The UK Has Deployed Its Armed Forces In 47 Countries Since 1945

Psychopaths, Sadists And Rapists Released From Prison In Ukraine.
Once condemned by Ukrainian officials and imprisoned for sadistic torture and the rape of minors, leaders of the notorious Tornado Battalion are free under Volodymyr Zelensky’s orders.
After banning virtually his entire political opposition, publishing a blacklist of foreign journalists and academics accused of advancing “Russian propaganda” and ramming through a law exempting 70% of Ukrainians from workplace protections, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy has freed from prison fascist militants convicted of some of the most heinous crimes the country has seen since World War II.
According to a July 11 report in Ukrainian media, Ruslan Onishenko, commander of the now-disbanded Tornado Battalion, was freed as part of President Zelensky’s scheme to release prisoners with combat experience.
Along with an unwavering commitment to fascism, Onishenko is known as a psychopathic sadist who was involved in sexually assaulting children, brutally torturing prisoners, and murder.
Onishenko’s release follows a February 27 order by Zelensky to free other convicted former Tornado members like Danil “Mujahed” Lyashuk, a fanatic from Belarus who has openly emulated ISIS and boasted of torturing captives for sheer enjoyment.
According to Zelensky‘s decree, prisoners with combat experience would be allowed to “compensate for their guilt” by fighting in the “hottest spots.”
( Esha Krishnaswamy, 22.07.2022 )  ..  thegrayzone.com

The Conservative Friends Of Israel Has Paid For Dozens Of MPs To Visit Israel.
A pro-Israel Tory lobby group has taken British MPs on 155 free trips over the last ten years, in an unprecedented charm offensive to promote the country in Westminster.
The Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) paid for MPs to go on more overseas trips than any other donor.
Records show the group fully or partially funded trips with an overall value of £367,000 since 2012.
It is part of a £8million splurge from a range of donors to fly MPs abroad, often including wining and dining with foreign diplomats and dignitaries.
Overall, 713 current or former MPs have accepted more than 3,100 all-expenses-paid trips.
As the most frequent donor, CFI has paid for dozens of MPs to visit Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The group exists “to ensure that Israel’s case is fairly represented in Parliament” and has previously been described as “the most well-connected and probably the best funded of all Westminster lobbying groups”.
In 2017, the CFI’s honorary president Lord Polak personally arranged a dozen meetings for Priti Patel when she was the government’s international development secretary – including one with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
It later emerged that Patel had failed to inform the prime minister about the trips, and she was forced to step down.
This year alone, CFI paid for three delegations of MPs to visit Israel, with 24 Conservative MPs declaring the visits in the registers of interests.
( Jenna Corderoy and Martin Williams, 12.12.2022 )  ..  opendemocracy.net

British Armed Forces Have Invaded Or Attacked Or Interfered With 47 Different Countries Since The Second World War.
The UK has deployed its armed forces for combat over 80 times in 47 countries since the end of the Second World War.
Declassified has documented 83 interventions by the UK armed forces since 1945, in 47 different countries.
The most striking of the British uses of force have been the overt invasions or armed attempts to overthrow governments such as in British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1953, Egypt in the 1950s, Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011.
The brutal colonial counter-insurgency wars of the 1950s and 1960s – in Kenya, Malaya, Aden and Cyprus – involved the widespread use of torture and, often, pernicious operations to displace large numbers of people to control the local population.
In Malaya between 1948 and 1960, British forces herded hundreds of thousands of people into fortified camps, heavily bombed rural areas and resorted to extensive propaganda to win the conflict.
British brutality fighting ‘Mau Mau’ forces in Kenya demanding independence from the UK resulted in tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of deaths, often from starvation in concentration camps.
Some of the UK’s most brutal interventions have been with the US, notably the bombing of and occupation of Afghanistan after 2001, the UK’s supportive role in Washington’s near-destruction of Vietnam from the 1960s and the forcible depopulation of the Chagos Islands from 1968-73, to make way for a US military base in the Indian Ocean.
After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the UK acted as America’s junior partner in a ferocious bombardment of Iraq the following year that destroyed much of the country’s civilian infrastructure.
UK-American bombing of Iraq continued for a decade after the Gulf War until the 2003 invasion.
( Mark Curtis, 10.01.2023 )  ..  declassifieduk.org

