Russian Missiles Strike Civilian Infrastructure Posing as Troop Barracks

"My neighbours are gone. No one is left." 

"Only the kitchens were left standing."

"An elderly woman, her daughter and two grandchildren lived on the ninth floor. They are gone." 

"A man with his son lived on the eighth floor. They are gone."

"A woman with her daughter lived on the seventh floor. They are gone."

"A young family lived on the sixth floor, their son was lucky ... he is alive." 

Serhii Lubivskyi, 58, Central Ukraine town of Uman  

 

"I couldn't understand what was happening. I went to the balcony and saw glass everywhere. It was horrible." 

"Russia is a terrorist state. You can see, there's no military object here. And it happened at four o'clock in the morning, as people were sleeping."

Oleksandr, 35, Uman resident    

 

"[I heard an explosion and] everything shook". 

"We tried to find ways to leave the building. I heard a voice of a child who was screaming in the flat next to ours. We wanted to help other people. There was smoke and fire everywhere."  

"Peaceful people were just sleeping."

Another resident, 60-year-old Vanda, Uman, Ukraine

Rescuers in Uman pulled casualties from the rubble during Friday morning   Ukraine State Emergency Service

"Another night of Russian terror. Missiles and UAVs."

"Russian evil can be stopped by weapons -- our defenders are doing it."

"And it can be stopped by sanctions -- global sanctions must be enhanced."

"This Russian terror must face a fair response from Ukraine and the world."

"And it will."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy 

"Russia's Air Force carried out a collective missile strike using long-range high-precision weapons overnight targeting temporary deployment sites of Ukrainian army reserve units."

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov

 

"Together with [Slovak President] Zuzana Caputova, we see the value of freedom and justice."

"It is hard to see with your own eyes how Ukrainians are paying the highest price for it. With the blood and lives of their own citizens."

"In the fight against the aggressor, they defend what we have in common. That is why we will back them."

Petr Pavel, President of the Czech Republic

Friday Russia hurled missiles at cities in Ukraine while people slept, its first large-scale airstrikes in almost two months. The long winter Russian offensive had seen little ground gained by Moscow. Only in Bukhov, a small mining town, was the grinding battle ongoing through the winter months. Ukrainian servicemen have been opposing the Russian plans of taking Bukhov for a year, despite that hundreds of thousands of reservists were called up, along with convicts recruited as mercenaries from prisons in Russian.

Kyiv, for its part, is deep in preparations for its spring counteroffensive, newly provided by foreign supporters with hundreds of tanks and armoured vehicles. The plan is to drive Russia out of the close to one-fifth of Ukraine occupied by Moscow which President Vladimir Putin claims to have annexed. "As soon as there is God's will, the weather and a decision by commanders, we will do it", stated Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleskii Reznikov.

Ukraine is "to a high percentage ready", he said, in possession of new and modern weapons to provide an "iron fist". Meanwhile, thanks to Moscow targeting overnight strikes at Ukrainian reserve troops, successfully struck, preventing them from reaching the front, as it claimed, the campaign was a success, but of which there was no evidence, missiles having indiscriminately been sent into towns and cities across the country, far from front lines; civilians were targeted and killed. 

In Uman, central Ukraine, firefighters battled an apartment building blaze after an upper floor was struck by a Russian missile where at least 23 civilians were killed, four children among them. Rescue workers made their awkward progress through smouldering rubble, hoisting a body on a stretcher while a man wearing a face mask wept, watching, and a woman comforted him.

Kyiv too was rocked by explosions during the night, along with central cities of Kremenchuk and Poltava, and to the south Mykolaiv and Ukrayinka; far, far from the front lines...nowhere near where Ukrainian reserve troops were stationed, as Moscow claimed. Out of 23 cruise missiles fired by Russia, the Ukrainian military said it had shot down 21. 

 

And Moscow reiterated yet again that it does not deliberately target civilians, to Kyiv's statement that strikes on cities far from the front lines have no military purpose, other than intimidating and harming civilians.

Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree addressing the pathway to Russian citizenship for those people living in parts of Ukraine under Moscow's control. Those who choose to decline, or who have no wish to legalize their status as 'Russian citizens' could be deported. 

 

In the lead-up to a visit expected later this year to South Africa, the opposition premier of Western Cape Province said he plans to order local police to seize Putin and presumably hand him over to the ICC to stand trial on charges of war crimes. Premier Alan Winde condemned the ruling African National Congress government for welcoming the Russian Leader despite his arrest ordered by the International Criminal Court for the forced deportation of Ukrainian children.

Still from video

Found Guilty -- Claiming Innocence -- Hassan Diab

"After 43 years of judicial wandering, justice is finally served for this deadly antisemitic attack."

"Everything must now be done to enforce the international arrest warrant. "

"CRIF [Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions] calls on Canada to cooperate with French justice."

Yonathan Arfi, president of CRIF

 

"It would be inappropriate to speculate on any potential requests for extradition for Dr. Diab to France."

"Extradition requests are confidential state-to-state communications, so we cannot comment on the existence of any request until it is made public by the courts."

Canadian Justice Minister David Lametti spokesperson

 

"[The case against his client is] replete with seemingly disconnected information."

"[The case against Diab contains] a great deal of argument, hypothesis, conjecture and references to information received, without describing the source of that information or the circumstances upon which it was received."

"The evidence shows he's innocent and yet they've convicted him. It's a political result. It's a wrongful conviction."

