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Key points of Russian position on flight MH17

By Dr Alexander Yakovenko* | RT | July 19, 2015

We express our deepest condolences to the relatives of all 283 passengers and 15 crewmembers – victims of the dreadful tragedy, the downing of MH17 one year ago.

  • We condemn the destruction of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 by unidentified individuals and confirm our position in favor of the inevitability of punishment for having committed this criminal act once the investigation is completed.
  • We consider the issue of establishing an international tribunal concerning the MH17 catastrophe to be premature and counterproductive. We are convinced that UNSC Resolution 2166 remains the only basis – acceptable to all – for international cooperation in the interests of an independent and transparent investigation of downing the Malaysian airliner. We call for a return to the legal framework of this resolution and for the full implementation of the investigation mechanisms provided for in this document.
  • Russia is interested in a thorough and objective international investigation of the catastrophe of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17. We do not see this happening at the moment. This is due in part to the fact that Russia has been barred from any substantive participation in the investigation (the involvement of the Russian representative has been purely nominal and has not resulted in his opinion, and the data presented by Russia, being taken into account). Russia has been intentionally excluded from required objective standards of ‘transparency’ by those who conducted the investigation – for example, Russian specialists were essentially denied full and equitable access to the materials which were in the possession of the Joint Investigation Team. The Ukrainian side has refused, up to this moment, to make public the recording of the air-traffic controllers’ radio exchange with the pilots of flight MH17.
  • Russia has been insisting on making the investigation transparent to the fullest possible degree, first of all, with respect to the UN Security Council. We have proposed discussing the course of the investigation in the Council, so as to find answers to the most obvious questions (a list of such questions was distributed by Russia to the council in 2014). There has been no reaction to these proposals from members of the council.
  • We are forced to conclude that UNSC Resolution 2166, which set out clear and professionally-founded requirements for investigating the MH17 catastrophe, has not been implemented.
  • There are many serious questions concerning the organization and conduct of the investigation. Russia’s numerous calls for making use of the UN Security Council to monitor the implementation of UNSC Resolution 2166 have been consistently ignored. The investigation is being conducted without due observance of international aviation standards and without recognition of the key role of ICAO in such matters.
  • We are surprised by the fact that the members of the Joint Investigation Team have not undertaken preparatory work on the basis of UNSC Resolution 2166 and have not discussed with the council their plan of further actions. Instead, they have tabled a far-reaching draft resolution under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. UNSC Resolution 2166 does not qualify the downing of the plane as a threat to international peace and security. The tragedy, though horrifying and tragic, was an isolated act of a criminal nature. Thus a trial could be organized on the basis of national, international or mixed law. In any case, this matter does not fall within the Security Council’s purview.
  • Russia is surprised by the proposal of adopting – literally within a number of days – such a fundamental decision, without even discussing any other possible options.
  • Despite the provisions of UNSC Resolution 2166, the UN secretary-general has not identified and submitted to the council possible options for United Nations support to the investigation.
  • Since the day of the disaster we have been witnessing a powerful information attack on our country in international media and fora (including the UNSC). It has been groundlessly claimed that Russia or “separatists controlled by Russia” were responsible for the downing of flight MH17. Such irresponsible and unproven statements are being issued up to this moment. Their aim is to negatively influence the media background surrounding the investigation. We consider such statements and unfounded accusations as an attempt to dissimulate the true facts concerning the catastrophe and to cover up the identities of the true perpetrators of the crime.
  • UNSC practice shows that the mere principle of establishing international judicial mechanisms by a decision of the Council has become a subject of serious and robust criticism by many countries and the international legal expert community. The practice of the existing international tribunals – the ICTY (former Yugoslavia) and ICTR (Rwanda) – confirm the validity of such skepticism. The activities of these two judicial organs are costly, inefficient and slow. Their decisions are highly politicized. They have not been able to finish their work – for over two decades – with acceptable results.
  • Up to this moment there has been no precedent in creating an international tribunal for bringing to justice those who were accused of perpetrating an act of violence against a civilian airliner: not when a Russian airliner belonging to the Sibir air company was shot down in 2001 by Ukrainian armed forces over the Black Sea; not when the American Navy destroyed Iran Air flight IR655 over the Persian Gulf on July 3, 1988; not after Pan American flight PA103 was blown up as a result of a terrorist act over Lockerbie in 1988, or Cubana de Aviacion flight CU455 over Barbados in 1976; not after Libyan Arab Airlines flight LN114 was shot down as a result of Israeli Air Force action in 1973. No international tribunals were created in other similar circumstances.
  • The haste in pushing the adoption of a resolution and its extended scope of reference seem to indicate that the UN Security Council is being used to find a pretext for using the MH17 tragedy to organize a ‘trial’ over Russia on the Ukrainian dossier.
  • In view of the above, Russia will not engage in textual work on the draft resolution on the establishment of an international tribunal or its proposed draft charter. At the same time we hope that our partners will understand our position and support completion of the investigation in a transparent manner which would provide a solid basis for a subsequent identification of a suitable trial formula.

*Dr Alexander Yakovenko, Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Deputy foreign minister (2005-2011).

July 20, 2015 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Protestors take to streets of Kiev to denounce high utility bills

RT | July 19, 2015

Around 2,000 rallied in the center of the Ukrainian capital on Sunday to protest high housing and public utilities prices, which have skyrocketed 88 percent since last year.

A column of demonstrators marched from the Kiev’s main Khreshchatyk Street to the government headquarters on Grushevskogo Street.

The protest, which was monitored by around 100 police officers, proceeded without incident, Tass reported.

The participants carried Ukrainian flags and banners reading: “No to rising tariffs,” “Increase pensions,” “Where are the reforms?” and “We are dying of hunger.”

The rally’s organizers said they wanted to draw the authorities’ attention to the importance of preserving social guarantees for pensioners and public sector employees.

Utility rates, including water and heating prices, have grown three-fold in Ukraine due to a rise in the price of gas since April 1, 2015.

Electricity prices are being increased in accordance with a five-stage program, due to be completed by March 1, 2017.

In order to comply with the terms of an agreed upon $17.5 billion IMF bailout package, Ukraine has approved amendments to the 2015 budget that will result in drastic pension cuts and the tripling of energy bills.

Some political sentiments were also voiced at the rally, as several signs called for a “Ukrainian government for Ukraine” and urged Kiev’s authorities to “Remove foreigners from the government.”

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko assigned several foreign nationals to key government positions in late 2014, which include American Natalie Jaresko as finance minister, Aleksandr Kvitashvili of Georgia as health minister, and Lithuania’s Aivaras Abromavicius as economy minister.

Last May, former Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili, who is wanted in his country for embezzlement, abuse of power, and politically-motivated attacks, became the governor of Ukraine’s Odessa region.

A similar rally in the city of Dnepropetrovsk in central Ukraine was dispersed by a group of masked thugs on Sunday.

Several dozen demonstrators, mainly people of older age, blocked one of the roads in the city.

They carried a big banner demanding the resignation of president Poroshenko and smaller signs, reading “Dnepropetrovsk for fair prices” and “Housing and utility tariffs equal genocide.”

A dashcam video caught the rally being attacked by a group of young men in balaclavas, who threw smoke bombs at the crowd and tore the banners apart.

