Malaysian media publish "Ukraine shot MH17" evidence but Singapore &
Western media silent
This newsletter is at http://mailstar.net/bulletins/140819-b2444-MH17.rtf
See all the MH370 & MH17 newsletters at
http://mailstar.net/bulletins/bulletins.html
Newsletter published on 19 August 2014
(1) Malaysian media publish "Ukraine shot MH17" evidence but Singapore &
Western media silent
(2) Paul: US government likely hiding truth about downed jet in Ukraine
(3) MH17: Dutch journalist Karel van Wolferen mentions Bociurkiw &
pulled BBC eyewitness accounts
(4) Malaysian media publish evidence that Ukraine government shot down
MH17 - wsws Trots
(5) New Straits Times (Malaysia): US analysts conclude MH17 downed by
aircraft
(6) MH17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts - Robert Parry
(7) NYT admits Ukraine using Neo-Nazis as shock troops to kill
separatists in East - Robert Parry
(8) Ukraine a key part of pivot to Asia - Mike Whitney
(9) Tensions grow in Germany over threat of war with Russia
(10) Why have the media and Obama administration gone silent on MH17?
(1) Malaysian media publish "Ukraine shot MH17" evidence but Singapore &
Western media silent - Peter Myers, August 19, 2014
There is an easy way to test which media outlets have published the
evidence that MH17 was shot down by a Ukrainian jet fighter.
The evidence is in my earlier bulletins
http://mailstar.net/bulletins/140801-b2430-MH17.rtf
and http://mailstar.net/bulletins/140803-b2433-MH17.rtf
Search Google for "mh17" "Haisenko" "Bociurkiw".
Haisenko is the name of the former Lufthansa pilot who showed that the
Cockpit of MH17 had been attacked FROM BOTH SIDES; a ground weapon does
not do this. Bociurkiw is the name of the OSCE investigator (himself a
migrant from Ukraine to Canada) who noted the machine gun like holes.
The above Google search shows that the Western media - the ones we rely
on for our news - have ignored or censored this information.
However, the New Straits Times, the leading English-language newspaper
of Malaysia, did publish it (items 4 & 5).
But the Straits Times, the leading Singapore newspaper, did not publish
it. You can check this out by adding the word "Straits" to the above
Google search-string.
The editors of the Straits Times can hardly have failed to notice the
report in the New Straits Times. Yet they kept silent about it.
The critical evidence is published on Michel Chossudovsky's website
Global Research. He is a Canadian Professor of Economics.
I am pleased to note that the Trotskyist WSWS website has picked up the
story (item 4).
Chossudovsky is a Marxist of the Stalinist camp. In the past, WSWS
published a number of articles by Nick Beams against him, eg
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/02/chos-f17.html
and http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/02/cho1-f21.html.
Now, WSWS has used the material at Global Research without mentioning
Chossudovsky by name. But, still, they used it. Other Trots and
Anarchists, to my knowledge, have not published this material. But WSWS
calls those others the "pseudo Left", and alleges that they tools of the
establishment.
eg see "Australia's pseudo-left covers up for US imperialism in Iraq":
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/08/18/salt-a18.html
Other Stalinist websites of note are Voltaire Network, Strategic Culture
and News From Iraq.
It is ironic that, decades after the Cold War, we internet dissidents
are looking to that quarter to find news we can't get elsewhere.
(2) Paul: US government likely hiding truth about downed jet in Ukraine
http://www.iraq-war.ru/article/318039
Press TV on: 11.08.2014 [05:55 ]
Mon Aug 11, 2014 4:8AM GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/08/11/374855/paul-us-hiding-truth-about-downed-jet/
Former US congressman Ron Paul says the US government is likely hiding
the truth about the crash of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in Ukraine.
"The US government has grown strangely quite {sic} on the accusation
that it was Russia or her allies that brought down the Malaysian
airliner with a buck anti-aircraft missile sic," he wrote on his news
website Voices of Liberty on August 7.
The former Republican presidential candidate made the comments after
Washington accused Moscow of shooting down the aircraft, killing all 298
people on board. The Kremlin, however, denied the allegation.
"The little that we have heard from US intelligence is that it has no
evidence that Russia was involved. Yet the war propaganda were
successful in convincing the American public that it was all Russia’s
fault," Paul said.
"It’s hard to believe that the US, with all of its spy satellites
available for monitoring everything in Ukraine that precise proof of who
did what and when is not available," he added.
“When evidence contradicts our government’s accusations, the evidence is
never revealed to the public—for national security reasons, of course.
Some independent sources claim that the crash site revealed evidence
that bullet holes may have come from a fighter jet. If true, it would
implicate Western Ukraine.”
"Questions do remain regarding the serious international incident," Paul
wrote. "Too bad we can’t count on our government to just tell us the
truth and show us the evidence. I’m convinced that it knows a lot more
than it’s telling us."
(3) MH17: Dutch journalist Karel van Wolferen mentions Bociurkiw &
pulled BBC eyewitness accounts
From: Debbie Menon
Date:08/17/2014 4:40 AM (GMT-06:00)
The Ukraine, Corrupted Journalism, and the Atlanticist Faith in the
“Failed States”
History is being made, once again. What may well determine Europe’s fate
is that also outside the defenders of the Atlanticist faith, decent
Europeans cannot bring themselves to believe in the dysfunction and
utter irresponsibility of the American state.
by Karel van Wolferen
Strategic Culture
16.08.2014
http://www.veteransnewsnow.com/2014/08/16/509346-the-ukraine-corrupted-journalism-and-the-atlanticist-faith-in-the-failed-states/
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2014/08/16/ukraine-corrupted-journalism-atlanticist-faith-failed-states.html
The European Union is not (anymore) guided by politicians with a grasp
of history, a sober assessment of global reality, or simple common sense
connected with the long term interests of what they are guiding. If any
more evidence was needed, it has certainly been supplied by the
sanctions they have agreed on last week aimed at punishing Russia.
One way to fathom their foolishness is to start with the media, since
whatever understanding or concern these politicians may have personally
they must be seen to be doing the right thing, which is taken care of by
TV and newspapers.
In much of the European Union the general understanding of global
reality since the horrible fate of the people on board the Malaysian
Airliner comes from mainstream newspapers and TV which have copied the
approach of Anglo-American mainstream media, and have presented ‘news’
in which insinuation and vilification substitute for proper reporting.
Respected publications, like the Financial Times or the once respected
NRC Handelsblad of the Netherlands for which I worked sixteen years as
East Asia Correspondent, not only joined in with this corrupted
journalism but helped guide it to mad conclusions. The punditry and
editorials that have grown out of this have gone further than anything
among earlier examples of sustained media hysteria stoked for political
purposes that I can remember. The most flagrant example I have come
across, an anti-Putin leader in the (July 26) Economist Magazine, had
the tone of Shakespeare’s Henry V exhorting his troops before the battle
of Agincourt as he invaded France.
One should keep in mind that there are no European-wide newspapers or
publications to sustain a European public sphere, in the sense of a
means for politically interested Europeans to ponder and debate with
each other big international developments. Because those interested in
world affairs usually read the international edition of the New York
Times or the Financial Times, questions and answers on geopolitical
matters are routinely shaped or strongly influenced by what editors in
New York and London have determined as being important.
Thinking that may deviate significantly as can now be found in Der
Spiegel, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit and Handelsblatt,
does not travel across German borders. Hence we do not see anything like
a European opinion evolving on global affairs, even when these have a
direct impact on the interests of the European Union itself.
The Dutch population was rudely shaken out of a general complacency with
respect to world events that could affect it, through the death of 193
fellow nationals (along with a 105 people of other nationalities) in the
downed plane, and its media were hasty in following the
American-initiated finger-pointing at Moscow. Explanations that did not
in some way involve culpability of the Russian president seemed to be
out of bounds.
This was at odds right away with statements of a sober Dutch prime
minister, who was under considerable pressure to join the fingerpointing
but who insisted on waiting for a thorough examination of what precisely
had happened.
The TV news programs I saw in the days immediately afterwards had
invited, among other anti–Russian expositors, American neocon-linked
talking heads to do the disclosing to a puzzled and truly shaken up
audience. A Dutch foreign policy specialist explained that the foreign
minister or his deputy could not go to the site of the crash (as
Malaysian officials did) to recover the remains of Dutch citizens,
because that would amount to an implicit recognition of diplomatic
status for the “separatists”. When the European Union en bloc recognizes
a regime that has come into existence through an American initiated coup
d’état, you are diplomatically stuck with it.