Diab's Canadian lawyer Donald Bayne

Firemen standing by the wreckage of a car and motorcycle after a bomb attack at a Paris synagogue on October 3, 1980 that killed four people. (AFP/Getty Images)

The search for justice can be extraordinarily complicated, as it has been in the case of the bombing in France that took place forty-three years ago when the Rue Copernic Synagogue was the site of a terrorist attack that killed four people and wounded dozens more. Hassan Diab, accused by French authorities of having been the man responsible for the bombing, was living in Canada when he was arrested in 2008 by the RCMP acting on a request for extradition from France. A long-drawn-out process ensued when what evidence that existed was studied by a Canadian court and though judged inconclusive, Mr. Diab was returned to France in 2014. 

He was imprisoned and spent over three years in incarceration. Eventually a French High Court ordered him freed on the basis of insufficient evidence. And Mr. Diab, a dual Lebanese/Canadian citizen, was permitted to return to Canada where he has been domiciled since then with his wife and their children. He has occasional work assignments as a casual university lecturer in sociology. Subsequent to his release and return to Canada the federal government authorized an investigation into the way his case was handled in Canada, culminating in his release from a French prison.

The report exonerated all those involved in the investigation, that led to Mr. Diab's extradition; that under the circumstances they comported themselves under the law properly, and no fault was to be found on the part of the prosecutors and the justice that examined the evidence concluding that the extradition process could proceed. Mr. Diab and his lawyer question the conclusion of the report, finding it biased and unreliable, giving the government and its agencies a clearance that in their opinion is undeserved.

Subsequent to which, Mr. Diab and his family decided to sue the federal government over the role Canada played in his extradition to France including the years of imprisonment in a French jail — the results of the terrorism probe that ultimately stalled in reflection of insecure and inadequate evidence. Mr. Diab's lawyers and his supporters cling to his contention that he had been in Lebanon at the time of the bombing, not in France. In a notice of action filed with the Ontario Superior Court, Diab, his wife Rania Tfaily and their two young children seek $90 million in damages.

However, a new trial was struck in France and Mr. Diab reacted to this trial as he had formerly, refusing to attend, declaring himself innocent of all charges. The trial proceeded with new evidence introduced, sufficient to convince French prosecutors and the court to reach a verdict of guilt. Found guilty in absentia of the bombing, Hassan Diab was sentenced to life in prison, and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

Police released an artist's impression of the bomber in 1980  AFP

The Paris Appeals court had disagreed with the decision to drop charges in recognition of a lack of evidence and Diab's return to Canada, ordering a trial, which took place in early April when Mr. Diab declined to attend, leaving the trial to proceed in his absence. Yet again the issue of extradition has arisen, with the government of Canada awaiting a formal request; if it has been received, it has not been made public. This man's declaration of innocence of the charges has wide support in Canada.

Those who should know better suggest that a fair trial was not possible in France.  Impugning the French justice system as a result of this singular case is peculiar, given relations as two democracies with much in common between Canada and France. The news media in France, on the other hand, has confidence that the trial's outcome is just and deserving. France 24 wrote of the attack being orchestrated by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. One of their commanders was in possession of Diab's passport which Diab claims had been stolen.

Witnesses to the bombing, however, in describing the suspect to police, led to a sketch bearing a striking resemblance to Diab in his younger years. In declaring his innocence since 2008 and beyond, Mr. Diab saw no profit in attending hearings and his trial in France to clear his name. He saw no need to defend himself in a French court of law. He can present no solid evidence that he was not present in France on that fateful day, acting in concert with the Palestinian terrorist group -- as a Palestinian born in Lebanon himself -- whose plan he may have carried out.

Hassan Diab in Ottawa on Friday April 21. A French court found Diab guilty on Friday in relation to a 1980 bombing of a Paris Synagogue. (Michel Aspirot/CBC)

 

 

 

U.S. Intelligence -- Monumental Incompetence

“There simply is no condition or combination of conditions that can ensure the Defendant will not further disclose additional information still in his knowledge or possession."

“The damage the Defendant has already caused to the US national security is immense."

"The damage the Defendant is still capable of causing is extraordinary.”

United States Justice Department lawyers 

Prosecutors argued in court filings that Teixeira poses a threat to national security and is a danger to the public  Associated Press

There have been quite a number of extraordinary situations where young Americans in a position of trust and working with sensitive intelligence have been able to copy highly classified U.S. military documents and release them to news agencies, exposing the U.S. and their allies to dangerous repercussions. The wonder is the obvious laxity of care taken to ensure that those issued with high security clearances are trustworthy and there exists no indications through careful background checks that they can be capable of releasing top secret documents to news sources, compromising and embarrassing American intelligence.

The latest of these scandalous and controversial releases by a 21-year-old unstable personality saw a large number of documents showing up on social media sites by a politically-motivated and emotionally unstable man who was furiously trying to impress individuals he had met on questionable online sites where an underworld of racist, immature, politically-grudging people tend to gather. Jack Teixeira's most immediate focus in copying and posting military documents of high security value was to draw attention to his conceit of being employed as a trusted high security employee with access to data of such sensitivity as to cause awe in the opinion of those whose admiration he sought.

That he was able to access the documents, to copy them and to post them and though incriminating himself as a traitor to his country, no red flags went up to alert the appropriate authorities only speaks to their lack of adequate and appropriate caution, both in hiring the man, in allowing him the security level that gained him access to the files and in failing to follow up to ensure there were no irregularities. A total lack of concern led to oblivion over the man's presence on those social media sites; had they been detected the revelations would have disqualified him from his position.

 

Instead the Massachusetts Air National guardsman was enabled to play with high security documents as though they were baseball cards to impress his social media colleagues. In the process laying bare for any interested, foreign and/or potentially hostile entities to have complete access to intelligence that would never otherwise be revealed to unauthorized eyes. Classified secrets available, through the juvenile conceit of an unreliable employee to anyone astute enough to recognize their value.

 

So why would a 21-year-old be given that level of high security clearance to begin with? Investigating authorities still have no firm idea of how much and what has been hoisted by the man, believing he may have still in his possession other material, not yet released which could have "tremendous value to hostile nation states that could offer him safe harbour and attempt to facilitate his escape from the United States", according to federal prosecutors.