July 19, 2015 Posted by | Economics, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

MH17: ‘No one deserves to die that way’

RT | July 17, 2015

With debris of Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 still covering the crash site in eastern Ukraine, the investigation of the July 17, 2014 tragedy is surrounded by secrecy. RT talked to international experts and the victims’ families, still waiting for answers.

“He was a good man, a good brother. He promised to take me one day on board of his plane… He wanted to take me to Europe, but instead I brought his body home from Amsterdam on a plane,” the younger sister of flight MH17 captain, Wan Lailatul Mustarah Bt. Wan Hussin told RT Documentary (RTD).

RTD’s team visited Captain’s Wan Amran’s family in Malaysia. They couldn’t talk to the pilot’s wife, as she was sick, suffering from mental problems resulting from the trauma she experienced after her husband was killed in the crash.

“At first the youngest son couldn’t accept this all, he was always saying that his father would come back,” the captain’s older sister, Wan Aini Bt. Wan Hussin, told RTD.

The Malaysian captain’s family was shown a picture of his body, which they say “wasn’t damaged, just slightly burnt.”

“I was able to identify him. The person who cleaned the bodies told us that our brother’s body was in the best condition, with nothing missing,” Wan Lailatul Mustarah Bt. Wan Hussin said. The family, like all victims’ families, were not allowed to open the coffins by the government, they told RTD.

“The government is keeping quiet,” the captain’s sister said, adding that the family doesn’t blame anybody. “We just want and hope somebody will come up with something, especially from the black box,” she said.

“We want the facts, we don’t want propaganda,” Malaysian engineer Azahar Zanudin told RTD. “I’d like to know the real things about the disaster of MH17, because in MH17 case there is something wrong about the investigation,” the engineer said. Blaming the local media for “following the western media” bias, Zanudin has created a Facebook page, where he collects the news about the crash from around the world “for the people to see.”

“You can study the whole world behind your laptop, but the best thing you can do is check the spot yourself,” Dutch blogger Max Van Der Werff told RTD. The blogger has visited the crash site in Ukraine, and said that in the one week he spent there, he had learned more about the crash “than in a whole year behind my laptop.”

“The Netherlands is the official head of the investigation… (but) we are part of NATO, we are part of anti-Russian alliance, so we are not independent investigators,” Van Der Werff said, adding that the MH17 crash should have been investigated by the UN, “not a biased country like the Netherlands.”

Another independent researcher from the West also changed his opinion on the possible cause of the tragedy after visiting the crash site. “I thought that the story of (another) plane taking the Boeing was a propaganda of Russia,” German independent journalist Billy Six shared with RTD. Then he visited the site in eastern Ukraine and spoke to witnesses who claimed they saw military jets flying in the area, but no BUK missile launcher vapor trail.

“When I reached the crash site, my first impression was quite eye-opening. I saw that the mass media coverage claiming that it’s a very large field of 45-50 square kilometers (about 20 square miles) of wreckage – which gives a conclusion to people that the plane was smashed into pieces in the air – is not true,” Billy Six said, adding that he saw just two places where the MH17 wreckage was largely concentrated.

A lot of pieces of evidence can still be found in the area. On finding parts of the Boeing, people bring them to the local administration, which is said to be in touch with Dutch experts.

Whoever launched the rocket is “a different story,” Elmar Gimulla, a Berlin lawyer who represents the families of aviation crashes victims, told RTD. But the Ukrainian government “has failed” and is to blame for allowing the passenger plane to fly above the military zone, he said.

“Only two days before this crash occurred, a military plane was downed by the rebels. In that situation it was a responsibility of the Ukrainian government to close the air space for civilian flights,” Elmar Gimulla told RTD, adding that he had received threatening emails after news broke that he was aiding German families in launching a suit against Ukraine over the MH17 crash. Once, someone from Ukraine describing himself as “a Nazi” wrote the lawyer with the warning: “be careful what you do.”

“There is too much secrecy regarding the investigation,” former Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad told RTD. Saying that the country is “very neutral because there is no real evidence,” the politician said that the investigation of the Malaysia Airlines crash, which claimed the lives of all 298 people on board, was “quite unusual.”“Involvement of Malaysia is limited,” the ex-prime minister said.

July 18, 2015 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Video | , | Leave a comment

U.S. officials flex their power over Ukrainian parliament

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Nuland and Pyatt, lords of the Verkhovna Rada
By Dmitry Rodonov | SVPressa | July 17, 2015

(Excerpts)

Yesterday the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, introduced to the parliament constitutional amendments on the special status of Donbass. …

The amendments were introduced during the visit to Ukraine by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, who along with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt was present of the floor of the Verkhovna Rada.

Nuland said that the constitutional amendments made by Kiev suggest that Ukraine has fulfilled its obligations under the Minsk Agreement.

According to her, at a meeting with President Petro Poroshenko, they discussed the importance of Ukraine’s compliance with its obligations under the Minsk Agreement. She paid particular attention to the need for legislative recognition of the special status of Donbass. In her opinion, this is necessary for the restoration of peace and territorial integrity in eastern Ukraine.

The special status of Donbass will be “the answer to any question about Ukraine’s compliance with the Minsk agreement,” she said.

Political analyst Victor Shapinov said that to accept constitutional changes you need a minimum of 300 votes of the deputies (out of 450), whereas the draft proposed by Poroshenko received only 288 votes, and will now be sent to the Constitutional Court for examination.

Victor Shapinov: So the case drags on. The law itself was enacted under unprecedented pressure from the United States. Victoria Nuland personally came to the Parliament to conduct the ballot – an unprecedented case even for puppet regimes like South Vietnam. The United States, and even more so the EU, has already “got” the situation where the Kiev regime is defiantly not fulfilling the Minsk agreement. On the other hand, the Kiev regime, under the dictation of the United States, “complied” in such a way that Donbass can under no circumstances accept it.

Once again there is an impasse – which probably suits the Washington strategists.

The Russian media response is surprising, with some beginning to say that Poroshenko’s proposal is exactly what the Donbass republics sought. In fact, the population of the republics initially demanded at least federalization of the country, and then voted in a referendum for complete independence from Ukraine and the creation of their own state.

Free Press: The adopted amendments really look like a mockery of Minsk, which is recognized in Donetsk and Lugansk, and in Moscow. What do you think?

VS: The same. Even Poroshenko said that his proposals do not provide for special status for Donbass and the “additional provisions for the peculiarities of local self-government in some areas of eastern Ukraine.” This is a direct mockery of the spirit and letter of the Minsk accords.

Kiev’s maneuver is obvious — to simulate the execution of Minsk, but in fact leave no chance for the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics to agree to its proposals. It is an attempt to shift responsibility for the escalation of the war onto the republics and put Russia in an awkward position: either Moscow abandons the republics to Kiev under unacceptable conditions, or it becomes responsible for a new round of war.

However, the Kiev authorities have not taken into account that the tail can’t wag the dog. Or if so, not for long. Kiev’s European senior partners have repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with the collapse of Minsk-2. Now Washington is unhappy with its satellite. And they don’t hesitate to show this openly. Before our eyes Kiev goes from being a convenient tool in the hands of the West to an inconvenient one. They shame Kiev. And from this it is only one step to withdrawal of support, which the Kiev regime clearly would not survive.

FP:  They speak of completely unprecedented pressure on Kiev from the West to adopt this decision. Why now?