The inhabitants and anti-Kiev fighters at the crash site were portrayed,
with images from youtube, as uncooperative criminals, which for many
viewers amounted to a confirmation of their guilt. This changed when
later reports from actual journalists showed shocked and deeply
concerned villagers, but the discrepancy was not explained, and earlier
assumptions of villainy did not make way for any objective analysis of
why these people might be fighting at all.
Tendentious twitter and youtube ‘news’ had become the basis for official
Dutch indignation with the East Ukrainians, and a general opinion arose
that something had to be set straight, which was, again in general
opinion, accomplished by a grand nationally televised reception of the
human remains (released through Malaysian mediation) in a dignified
sober martial ceremony.
Nothing that I have seen or read even intimated that the Ukraine crisis
– which led to coup and civil war – was created by neoconservatives and
a few R2P (“Responsibility to Protect”) fanatics in the State Department
and the White House, apparently given a free hand by President Obama.
The Dutch media also appeared unaware that the catastrophe was
immediately turned into a political football for White House and State
Department purposes. The likelihood that Putin was right when he said
that the catastrophe would not have happened if his insistence on a
cease-fire had been accepted, was not entertained.
As it was, Kiev broke the cease-fire – on the 10th of June – in its
civil war against Russian speaking East Ukrainians who do not wish to be
governed by a collection of thugs, progeny of Ukrainian nazis, and
oligarchs enamored of the IMF and the European Union. The supposed
‘rebels’ have been responding to the beginnings of ethnic cleansing
operations (systematic terror bombing and atrocities – 30 or more
Ukrainians burned alive) committed by Kiev forces, of which little or
nothing has penetrated into European news reports.
It is unlikely that the American NGOs, which by official admission spent
5 billion dollars in political destabilization efforts prior to the
February putsch in Kiev, have suddenly disappeared from the Ukraine, or
that America’s military advisors and specialized troops have sat idly by
as Kiev’s military and militias mapped their civil war strategy; after
all, the new thugs are as a regime on financial life-support provided by
Washington, the European Union and IMF. What we know is that Washington
is encouraging the ongoing killing in the civil war it helped trigger.
But Washington has constantly had the winning hand in a propaganda war
against, entirely contrary to what mainstream media would have us
believe, an essentially unwilling opponent. Waves of propaganda come
from Washington and are made to fit assumptions of a Putin, driven and
assisted by a nationalism heightened by the loss of the Soviet empire,
who is trying to expand the Russian Federation up to the borders of that
defunct empire. The more adventurous punditry, infected by neocon fever,
has Russia threatening to envelop the West.
Hence Europeans are made to believe that Putin refuses diplomacy, while
he has been urging this all along. Hence prevailing propaganda has had
the effect that not Washington’s but Putin’s actions are seen as
dangerous and extreme. Anyone with a personal story that places Putin or
Russia in a bad light must move right now; Dutch editors seem insatiable
at the moment.
There is no doubt that the frequently referred to Moscow propaganda
exists. But there are ways for serious journalists to weigh competing
propaganda and discern how much veracity or lies and bullshit they
contain. Within my field of vision this has only taken place a bit in
Germany. For the rest we must piece political reality together relying
on the now more than ever indispensable American websites hospitable to
whistleblowers and old-fashioned investigative journalism, which
especially since the onset of the ‘war on terrorism’ and the Iraq
invasion have formed a steady form of samizdatpublishing.
In the Netherlands almost anything that comes from the State Department
is taken at face value. America’s history, since the demise of the
Soviet Union, of truly breathtaking lies: on Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq,
Syria, Venezuela, Libya and North Korea; its record of overthrown
governments; its black-op and false flag operations; and its stealthily
garrisoning of the planet with some thousand military bases, is
conveniently left out of consideration.
The near hysteria throughout a week following the downed airliner
prevented people with some knowledge of relevant history from opening
their mouths. Job security in the current world of journalism is quite
shaky, and going against the tide would be almost akin to siding with
the devil, as it would damage one’s journalistic ‘credibility’.
What strikes an older generation of serious journalists as questionable
about the mainstream media’s credibility is editorial indifference to
potential clues that would undermine or destroy the official story line;
a story line that has already permeated popular culture as is evident in
throwaway remarks embellishing book and film reviews along with much
else. In the Netherlands the official story is already carved in stone,
which is to be expected when it is repeated ten-thousand times. It
cannot be discounted, of course, but it is based on not a shred of evidence.
The presence of two Ukrainian fighter planes near the Malaysian airliner
on Russian radar would be a potential clue I would be very interested in
if I were investigating either as journalist or member of the
investigation team that the Netherlands officially leads. This appeared
to be corroborated by a BBC Report with eyewitness accounts from the
ground by villagers who clearly saw another plane, a fighter, close to
the airliner, near the time of its crash, and heard explosions coming
from the sky.
This report has recently drawn attention because it was removed from the
BBC’s archive. I would want to talk with Michael Bociurkiw, one of the
first inspectors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE) to reach the crash site who spent more than a week
examining the wreckage and has described on CBC World News two or three
“really pock-marked” pieces of fuselage. “It almost looks like machine
gun fire; very, very strong machine gun fire that has left these unique
marks that we haven’t seen anywhere else.”
I would certainly also want to have a look at the allegedly confiscated
radar and voice records of the Kiev Air Control Tower to understand why
the Malaysian pilot veered off course and rapidly descended shortly
before his plane crashed, and find out whether foreign air controllers
in Kiev were indeed sent packing immediately after the crash.
Like the “Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity”, I would
certainly urge the American authorities with access to satellite images
to show the evidence they claim to have of BUK missile batteries in
‘rebel’ hands as well as of Russian involvement, and ask them why they
have not done so already.
Until now Washington has acted like a driver who refuses a breathalyzer
test. Since intelligence officials have leaked to some American
newspapers their lesser certainty about the American certainties as
brought to the world by the Secretary of State, my curiosity would be
unrelenting.
To place European media loyalty to Washington in the Ukraine case as
well as the slavish conduct of European politicians in perspective, we
must know about and understand Atlanticism. It is a European faith. It
has not given rise to an official doctrine, of course, but it functions
like one. It is well summed up by the Dutch slogan at the time of the
Iraq invasion: “zonder Amerika gaat het niet” (without the United States
[things] [it] won’t work).
Needless to say, the Cold War gave birth to Atlanticism. Ironically, it
gained strength as the threat from the Soviet Union became less
persuasive for increasing numbers among European political elites. That
probably was a matter of generational change: the farther away from
World War II, the less European governments remembered what it means to
have an independent foreign policy on global-sized issues. Current heads
of government of the European Union are unfamiliar with practical
strategic deliberations. Routine thought on international relations and
global politics is deeply entrenched in Cold War epistemology.
This inevitably also informs ‘responsible’ editorial policies.
Atlanticism is now a terrible affliction for Europe: it fosters
historical amnesia, willful blindness and dangerously misconceived
political anger. But it thrives on a mixture of lingering unquestioned
Cold War era certainties about protection, Cold War loyalties embedded
in popular culture, sheer European ignorance, and an understandable
reluctance to concede that one has even for a little bit been brainwashed.
Washington can do outrageous things while leaving Atlanticism intact
because of everyone’s forgetfulness, which the media do little or
nothing to cure. I know Dutch people who have become disgusted with the
villification of Putin, but the idea that in the context of Ukraine the
fingerpointing should be toward Washington is well-nigh unacceptable.
Hence, Dutch publications, along with many others in Europe, cannot
bring themselves to place the Ukraine crisis in proper perspective by
acknowledging that Washington started it all, and that Washington rather
than Putin has the key to its solution. It would impel a renunciation of
Atlanticism.
Atlanticism derives much of its strength through NATO, its institutional
embodiment. The reason for NATO’s existence, which disappeard with the
demise of the Soviet Union, has been largely forgotten. Formed in 1949,
it was based on the idea that transatlantic cooperation for security and
defense had become necessary after World War II in the face of a
communism, orchestrated by Moscow, intent on taking over the entire
planet. Much less talked about was European internal distrust, as the
Europeans set off on their first moves towards economic integration.
NATO constituted a kind of American guarantee that no power in Europe
would ever try to dominate the others.
NATO has for some time now been a liability for the European Union, as
it prevents development of concerted European foreign and defense
policies, and has forced the member states to become instruments serving
American militarism. It is also a moral liability because the
governments participating in the ‘coalition of the willing’ have had to
sell the lie to their citizens that European soldiers dying in Iraq and
Afghanistan have been a necessary sacrifice to keep Europe safe from
terrorists.
Governments that have supplied troops to areas occupied by the United
States have generally done this with considerable reluctance, earning
the reproach from a succession of American officials that Europeans do
too little for the collective purpose of defending democracy and freedom.
