RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15557/russia-wagner-group

The Kremlin under President Vladimir Putin still manages to exploit opportunities in Africa and Latin America that threaten to diminish U.S. influence. To this end — to extend its power to regions beyond its borders and limited resources — Moscow established the Wagner Group.

The Wagner Group masquerades as a private commercial enterprise, but it is actually a mercenary arm of the Russian Defense Ministry, run by a long-time Putin associate, the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Putin has pledged support to rebel leader General Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA), in his effort to overthrow the UN-recognized government in Tripoli.

One motivation for Putin’s support for Haftar’s rebel army may be Moscow’s desire to gain access to Libya’s oil wells, almost all of which are under Haftar’s control.

The Wagner Group provides Putin with an aggressive force to safeguard his interests, while allowing him plausible deniability in the event of a confrontation with Washington…. One hopes the White House is listening.

Although Russia is no longer the superpower it was during the days of the Soviet Union, when it posed a genuine threat to U.S. interests around the world, the Kremlin under President Vladimir Putin still manages to exploit opportunities in Africa and Latin America that threaten to diminish U.S. influence. To this end — to extend its power to regions beyond its borders and limited resources — Moscow established the Wagner Group.

The Wagner Group masquerades as a private commercial enterprise, but it is actually a mercenary arm of the Russian Defense Ministry, run by a long-time Putin associate, the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin. A paramilitary organization that enjoys technical support from the Russian Army — receiving armor, artillery and rocket systems — the Wagner Group may receive direct orders from the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU), the institutional successor to the old Soviet KGB spy organization, in which Putin was a career officer.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/02/11/israel-upset-at-belgium-for-inviting-terror-supporters-to-un-security-council/

JNS.org – Israel is furious at Belgium for continuing to act against Israel at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), including inviting a “one-sided, radical” pro-Palestinian activist to address council members.

Belgium, who currently holds the rotating presidency for the UNSC, has invited Brad Parker, a senior official for a non-profit called Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P), to speak at the council’s session.

DCI-P accuses Israel of committing war crimes, supports the BDS movement and has ties to the US-designated terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

“Belgium has positioned itself as one of the Security Council member states most hostile toward Israel,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lior Haiat told The Times of Israel. “Inviting a one-sided radical activist such as Mr. Parker to brief the Security Council is yet another negative record.”

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/02/cardinal-george-pell-australias-dreyfus/

The new legal year began this month with various ceremonies, among them the traditional celebration of a “Red Mass” in the Roman Catholic cathedrals of the state capitals. In Melbourne, the judges and lawyers who attended St Patrick’s must have pondered the strange combination of circumstances that have made that imposing Gothic building the alleged locus delicti of Australia’s most publicised and divisive legal case in living memory; and have seen Cardinal George Pell, the prelate whose archiepiscopal seat the cathedral once was, convicted for child sexual abuse – offences committed, it is said, in a sacristy just across the transept from the assembled jurists participating in the Mass.

The Pell case is one of those indicators, like climate change, of where one stands politically. The Left is pretty much anti-Pell en bloc, not so much for any privileged access to evidence, but because he is a conservative, someone who can therefore do no good – just like President Trump, who even if he could somehow fulfil the leftist dream and abolish “global warming” overnight would get no thanks for it. Those who have publicly stated their belief in Pell’s innocence tend to be conservative (Pell’s two most eloquent champions have been Keith Windschuttle, Editor-in-Chief of Quadrant, who has dissected the evidence with a forensic skill unusual even in the highest levels of the legal profession, and columnist Andrew Bolt) but they believe him not because of shared political or other views but because conservative thinking requires good reasons for its conclusions and is not swayed by shallow emotionalism and the shouts of the mob, and the evidence adduced against Pell is about as far from conclusive as any evidence accepted by an Australian court could ever have been.

On March 11, the full bench of the High Court will come together to hear the long awaited appeal by Pell, former Archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney, then cardinal in charge of reforming (i.e. cleaning up) the finances of the Vatican, now prisoner no. CRN 218978 at Barwon, Victoria. When it does, the hearing will push whatever is obsessing the media at the time – coronavirus, the horrors of a Trump re-election, the collapse of the British economy after Brexit (that’ll be the wishfully thought-up fake news from the Nine media and the Guardian) off front pages round the world.