 

Revelations that the Air Force suspended the 102nd Intelligence Support Squadron Commander where Teixeira worked along with the administrative commander "overseeing the support for the unit mobilized under federal orders" until further investigation reveals closer details is certainly merited. Each of these leaders' access to classified systems and information has also been temporarily removed. Given the serious nature of the situation these actions should put a permanent barrier in the advance of their career paths. 

The release of these documents to public scrutiny and whatever fallout occurs in the near future places the U.S. in the rather uncomfortable position of failing the test of confidence in its intelligence relationship with Britain, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada in the Five Eyes Intelligence group. If the United States could be so negligent with its document security that involves its other partners in intelligence, who can be trusted as an ally in a world growing ever more hostile and dangerous?

Teixeira, it is now being revealed, had a troubled and troubling background. What happened to the necessity of background checks that would divulge these unstable characteristics? At high school he was suspended when a classmate overheard him discussing Molotov cocktails and other weapons. There were also racial threats reported. According to prosecutors, more recently he used his government computer to research mass shootings and standoffs with federal agents. This was a stink bomb ready to be triggered.

He has been charged under the Espionage Act with unauthorized retention and transmission of classified national defence information, although he has not entered a plea as yet. His lawyers, however, urge the judge to release their client from prison. Their argument was that appropriate conditions could be set, even if the court finds him to be a flight risk. They sound as logical as their client is psychologically stable.

Terrorist Group and Don't Know Where to Peddle Your Wares? Try Canada!

"Enough is enough. Samidoun's ties to the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] terrorist entity are self-proclaimed and explicit. The group does not even attempt to hide them."

"What is unclear is why the [Liberal] government has yet to take action to outlaw the group's activities in Canada."

Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, (CIJA) Canada 

 

"We have long alerted the government to Samidoun's incitement to hatred against Canada's Jewish community and affiliation with the PFLP."

"Emboldened by impunity and inaction, Samidoun is now hosting its first major North American demonstration, here in the capital [Ottawa] of our country."

Shimon Koffler Fogel, president, CIJA 

"This conference is not organized by Samidoun."

"Throughout my years here, and I've been here for almost a decade, any kind of Palestinian-themed event here meets some sort of resistance, from either B'nai Brith or other organizations, so we've come to hear all kinds of complaints."

"We work with all kinds of progressive movements here in the city."

Jason St-Laurent, SAW curator

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network is honoured to join with the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, in calling all activists, organizers and supporters of Palestine in North America to join us in Ottawa on Algonquin Anishinaabe Land, April 28-30, 2023, for the Liberation Conference. Samidoun Website

The tip-off is the 'progressive' designation and affiliation. The PFLP is a recognized terrorist organization, infamous for its plane highjackings and other high-profile stunts to draw attention to the existence of a 'Palestinian' extremist group whose purpose is the destruction of the State of Israel. As a terrorist entity Canada, among other democratic nations of the world have placed the group on a terrorist list forbidden entry to those countries.

 

Jewish groups, in view of the NGO group calling itself Samidoun, heavily affiliated with the PFLP which purportedly defends the human rights of Palestinians in Israeli prisons (where conditions are such that prisoners may pursue academic upgrades among other 'progressive'-welfare conditions of their imprisonment for major terrorism events) and for whom propaganda slandering Israel and Jews is a major activity -- call on the government to investigate it under Section 83.05(1)(b) of the Criminal Code for acting on behalf of and/or associating with a listed terrorist entity, the PFLP.

The SAW Centre is an avant-garde Ottawa arts centre, preparing to play host to an international conference organized by a shadowy terror-affiliated network whose purpose is defaming Israel preparatory to its destruction. It has wide appeal among 'progressives' and those for whom antisemitism is a natural reaction to the presence of Jews. Yet Public Safety Canada is disinterested in acting in any capacity, whether it be an investigation of the presence of these outlawed terror groups or their purpose harmful to the Canadian-Jewish community in inciting against Jews and Israel.

According to the SAW Centre, the Jewish Federation of Ottawa is busy spreading a "fallacy" about the central role that Samidoun has taken in the conference organization. The Ontario Public Interest Research Group at Carleton University booked the SAW venue, Samidoun simply an endorser of the conference among about 30 "antiwar" and "anti-imperialist" groups organizing and attending the conference whose focus is the victimhood of Palestinians.

 

From its inception in 1973, the artist-run centre SAW has supported politically and socially engaged art, focusing on the performance and media arts.  SAW Website

 

The website for the conference is festooned with Samidoun flags; its European coordinator announced the plans for the event months earlier, the first such conference in North America of "the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement". A fairly new group of Palestinian militants, Masar Badil, who reject Palestinian Authority legitimacy, oppose peace talks with Israel and call for a resumption of the intifada of 1987. After the intifadeh that saw the deaths of both Israelis and Palestinians, 822 Palestinians were executed by their leaders, who charged them with collaborating with Israel.

The co-founder of the group is Khaled Barakat, key in the rejectionist militant movement, who has been resident in Canada off and on for several decades; a ubiquitous figure at Samidoun events globally. According to Israeli intelligence, Barakat is a high-ranking PFLP member, and Samidoun the PFLP's overseas fund-raising and recruitment proxy. Fund raising is vital to Samidoun and they've run into constraints since Visa and MasterCard cut the group off.

Three days before Samidoun was registered as a charitable group with Corporations Canada as a non-profit corporation, Israeli authorities listed Samidoun as a terrorist entity, given its PFLP connections. The event taking place at the SAW Centre this weekend describes itself as focusing on "building the liberation struggle in North America", linking with Indigenous and Black "liberation movements". 