VS:  Washington is now talking about the need for cooperation with Russia on the situation in Syria and the Middle East as a whole. Apparently, by “turning up the heat” on official Kiev, they are trying to show Moscow that an agreement is possible, that for the U.S. the Ukrainian conflict is not so fundamental, and they are willing to compromise. Another thing is that any compromise will be rotten.

FP: Is the adoption of the amendments connected with the intensification of fighting in Donbass?

VS: Quite the opposite. They were training and preparing the intensification of hostilities. Now the United States showed that they can rein in their satellite if necessary. They demonstrate their control over Kiev in tradeoff with Russia.

FP: Will the adopted amendments complicate the standoff with the authorities, provoking another coup by ultra-right radicals?

VS: So far, since Mukachevo, the so-called radicals have demonstrated very limited resources for mobilization. Without the support of the Ukrainian oligarchy and a “signal” from the West, they hardly dare to do anything serious. The United States continues to support Poroshenko, and the EU follows in their footsteps in this regard. The “radicals,” the Nazis, are only a tool of the oligarchy for suppressing street opposition and dissent. No one takes them seriously as contenders for power — at best, merely as junior partners.

Ukrainian journalist Andriy Manchuk stressed that yesterday’s events in Parliament showed that the foreign policy of Ukraine is dictated from outside — and, moreover, no one considers it necessary to conceal this fact from the public.

Andriy Manchuk: Nuland and Pyatt put direct pressure on the ruling coalition to force them to inscribe in the constitution a new version of the special status for the Donbass territory outside Kiev’s control. Of course, it looks like a humiliation for Ukraine’s national dignity, as with some of the Latin American “banana republics” of the last century — even though Latin American society usually responds much more forcefully to such cynical external dictates. And one can be sure that the nationalist rhetoric adopted by the regime is a cover for our country’s loss of sovereignty – even many of its ideological supporters are now becoming aware of that.

Internal policies of Ukraine are determined from the outside — across the full spectrum of major important political and economic issues. And it’s not the Kremlin’s doing.

FP: Adoption of the amendments comes amidst the government’s conflict with the radicals in the west. Is there a connection between these events?

AM: The conflict with the ultra-right, combined with the fact that Poroshenko was unable to hold a vote on the Donbas without the personal intervention of U.S. politicians and diplomats, really shows that the government does not control fully the situation in Ukraine. Another thing is that it fully coincides with the traditional political line of the U.S. State Department, which always seeks to act as an external arbiter between political forces weakened by internal conflicts in countries dependent on the U.S.

FP: Why did the U.S. suddenly decide to put pressure on Poroshenko?

AM: The reasons that the United States forced the Ukrainian parliament to take yesterday’s decision likely has a complex character — that is, it’s determined by different aspects of  U.S.-Russian relations on a wide range of issues, from the Iranian and Syrian issue to behind-the-scenes dialogue on the Ukrainian problem. Both sides are maneuvering in the context of an acute conflict, and are very far from ending the war – as shown by the escalated fighting at the front.

First, despite the fact that most citizens of Ukraine are waiting for peace, the politicians of the ruling coalition, as well as officials and businessmen who profit from this war — not to mention their clientele from among far-right militants, “civil society activists” and pro-government media — are categorically not interested in ending the conflict. And they will do all they can to make it last as long as possible. Second, external political forces that define our country’s policies also see the special status as something very vague that could be disavowed at any time, no more than a political bargaining chip, where the conditional “carrot” balances the “stick” of the proposed tribunal for Boeing [the MH17 crash].

FP: Do you see any non-military solution to the conflict? The media often write about the prospects of a Transnistrian or Bosnian scenario…

AM: Donbass is not Bosnia or Transnistria, and the economic and political situation in Europe and around the world today not at all similar to the situation in the early ‘90s. Peace is possible in the Donbass — the only question is, how many months or years of war separate us from it, and will this conflict be a prelude to more global shocks? I do not think Washington, Brussels or Moscow know the exact answer to this question.

Source

Translated by Greg Butterfield

July 18, 2015 Posted by | Deception | , , | Leave a comment

MH-17 Mystery: A New Tonkin Gulf Case?

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | July 17, 2015

One year ago, the world experienced what could become the Tonkin Gulf incident of World War III, the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine. As with the dubious naval clash off the coast of North Vietnam in 1964, which helped launch the Vietnam War, U.S. officials quickly seized on the MH-17 crash for its emotional and propaganda appeal – and used it to ratchet up tensions against Russia.

Shocked at the thought of 298 innocent people plunging to their deaths from 33,000 feet last July 17, the world recoiled in horror, a fury that was then focused on Russian President Vladimir Putin. With Putin’s face emblazoned on magazine covers, the European Union got in line behind the U.S.-backed coup regime in Ukraine and endorsed economic sanctions to punish Russia.

In the year that has followed, the U.S. government has continued to escalate tensions with Russia, supporting the Ukrainian regime in its brutal “anti-terrorism operation” that has slaughtered thousands of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. The authorities in Kiev have even dispatched neo-Nazi and ultranationalist militias, supported by jihadists called “brothers” of the Islamic State, to act as the tip of the spear.

Raising world tensions even further, the Russians have made clear that they will not allow the ethnic Russian resistance to be annihilated, setting the stage for a potential escalation of hostilities and even a possible nuclear showdown between the United States and Russia.

But the propaganda linchpin to the West’s extreme anger toward Russia remains the MH-17 shoot-down, which the United States and the West continue to pin on the Russian rebels – and by extension – Russia and Putin. The latest examples are media reports about the Dutch crash investigation suggesting that an anti-aircraft missile, allegedly involved in destroying MH-17, was fired from rebel-controlled territory.

Yet, the U.S. mainstream media remains stunningly disinterested in the “dog-not-barking” question of why the U.S. intelligence community has been so quiet about its MH-17 analysis since it released a sketchy report relying mostly on “social media” on July 22, 2014, just five days after the shoot-down. A source briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts told me that the reason for the intelligence community’s silence is that more definitive analysis pointed to a rogue Ukrainian operation implicating one of the pro-regime oligarchs.

The source said that if this U.S. analysis were to see the light of day, the Ukrainian “narrative” that has supplied the international pressure on Russia would collapse. In other words, the Obama administration is giving a higher priority to keeping Putin on the defensive than to bringing the MH-17 killers to justice.

Like the Tonkin Gulf case, the evidence on the MH-17 case was shaky and contradictory from the start. But, in both cases, U.S. officials confidently pointed fingers at the “enemy.” President Lyndon Johnson blamed North Vietnam in 1964 and Secretary of State John Kerry implicated ethnic Russian rebels and their backers in Moscow in 2014. In both cases, analysts in the U.S. intelligence community were less certain and even reached contrary conclusions once more evidence was available.

In both cases, those divergent assessments appear to have been suppressed so as not to interfere with what was regarded as a national security priority – confronting “North Vietnamese aggression” in 1964 and “Russian aggression” in 2014. To put out the contrary information would have undermined the government’s policy and damaged “credibility.” So the facts – or at least the conflicting judgments – were hidden.

The Price of Silence

In the case of the Tonkin Gulf, it took years for the truth to finally emerge and – in the meantime – tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers and millions of Vietnamese had lost their lives. Yet, much of the reality was known soon after the Tonkin Gulf incident on Aug. 4, 1964.