As is the mark of an ideology, Atlanticism is ahistorical. As horse
medicine against the torment of fundamental political ambiguity it
supplies its own history: one that may be rewritten by American
mainstream media as they assist in spreading the word from Washington.
There could hardly be a better demonstration of this than the Dutch
experience at the moment. In conversations these past three weeks I have
encountered genuine surprise when reminding friends that the Cold War
ended through diplomacy with a deal made on Malta between Gorbachev and
the elder Bush in December 1989, in which James Baker got Gorbachev to
accept the reunification of Germany and withdrawal of Warsaw Pact troops
with a promise that NATO would not be extended even one inch to the East.
Gorbachev pledged not to use force in Eastern Europe where the Russians
had some 350,000 troops in East Germany alone, in return for Bush’s
promise that Washington would not take advantage of a Soviet withdrawal
from Eastern Europe. Bill Clinton reneged on those American promises
when, for purely electoral reasons, he boasted about an enlargement of
NATO and in 1999 made the Czech Republic and Hungary full members.
Ten years later another nine countries became members, at which point
the number of NATO countries was double the number during the Cold War.
The famous American specialist on Russia, Ambassador George Kennan,
originator of Cold War containment policy, called Clinton’s move “the
most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.”
Historical ignorance abetted by Atlanticism is poignantly on display in
the contention that the ultimate proof in the case against Vladimir
Putin is his invasion of Crimea. Again, political reality here was
created by America’s mainstream media. There was no invasion, as the
Russian sailors and soldiers were already there since it is home to the
‘warm water’ Black Sea base for the Russian navy.
Crimea has been a part of Russia for as long as the United States has
existed. In 1954 Khrushchev, who himself came from the Ukraine, gave it
to the Ukrainian Socialist Republic, which came down to moving a region
to a different province, since Russia and Ukraine still belonged to the
same country. The Russian speaking Crimean population was happy enough,
as it voted in a referendum first for independence from the Kiev regime
that resulted from the coup d’état, and subsequently for reunification
with Russia.
Those who maintain that Putin had no right to do such a thing are
unaware of another strand of history in which the United States has been
moving (Star Wars) missile defense systems ever closer to Russian
borders, supposedly to intercept hostile missiles from Iran, which do
not exist. Sanctimonious talk about territorial integrity and
sovereignty makes no sense under these circumstances, and coming from a
Washington that has done away with the concept of sovereignty in its own
foreign policy it is downright ludicrous.
A detestable Atlanticist move was the exclusion of Putin from the
meetings and other events connected with the commemoration of the
Normandy landings, for the first time in 17 years. The G8 became the G7
as a result. Amnesia and ignorance have made the Dutch blind to a
history that directly concerned them, since the Soviet Union took the
heart out of the Nazi war machine (that occupied the Netherlands) at a
cost of incomparable and unimaginable numbers of military dead; without
that there would not have been a Normandy invasion.
Not so long ago, the complete military disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan
appeared to be moving NATO to a point where its inevitable demise could
not to be too far off. But the Ukraine crisis and Putin’s decisiveness
in preventing the Crimea with its Russian Navy base from possibly
falling into the hands of the American-owned alliance, has been a
godsend to this earlier faltering institution.
NATO leadership has already been moving troops to strengthen their
presence in the Baltic states, sending missiles and attack aircraft to
Poland and Lithuania, and since the downing of the Malaysian airliner it
has been preparing further military moves that may turn into dangerous
provocations of Russia. It has become clear that the Polish foreign
minister together with the Baltic countries, none of which partook in
NATO when its reason for being could still be defended, have become a
strong driving force behind it.
A mood of mobilization has spread in the past week. The ventriloquist
dummies Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Jaap de Hoop Scheffer can be relied
upon to take to TV screens inveighing against NATO member-state
backsliding. Rasmussen, the current Secretary General, declared on
August 7 in Kiev that NATO’s “support for the sovereignty and
territorial integrity of Ukraine is unwavering” and that he is looking
to strengthen partnership with the country at the Alliance’s summit in
Wales in September.
That partnership is already strong, so he said, “and in response to
Russia’s aggression, NATO is working even more closely with Ukraine to
reform its armed forces and defense institutions.”
In the meantime, in the American Congress 23 Senate Republicans have
sponsored legislation, the “Russian Aggression Prevention Act”, which is
meant to allow Washington to make the Ukraine a non-NATO ally and could
set the stage for a direct military conflict with Russia. We will
probably have to wait until after America’s midterm elections to see
what will become of it, but it already helps provide a political excuse
for those in Washington who want to take next steps in the Ukraine.
In September last year Putin helped Obama by making it possible for him
to stop a bombing campaign against Syria pushed by the neocons, and had
also helped in defusing the nuclear dispute with Iran, another neocon
project. This led to a neocon commitment to break the Putin-Obama link.
It is hardly a secret that the neoconservatives desire the overthrow of
Putin and eventual dismemberment of the Russian Federation.
Less known in Europe is the existence of numerous NGOs at work in
Russia, which will help them with this. Vladimir Putin could strike now
or soon, to preempt NATO and the American Congress, by taking Eastern
Ukraine, something he probably should have done right after the Crimean
referendum. That would, of course, be proof of his evil intentions in
European editorial eyes.
In the light of all this, one of the most fateful questions to ask in
current global affairs is: what has to happen for Europeans to wake up
to the fact that Washington is playing with fire and has ceased being
the protector they counted on, and is instead now endangering their
security? Will the moment come when it becomes clear that the Ukraine
crisis is, most of all, about placing Star Wars missile batteries along
an extensive stretch of Russian border, which gives Washington – in the
insane lingo of nuclear strategists – ‘first strike’ capacity?
It is beginning to sink in among older Europeans that the United States
has enemies who are not Europe’s enemies because it needs them for
domestic political reasons; to keep an economically hugely important war
industry going and to test by shorthand the political bona fides of
contenders for public office.
But while using rogue states and terrorists as targets for ‘just wars’
has never been convincing, Putin’s Russia as demonized by a militaristic
NATO could help prolong the transatlantic status quo. The truth behind
the fate of the Malaysian airliner, I thought from the moment that I
heard about it, would be politically determined. Its black boxes are in
London. In NATO hands?
Other hindrances to an awakening remain huge; financialization and
neoliberal policies have produced an intimate transatlantic entwining of
plutocratic interests. Together with the Atlanticist faith these have
helped stymie the political development of the European Union, and with
that Europe’s ability to proceed with independent political decisions.
Since Tony Blair, Great Britain has been in Washington’s pocket, and
since Nicolas Sarkozy one can say more or less the same of France.
That leaves Germany. Angela Merkel was clearly unhappy with the
sanctions, but in the end went along because she wants to remain on the
good side of the American president, and the United States as the
conqueror in World War II does still have leverage through a variety of
agreements. Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, quoted
in newspapers and appearing on TV, repudiated the sanctions and points
at Iraq and Libya as examples of the results brought by escalation and
ultimatums, yet he too swings round and in the end goes along with them.
Der Spiegel is one of the German publications that offer hope. One of
its columnists, Jakob Augstein, attacks the “sleepwalkers” who have
agreed to sanctions, and censures his colleagues’ finger-pointing at
Moscow. Gabor Steingart, who publishes Handelsblatt, inveighs against
the “American tendency to verbal and then to military escalation, the
isolation, demonization, and attacking of enemies” and concludes that
also German journalism “has switched from level-headed to agitated in a
matter of weeks.
The spectrum of opinions has been narrowed to the field of vision of a
sniper scope.” There must be more journalists in other parts of Europe
who say things like this, but their voices do not carry through the din
of vilification.
History is being made, once again. What may well determine Europe’s fate
is that also outside the defenders of the Atlanticist faith, decent
Europeans cannot bring themselves to believe in the dysfunction and
utter irresponsibility of the American state.
Original source:
<http://www.unz.com/article/the-ukraine-corrupted-journalism-and-the-atlanticist-faith/>
Karel van Wolferen is a Dutch journalist and retired professor at the
University of Amsterdam. Since 1969, he has published over twenty books
on public policy issues, which have been translated into eleven
languages and sold over a million copies worldwide. As a foreign
correspondent for NRC Handelsblad , one of Holland’s leading newspapers,
he received the highest Dutch award for journalism, and over the years
his articles have appeared in The New York Times , The Washington Post ,
The New Republic , The National Interest , Le Monde , and numerous other
newspapers and magazines.