Sessions at the conference include: Anti-Imperialism and the International People's tribunal on U.S. Imperialism; Palestinian Prisoners and the Resistance; Organizing for Return to Palestine; Building the Boycott Movement; and Anti-Zionism: An Anti-Colonial Struggle.

Members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine stand guard during an Al-Quds Day parade in Beirut on April 14. Photo by Mohamed Azakir/Reuters

The Final Insult in the UN's Assaults Against Israel

 U.N. Anti-Israel Bias

"This most recent resolution approved by the United Nations reflects an ongoing history of anti-Israel bias in the entity. Palestinian representation in the United Nations drives hard for recognition of their viewpoint that sees Israel as their oppressor and occupier. They have pressed for – and won – a permanent slot on the agenda of every Human Rights Council meeting for the discussion of Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights. Item 7 is a permanent fixture on the schedule, and while it’s worded in a way that indicates it’s for discussing human rights violations occurring amid the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the conversation remains unbalanced. It regularly results in resolutions and condemnations against Israel but rarely does so against Palestinians, though they repeatedly violate the human rights of their own people in their fervor to harm Israel, continue to incite terrorist activity against Israelis and reward them with payments to the families of imprisoned or martyred terrorists."

Jewish Voice Ministries Canada 

Israel's Ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, on Nov. 30, 2022 (Photo: Israel Permanent Mission to the UN)

"What would you say if the international community celebrated the establishment of your country as a disaster? What a disgrace."

"[Jews living in the Middle East and in North Africa] did not revolt against the international community’s decision. They did not try to annihilate another people. Their only crime was being Jewish."

"This is the true ‘Nakba.’ This is the disaster carried out against the Jewish people and this is the disaster that this body has ignored for decades."

Gilad Erdan, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations

With the creation of the State of Israel 75 years ago, an estimated 650,000 Arabs living in the region fled, assuming they would return, as they were assured they could, in the face of combined Arab armies attacking the fledgling Jewish State with the purpose of annihilating its presence, felt by Muslims to be an sacrilegious assault against Islam which forbids any other religion to abide in lands consecrated to Islam. 850,000 Jews were expelled from their ancient homes in Arab states in reaction to Israel's rebirth; from North Africa, including Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, while others fled or were driven out of Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria and Iran. 

The United Nations created a refugee assistant body specific to the new refugees that called themselves Palestinians, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency to look after the needs of these refugees who found themselves unable to return to the land now occupied by the State of Israel. The opportunity for a state of their own -- in former biblical-era Samaria and Judea now called the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- through the Partition offered by the United Nations was refused by the Arab Palestinians who maintained the entire area was their ancestral land, not that of the Jews.

UNRWA has been a permanent UN refugee installation, unlike any other in the world where other, much larger refugee populations fleeing conflict are eventually settled into permanent homes. By keeping UNRWA alive and active the UN has deliberately and with a strange malice aforethought institutionalized a permanent refugee status for Arab Palestinians who will only cease being 'refugees' once Israel ceases to exist. Israel has no intention whatever of moving over and out of their ancestral land mass. In point of fact, Israel accepted as their new home a portion of the geography that was once theirs; an act of conciliation and jubilation.

 

Palestinians and their victimhood enablers rally to the cause of Israel as an 'occupation' authority ruling the lives of Palestinians. And to keep that institutionalized victimhood alive and well, the day of Israel's modern re-founding on May 15 has been dubbed 'Nakba' (catastrophe) Day for 'Palestinians' commemorating their great loss. The United Nations general assembly in December, led by the Arab League nations, voted to formalize international recognition through the UN of 'Nakba Day'. While Israel celebrates its 75th birthday as a homeland reborn for Jews, the world community with some exceptions recognize that event as a catastrophe.

 

The United Nations, dedicated to world peace, dedicated to advancement of humanity, of nations living in security, dedicated to human rights and equality has become a global institution of renascent antisemitism led by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and their allies wherein UN various departments tend to agree that Israel may be a member of the United Nations by sufferance, and if any nation is going to be criticized as offending human rights, it will be Israel, the inclusive nation which, though existing as a haven and home for Jews, accepts 20 percent of its population comprised of Arabs and other non-Jewish ethnics with full citizenship.

In the past seven years the UN General Assembly has seen fit to pass 208 resolutions that target countries for reported UN Charter violations along with other transgressions; 140 of those resolutions singled out Israel. The total of UN condemnations targeting other UN member states last year combined was 13. Israel alone was targeted with 15 condemnations last year. 

The UN's International Court of Justice has been assigned by the General Assembly to study Israel's "prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation" of Palestinian territory along with measures allegedly taken by Israel "aimed at altering the demographic composition, charter and status" of Jerusalem, the City of David, the ancient ancestral capital city of Judaean heritage. The resolution makes no mention of the violence committed by Fatah, the PLFP, Hamas or any other of the Palestinian terrorism groups violently attacking Israel to achieve their 'River to the Sea' aspiration.

 

 

Infamously some of the member-nations that regularly sit on the UN Human Rights Commission, to sit in judgement on democratic Israel with its just laws and commitment to equality for all its citizens, include human rights abusers such as China, Sudan, Zimbabwe and Cuba. In the 17 years since its founding, the UN's HRC adopted 90 resolutions in condemnation of Israel. The Human Rights Council this year sees China, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia as ruling members.

On behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, two years ago the HRC established a permanent commission of enquiry to examine breaches of human rights norms by Israel, in a vote initiated by Pakistan and the delegation from the Palestine Liberation Organization, a terrorist group in its own right. UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization adopted a resolution in 2016 that literally negated a Jewish presence from antiquity forward in the Middle East.