Daniel Ellsberg, who in 1964 was a young Defense Department official, recounts – in his 2002 book Secrets – how the Tonkin Gulf falsehoods took shape, first with the panicked cables from a U.S. Navy captain relaying confused sonar readings and then with that false storyline presented to the American people.

As Ellsberg describes, President Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara announced retaliatory airstrikes on Aug. 4, 1964, telling “the American public that the North Vietnamese, for the second time in two days, had attacked U.S. warships on ‘routine patrol in international waters’; that this was clearly a ‘deliberate’ pattern of ‘naked aggression’; that the evidence for the second attack, like the first, was ‘unequivocal’; that the attack had been ‘unprovoked’; and that the United States, by responding in order to deter any repetition, intended no wider war.”

Ellsberg wrote: “By midnight on the fourth, or within a day or two, I knew that each one of those assurances was false.” Yet, the White House made no effort to clarify the false or misleading statements. The falsehoods were left standing for several years while Johnson sharply escalated the war by dispatching a half million soldiers to Vietnam.

In the MH-17 case, we saw something similar. Within three days of the July 17, 2014 crash, Secretary Kerry rushed onto all five Sunday talk shows with his rush to judgment, citing evidence provided by the Ukrainian government through social media. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” David Gregory asked, “Are you bottom-lining here that Russia provided the weapon?”

Kerry: “There’s a story today confirming that, but we have not within the Administration made a determination. But it’s pretty clear when – there’s a build-up of extraordinary circumstantial evidence. I’m a former prosecutor. I’ve tried cases on circumstantial evidence; it’s powerful here.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Kerry’s Latest Reckless Rush to Judgment.”]

Two days later, on July 22, the Director of National Intelligence authorized the release of a brief report essentially repeating Kerry’s allegations. The DNI’s report also cited “social media” as implicating the ethnic Russian rebels, but the report stopped short of claiming that the Russians gave the rebels the sophisticated Buk (or SA-11) surface-to-air missile that the report indicated was used to bring down the plane.

Instead, the report cited “an increasing amount of heavy weaponry crossing the border from Russia to separatist fighters in Ukraine”; it claimed that Russia “continues to provide training – including on air defense systems to separatist fighters at a facility in southwest Russia”; and its noted the rebels “have demonstrated proficiency with surface-to-air missile systems, downing more than a dozen aircraft in the months prior to the MH17 tragedy, including two large transport aircraft.”

Yet, despite the insinuation of Russian guilt, what the public report didn’t say – which is often more significant than what is said in these white papers – was that the rebels had previously only used short-range shoulder-fired missiles to bring down low-flying military planes, whereas MH-17 was flying at around 33,000 feet, far beyond the range of those weapons.

The assessment also didn’t say that U.S. intelligence, which had been concentrating its attention on eastern Ukraine during those months, detected the delivery of a Buk missile battery from Russia, despite the fact that a battery consists of four 16-foot-long missiles that are hauled around by trucks or other large vehicles.

Rising Doubts

I was told that the absence of evidence of such a delivery injected the first doubts among U.S. analysts who also couldn’t say for certain that the missile battery that was suspected of firing the fateful missile was manned by rebels. An early glimpse of that doubt was revealed in the DNI briefing for several mainstream news organizations when the July 22 assessment was released.

The Los Angeles Times reported, “U.S. intelligence agencies have so far been unable to determine the nationalities or identities of the crew that launched the missile. U.S. officials said it was possible the SA-11 was launched by a defector from the Ukrainian military who was trained to use similar missile systems.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mystery of a Ukrainian ‘Defector.’”]

The Russians also challenged the rush to judgment against them, although the U.S. mainstream media largely ignored – or ridiculed – their presentation. But the Russians at least provided what appeared to be substantive data, including alleged radar readings showing the presence of a Ukrainian jetfighter “gaining height” as it closed to within three to five kilometers of MH-17.

Russian Lt. Gen. Andrey Kartopolov also called on the Ukrainian government to explain the movements of its Buk systems to sites in eastern Ukraine and why Kiev’s Kupol-M19S18 radars, which coordinate the flight of Buk missiles, showed increased activity leading up to the July 17 shoot-down.

The Ukrainian government countered by asserting that it had “evidence that the missile which struck the plane was fired by terrorists, who received arms and specialists from the Russian Federation,” according to Andrey Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine’s Security Council, using Kiev’s preferred term for the rebels.

On July 29, amid this escalating rhetoric, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of mostly retired U.S. intelligence officials, called on President Barack Obama to release what evidence the U.S. government had, including satellite imagery.

“As intelligence professionals we are embarrassed by the unprofessional use of partial intelligence information,” the group wrote. “As Americans, we find ourselves hoping that, if you indeed have more conclusive evidence, you will find a way to make it public without further delay. In charging Russia with being directly or indirectly responsible, Secretary of State John Kerry has been particularly definitive. Not so the evidence.”

But the Obama administration failed to make public any intelligence information that would back up its earlier suppositions.

Then, in early August, I was told that some U.S. intelligence analysts had begun shifting away from the original scenario blaming the rebels and Russia to one focused more on the possibility that extremist elements of the Ukrainian government were responsible, funded by one of Ukraine’s rabidly anti-Russian oligarchs. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Flight 17 Shoot-down Scenario Shifts”and “Was Putin Targeted for Mid-air Assassination?”]

Last October, Der Spiegel reported that the German intelligence service, the BND, also had concluded that Russia was not the source of the missile battery – that it had been captured from a Ukrainian military base – but the BND still blamed the rebels for firing it. The BND also concluded that photos supplied by the Ukrainian government about the MH-17 tragedy “have been manipulated,” Der Spiegel reported.

And, the BND disputed Russian government claims that a Ukrainian fighter jet had been flying close to MH-17, the magazine said, reporting on the BND’s briefing to a parliamentary committee on Oct. 8, 2014. But none of the BND’s evidence was made public — and I was subsequently told by a European official that the evidence was not as conclusive as the magazine article depicted. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Germans Clear Russia in MH-17 Case.”]

Dog Still Doesn’t Bark

When the Dutch Safety Board investigating the crash issued an interim report in mid-October, it answered few questions, beyond confirming that MH-17 apparently was destroyed by “high-velocity objects that penetrated the aircraft from outside.” The 34-page Dutch report was silent on the “dog-not-barking” issue of whether the U.S. government had satellite surveillance that revealed exactly where the supposed ground-to-air missile was launched and who fired it.

In January, when I re-contacted the source who had been briefed by the U.S. analysts, the source said their thinking had not changed, except that they believed the missile may have been less sophisticated than a Buk, possibly an SA-6, and that the attack may have also involved a Ukrainian jetfighter firing on MH-17.

Since then there have been occasional news accounts about witnesses reporting that they did see a Ukrainian fighter plane in the sky and others saying they saw a missile possibly fired from territory then supposedly controlled by the rebels (although the borders of the conflict zone at that time were very fluid and the Ukrainian military was known to have mobile anti-aircraft missile batteries only a few miles away).

But the larger dog-not-barking question is why the U.S. intelligence community has clammed up for nearly one year, even after I reported that I was being told that U.S. analysts had veered off in a different direction – from the initial blame-the-Russians approach – toward one focusing on a rogue Ukrainian attack.

For its part, the DNI’s office has cited the need for secrecy even as it continues to refer to its July 22 report. But didn’t DNI James Clapper waive any secrecy privilege when he rushed out a report five days after the MH-17 shoot-down? Why was secrecy asserted only after the U.S. intelligence community had time to thoroughly review its photographic and electronic intelligence?