(4) Malaysian media publish evidence that Ukraine government shot down
MH17 - wsws Trots
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/08/09/mala-a09.html
Malaysian press charges Ukraine government shot down MH 17
By Alex Lantier
9 August 2014
A Thursday article in the New Straits Times, Malaysia's flagship
English-language newspaper, charged the US- and European-backed
Ukrainian regime in Kiev with shooting down Malaysian Airlines flight MH
17 in east Ukraine last month. Given the tightly controlled character of
the Malaysian media, it appears that the accusation that Kiev shot down
MH17 has the imprimatur of the Malaysian state.
The US and European media have buried this remarkable report, which
refutes the wave of allegations planted by the CIA in international
media claiming that Russian president Vladimir Putin was responsible for
the destruction of MH17, without presenting any evidence to back up this
charge.
The New Straits Times article, titled "US analysts conclude MH17 downed
by aircraft," lays out evidence that Ukrainian fighter aircraft attacked
the jetliner with first a missile, then with bursts of 30-millimeter
machine gun fire from both sides of MH17. The Russian army has already
presented detailed radar and satellite data showing a Ukrainian
Sukhoi-25 fighter jet tailing MH17 shortly before the jetliner crashed.
The Kiev regime denied that its fighters were airborne in the area, however.
The New Straits Times article began, "Intelligence analysts in the
United States have already concluded that Malaysia flight MH17 was shot
down by an air-to-air missile, and that the Ukrainian government had had
something to do with it. This corroborates an emerging theory postulated
by local investigators that the Boeing 777-200 was crippled by an
air-to-air missile and finished off with cannon fire from a jet that had
been shadowing it as it plummeted to earth."
It cited "experts who had said that the photographs of the blast
fragmentation patterns on the fuselage of the airliner showed two
distinct shapes--the shredding pattern associated with a warhead packed
with 'flechettes,' and the more uniform, round-type penetration holes
consistent with that of cannon rounds."
The New Straits Times cited several sources to substantiate its
position. One was testimony by a Canadian-Ukrainian monitor for the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Michael
Bociurkiw--one of the first investigators to arrive at the crash site.
Speaking to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on July 29, Bociurkiw
said: "There have been two or three pieces of fuselage that have been
really pockmarked with what almost looks like machine gun fire; very,
very strong machine gun fire."
Another source the paper cited was an article, "Flight 17 Shoot-Down
Scenario Shifts," by former Associated Press reporter Robert Parry, who
now writes for the ConsortiumNews.com web site. Given the lack of any
evidence supporting US charges that pro-Russian forces shot MH17 down
with a Buk anti-aircraft missile, Parry said, "some US intelligence
analysts have concluded that the rebels and Russia were likely not at
fault, and that it appears Ukrainian government forces were to blame,
according to a source briefed on these findings."
Parry indicated that sections of the US intelligence apparatus have
concluded that US secretary of state John Kerry's claims that
pro-Russian forces shot down the plane are lies.
"Only three days after the crash, Secretary of State Kerry did the
rounds of the Sunday talk shows making what he deemed an 'extraordinary
circumstantial' case supposedly proving that the rebels carried out the
shoot-down with missiles provided by Russia. He acknowledged that the US
government was 'not drawing the final conclusion here, but there is a
lot that points at the need for Russia to be responsible,' " Parry
wrote. "By then, I was already being told that the US intelligence
community lacked any satellite imagery supporting Kerry's allegations,
and that the only Buk missile system in that part of Ukraine appeared to
be under the control of the Ukrainian military."
Finally, the New Straits Times and Parry both cite retired Lufthansa
pilot Peter Haisenko, who has pointed to photographic evidence of MH17
wreckage suggesting that cockpit panels were raked with heavy machine
gun fire from both the port and starboard sides. "Nobody before Haisenko
had noticed that the projectiles had ripped through the panel from both
its left side and its right side. This is what rules out any
ground-fired missile," Parry wrote.
The New Straits Times report constitutes a powerful accusation not only
against the Ukrainian government, but against Washington, Berlin, and
their European allies. They installed the Kiev regime through a
fascist-led putsch in February. They then deployed a series of
intelligence operatives and Blackwater mercenaries who are closely
coordinating the various fascist militias and National Guard units
fighting for Kiev on the ground in east Ukraine, where MH17 was shot down.
These forces now stand accused not only of stoking an explosive
political and military confrontation with Russia on its border with
Ukraine over the MH17 crash, which threatens to erupt into nuclear war,
but of provoking the confrontation through the cold-blooded murder of
298 people aboard MH17.
These charges from Malaysia are all the more significant in that
Malaysia is not a strategic adversary of the United States. Unlike
Russia, which already presented evidence suggesting Ukrainian
involvement in the crash, Malaysia has no political motive for trying to
discredit the US, the European powers, or their puppet regime in Kiev.
While it has not aligned itself as openly as the Philippines or Vietnam
with the US "pivot to Asia" aimed at isolating China, Malaysia has
pushed for deployments of its forces in the South China Sea to contest
Chinese influence in the area, in line with the agenda of the US "pivot."
Indeed, the New Straits Times and its sources are basing themselves on
sections of US intelligence that, disgruntled by the complete lack of
evidence to back up US charges against Putin and fearing catastrophic
military escalation, have criticized Washington's handling of the crisis
(see: "Former US intelligence personnel challenge Obama to present
evidence of Russian complicity in MH17 crash").
These developments also constitute yet another indictment of the Western
media, which have completely blacked out the investigation of the crash
of MH17 and the latest material in the New Straits Times. Instead, the
elements in the CIA and their Ukrainian proxies driving the war in
eastern Ukraine have been able to escalate the confrontation with Russia
and demonize Putin, without any of their unsubstantiated accusations of
Russian involvement in the MH17 crash being challenged.
Kiev regime officials are continuing to stonewall the investigation,
refusing Malaysian requests for information about MH17, such as the
record of communications between the doomed plane and air traffic
controllers in Kiev.
In an interview with the New Straits Times, Ukrainian Ambassador to
Malaysia Ihor Humennyi denied reports that the tapes had been seized by
Ukraine's State Security Service (SBU). "There is no proof or evidence
that the tapes were confiscated by the SBU. I only read this in the
newspapers," he said.
When the New Straits Times asked where the tapes were, Humennyi said he
did not know. "We don't have any information that it had not been given
to the investigation team, or that it was not received by the [team of
international] investigators," he said.
{above article was re-published at Op Ed News:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Malaysian-press-charges-Uk-by-Alex-Lantier-Government-Corruption_Malaysia-Airlines-Flight-17_Putin_Russia-140809-576.html}
(5) New Straits Times (Malaysia): US analysts conclude MH17 downed by
aircraft
Ionut Dobrinescu<idobrinescu@ddrept.net> 7 August 2014 22:35
http://www.nst.com.my/node/20925
US analysts conclude MH17 downed by aircraft
BY HARIS HUSSAIN - 7 AUGUST 2014 @ 8:20 AM
KUALA LUMPUR: INTELLIGENCE analysts in the United States had already
concluded that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by an
air-to-air missile, and that the Ukrainian government had had something
to do with it.
This corroborates an emerging theory postulated by local investigators
that the Boeing 777-200 was crippled by an air-to-air missile and
finished off with cannon fire from a fighter that had been shadowing it
as it plummeted to earth.
In a damning report dated Aug 3, headlined “Flight 17 Shoot-Down
Scenario Shifts”, Associated Press reporter Robert Parry said “some US
intelligence sources had concluded that the rebels and Russia were
likely not at fault and that it appears Ukrainian government forces were
to blame”.
This new revelation was posted on GlobalResearch, an independent
research and media organisation.
In a statement released by the Ukrainian embassy on Tuesday, Kiev denied
that its fighters were airborne during the time MH17 was shot down. This
follows a statement released by the Russian Defence Ministry that its
air traffic control had detected Ukrainian Air Force activity in the
area on the same day.
They also denied all allegations made by the Russian government and said
the country’s core interest was in ensuring an immediate, comprehensive,
transparent and unbiased international investigation into the tragedy by
establishing a state commission comprising experts from the
International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and Eurocontrol.
“We have evidence that the plane was downed by Russian-backed terrorist
with a BUK-M1 SAM system (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation reporting
name SA-11) which, together with the crew, had been supplied from
Russia. This was all confirmed by our intelligence, intercepted
telephone conversations of the terrorists and satellite pictures.
“At the same time, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have never used any
anti-aircraft missiles since the anti-terrorist operations started in
early April,” the statement read.
Yesterday, the New Straits Times quoted experts who had said that
photographs of the blast fragmentation patterns on the fuselage of the
airliner showed two distinct shapes — the shredding pattern associated
with a warhead packed with “flechettes”, and the more uniform,
round-type penetration holes consistent with that of cannon rounds.