The site of the two ancient Jewish temples known as the Temple of Solomon, twice destroyed with one retaining wall left, the Western Wall (Wailing Wall) is given short shrift as the most sacred site in Judaism, the site given attribution as a sacred Islamic site; the Noble Sanctuary, where it was known well before the advent of Islam as the Temple Mount. Hebron, the site of the Tomb of the Patriarchs where Abraham and his family were buried, from whom the 12 Tribes of Israel were descended, is marked by UNESCO as a Palestinian World Heritage Site. The UN an accomplice of the Palestinian Authority in pillaging Judaism and Judaic history.

The UN's Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) last year produced one agenda for a resolution singling Israel out as a "major obstacle" to the rights of Palestinian women. "ECOSOC's 2022 session completely ignored the world's worst abusers of women's rights, refusing to pass a single resolution on the situation of women in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Chad, Qatar or Algeria, which rank among the ten worst violators of women's rights in the world", Hillel Neuer of UN Watch fumed.

The United Nations General Assembly Fourth Committee votes on measures addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at the United Nations in New York, November 11, 2022. (Luke Tress/Times of Israel)

Khartoum Imploding

"There were power cuts, no running water, no access to cash. So I left with only $20. The city was complete mayhem when I left."

"There were women, children, families who were escaping villages along the way. I thought at the time that only Khartoum had seen the most destruction, but we saw villages that had clearly been devastated by the war."

Lakshmi Parthasarathy, 32, U.S. Citizen

 

"There is no way to go outside of Khartoum. You can be shot, everything can happen to you in the street."

"All the streets are captured by the militias."

"If this war continues for two or three months more, most of the Sudanese people are going to die from poverty because the situation is very, very difficult."

Musa Osman El Sayeed, 55, Sudanese citizen

A Spanish air force plane carried evacuees from Sudan to Madrid on Monday. A European airlift has pulled out a wide variety of private citizens from many countries. Spanish Defence Ministry via AP

For the people of Sudan, seeing the frantic international airlifts of foreign nationals is a heart-sinking moment, indicating to them that the international community holds out no hope that the two sides in the conflict will reach an agreement any time soon, and the conflict of which several ceasefires have been brokered and subsequently broken will only escalate, leaving them in the middle of a maelstrom they will be helpless to escape.

Foreign governments have committed to airlifting hundreds of their diplomats and other citizens out of the country to safety while Sudanese are left to their own devices desperately seeking out ways they can leave the chaos behind, believing that the two rival generals will raise their present relatively low-level conflict to all-out civil war in their battle for power, awaiting the completion of the foreign evacuations before embarking on full-scale warfare.

Convoys of foreign diplomats, civilian teachers, students, workers and families from various countries made their way past the combatants at front lines in Khartoum in an orderly but tense purpose to reach arranged extraction points, while others drove to the country's east coast, hundreds of kilometres distant. 

At the airport a steady stream of European, Mideast, African and Asian military aircraft flew in throughout the day Sunday and Monday to collect the evacuees and fly them out to safety elsewhere; for many the first leg of their trip back to their home countries. The last  nominal ceasefire with little reduction in fighting due to expire on Monday evening.

Over 420 people of which total at least 273 were civilians have died, while over 3,700 people have been wounded since the April 15 date when fighting began. The country's military vows to fight to the end until it accomplishes the crushing of the country's paramilitary opposition group. Adequate reason why many Sudanese fear a dramatic escalation in violence.

Sudan's power-sharing negotiations with the ultimate goal of the military to hold democratic elections and relinquish their power role to elected civilians after the military coup, is being challenged by the paramilitary troops with which it had a shared power agreement, but which rejects elections and a civil, democratic government to be returned in the East African country.

Canada is one country that has not made plans to send in military aircraft to evacuate the almost 1,600 Canadians formally registered in Sudan. It has suspended consular services from the capital, noting that Canadian diplomats would "temporarily work from a safe location outside the country", while still making an effort to aid their citizens in Sudan.

The New York Times reported that U.S. special forces evacuated six Canadian diplomats, along with 70 American diplomats and some as well from other countries. Canadians were among a group evacuated by sea to Saudi Arabia. An Egyptian expert on Africa, Amani el-Taweel, warned of "horrific suffering" for Sudanese unable to leave. It is not possible, after all, to evacuate an entire population of any country under military duress. All the more so of a population of 46 million people.

This is a country where humanitarian aid was already required by a third of its population. And with an active conflict, aid agencies will no longer be capable of reaching most Sudanese. "Warring parties will not heed any calls for a truce or a ceasefire" once evacuations are complete, warned Ms. el-Taweel. Despite the ceasefire set to expire, intensified airstrikes hit Khartoum's Nile-side Kalakla district until the area was "razed to the ground".

Continued fighting between the Sudanese military and their rival paramilitary group the Rapid Support Forces saw heavy gunfire and thundering explosions rock the city. 

Civilians evacuated from Sudan arrive at a military airport in Amman, Jordan, on Monday. Foreign powers have sought to use a lull in fighting to get citizens out. Raad Adayleh / AP

"One of the fighting parties had seized control of the central public health laboratory in Khartoum and kicked out all of the technicians."

"That is extremely, extremely dangerous because we have polio isolates in the lab. We have measles isolates in the lab. We have cholera isolates in the lab." 

"There is a huge biological risk associated with the occupation of the central public health lab in Khartoum by one of the fighting parties." 

"[The expulsion of technicians and power cuts in Khartoum mean] it is not possible to properly manage the biological materials that are stored in the lab for medical purposes."

Dr. Nima Saeed Abid, World Health Organization representative in Sudan

Nazi Germany's 1936 Olympics, Anaesthesizing the World Community of Sports

"In 1924 Adolf Hitler warned "blood desecration" and "defilement of the race" represented "original sin". The deleterious effects of "racial cross-breeding" was condemned in his book Mein Kampf. "Every animal mates only with a member of the same species ... The titmouse seeks the titmouse,the wolf the she-wolf, etc."