Over the past 11 months, the DNI’s office has offered no updates on the initial assessment, with a DNI spokeswoman even making the absurd claim that U.S. intelligence has made no refinements of its understanding about the tragedy since July 22, 2014.

If what I’ve been told is true, the reason for this silence would likely be that a reversal of the initial rush to judgment would be both embarrassing for the Obama administration and detrimental to an “information warfare” strategy designed to keep the Russians on the defensive.

But if that’s the case, President Barack Obama may be acting even more recklessly than President Johnson did in 1964. As horrific as the Vietnam War was, a nuclear showdown with Russia could be even worse.

~

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

July 18, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

US Prepares to Put More Pressure on Russia, Threatens ‘Scaling Up Costs’

Sputnik | 18.07.2015

The US is prepared to put more pressure on Russia if the conflict in Ukraine escalates, and threatens that “the costs [then] will go up”, according to US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland; she also revealed that the US has spent $150 million on training the Ukrainian military, which it regards as “security assistance”.

“As you know, the sanctions that the international community has put in place – that the US and the EU have in place – are there to change the policy of Russia, to encourage it to fulfill its obligations. We’ve made clear that they will stay in place until Minsk is fully implemented, including an end to the violence, including a return of hostages, a return of the border. But we’ve also made clear that if the violence increases, we’re prepared to put more pressure on Russia,” Nuland said in an interview with the host of “Shuster Live” talk show on 112 Ukraine TV channel.

“Our hope is that we can use this pressure – the increased capability – to see Russia and those that they manage in Donetsk and Lugansk, implement the obligations that they’ve made. If not, the costs will go up,” she said, adding that it will be both economically and militarily.

The politician also revealed that the US has “contributed about $150 million dollars so far to security assistance – to training. We’re training out in Yavoriv.”

Currently over 300 paratroopers from the US army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade have been training the Ukrainian military at the Yavoriv range in the Lviv region since April 20. The declared purpose is “to develop professional skills of the National Guard servicemen.”

US Assistant Secretary of State recently commented on Ukraine’s fulfilment of Minsk agreement, claiming that Kiev’s amendments to its constitution addressing the special status of Donbass “show that Kiev has implemented its side of Minsk II, the second ceasefire agreement in the Donbass conflict”.

The claim was bashed by the chairman of the Russian State Duma’s Foreign Relations Committee as “far from the Minsk Agreements and only close to [President Poroshenko] own political fantasies.”

On July 16, Poroshenko submitted a proposal on constitutional amendments which would address the special status of the Donbass region to the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.

The draft amendments to Ukraine’s Constitution imply no federalization or special status for the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics known as Donbas, President Poroshenko said on Thursday.

“There is not a single hint of federalization. Ukraine was, is and will remain a unitary state. The draft envisages no special status of Donbas. I am sure that the proposed draft is no way beyond the framework of the Minsk agreements,” Poroshenko said.

According to the draft amendments, “a special law will regulate peculiarities of local self-government” in the districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

However, the Verkhovna Rada is not set to vote for the constitutional amendments submitted by Poroshenko and this draft will be sent to the Constitutional Court, an MP from the Poroshenko Bloc faction said earlier on Thursday.

Constitutional amendments providing more autonomy to the Donetsk and Lugansk regions were stipulated by the February Minsk agreements signed by Kiev and Donbass representatives, along with a ceasefire deal.

July 18, 2015 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Canadians say ‘we don’t believe you’ to Harper and Yatsenyuk fear mongering over war in Ukraine

New Cold War | July 16, 2015

While in Ottawa on an official visit on July 14, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk was given several platforms by Canada’s state broadcaster, the CBC, to expound his views on the situation in his country. Yatsenyuk argued that present-day Russia  threatens “global security”, which means that Canada’s security is also threatened. Therefore, goes the logic, Canada should continue to support–nay, boost its support–to Ukraine’s civil war against its population in the east of the country.

To gain some insight into the views of ordinary Canadians on this subject, read the hundreds of comments which readers and listeners of the broadcast network have posted to a CBC News article presenting Yatsenyuk’s views, here. The article is headlined, appropriately enough, ‘Ukraine crisis a threat to Canada’s security, Arseniy Yatsenyuk says’. Here are a few samples of the comments:

  • How is the security of a country over 5000 miles away a risk to Canada? They are just pandering to the few Canadians that believe bill C-51 was necessary!
  • We can’t let an ethnic Russian concert pianist play a concert because she might have an opinion on her countrymen being murdered, but we can give a voice and listen to a war criminal installed as dictator after a violent coup overthrowing a democratically elected government. Get out of Canada and go back to where you came from!
  • I am in Canada and I absolutely do not feel threatened by Russia or by Iran for that matter. The controlled mainstream media has got to stop that propaganda to further the aims of the US and world dominance.
    How many countries has Russia invaded as compared to the US? How many military bases does the US have throughout the world as compared to Russia?
    Yatsenyuk wants arms so they can defend themselves. Against who? The Russians? C’mon. That would be like Canada going to war against the US. He wants arms to escalate the war. A war that will draw in the US. So who is a threat to global security? I think it’s anyone who wants to start a war with Russia.
    The same with Iran. Harper and his minions say that Iran is a threat to global security. In what way? They do not have nuclear weapons. Israel does, and atomic inspectors are not allowed in for a look. But those same inspectors must be allowed into Iran and they do not have those weapons. No double standards?
    Not once have I read or heard Yatsenyuk or Harper say that there must be meetings with the Russian and talk of peace proposals. This whole thing did not start with the Russians. Harper starts his peace efforts with Russia and Iran with rhetoric and sanctions.
  • Yes, yes, the Harper Conservatives have been screaming “the Ruskies are coming” very loudly over the years. And holy cow, am I ever scared – NOT… I’m sorry, but you can tell me that Russia intends to invade Canada all you want. It doesn’t mean I’m going to believe it. I can’t wait until this fear mongering government of ours is ousted in October…
  • Too late, Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Harper tried to feed us that Kool-Aid already and nobody bought it.

July 17, 2015 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

From Kosovo to Crimea: Obama’s Strange Position on Referendums

By Brian Cloughley | Strategic Culture Foundation | July 16, 2015

After the death of President Tito in 1980 the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia slid towards chaos. In the 1990s the plunge accelerated into civil war and one of the regions most affected was Kosovo from which Serbia withdrew after a NATO bomb and rocket offensive from 24 March to 11 June 1999. That blitz involved over 1,000 mainly American aircraft conducting some 38,000 airstrikes on Yugoslavia that killed approximately 500 civilians and destroyed much of the economic and social infrastructure of the region.

The destruction and outcome were not quite as tragic and catastrophic as those from NATO’s fatuously-named Operation Unified Protector against Libya in 2011 when its seven month aerial jamboree of 9,658 air strikes caused collapse of governance and gave rise to the present infestation of Islamic savages and a massive refugee problem, but it was still calamitous, as blitzes go.

NATO said its air bombardment of Serbia was essential to halt repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and justified the deaths of hundreds of women and children as being necessary to defeat a “great evil.” The air attacks were not authorized by the United Nations Security Council and there is no article in the North Atlantic Treaty that justifies such a war.  It resulted, however, in Kosovo declaring independence from Serbia in 2008.