Parry’s conclusion also stemmed from the fact that despite assertions
from the Obama administration, there has not been a shred of tangible
evidence to support the conclusion that Russia supplied the rebels with
the BUK-M1 anti-aircraft missile system that would be needed to hit a
civilian jetliner flying at 33,000 feet.
Parry also cited a July 29 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation interview
with Michael Bociurkiw, one of the first Organisation for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) investigators to arrive at the scene of the
disaster, near Donetsk.
Bociurkiw is a Ukrainian-Canadian monitor with OSCE who, along with
another colleague, were the first international monitors to reach the
wreckage after flight MH17 was brought down over eastern Ukraine.
In the CBC interview, the reporter in the video preceded it with: “The
wreckage was still smouldering when a small team from the OSCE got
there. No other officials arrived for days”.
“There have been two or three pieces of fuselage that have been really
pockmarked with what almost looks like machinegun fire; very, very
strong machinegun fire,” Bociurkiw said in the interview.
Parry had said that Bociurkiw’s testimony is “as close to virgin,
untouched evidence and testimony as we’ll ever get. Unlike a black-box
interpretation-analysis long afterward by the Russian, British or
Ukrainian governments, each of which has a horse in this race, this
testimony from Bociurkiw is raw, independent and comes from one of the
two earliest witnesses to the physical evidence.
“That’s powerfully authoritative testimony. Bociurkiw arrived there fast
because he negotiated with the locals for the rest of the OSCE team, who
were organising to come later,” Parry had said.
Retired Lufthansa pilot Peter Haisenko had also weighed in on the new
shootdown theory with Parry and pointed to the entry and exit holes
centred around the cockpit.
“You can see the entry and exit holes. The edge of a portion of the
holes is bent inwards. These are the smaller holes, round and clean,
showing the entry points most likely that of a 30mm caliber projectile.
“The edge of the other, the larger and slightly frayed exit holes, show
shreds of metal pointing produced by the same caliber projectiles.
Moreover, it is evident that these exit holes of the outer layer of the
double aluminum reinforced structure are shredded or bent — outwardly.”
He deduced that in order to have some of those holes fraying inwardly,
and the others fraying outwardly, there had to have been a second
fighter firing into the cockpit from the airliner’s starboard side. This
is critical, as no surface-fired missile (or shrapnel) hitting the
airliner could possibly punch holes into the cockpit from both sides of
the plane.
“It had to have been a hail of bullets from both sides that brought the
plane down. This is Haisenko’s main discovery. You can’t have
projectiles going in both directions — into the left-hand-side fuselage
panel from both its left and right sides — unless they are coming at the
panel from different directions.
“Nobody before Haisenko had noticed that the projectiles had ripped
through that panel from both its left side and its right side. This is
what rules out any ground-fired missile,” Parry had said.
(6) MH17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts - Robert Parry
http://consortiumnews.com/2014/08/03/flight-17-shoot-down-scenario-shifts/
Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts
August 3, 2014
Exclusive: From magazine covers to pronouncements by top politicians,
Official Washington jumped to the conclusion that Ukrainian rebels and
Russia were guilty in the shoot-down of a Malaysian passenger plane. But
some U.S. intelligence analysts may see the evidence differently, writes
Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Contrary to the Obama administration’s public claims blaming eastern
Ukrainian rebels and Russia for the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines
Flight 17, some U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded that the
rebels and Russia were likely not at fault and that it appears Ukrainian
government forces were to blame, according to a source briefed on these
findings.
This judgment – at odds with what President Barack Obama and Secretary
of State John Kerry have expressed publicly – is based largely on the
absence of U.S. government evidence that Russia supplied the rebels with
a Buk anti-aircraft missile system that would be needed to hit a
civilian jetliner flying at 33,000 feet, said the source, who spoke on
condition of anonymity.
Despite U.S. spy satellites positioned over eastern Ukraine, U.S.
intelligence agencies have released no images of a Buk system being
transferred by Russians to rebel control, shipped into Ukraine, deployed
into firing position and then being taken back to Russia. Though the
Obama administration has released other images of Ukraine taken by U.S.
spy satellites, the absence of any photos of a rebel-controlled Buk
missile battery has been the dog not barking in the strident case that
Official Washington has made in blaming the rebels and Russia for the
July 17 shoot-down that killed 298 people.
Given the size of these missile batteries – containing four 16-foot-long
missiles – the absence of this evidence prompted caution among U.S.
intelligence analysts even as senior U.S. officials and the U.S.
mainstream media rushed to judgment blaming the rebels and Russians.
In making that case, Kerry and other senior officials relied on claims
made by the Ukrainian government along with items posted on “social
media.” These snippets of “evidence” included ambiguous remarks
attributed to rebels who may have initially thought the shoot-down was
another of their successful attacks on lower-flying Ukrainian military
aircraft but who later insisted that they had not fired on the Malaysian
plane and lacked the longer-range Buk missiles needed to reach above
30,000 feet.
If the U.S. intelligence analysts are correct – that the rebels and
Russia are likely not responsible – the chief remaining suspect would be
the Ukrainian government, which does possess Buk anti-aircraft missiles
and reportedly had two fighter jets in the vicinity of Malaysia Airlines
Flight 17 at the time of the shoot-down.
Some independent analyses of the initial evidence from the crash site
suggest the jetliner may have been destroyed by an air-to-air attack,
not by an anti-aircraft missile fired from the ground. Yet, the working
hypothesis of the U.S. intelligence analysts is that a Ukrainian
military Buk battery and the jetfighters may have been operating in
collusion as they hunted what they thought was a Russian airliner,
possibly even the plane carrying President Vladimir Putin on a return
trip from South America, the source said.
The source added that the U.S. intelligence analysis does not implicate
top Ukrainian officials, such as President Petro Poroshenko or Prime
Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, suggesting that the attack may have been the
work of more extremist factions, possibly even one of the Ukrainian
oligarchs who have taken an aggressive approach toward prosecuting the
war against the ethnic Russian rebels in the east.
Obviously, a successful shoot-down of a Russian plane, especially one
carrying Putin, could have been a major coup for the Kiev regime, which
ousted Russian ally, President Viktor Yanukovych, last February touching
off the civil war. Some prominent Ukrainian politicians, such as
ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, have expressed the desire to kill Putin.
“It’s about time we grab our guns and kill, go kill those damn Russians
together with their leader,” Tymoshenko said in an intercepted phone
call in March, according to a leak published in the Russian press and
implicitly confirmed by Tymoshenko.
The Shoot-Down Mystery
The Malaysia Airlines plane, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was
not expected to be over the eastern part of Ukraine on the afternoon of
July 17, but was rerouted to avoid bad weather. The plane was nearing
Russian airspace when it was shot down.
Some early speculation had been that the Ukrainian military might have
mistaken the plane for a Russian spy plane and attacked it in a scenario
similar to the Soviet shoot-down of Korean Airlines Flight 007 in 1983
after misidentifying it as a U.S. spy plane.
In the two-plus weeks since the Ukrainian air disaster, there have been
notable gaps between the more measured approach taken by U.S.
intelligence analysts and the U.S. politicians and media personalities
who quickly rushed to the judgment blaming the rebels and Russia.
Only three days after the crash, Secretary of State Kerry did the rounds
of the Sunday talk shows making what he deemed an “extraordinary
circumstantial” case supposedly proving that the rebels carried out the
shoot-down with missiles provided by Russia. He acknowledged that the
U.S. government was “not drawing the final conclusion here, but there is
a lot that points at the need for Russia to be responsible.”
By then, I was already being told that the U.S. intelligence community
lacked any satellite imagery supporting Kerry’s allegations and that the
only Buk missile system in that part of Ukraine appeared to be under the
control of the Ukrainian military. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “What Did
US Spy Satellites See in Ukraine?”]
On the Tuesday after Kerry’s Sunday declarations, mainstream
journalists, including for the Los Angeles Times and the Washington
Post, were given a senior-level briefing about the U.S. intelligence
information that supposedly pointed the finger of blame at the rebels
and Russia. But, again, much of the “evidence” was derived from postings
on “social media.”
The Los Angeles Times article on the briefing took note of the
uncertainties: “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 [the Buk
anti-aircraft missile] was launched by a defector from the Ukrainian
military who was trained to use similar missile systems.”
That reference to a possible “defector” may have been an attempt to
reconcile the U.S. government’s narrative with the still-unreleased
satellite imagery of the missile battery controlled by soldiers
appearing to wear Ukrainian uniforms. But I’m now told that U.S.
intelligence analysts have largely dismissed the “defector” possibility
and are concentrating on the scenario of a willful Ukrainian shoot-down
of the plane, albeit possibly not knowing its actual identity.