"Hitler's race theory was his belief in the biological superiority of the Aryan race and he vowed to end what he believed to be the harmful contamination of Aryan blood and maintain its purity."

"For Hitler, the worst violation of blood occurred in the mating between Jews and Aryans. The 1935 "Law for the Protection of German Blood" made sexual intercourse between Aryan and non-Aryan a crime."
"By 1945 race defilement was punishable by execution."

The Holocaust Chronicle

Games of the XI Olympiad   Getty Images

Back in 1932, the year before Adolf Hitler assumed power as Chancellor of Germany, the International Olympic Committee awarded the 1936 Games to Berlin, as the venue for the summer competition. Bavaria would host the Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. No one at the IOC appeared to foresee that it would be a Nazi Germany that would host those games. At play was the Olympics; idealism of uniting the world's people through a sport festival. 

An international ideal fundamentally opposed to the racist and antisemitic nationalism of Nazi Germany. 

And while the IOC did consider moving the Games to another venue, Hitler offered concessions to maintain the original invitation for Germany to host the events. He foresaw the Olympics playing out in Germany as a public relations boon for the Third Reich. And indeed, the 1936 Olympics gave a huge assist to Nazi Germany's Final Solution, in the final analysis. 

International attendees to the Games were hugely impressed by the grand Opening Ceremonies and by the release of 20,000 birds soaring skyward, trailing coloured ribbons. The illusion was that the Nazis weren't the villains they were made out to be. Throughout the Olympics antisemitism was soft-pedalled, despite that German Jews, including Jewish athletes had faced severe discrimination.

 

1936 Olympic Games, Berlin, Germany,  Getty Images

 

Banned from sports clubs and athletic facilities where they had once been members, separate and inferior facilities were thought more than enough to serve the interests of inferior Jewish athletes. Gretl Bergmann, world-class high jumper (a Jew), matched the German women's record; five feet, three inches during the training period before the 1936 Summer Olympics. She received a letter from the German Olympic Committee criticizing her performances for being erratic; informing her she had not been chosen as a member of Germany's Olympic track and field team.

It was the summer of 1936; German Jews lost their citizenship rights; their businesses were boycotted,their professional lives restricted. Jews were excluded from public facilities, prohibited from marrying non-Jews. As anti-Jewish policies were expanded, German physical fitness and athletic prowess was recognized as a vehicle for building nationalism, for fostering racial purity and for spurring military preparedness.  Which led to opportunity for Jews to be given places in the 1936 Olympic team eliminated.

The IOC was placated by Reich officials who permitted one Jewish athlete to compete for Germany; Helene Mayer who had competed for Germany in two previous Olympiads. Half Jewish, she was tall and blonde, fitting the prototypical Aryan image. In the women's foil competition she received the Olympic silver medal; film coverage of that day shows her giving the stiff-armed Nazi salute; if a Jew could do that, Germany wasn't such a bad place for them, after all.

 

1936 Olympic Games, Germany, Javelin Throw   Getty Images

 

Prior to the Games' opening, several countries including the United States and Soviet Union urged a boycott of Olympic competition in Germany. The Nazi regime gave image-improving concessions -- some involving taking down vicious anti-Jewish signs proliferating along German highways, towns and city boundaries, on streets and at stores: "Jews are not wanted in this place", and "The Jew is our misfortune".

Antisemitic signs along the highways that led to competition sites were seen by Count Henri Faillet-Latour, the Belgian president of the IOC as he travelled to the Winter Games opening. Demanding to see Hitler, he informed him such practices were unacceptable. Hitler argued Olympic protocol could not override concerns of paramount importance within Germany, but ordered the signs removed when he was threatened with cancellation of the Games.

Forty-nine countries sent teams to the Nazi Olympics including the United States where the boycott movement failed. Leni Riefenstahl and her film crews captured the pageantry and athletic competition; her film Olympia won first prize at the 1938 Venice film festival. Jesse Owens representing the United States won four gold-medal performances, hailed by critics of the Nazi regime who felt the victories refuted Hitler's claim of white superiority.

 

American runner Jesse Owens, Getty Images

 

The German team won more medals than any other nation's teams. Hitler played the part of world statesman and honoured national leader. Foreign visitors were largely persuaded that the Third Reich's intentions were as peaceful as its economic revival was efficient, its goals benign, its culture healthy and vigorous. For after all, ten Jewish athletes won medals at the 1936 Olympics. In reality, Victor Perez, a French Jews, the world's flyweight boxing champion was murdered at Auschwitz.

Lilli Henoch, world record holder in the shot put and discus was murdered and buried in a mass grave near Riga, Latvia. A Hungarian fencer, Attila Petschauer who won a silver medal in the 1928 Olympics, froze to death in a Nazi labour camp. Alfred Flatow, a German Jew and winner of three gold medals and one silver in gymnastics in Athen's 1896 games died in the Theresienstadt camp, Czechoslovakia. 

1936 Olympics, Germany   Getty Images

The Start-Up Nation

"Seventy-Five years ago, on the fifth day of Iyar on the Hebrew lunar calendar, which falls on April 26 this year, on the eve of Great Britain pulling out of Palestine, the region's Jewish community declared 'the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel'."

"The Zionist movement was formed to re-establish the ancient Jewish homeland in Judaea, as a refuge for a people who faced centuries of persecution. At the end of the 19th century, the World Zionist Organization began building the institutions that would form the basis of an eventual state."

"Following the Holocaust, Zionism came to be seen not just as a dream, but as an existential imperative for a people who had barely escaped total annihilation."

From ubiquitous carbonated water to drip irrigation for growing crops in the desert, the USB key and anti-missile systems, Israel has a talent for creating things the world wants.