As reported by the Washington Post, NATO supported the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army whose members are now, belatedly, being convicted of war crimes.

On March 26, 2014 President Barack Obama said in a speech in Brussels that regarding the 1999 war on Yugoslavia, “NATO only intervened after the people of Kosovo were systematically brutalized and killed for years. And Kosovo only left Serbia after a referendum was organized not outside the boundaries of international law, but in careful cooperation with the United Nations and with Kosovo’s neighbours.”

The President of the United States, whose State Department has some 15,000 experts to keep him informed about international affairs, told the world that Kosovo had held an independence referendum “in careful cooperation” with the United Nations Organization. He added that “None of that even came close to happening in Crimea,” which was an intriguing pronouncement.

Because as reported on Fox News, “During his speech in Brussels, President Obama showed a lack of knowledge of the political situation in Kosovo. Kosovo never organized any kind of referendum, but the Assembly of Provisional Institutions of self-government of Kosovo made a unilateral declaration of independence on February 17th 2008.”

Fox News went on to report Doctor James Ker-Lindsay, a Senior Research Fellow on the Politics of South East Europe at the London School of Economics, as saying that “Surely there must have been someone at hand who would have known that there was no UN organised referendum in Kosovo. It really was not that long ago . . .   It will be interesting to see if a retraction or correction is issued by the White House.”

And correction came there none.

Although there was no referendum in Kosovo before its declaration of independence from Serbia it is apparent that the majority of Kosovans desired independence and would have voted for separation from Serbia if they had been given the opportunity to do so.  And according to Mr Obama there was and remains no reason for their wishes to be denied.

After all, in 2010 the UN International Court’s Advisory Opinion concerning Kosovo indicated that “international law contains no prohibition on declarations of independence,” a clear-cut endorsement of Kosovo’s actions — and of other such decisions around the world.

No doubt Mr Obama approved of the opportunity given to the people of Scotland to vote in an Independence Referendum a few months after his enthusiastic endorsement of a non-existent plebiscite in Kosovo.  In the Scottish Referendum I wasn’t allowed to vote, in spite of being Scottish-born and educated, because I live outside Scotland (in France, in which place of residence I have a vote in the UK’s general elections — in a Scottish constituency).

In other blatant attempts to influence voting,  the Scottish National Party decided (in the already independent Scottish Parliament which met first in May 1999, coincidentally at the height of the US-NATO blitz on Serbia) to reduce the voting age from 18 to 16 and to forbid Scottish soldiers serving outside Scotland — in Afghanistan, for example — to vote unless they had a residence address in Scotland.

All the attempted manipulation didn’t work, and the majority of Scots voted against independence (much to the vexation of many English people), but justice was seen to be done.

Just as justice was done in the Crimea referendum.

I wrote last year that “some 90% of the inhabitants of Crimea are Russian-speaking, Russian-cultured and Russian-educated, and it would be strange if they did not vote for accession to a country that welcomes their kinship, empathy and loyalty” and that there was not “a single case of bloodshed in the run-up to the plebiscite, the free vote as to whether the population wished to accede to Russia or support the “status of Crimea as a part of Ukraine.”  The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was asked by the government of Crimea to send representatives to monitor the referendum but refused to do so.”

It was not surprising that the OSCE rejected the offer to observe the referendum and provide independent assessments of its conduct, because its findings would have been extremely embarrassing for the West and especially for Washington which had no intention of accepting the result of any referendum in which voters would favour Russia.  Obama’s assertion that the popular accession of Crimea to Russia was “annexation” is on the same level as his imaginative claim about a non-existent referendum by the citizens of Kosovo.

There were energetic attempts in the West to paint the post-accession treatment of Ukrainian military personnel in Crimea as harsh, but some newspapers refrained from deliberate lies. Even the ultra-right-wing British Daily Telegraph reported that “Like many of the Ukrainian servicemen in Crimea, the 600-strong marine battalion in Feodosia has strong local links. Many of the men are either local recruits or have served here so long they have put down roots. Only about 140 of the 600-strong battalion stationed here are expected to return to Ukraine. The remainder, with local family and friends, have opted to remain in Crimea — the land they call home.”

To President Obama it is irrelevant that the vast majority of Crimean citizens want to belong to Russia.  His hatred of Russia and especially of President Putin has tipped any intellectual balance he may have possessed and is now extreme to the point of being malevolently insulting.  He is increasingly intent on confrontation and has stated that the decision of the citizens of Crimea to accede to Russia is illegal.  The White House announced that “We reject the ‘referendum’ that took place today in the Crimean region of Ukraine,” and Obama declared “I again call on Russia to end its occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea.”

But what is Obama going to do about Crimea?  Does he seriously believe that 1.2 million Crimean Russians could accept domination by Ukraine’s Poroshenko?  There would be civil insurrection and mayhem if Ukraine took over the country as suggested by Obama.

Mr Obama’s claim that “Kosovo only left Serbia after a referendum was organized not outside the boundaries of international law, but in careful cooperation with the United Nations and with Kosovo’s neighbours,” was bizarrely untruthful — but was clear indication that he approves of UN-supervised independence plebiscites in territories whose citizens indicate that they wish to alter their circumstances of governance.

Given the practicalities of his admirable moral stance it is obvious that in order to clarify matters to his satisfaction he should propose another referendum in Crimea.

July 17, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

BBC HARDtalk less than hard talking in interview with Saakashvili

New Cold War | July 16, 2015

BBC’s HARDtalk program interviewed the former president of Georgia and fugitive from Georgian justice, Mikheil Saakashvili, on July 15. Saakashvili was appointed last month to the post of “governor” of the region of Odessa by Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko. While some important questions were asked of him–the criminal charges he faces in Georgia, his appointment as a foreigner to govern one of Ukraine’s most important cities and industrial regions–questions on other subjects were avoided. These included questions about the Odessa Massacre of May 2, 2014, the subsequent failure of authorities to properly investigate, the vigilante justice currently prevailing in the streets of Odessa and the plans of the Kyiv government to privatize the remaining state-owned industries and services of Ukraine, many of which are located in Odessa.

BBC also avoided questioning Saakashvili over his role as then-president of Georgia in provoking a war in South Ossetia in 2008, including his decision to intensely shell the capital city of the territory. (The BBC host voiced the Western interpretation that Saakashvili’s unfortunate adventure in 2008 led to “Russian occupation” of former regions of the country, including South Ossetia and Abkhazia.)

July 17, 2015 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Poland Denies Asylum to Ethnic Kin in War-Torn Ukraine

Sputnik – 15.07.2015

An asylum request from a group of ethnic Poles living in Ukraine’s war-ravaged Donbass has been turned down by Warsaw, a Ukrainian newspaper wrote on Wednesday.

Fifty ethnic Poles from the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol received a flat “no” from the Polish government, the Kiev-based Evropeiska Pravda newspaper wrote, quoting Freedom and Democracy Foundation chairman Michal Dworczik.

The Polish Foreign Ministry said the January evacuation of nearly 200 ethnic Poles from war zone in Donbass was a one-off measure and that there was no fighting going on in Mariupol.

“Mariupol is located in direct vicinity of the frontlines and everything will depend on what happens next… If the hostilities intensify and spread to new areas groups of local ethnic Poles may try to flee and find refuge in Poland,” Dvorczik said in an interview with Radio Poland.

