorism and Judicial Power in the Israeli Case Study and Counter Terror Warfare: The Judicial Front (2008), written for the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (2005).
Adiri’s interest in ‘counter-terror’ did not end in 2008. Just two months ago, shortly after the Hamas kibbutz raid, Adiri spoke to Bloomberg Technology ‘The importance of Intelligence in Israel-Hamas war’, comparing Hamas to ISIS and talking of the use of technology by intelligence services to defeat the Palestinian resistance organisation:
Skwawkbox did not find details of any involvement with Israeli spytech unit ‘Unite 8200’ – the cyberspy unit whose members reportedly paint an ‘X’ on their headsets for each Palestinian they help kill – in Adiri’s IDF service, but according to his bio page as a speaker for hire on allamericanspeakers.com, he remains a reserve captain in the ‘international operational negotiations unit’ and has acted as moderator at discussions held by the Israeli-government-sponsored Institute for National Security Studies on the use of drones and other technology for ‘national security’:
According to one article, Adiri acted for the IDF in negotiating a prisoner swap with Lebanese militia group Hezbollah.
Adiri also acted as senior national security ‘policy consultant’ for the Reut Institute, a right-wing Israeli think tank that now plays a key role in Israel’s attempts to counter the peaceful pro-Palestinian ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ movement.
And while Adiri may not have been a member of Unit 8200, he is – since at least March 2023 – an ‘industry mentor’ for the ‘LEAP’ initiative:
The LEAP website says that:
Leap was created in partnership with 8200bio, an organization of 8200 alumni working to promote the Israeli healthtech ecosystem. The program does strive to bring exceptional 8200 alumni into the healthtech domain, but the program is open to entrepreneurs of any background, according to the criteria described above.
Like its partner 8200 Impact, 8200bio is run by former members of what 8200 Impact calls the ‘elite IDF Signal Intelligence and Cybersecurity unit’. Israeli newspaper Haaretz noted in 2020 that:
Nor did Wes Streeting simply pull the name Healthy.io out of a hat without knowing the company’s links. In May 2022, according to right-wing pressure group Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), Streeting visited Israel on LFI’s dime – and LFI said ahead of the trip that:
Streeting will also visit Healthy.io, a tech provider for the NHS and Boots.
Right-wing libel-merchant and ‘dauphin of phone hacking‘ Lee Harpin, writing for Jewish News rather than the Jewish Chronicle that he cost so much money in damages for smearing left-wingers, confirmed that the visit went ahead. Streeting told the NHS Confederation last spring that he had been ‘blown away’ by his trip.
Keir Starmer employs a Unit 8200 alumnus, Assaf Kaplan, to monitor members’ social media.
Wes Streeting has come out as an avid NHS privatiser – which will surprise no one who has been watching. That he chose to garnish his promise to ‘throw open the doors’ of the NHS to more private profit-taking by touting an Israeli – and Israeli military-linked – firm during Israel’s war crimes, mass slaughter of women, children, medics and teachers and the bombing of hospitals and schools, in Gaza makes the betrayal even worse.
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