A Hardened Conventional Wisdom
Nevertheless, even as the mystery of who shot down Flight 17 deepened,
the U.S. conventional wisdom blaming Putin and the rebels hardened. The
New York Times has reported Russia’s culpability in the airline disaster
as flat-fact.
On July 29, Obama prefaced his announcement of tougher sanctions against
Russia by implicitly blaming Putin for the tragedy, too. Reading a
prepared statement, Obama said: “In the Netherlands, Malaysia,
Australia, and countries around the world, families are still in shock
over the sudden and tragic loss of nearly 300 loved ones senselessly
killed when their civilian airliner was shot down over territory
controlled by Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine. …
“Since the shoot-down, however, Russia and its proxies in Ukraine have
failed to cooperate with the investigation and to take the opportunity
to pursue a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Ukraine. These
Russian-backed separatists have continued to interfere in the crash
investigation and to tamper with the evidence. They have continued to
shoot down Ukrainian aircraft in the region. And because of their
actions, scores of Ukrainian civilians continue to die needlessly every
day.” [Emphasis added.]
Though one could argue that Obama was rhetorically tip-toeing around a
direct accusation that the rebels and Russia were responsible for the
Malaysia Airlines shoot-down, his intent clearly was to leave that
impression. In other words, Obama was pandering to the conventional
wisdom about Russian guilt and was misleading the American people about
what the latest U.S. intelligence may suggest.
It’s also grotesquely deceptive to blame the Russians and the rebels for
the indiscriminate shelling by government forces that have claimed
hundreds of lives in eastern Ukraine. The rebels have been resisting
what they regard as an illegitimate coup regime that, with the aid of
neo-Nazi militias from western Ukraine, overthrew elected President
Yanukovych in February and then moved to marginalize and suppress the
ethnic Russian population in the east.
By presenting the conflict in a one-sided way, Obama not only misled
Americans about the origins of the Ukraine crisis but, in effect, gave
the Kiev regime a green light to slaughter more ethnic Russians. By
pointing the finger of blame at Moscow for all the troubles of Ukraine,
Obama has created more geopolitical space for Kiev to expand its brutal
onslaught that now has included reported use of poorly targeted
ballistic missiles against population centers.
Obama’s covering for the Kiev regime is even more outrageous if the U.S.
intelligence analysts are right to suspect that Ukrainian forces were
behind the Flight 17 shoot-down.
And as for who’s been responsible for destroying evidence of the Flight
17 shoot-down, an assault by the Ukrainian military on the area where
the plane crashed not only delayed access by international investigators
but appears to have touched off a fire that consumed plane debris that
could have helped identify the reasons for the disaster.
On Saturday, the last paragraph of a New York Times story by Andrew E.
Kramer reported that “the fighting ignited a fire in a wheat field that
burned over fuselage fragments, including one that was potentially
relevant to the crash investigation because it had what appeared to be
shrapnel holes.” The shrapnel holes have been cited by independent
analysts as possible evidence of an attack by Ukrainian jetfighters.
Accepting Reality
Yet, given how far the U.S. political/media establishment has gone in
its Flight 17 judgment pinning the blame on the rebels and Russia even
before an official investigation was started, it’s not clear how those
power-brokers would respond if the emerging analysis fingering Ukrainian
forces turns out to be correct.
The embarrassment to high-level U.S. officials and prominent mainstream
U.S. news outlets would be so extreme that it is hard to believe that
the reality would ever be acknowledged. Indeed, there surely will be
intense pressure on airline investigators and intelligence analysts to
endorse the Putin-is-to-blame narrative.
And, if the investigators and analysts won’t go that far, they might at
least avoid a direct contradiction of the conventional wisdom by
suggesting that the Flight 17 mystery remains unsolved, something for
historians to unravel.
Such has been the pattern in other cases of major mainstream mistakes.
For instance, last year, some of the same players, including Secretary
Kerry and the New York Times, jumped to conclusions blaming the Syrian
government for an Aug. 21 sarin gas attack that killed hundreds of
people in a Damascus suburb.
On Aug. 30, Kerry gave a bellicose speech filled with “we knows” but
providing no verifiable evidence. A punitive U.S. bombing campaign
against the Syrian government was averted at the last minute when
President Obama decided to first seek congressional approval and then
accepted President Putin’s assistance in working out a deal in which the
Syrian government surrendered all its chemical weapons while still
denying a role in the Aug. 21 incident.
Only later did much of Kerry’s case fall apart as new evidence pointed
to an alternative explanation, that extremist Syrian rebels released the
sarin as a provocation to push Obama across his “red line” and into
committing the U.S. military to the Syrian civil war on the side of the
rebels. But neither U.S. officialdom nor the mainstream U.S. press has
acknowledged the dangerous “group think” that almost got the United
States into another unnecessary war in the Middle East. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “The Collapsing Syria-Sarin Case.”]
It may seem cynical to suggest that the powers-that-be in Official
Washington are so caught up in their own propaganda that they would
prefer the actual killers of innocent people – whether in Syria or
Ukraine – to go unpunished, rather than to admit their own mistakes. But
that is often how the powerful react. Nothing is more important than
their reputations.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra
stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.
(7) NYT admits Ukraine using Neo-Nazis as shock troops to kill
separatists in East - Robert Parry
http://consortiumnews.com/2014/08/10/nyt-discovers-ukraines-neo-Nazis-at-war/
NYT Discovers Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis at War
August 10, 2014
Exclusive: Throughout the Ukraine crisis, the U.S. State Department and
mainstream media have downplayed the role of neo-Nazis in the
U.S.-backed Kiev regime, an inconvenient truth that is surfacing again
as right-wing storm troopers fly neo-Nazi banners as they attack in the
east, Robert Parry reports.
By Robert Parry
The New York Times reported almost in passing on Sunday that the
Ukrainian government’s offensive against ethnic Russian rebels in the
east has unleashed far-right paramilitary militias that have even raised
a neo-Nazi banner over the conquered town of Marinka, just west of the
rebel stronghold of Donetsk.
That might seem like a big story – a U.S.-backed military operation,
which has inflicted thousands of mostly civilian casualties, is being
spearheaded by neo-Nazis. But the consistent pattern of the mainstream
U.S. news media has been – since the start of the Ukraine crisis – to
white-out the role of Ukraine’s brown-shirts.
{photo}
http://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Screen-shot-2014-03-30-at-1.31.29-PM-300x171.png
Far-right militia members demonstrating outside Ukrainian parliament in
Kiev in March 2014. (Screen shot from RT video via YouTube video)
{end photo}
Only occasionally is the word “neo-Nazi” mentioned and usually in the
context of dismissing this inconvenient truth as “Russian propaganda.”
Yet the reality has been that neo-Nazis played a key role in the violent
overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych last February as well
as in the subsequent coup regime holding power in Kiev and now in the
eastern offensive.
On Sunday, a Times article by Andrew E. Kramer mentioned the emerging
neo-Nazi paramilitary role in the final three paragraphs:
“The fighting for Donetsk has taken on a lethal pattern: The regular
army bombards separatist positions from afar, followed by chaotic,
violent assaults by some of the half-dozen or so paramilitary groups
surrounding Donetsk who are willing to plunge into urban combat.
“Officials in Kiev say the militias and the army coordinate their
actions, but the militias, which count about 7,000 fighters, are angry
and, at times, uncontrollable. One known as Azov, which took over the
village of Marinka, flies a neo-Nazi symbol resembling a Swastika as its
flag.
“In pressing their advance, the fighters took their orders from a local
army commander, rather than from Kiev. In the video of the attack, no
restraint was evident. Gesturing toward a suspected pro-Russian
position, one soldier screamed, ‘The bastards are right there!’ Then he
opened fire.”
In other words, the neo-Nazi militias that surged to the front of
anti-Yanukovych protests last February have now been organized as shock
troops dispatched to kill ethnic Russians in the east – and they are
operating so openly that they hoist a Swastika-like neo-Nazi flag over
one conquered village with a population of about 10,000.
Burying this information at the end of a long article is also typical of
how the Times and other U.S. mainstream news outlets have dealt with the
neo-Nazi problem in the past. When the reality gets mentioned, it
usually requires a reader knowing much about Ukraine’s history and
reading between the lines of a U.S. news account.
For instance, last April 6, the New York Times published a
human-interest profile of a Ukrainian nationalist named Yuri Marchuk who
was wounded in the uprising against Yanukovych in February. If you read
deep into the story, you learn that Marchuk was a leader of the
right-wing Svoboda from Lviv, which – if you did your own research – you
would discover is a neo-Nazi stronghold where Ukrainian nationalists
hold torch-light parades in honor of World War II Nazi collaborator
Stepan Bandera.