In January, Polish Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna did not rule out an additional evacuation of ethnic Poles from eastern Ukraine if the worsening situation there put their lives in danger.

July 15, 2015 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine: Who Invaded Who?

By William DUNKERLEY | Oriental Review | July 15, 2015

Why did Kyiv invade the Donbass region? To that question you might respond quizzically: who did WHAT? Everyone knows it was Russia that invaded Ukraine, right?

Not only that, but Russia isn’t going to stop in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. We all know of Putin’s aggressive territorial ambitions. He wants to recreate the Soviet Union, right?

If you have no personal knowledge of these facts, you can take it from President Barack Obama. Recently he issued a warning at the June 7 summit of the G7. He admonished the world to “stay vigilant and stay focused on the importance of upholding the principles of territorial integrity” regarding Ukraine.

Obama explained that Putin is “in pursuit of a wrong-headed desire to recreate the glories of the Soviet empire.”

However, the president failed to disclose how he knows that Putin has territorial conquest on the agenda. Putin denies it. How do we know who’s right?

The rhetoric of Obama about Ukraine reminds me of the commonly-accepted version of the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia. Reportage then was replete with unsubstantiated allegations, too. Typical headlines exclaimed “Russia Invades Georgia.” Territorial expansion was in the news. President Mikheil Saakashvili was out in front bemoaning the tragedy that was inflicted upon his country.

That’s what set me comparing the ongoing Ukrainian crisis with what happened in Georgia. Despite the assertive headlines, Georgia was another case where reliable facts were hard to find. There were a lot of confident allegations, but few hard facts on the Georgian side of the story.

It came down to a question of who shot first. The Russian counter-version of the story claimed the Georgians started the conflict and that Russia was merely being reactive. The Russian argument was greeted with quite a lot of disbelief.

Later, however, a multinational EU fact-finding mission issued a report that blamed Georgia for the war. A Spiegel Online headline proclaimed, “EU Investigators Debunk Saakashvili’s Lies.” The Russia-Invades-Georgia story was a highly successful fabrication.

Now in Ukraine the question is not who shot first. It’s who invaded who. If we take Obama’s word for it, the headline would be “Russia Invades Eastern Ukraine.”

But I think there’s another side to the story. What is it? It is that maybe Kyiv invaded Donbass, the area in which thousands of Ukrainians have died in horrific battles.

You see, if you think about it, there are two Ukraines. To justify that statement let me paraphrase a Clintonism: it depends on what the meaning of the word Ukraine is. There is a “former Ukraine.” That’s the country that existed before the Maidan uprisings. It was territorially whole, constitutional, and not beset by bloody internal war.

Right Sector and other illegal armed gangs are trying to establish control over the whole territory of Ukraine.

Now there is the new Ukraine, the Ukraine created by the Maidanists. Many observers, like Obama, automatically equate the borders of the new Ukraine with those of the former Ukraine. But that equivalence does not seem to be rooted in reality.

The notion that the new Ukraine is entitled to all the territory of the former Ukraine is quite tenuous. There was no constitutional transfer from the former to the new. Instead, an armed junta took over in Kyiv by force. It chased the democratically-elected president Yanukovych out of the country under threats of death. And it nullified the democratically-instituted constitution.

A so-called interim government was put in place by the junta. It ruled from February 27, 2014 until June 7, 2014 when President Petro Poroshenko assumed office following a democratic election. In the meantime, however, two areas of former Ukraine, Donbass and Crimea, declined to become parts of the new Ukraine. The new Ukraine never had controlled those territories, and the majority of the inhabitants wanted no part of the new Ukraine.

I find it is hard for many people to wrap their minds around the foregoing explanation. The media drumbeat has constantly sounded out the Kyiv-centric version of things. Most casual observers have accepted it as gospel. Passions run high among those immersed in the news reports.

So it might be helpful to strip away the polarized positions that many have taken regarding Ukraine. To sidestep those entrenched views, let’s explore the relevant issues with a hypothetical parallel:

Just say that in Spain there is a revolution whereby people who feel antagonistically toward Catalonians take over by force in Madrid. They throw out the Spanish constitution. There is no legal continuity of government. The junta immediately advances threats that diminish the cultural and linguistic heritage and practices of Catalonians.

In response the Catalonians take charge of their own territory. That region was never under control of the junta. What in the world would broadly legitimize a junta’s claim of a right to control Catalonia?

And what just person would not condemn the junta if it invaded Catalonia, causing thousands of deaths and much economic destruction?

Of course the situation in Ukraine is much more complicated due to the Soviet background, differing World War II related sentiments and legends, and a long-running and well-crafted demonization of Putin in the press. But the principle seems the same to me. The hypothetical Catalonian scenario is the reality of Ukraine today. All of it. Donbass is the real Catalonia.

What this adds up to is that Kyiv indeed invaded Donbass.

All the flap about Russia sending troops and weapons into Eastern Ukraine has things backwards. What’s being called Eastern Ukraine in the press is in reality Donbass. Russia actively denies that it has supported Donbass with military personnel and equipment. I don’t know whether it has or not.

But isn’t whatever Russia might be doing really a moot point? The real issue is that Kyiv invaded Donbass. That’s the source of all the death and destruction. Once again, Russia didn’t shoot first. It was just made the villain by a skillful campaign based on fabrications.

New Ukrainian statehood was born during the violent actions on Maydan and throughout the country.

Unfortunately, world attention has been diverted from Kyiv’s transgressions and the horror they have wreaked. It’s been redirected to the reported Russian aggression. I’ve documented in my book Ukraine in the Crosshairs how those allegations are not fact based.

I think it is very important to question why the press, the US, NATO, and the EU have so contorted their depiction of the Ukrainian crisis. Their actions have worked to the detriment of the Ukrainian people.

Ostensibly, the Maidanists claimed from the start to be seeking greater democracy and closer ties to Europe. The junta argued that a proposed EU association agreement was the key. Not everyone agreed. And that divisive issue spawned the internal conflict that precipitated the great Ukrainian crisis.

Look at what’s happened in the junta’s wake:

–Before the escalation of the Maidan protests, there was no threat of a Russian invasion, there were no fighting “separatists,” there was no war in Donbass. Ukraine was whole.

–Sanctions were not causing ruinous economic damage to many countries. Relations between the US and Russia were not in dangerous disarray.

–There were no war-torn Donbass cities, towns, and villages. Thousands of now deceased Ukrainians were still alive.

–And the opportunity for replacing the unpopular leader Yanukovych through a democratic election was on the immediate horizon. Change was in the offing without any need for war.

Take a good look at what’s transpired and tell me what tangible benefit has accrued to the Ukrainian people. The Maidanists set out to improve the population’s lot. But things have gotten worse. Much worse.

It is difficult to imagine why anyone would believe that association with the EU will undo all the damage that conflict has caused. Claims it will help seem illusory. In the end, the horrors inflicted upon Ukrainians by the junta were totally unnecessary, ineffectual, and counterproductive.

What on earth are the motives of the people and governments that promoted and supported all this needless death and destruction?

William Dunkerley is author of Ukraine in the Crosshairs. He is a media business analyst, principal of William Dunkerley Publishing Consultants, and a Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow.