 

Modern-day Israel has distinguished itself as a innovative hub of human creativity, a vast beehive of technological advances as well as an agricultural focus on the art of the possible. In an arid landscape where water is always in short supply, its lack through normal means and natural resources has been rectified by coercing nature to cooperate with enterprising methods in resupply to huge advantage not only to Israel but in sharing its remedies to the rest of the water-scarce world.

 

Ranking highest in the world for per-capita startups, Israel's rate of tech investment has registered as much as 28 times greater than the United States. In the 1980s, the USB stick was invented in Israel. Israeli agricultural scientists popularized the cherry tomato. Smartphones with Waze operate with Israeli code. The brilliant inventive power of Israeli scientists has led to all manner of inventions uniquely Israeli which become technologies with global spread.

 

Translation machines represent a particular Israeli tech inspiration possibly reflective of the many langues aside from the country's national Hebrew, being spoken. Babylon, one of the first software programs offering instantaneous translation of documents and web pages was the work of an Israeli company in 1997. In the 1990s Wizcom Technologies debuted pens able to scan words and translate them to an LCD screen. OrCam Read, a hand-held device, can scan printed pages and read them aloud. 

One of the country's first major technical challenges to face Israeli scientists was how to maximize scarce water resources. Israeli geography is largely desert; almost all sources of surface water arrive through neighbouring territories hostile to Israel. Israel now produces 20 percent more water than required internally, with three major initiatives.

 

Huge desalination plants to repurpose sea water into potable water; a centralized water management system repurposing wastewater, replenishes aquifers and moves awater through a complex system of canals, pipes and reservoirs. Irrigation, the third, a method of agriculture developed in the 1950s where water crops use targeted drips instead of sprinklers. 

 

The Pillcam ESO is used to photograph a patient’s esophagus.

 

Rewalk, a robotic exoskeleton enabling paraplegics to walk, grabbed world attention to gawk at Israeli medical technology. Israeli researchers invented tiny cameras and sensors to be introduced into the human body; disposable 'cameras'-in-a-pill, the PillCam that can be swallowed to allow doctors to view the state of a body's internal organs. An off shoot of Israel's security tech sector. Surveillance cameras, drones and spy cameras, part of Israeli defence technology.

ENvizion Medical based in Tel Aviv created a "smart" feeding tube to help chart its path down the esophagus, meant to prevent health-care providers from accidentally sending the tube into the lungs. Another, a flexible and high-resolution Aer-O-Scope colonoscope sends a tube to scope around the human colon. 

Israel's never-ending concern over hostile neighbours scheming to destroy it by incremental attacks and lethal violence required technology capable of destroying incoming missiles. The country's military poses an advanced catalogue of technologies designed to shoot down missiles; Iron Dome the most famous among them. About 90 percent of incoming rockets and artillery shells are blocked from landing through the latticework of sensors and interceptor missiles along Israel's border.

 

Israel has an advanced catalogue of technologies designed to shoot down missiles from hostile neighbours.

 

A qick reaction missile -- Arrow 3 -- "designed to intercept and destroy the newest, longer-range threats, especially those carrying weapons of mass destruction" has been developed. A tiny anti-missile system to be attached to tanks and armoured vehicles is the Trophy countermeasure system, designed to detect an incoming anti-tank missile and disarm it at the last second with a burst of small projectiles.

Whoops! Sorry About That!

"As a Sukhoi Su-34 air force plane was flying over the city of Belgorod, there was an accidental discharge of aviation ammunition."

Russian Defence Ministry

 

"The residents of Belgorod were faced with tough ordeals last night."

"Together, I think we will go through them."

"[Sappers examining the site of Thursday’s blast found and decided to detonate an] explosive object [that was] in the immediate vicinity of residential buildings."

"The bomb was removed from the residential area. Residents are being delivered back to their homes."

 Governor of Belgorod province, Vyacheslav Gladkov

Damage after an explosion in the city in Belgorod, Russia, on Wednesday.   Russian Mayor Valentin Demidov via Telegram / AFP via Getty Images

A Russian city located fairly close to Russia's border with Ukraine had a sudden surprise on Thursday evening when a bomb fell close to the city centre. The first impression was that this was an attack by Ukrainian forces, but it was not. In the annals of modern warfare such incidents are now identified as 'friendly fire', the inadvertent attacks that take place against one's own; in this instance a Russian supersonic warplane dropped not one, but two bombs on a Russian city, mistaking it for a Ukrainian city.

The training of Russian pilots may be missing some critical points in observance and performance techniques. Three people were injured, and the town now has a massive crater in what was an ordinary-enough street. Piles of twisted metal and great chunks of concrete scattered on the street can be seen from a video shot at the scene. There were a number of damaged cars and nearby apartment buildings suffered blasted windows and destroyed walls.

The blast was sufficiently strong to flip a car skyward, landing it on a nearby shop roof. In total 17 buildings suffered damages, while residents of a nearby apartment block were evacuated until such time that damages can be assessed and repairs undertaken. Some Russian war bloggers were convinced this was a Ukraine military attack, urging the Russian military to strike back, harder.

 Antiwar Russian civilians on the other hand, took to social media to classify the incident as an example of a meme reflecting the Kremlin's tendency to oppose or attempt harming the West with measures that invariably wind up harming its own citizens instead. 

Russian ground staff load a Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bomber with weapons at the Hmeymim air base near Latakia, Syria, in a handout photo released by Russia's Defense Ministry. REUTERS/Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation/Handout

"The FAB [glide bomb] exploded as normal; the fuse was set on delay, so apparently the target was something underground: bunkers, cellars, workshops and the like. Belgorod got lucky today", wrote a prominent Russian military blogger on the Telegram messaging app, so popular with Russians. He was referring to a UMPK FAB-500M62 glide bomb whose wings failed to initiate, though it was not clear what type of weapon had exploded in Belgorod.