Without providing that context, the Times does mention that Lviv
militants plundered a government arsenal and dispatched 600 militants a
day to Kiev’s Maidan square to do battle with the police. Marchuk also
described how these well-organized militants, consisting of paramilitary
brigades of 100 fighters each, launched the fateful attack against the
police on Feb. 20, the battle where Marchuk was wounded and where the
death toll suddenly spiked into scores of protesters and about a dozen
police.
Marchuk later said he visited his comrades at the occupied City Hall.
What the Times doesn’t mention is that City Hall was festooned with Nazi
banners and even a Confederate battle flag as a tribute to white supremacy.
The Times touched on the inconvenient neo-Nazi truth again on April 12
in an article about the mysterious death of neo-Nazi leader Oleksandr
Muzychko, who was killed during a shootout with police on March 24. The
article quoted a local Right Sektor leader, Roman Koval, explaining the
crucial role of his organization in carrying out the anti-Yanukovych coup.
“Ukraine’s February revolution, said Mr. Koval, would never have
happened without Right Sector and other militant groups,” the Times wrote.
Burning Insects
The brutality of these neo-Nazis surfaced again on May 2 when right-wing
toughs in Odessa attacked an encampment of ethnic Russian protesters
driving them into a trade union building which was then set on fire with
Molotov cocktails. As the building was engulfed in flames, some people
who tried to flee were chased and beaten, while those trapped inside
heard the Ukrainian nationalists liken them to black-and-red-striped
potato beetles called Colorados, because those colors are used in
pro-Russian ribbons.
“Burn, Colorado, burn” went the chant.
As the fire worsened, those dying inside were serenaded with the
taunting singing of the Ukrainian national anthem. The building also was
spray-painted with Swastika-like symbols and graffiti reading “Galician
SS,” a reference to the Ukrainian nationalist army that fought alongside
the German Nazi SS in World War II, killing Russians on the eastern front.
The death by fire of dozens of people in Odessa recalled a World War II
incident in 1944 when elements of a Galician SS police regiment took
part in the massacre of the Polish village of Huta Pieniacka, which had
been a refuge for Jews and was protected by Russian and Polish
partisans. Attacked by a mixed force of Ukrainian police and German
soldiers on Feb. 28, 1944, hundreds of townspeople were massacred,
including many locked in barns that were set ablaze.
The legacy of World War II – especially the bitter fight between
Ukrainian nationalists from the west and ethnic Russians from the east
seven decades ago – is never far from the surface in Ukrainian politics.
One of the heroes celebrated during the Maidan protests in Kiev was Nazi
collaborator Stepan Bandera, whose name was honored in many banners
including one on a podium where Sen. John McCain voiced support for the
uprising to oust Yanukovych, whose political base was among ethnic
Russians in eastern Ukraine.
During World War II, Bandera headed the Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists-B, a radical paramilitary movement that sought to transform
Ukraine into a racially pure state. OUN-B took part in the expulsion and
extermination of thousands of Jews and Poles.
Though most of the Maidan protesters in 2013-14 appeared motivated by
anger over political corruption and by a desire to join the European
Union, neo-Nazis made up a significant number and surged to the front
during the seizure of government buildings and the climatic clashes with
police.
In the days after the Feb. 22 coup, as the neo-Nazi militias effectively
controlled the government, European and U.S. diplomats scrambled to help
the shaken parliament put together the semblance of a respectable
regime, although at least four ministries, including national security,
were awarded to the right-wing extremists in recognition of their
crucial role in ousting Yanukovych.
As extraordinary as it was for a modern European state to hand
ministries over to neo-Nazis, virtually the entire U.S. news media
cooperated in playing down the neo-Nazi role. Stories in the U.S. media
delicately step around this neo-Nazi reality by keeping out relevant
context, such as the background of coup regime’s national security chief
Andriy Parubiy, who founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine in
1991, blending radical Ukrainian nationalism with neo-Nazi symbols.
Parubiy was commandant of the Maidan’s “self-defense forces.”
Last April, as the Kiev regime launched its “anti-terrorist operation”
against the ethnic Russians in the east, Parubiy announced that his
right-wing paramilitary forces, incorporated as National Guard units,
would lead the way. On April 15, Parubiy went on Twitter to declare,
“Reserve unit of National Guard formed #Maidan Self-defense volunteers
was sent to the front line this morning.” (Parubiy resigned from his
post this past week for unexplained reasons.)
Now, however, as the Ukrainian military tightens its noose around the
remaining rebel strongholds, battering them with artillery fire and
aerial bombardments, thousands of neo-Nazi militia members are again
pressing to the front as fiercely motivated fighters determined to kill
as many ethnic Russians as they can. It is a remarkable story but one
that the mainstream U.S. news media would prefer not to notice.
Threatening Russia: The Unanswered Questions of Malaysian Airlines MH17
| Global Research
Ionut Dobrinescu<idobrinescu@ddrept.net> 4 August 2014 03:39
(8) Ukraine a key part of pivot to Asia - Mike Whitney
http://www.globalresearch.ca/threatening-russia-the-unanswered-questions-of-malaysian-airlines-mh17/5394664
The Unanswered Questions of Malaysian Airlines MH17
By Mike Whitney
Global Research, August 03, 2014
If you’re starting to think that everything you’ve read about the MH17
crash is bullshit, you’re probably right. There’s not much truth to most
of it.
But why would the administration lie about things that are so easy to
disprove? What’s the point? Are they just getting sloppy and apathetic
or is something else going on here?
To get a handle on what’s really going on, we have to understand that
Ukraine is not just another bloody afterthought like Iraq, Afghanistan
or Syria, none of which would dramatically impact the US’s role as the
world’s only superpower. Ukraine is different. Ukraine is an essential
part of Washington’s plan to pivot to Asia. If Washington is unable to
achieve its objectives in Ukraine — create a chokepoint for vital
resources flowing from Russia to the EU, establish NATO bases in the
heart of Eurasia, and drive a wedge between Moscow and Brussels — then
the plan to maintain US global hegemony for the next century will fail.
And if the plan fails, then China will gradually become the world’s
biggest and most powerful economy, economic ties between Moscow and
Europe grow stronger, and the US will slide into irreversible decline.
Get the picture?
This is the scenario that Washington wants to avoid at all cost. That’s
why the anti-Russia hysteria in the media has been so ferocious and
unrelenting. That’s why the State Department assisted in the coup d’état
that toppled the Ukrainian government and triggered the crisis. And
that’s why ruling elites of all stripes have thrown their support behind
a policy that recklessly pits one nuclear-armed adversary against
another. It’s because the bigshot money-guys who run this country are
bound and determined to be the Kingfish for the next hundred years even
if it means plunging the world into the abyss of a third world war.
That’s just a chance they’re willing to take.
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless:
Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also
available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.
(9) Tensions grow in Germany over threat of war with Russia
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/08/11/germ-a11.html
By Ulrich Rippert and Peter Schwarz
11 August 2014
A fierce dispute over German policy towards Russia has broken out
between two leading German business newspapers, Handelsblatt and
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). While the FAZ calls for a robust
confrontation with Russia, the Handelsblatt describes this as a "wrong
track" leading directly to war. The conflict expresses sharp divisions
within the ruling class over the future direction of German foreign policy.
Since the start of the crisis in Ukraine, virtually the entire German
media has supported and encouraged the federal government's aggressive
line. The Handelsblatt, speaking for the German export industry, had
merely cautioned for a little more prudence.
But last Monday, Handelsblatt publisher Gabor Steingart made a frontal
attack on the FAZ. In his "Morning Briefing" column, delivered daily by
e-mail to Handelsblatt subscribers, he accused the FAZ editorial board
of "openly" calling "for a strike against Russia." He referred to the
lead article, "Show strength," published the same day on the front page
of the FAZ, which demanded that the West "strengthen and also
demonstrate its willingness for military defense." Such phrases amount
to an "ideological conscription order," Steingart charged.
The FAZ responded immediately. Christian Geyer described Steingart's
accusations as "ludicrous" and accused him of submitting to "pressure
from the business lobby" and making himself into a "mouth-piece for an
economism for which business is the be-all and end-all". Steingart's
maxim, Geyer charged, was: "Be nice to Putin, whatever he does;
otherwise business located in Germany will have an economic problem."
According to the FAZ, "military aggression" by the Russian army has
already begun, and anyone who failed to take this into consideration had
tragically lost contact with reality.
Steingart responded with a long essay, "The West on the wrong path,"
which simultaneously appeared in Russian and English on Friday. The
article is noteworthy because it adopts an openness rarely found in the
bourgeois media to warn of the imminent threat of war with Russia.