July 15, 2015 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

MH17: The Blaming Putin Game Goes On

Who shot down MH-17? Somebody knows

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • July 14, 2015

Once upon a time CIA Stations overseas received what was referred to as an “Operating Directive” which prioritized intelligence targets for the upcoming year based on their importance vis-à-vis national security. Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, penetrating Moscow and preventing the KGB’s repaying the favor in kind loomed large as Russia and its allies represented the only genuine threat that could in fact destroy much of the United States. Today’s Russia retains much of that military capability but somehow the perception that you have to deal with what is important first has been lost on our policymakers, possibly due to a false impression inside the beltway that Moscow no longer matters.

A working relationship with Moscow that seeks to mitigate potential areas of conflict is not just important, it is essential. Russian willingness to cooperate with the west in key areas to include the Middle East is highly desirable in and of itself but the bottom line continues to be Moscow’s capability to go nuclear against Washington if it is backed into a corner. Unfortunately, U.S. administrations since Bill Clinton have done their best to do just that, placing Russia on the defensive by encroaching on its legitimate sphere of influence through the expansion of NATO. Washington’s meddling has also led to interfering in Russia’s domestic politics as part of a misguided policy of “democracy building” as well as second guessing its judiciary and imposing sanctions through the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012. The damage to relations has been aggravated by the ill-advised commentary from American politicians on the make, including Senator John McCain’s dismissal of Russia as “a gas station masquerading as a country.”

One should legitimately be concerned over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inflicting damage on his country’s fledgling democracy through fraud, corruption, media clampdowns and exploitation of a malleable legal system. One might also object to exactly how Russia asserted its interests using force against neighboring states Georgia and Ukraine. But that does not change the bottom line, which continues to be that functional relations between Moscow and Washington are a sine qua non. Russia’s domestic politics are none of our business and the alleged grievances of Georgia and Ukraine are undeniably a lot less purely attributable to Russian actions than the White House and Congress would have us believe, with U.S. interference in both countries clearly a major contributing factor to the resulting instability.

Assuming that one accepts that lessening bilateral tension over the Ukraine is a desirable objective, the White House might soon have a good opportunity to demonstrate that it is willing to deal fairly with the Russian leadership in Moscow. The Dutch Government’s Safety Board will in October make public its long awaited report detailing its assessment of last year’s downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17 over Ukraine. The investigation was conducted with the cooperation of the Ukrainian and Malaysian authorities, but did not include a thorough survey of the crash site, which was and still is considered too dangerous. According to leaks of its conclusions, the report will admit that there is no conclusive evidence regarding who is responsible for the shoot down but it will nevertheless make a circumstantial case that the pro-Russian separatists are the most likely suspects in spite of the fact that there is no hard technical or intelligence related evidence supporting that judgment. Blaming the separatists will, by implication, also blame Moscow.

At this point, the United States, which together with other interested parties has been reviewing a copy of the report in draft, does not intend to present its own findings but will instead go along with the Dutch conclusions. Among former intelligence, military and Foreign Service officers there has been considerable discussion of the significance of Washington’s standing on the sidelines regarding the findings. To be sure, there are a number of rumors and allegations circulating relating to what is actually known or not know about the shoot down.

According to some sources, the U.S. intelligence community disagrees over the likelihood of the alleged Russian role and has suggested as much privately to the Dutch. Some analysts who have looked at all the considerable body of information that has been collected relating to the downing actually believe that the most likely candidate might well be the then governor of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Ihor Kolomoisky, an oligarch billionaire who is an Israeli-Ukrainian dual national. Kolomoisky is known to employ Israeli mercenaries as advisers and has personally organized and paid for militias fighting the Russian separatists. He would have been strongly motivated to create an incident that could plausibly be blamed on the Russians or their surrogates and he had the means to do so. The government in Kiev acting independently also had the resources and motive to shoot down the plane and blame it on Moscow.

The dominant narrative that is still circulating widely suggests that either a direct or enabling Russian role is a given based on the claimed origin of the Buk missile, technical analysis of the plume and trajectory, and the military units that were known to be in place or moving at the time. And there was also the apparent separatist bragging on communications intercepts about shooting down a transport plane. This was the explanation that surfaced shortly after the downing, that was heavily promoted by the Ukrainian government and the media and that has been much favored by the international punditry ever since.

The third option of how to explain the shoot down is, of course, the Dutch approach: we think it was the Russians but we can’t prove it. That is an easy choice to make as it really says nothing, which is possibly why it is being favored by the White House.

But if it is actually true that there has been considerable dissent on the findings, the tacit acceptance of a possibly unreliable and essentially unsustainable report by the White House will have significant impact on relations with Russia. It constitutes a disturbing rejection of possibly accurate intelligence analysis in favor of a politically safe alternative explanation. It recalls the politicization of intelligence that included Robert Gates’ Soviet assessments of the 1980s, John McLaughlin’s tergiversation regarding Iraq, and, most recently, Michael Morell’s over the top hyping of the threat posed by political Islam. It is a return to a Manichean view of the world as “them” and “us” with the implication that intelligence professionals are willing to restrain their dissent on an important issue if it serves to advance the current war of words with Russia.

To be sure, deep sixing intelligence assessments that contradict policies that the White House is intent on pursuing anyway buys congenial access to the President and his advisers but it comes at the cost of diminishing the ability of the intelligence community to provide objective and reliable information in a timely fashion, which is at least in theory why it exists at all. Producing honest intelligence will, on the contrary, strengthen both the reputations and credibility of all involved.

If Russia is indeed to blame for the airplane shoot down it should be held accountable, but it is up to the U.S. government to put its cards on the table and be clear about what it does and does not know. The original claims that Russia was involved were based on snap judgments based on bits of information that had been obtained immediately after the event, little of which has been subsequently corroborated through either satellite imagery or electronic and signal intercepts. Since that time the German BND intelligence service has expressed its doubts that the missile used in the shoot down could have been supplied by Russia and has also claimed that photos provided by the Ukrainian government as part of the investigation had been “doctored.” There have also been reports regarding a Ukrainian fighter plane being in the area of the airliner as well as the nearby presence of Ukrainian ground to air missile units. Reported conversations among separatist claiming credit were eventually determined to be composite fakes produced by the Ukrainian intelligence services. Presumably U.S. intelligence has also taken a long and hard look at all the evidence or lack thereof but it is being quiet regarding what it has determined.

It is important to get this right because the potential damage goes far beyond the role of intelligence or even who might have been responsible for the downing of an airliner one year ago. As the relationship with Russia is of critical importance and should be regarded as the number one national security issue for the United States, it is essential that the Dutch conclusions be aggressively challenged if there is even the slightest possibility that Russia is blameless.

One does not have to be a fan of Vladimir Putin to appreciate that the nearly continuous efforts being promoted within mostly neoconservative circles to both delegitimize and confront him and his regime do not serve any conceivable American national interest. In an Independence Day phone call to President Obama, President Putin called for a working relationship with the United States based on “equality and respect,” which should, under the circumstances, be a given. Americans have been lied into intervention and war more than once over the past fifteen years and it should be clear to all that any contrived crisis based on an erroneous conclusion regarding a shot down airliner that develops into an armed conflict with Russia will have unimaginable consequences. A skeptical American public and international community must demand that any MH-17 report should reflect a full assessment, to include any dissent from its conclusions registered by the United States intelligence community. Any information at variance with the conventional view, particularly anything that suggests that there might be other interested parties who had both the means and compelling interest to shoot down a civilian airliner, must become a part of the discussion.

July 14, 2015 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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