"It would all have been fine except for the chosen flight path over the city, which at night glows like a huge lantern and it's impossible not to see it", commented the blogger. "You can't make mistakes like that. This should never ever happen again."

 

Ukraine had warned earlier in the month that Russia has brought guided bombs into its arsenal, like the modified FAB-500 bomb. A type of bomb it has used to target Ukrainian defences in Avdlivka in the Donetsk region. The FAB-500 is a 500-kiilogram Soviet-made general-purpose bomb with a  highly explosive warhead.

 

A frame grab taken from video released by Russia's Defense Ministry shows a Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber dropping a bomb in the air over Syria. REUTERS/Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation/Handout

Recently,the Russian military has been using these bombs "from a distance that is unreachable for Ukrainian air defence", pointed out Yurii Ihnat, spokesman for the Ukrainian air force. Russia, he added, may be increasing production of these bombs, outfitting them with wings and GPS navigation. Only recently has Russia adopted this method of turning simple bombs into guided ones and speculation is that this is Moscow's way of replenishing its depleted stockpiles of cruise and ballistic missiles with relatively cheap and effective weapons.

 

"More often, the enemy uses guided air bombs weighing 500 kg along the entire front line. There are signs of preparation for the mass use of 1,500 kg KABs."

"The planes of the Russians do not enter the zone of damage of our air defence, striking remotely at the front line and near-frontline cities", explained Mykola Oleschuk, commander of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

 

Since Russia invaded Ukraine over a year ago, the Belgorod region, its capital city a few miles from the Ukrainian border, has served as one of the key staging grounds for Russian troops. The drama of Thursday night's accidental bombing in Belgorod came to a conclusion on Saturday, when another explosive device was found at the site where the first one exploded, resulting in seventeen apartment buildings being  evacuated.

 

This handout photo posted to the Telegram channel of Belgorod region governor Vyacheslav Gladkov shows damaged apartments building near the crater after an explosion in Belgorod, Russia, April 21, 2023, caused by a Russian Su-34 warplane accidentally discharging ammunition over the city.  Telegram/Vyacheslav Gladkov/AP

 

 

 

 

Chinese-Produced Security Gear -- Five Eyes Intelligence Group

"The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces take physical and corporate security extremely seriously and ensures it has a robust and effective security program in place."

"This is accomplished through the development and maintenance of a comprehensive security policy, tailored to both DND/CAF departmental and operational requirements through which we continually assess the effectiveness of our security practices."

"Acquisitions are done in accordance with DND/CAF [Department of National Defence/Canadian Armed Forces] industrial security program protocols, which provides oversight of the risks associated with supply chain integrity commensurate with the intended final use of goods/services."

National Defence spokesperson Dan Le Bouthillier

"Both the human and technical reach of Chinese companies now give the intelligence services opportunities to gain direct access to many governments within the developing world as well as many Allied and European countries with inroads into other societies."

Canadian Security Intelligence Service

"[If Canadian communication passes through their equipment, the companies could be] compelled to comply with extrajudicial directions from foreign governments in ways that would conflict with Canadian laws or would be detrimental to Canadian interests."

Bill C-26, Cybersecurity Law

Getty Images

 

Bill C-26, a proposed cybersecurity law would allow the government to order private telecom networks to extract gear from China-based Huawei and ZTE should their equipment allow Canadian communication to pass through to a foreign government. Canada, as a member of the Five-Eyes intelligence security group, along with the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand is now out of step with those other four nations in the laxity of the Liberal government's reaction to obvious breaches in national security posed by Chinese equipment.

This, despite the fact that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service has given due warning to the government that China's National Intelligence Law authorizes Beijing to compel Chinese companies' cooperation with intelligence-gathering. This is a law that not only pertains to companies operating within China, but those with branches and operations globally; all are expected to respond to the National Intelligence Law. This is a law that extends to expatriate Chinese with citizenship in other countries, as well.

DND spokesman Dan Le Bouthillier notes that all closed-circuit video gear comes courtesy of a list of vendors the government's procurement department maintains. Vendors who generally install and maintain equipment they purchase from manufacturers for the purpose of reselling them. The United States initiated a cull of Chinese-produced cameras out of its public security systems in 2019 -- products from Hytera, Hikvision and Dahua specifically targeted, as have other allies in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network.

The Department of National Defence in Canada explained it would not follow the U.S. ban of multiple models of security cameras manufactured in China, partly because there are 20,000 DND buildings, none of which properties are managed centrally. Moreover an inventory of where security gear emanates from has never been developed by DND. The United Kingdom and Australia share the U.S. concerns of devices manufactured in China having the potential to endanger national security.

The U.K. in 2022 ordered its government agencies that new Chinese cameras were not to be installed at sensitive sites; further that Chinese-made surveillance equipment from core networks be disconnected, and plans forwarded to remove such equipment altogether. The United States Federal Communications Commission moved to restrict sale of security equipment even to ordinary consumers, of several Chinese brands.

Many police departments in Britain use cameras from Chinese manufacturers, pointed out the British government surveillance watchdog, cautioning that software updates can create new backdoors in equipment following initial installation. Australia's defence minister committed to that country removing Chinese-made cameras from government buildings, while New Zealand this month saw a news probe discovering that Chinese surveillance technology permeates government buildings -- and calls are being made for an audit on the devices.

Surveillance cameras manufactured by Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co. are mounted on a post at a testing station near the company's headquarters in Hangzhou, China, on Tuesday, May 28, 2019. Hikvision, which is controlled by the Chinese government, is one of the leaders in the market for surveillance technology, with cameras that can produce sharp, full-color images in fog and near-total darkness. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg , Bloomberg