The Innocent People Of Ukraine Are Beginning To Hate Their Country.
Ukraine is being portrayed as an innocent victim of the war that Russia is waging against it.
Definitely, Ukraine is a victim.
Russia is a much larger and superior force, and will eventually vanquish Ukraine’s defences.
Already, the Eastern European country has faced major losses in terms of weapon systems and armed fighters and moving forward, Kyiv will find it incredibly difficult to keep fighting Russia.
Most of those that are fighting Russian forces are Ukrainian conscripts.
So, Kyiv is naturally getting desperate.
Not only is the regime of Volodymyr Zelensky desperate, but so are Western powers puppeteering the Ukrainian president.
The United States under Joe Biden, and all of its NATO allies, have invested several billion dollars to ensure that Ukraine keeps fighting to its last man standing.
Ukraine is adamant it will not surrender.
However, who is suffering due to such obstinacy on the part of Zelensky and his masters?
The innocent people of Ukraine, who are beginning to hate their country and its armed forces due to what they are being put through.
( Sanbeer Singh Ranhotra, 09.05.2022 )  ..  tfiglobalnews.com

UK Billionaires Increase Their Wealth By Over 20% During The Pandemic.
The Sunday Times Rich List revealed that there are now a record 171 billionaires in the UK, with Ukranian Sir Leonard Blavatnik topping the pile as the richest person in the country.
The number of billionaires jumped by 24%, in stark contrast with the wider economic turmoil of the pandemic which saw millions enter furlough and the rate of unemployment lift to its highest in almost five years.
Wealth among billionaires increased by 21.7% over the year, rising by £106.5 billion to £597.2 billion.
The annual index of the country’s wealthiest residents showed that oil and media investor Mr Blavatnik saw his fortune surge by £7.2 billion to around £23 billion during the pandemic-hit year.
He took the title of UK’s richest man from Sir James Dyson who slipped back to fourth in the table after his wealth only increased by £100 million to £16.3 billion.
The electrical entrepreneur was also beaten by property investors David and Simon Reuben, who reached the second spot after their wealth increased by £5.46 billion to £21.46 billion.
( Luke O’Reilly, 21.05.2021 )  ..  standard.co.uk

A Fake Peace Plan By The U.S. And Europe To Deceive Russia.
Early last year (2022), when Petro Poroshenko stated publicly that the post-coup regime in Kyiv had no intention of abiding by diplomatic commitments it made in 2014/15 to a peaceful settlement of the Ukraine crisis, a few eyebrows arched, but not over many.
It was another matter when, in early December 2022, Angela Merkel admitted in back-to-back interviews that the European powers were up to the same thing.
The objective of diplomatic talks in late 2014 and early 2015, the former German chancellor told Der Spiegel and Die Zeit, was not, as they had pretended, a framework for a federalised Ukraine in the cause of a lasting peace between its hostile halves: It was to deceive the Russians to give Kyiv time to prepare for a military assault on the Russian-speaking provinces in the east, whose people had refused to accept the U.S.–orchestrated coup that brought compulsively Russophobic Nazi-inflected nationalists to power in February 2014.
( Patrick Lawrence, 08.01.2023 )  ..  scheerpost.com

NATO is mostly funded by, and simply an extension of, the U.S. military.
Everyone with an ounce of intelligence knows that.
The European-only NATO members are the spineless puppets who do exactly what they are told to do and say by the warmongering U.S.”
( Rose Winfold )

The UK Tory Government ‘Praised’ Dictator’s New Repressive Law.
Former British prime minister John Major praised Oman’s dictator, Sultan Qaboos, for passing a law that gave him absolute power, describing it as ‘clearly a most imaginative and constructive step forward’.
The law enacted in 1996 by the close British ally effectively banned political parties, independent media and criticism of the ruler.
The repressive new law was praised by foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind as an ‘important development’ and by UK officials as a ‘welcome first step’.
John Major congratulated Qaboos, telling him ‘our commitment to Oman is unwavering’.
Newly declassified Foreign Office papers shed fresh light on the extent of Whitehall’s support for Qaboos bin Said al-Said, who became Sultan of Oman in 1970 after deposing his father in a coup led by British soldiers.
The files show that British ministers and officials welcomed the introduction of a repressive Basic Law in 1996 amid efforts to secure arms and energy contracts with the regime.
( Phil Miller, 15.01.2021 )  ..  declassifieduk.org

The UK Government Brag About Supplying Weapons To Ukraine.
The UK is already the second largest military donor to Ukraine, committing £2.3billion in 2022.
We have trained 27,000 members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces since 2015, and in the last year we have provided hundreds of rockets, five air defence systems, 120 armoured vehicles and over 200,000 pieces of non-lethal military equipment.
Last week saw the largest commercial road move of ammunition since the Second World War as tens of thousands more rounds of UK-donated artillery ammunition went to the front lines in Ukraine.
The precise nature of UK military support in 2023 will be determined based on the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
However, it is expected to include equipment like the Multiple Launch Rocket System, provided to Ukraine by the UK and others, which has been decisive in allowing Ukraine to re-gain over 3,000 square kilometres of territory in recent days.
( UK Government Report published 20.09.2022 )  ..  gov.uk

Ukraine Celebrate The Birthday Of A Nazi Collaborator.
Ukraine’s support for neo-Nazi groups and its attempts to officially recognise pro-Nazi legions and Nazi collaborators from World War II have been steadfastly criticised by communists and other anti-fascist groups in the region.
Kiev’s supporters in Europe and North America have, until now,  maintained a complicit silence about these manoeuvres.
However, the latest gesture by the Ukrainian parliament — cheering on the birthday of the Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera — has drawn sharp criticism even from neighbouring Poland, its staunch ally in the ongoing war with Russia.
On Jan. 1, 2022, a post celebrating the 114th birthday of Stepan Bandera — notorious Ukrainian far-right leader and  World War II Nazi collaborator — was tweeted from the official handle of the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament.
According to reports, the tweet contained “a quote from Stepan Bandera and a photo of the Ukrainian Armed Forces chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, with a large portrait of the Nazi collaborator in the background.”
After receiving a significant amount of criticism, it was later deleted from the twitter handle of Verkhovna Rada.
On Jan. 2, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki denounced the glorification of Stepan Bandera by the Ukrainian parliament.
On the same day, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper also slammed Ukrainian authorities for celebrating and quoting an anti-Semitic Nazi collaborator.
( 06.01.2023 )  ..  consortiumnews.com

£29 Million “Reward And Recognition” Vouchers Paid To Civil Servants.
Data shows that 16 Government departments paid out a total of £29.57million to staff in “reward and recognition” vouchers – a third more than the previous year.
The Foreign Office spent the most, totalling £9.9million given to staff in vouchers.
The Home Office spent £6.6million – up from £2.8million – and the Department of Work and Pensions handed out £5.9million in vouchers.
The Ministry of Justice spent £4.9million on shopping and restaurant vouchers.
The Ministry of Defence, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Ministry of Health refused to provide figures for their voucher programmes.
The controversial voucher payments came despite previous Chancellor and current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak introducing a year-long pay freeze across the majority of the civil service amid the cost of living crisis, and a growing number of walkouts across the public sector over pay disputes and working conditions.
( Emma Soteriou, 29.12.2022 )  ..  lbc.co.uk