The Handelsblatt publisher compares the war propaganda against Russia
with the war fever at the beginning of the First World War. He writes
that the formula that "History does not repeat itself" brings him no
comfort, as the US Congress is openly discussing arming Ukraine. Former
security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski was recommending equipping local
citizens there for house-to-house and street combat. And the German
chancellor was declaring herself ready "to take severe measures."
Steingart attacked the conformism of the German media, citing by name
the Tagesspiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung
and Der Spiegel. In his view, German journalism has "switched from
level-headed to agitated" in a few weeks. The spectrum of opinion had
been "narrowed to the field of vision of a sniper scope ... Newspapers
we thought to be all about thoughts and ideas now march in lock-step
with politicians in their calls for sanctions against Russia's President
Putin."
At the end of his article, Steingart urgently appeals to Chancellor
Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier to abandon
the political course of the United States. "(N)o one is forcing us to
play the role of vassals," he writes. Everyone can see how President
Obama "and Putin are driving as in a dream directly towards a sign which
reads: Dead End."
Steingart argues that the American tendency to engage in military
escalation has not proven itself. After the successful Normandy landing
in the Second World War, all major US wars--Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and
Afghanistan--had been clear failures. Moving NATO units towards the
Polish border and thinking about arming Ukraine was "a continuation of a
lack of diplomacy by military means."
Steingart advises the federal government to be guided by the example of
Willy Brandt. Brandt, as mayor of Berlin in 1961, had reined in his
impotent rage over the construction of the Wall, "so as not to slip from
the catastrophe of division into the much greater catastrophe of war."
Instead of pursuing a "policy of running your head against the wall",
Germany needed a policy designed to achieve a "reconciliation of
interests" with Russia.
The sharp exchange of words between the two business dailies shows that
the risk of a war with Russia, which may develop into a nuclear
catastrophe, is far more imminent than is otherwise admitted by the
media. The Handelsblatt editor's stark warning of an imminent military
escalation clearly reveals that leading capitalist interests take this
threat very seriously.
For a long time, German business organisations have--albeit
grudgingly--declared their willingness to bow to the "primacy of
politics" in the Ukraine crisis. However, following the imposition of
tough sanctions against Russia, which have also had a telling effect on
the German economy and threaten to throw Europe back into recession,
they are now breaking their silence.
At the same time, the danger of military confrontation increases daily.
The Ukrainian army's besieging and bombardment of the cities of Luhansk
and Donetsk has forced hundreds of thousands to flee to Russia, and is
aimed at provoking Russia into a military response.
On Thursday, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen travelled to
Kiev and ensured the Ukrainian government of the Western alliance's
financial and military backing. US President Barack Obama also announced
support for the regime in Kiev. At the same time, the US Navy announced
that a guided missile warship, the Vella Gulf, was to arrive Thursday in
the Black Sea with a 400-man crew.
This has led to more calls from within leading German circles advocating
a fundamental reorientation of foreign policy: a departure from the
alliance with the US and closer cooperation with Russia.
Steingart makes a sharp attack on US foreign policy, but he falls short
of calling for such a change of course. That is done instead by Jakob
Augstein, who recommends a very similar line to Steingart's in his
weekly Spiegel Online column. While the Spiegel editors clamour an for
aggressive confrontation with Russia, Spiegel co-owner Augstein pleads
for the build-up of new security structures together with Russia--and
"if necessary without the United States." [...]
(10) Why have the media and Obama administration gone silent on MH17?
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/08/18/ukmh-a18.html
By Niles Williamson
18 August 2014
The deafening silence of the US media and government about the
investigation into the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 one
month ago reeks of a cover-up.
In the hours and days immediately after the crash, without a single
shred of evidence, US officials alleged that the passenger jet was shot
down by an SA-11 ground-to-air missile fired from pro-Russian
separatist-held territory in eastern Ukraine. They launched a political
campaign to obtain harsh economic sanctions against Russia and
strengthen NATO’s military posture in Eastern Europe.
Picking up on the scent, the CIA attack dogs in the US and European
media blamed the crash squarely on Russian President Vladimir Putin. The
cover of the July 28 print edition of German news magazine Der Spiegel
showed the images of MH17 victims surrounding bold red text reading
“Stoppt Putin Jetzt!” (Stop Putin Now!). A July 26 editorial in the
Economist declared Putin to be the author of MH17’s destruction, while
the magazine ghoulishly superimposed Putin’s face over a spider web on
its front cover, denouncing Putin’s “web of lies.”
Anyone comparing the media’s demonization of Putin with their treatment
of Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi had to conclude that Washington was
launching a campaign for regime change in Russia like those it carried
out in Libya and Iraq—this time, recklessly pushing the United States
towards war with a nuclear-armed power, Russia.
Having built up the crash into a casus belli against Russia, however,
the US media suddenly dropped the matter completely. The New York Times
has not found it fit to print a word on the MH17 crash since August 7.
There is no innocent explanation for the sudden disappearance of MH17
from the media and political spotlight. The plane’s black box has been
held in Britain for examination for weeks, and US and Russian spy
satellites and military radar were intensively scanning east Ukraine at
the time of the crash. The claim that Washington does not have detailed
knowledge of the circumstances of the crash and the various forces
involved is not credible.
If the evidence that is in Washington’s hands incriminated only Russia
and the Russian-backed forces, it would have been released to feed the
media frenzy against Putin. If it has not been released, this is because
the evidence points to the involvement of the Ukrainian regime in Kiev
and its backers in Washington and the European capitals.
From the outset, the Obama administration presented no evidence to back
up the incendiary charges that Putin was responsible for the MH17 crash.
In his press briefing on July 18, the day after the crash, President
Obama stated that it was still “too early for us to be able to guess
what the intentions of those who might have launched this surface-to-air
missile might have had.”
While cynically exploiting the crash to pressure and threaten Russia,
Obama warned that “there will likely be misinformation” in the coverage
of the crash. In a backhanded acknowledgment that he had no evidence to
support his claims, he said: “In terms of identifying specifically what
individual or group of individuals or personnel ordered the strike, how
it came about those are things that I think are still going to be
subject to additional information that we’re going to be gathering.”
In the event, the misinformation on the MH17 crash came from the Obama
administration itself. Secretary of State John Kerry went on a media
blitz on July 20, arguing that the pro-Russian separatists and the
Russian government were responsible for the shoot-down.
The sole evidence he presented were a few, dubious “social media
records” posted to the Internet. He presented unauthenticated audio
recordings of separatists speaking of a plane crash, edited and released
by Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency, which works closely with the CIA;
YouTube video clips showing a truck moving unidentified military
equipment along a road; and a retracted social media statement claiming
responsibility for shooting down a plane attributed to separatist leader
Igor Strelkov.
Very quickly, the US government’s story line on MH17 began to collapse.
At a press briefing on July 21, State Department spokesperson and former
CIA Middle East analyst Marie Harf declared that the Obama
administration’s conclusions regarding the downing of the plane were
“based on open information which is basically common sense.” Challenged
by reporters to provide the evidence, she admitted that she could not:
“I know it’s frustrating. Believe me, we try to get as much out there
are possible. And for some reason, sometimes we can’t.”
After a month during which Washington has failed to release evidence to
support its charges against Putin, it is clear that the political
offensive of the NATO governments and the media frenzy against Putin
were based on lies.
If pro-Russian separatists had fired a ground-to-air missile, as the US
government claims, the Air Force would have imagery in their possession
confirming it beyond a shadow of a doubt. The US Air Force’s Defense
Support Program utilizes satellites with infrared sensors to detect
missile launches anywhere on the planet, and US radar posts in Europe
would have tracked the missile as it shot through the sky. These
satellite and radar data have not been released, because whatever they
show does not fit the storyline concocted by the US government and media.
What has emerged, instead, is a drumbeat of evidence pointing to the
US-backed regime in Kiev’s role in the MH17 shoot-down. The day after
Kerry made his remarks, the Russian military presented radar and
satellite data indicating that a Ukrainian SU-25 fighter jet was in the
immediate vicinity and ascending towards MH17 as it was shot down. This
claim has not been addressed, let alone refuted by the American government.
NSA whistle-blower William Binney and other retired American
intelligence agents issued a statement at the end of July calling into
question the social media data presented by Kerry, and demanding the
publication of satellite imagery of the missile launch. They added, “We
are hearing indirectly from some of our former colleagues that what
Secretary Kerry is peddling does not square with the real intelligence.”
On August 9, the Malaysian New Straits Times published an article
charging the Kiev regime with shooting down MH17. It stated that
evidence from the crash site indicated that the plane was shot down by a
Ukrainian fighter with a missile followed by heavy machine gun fire.
While it is too early to say conclusively how MH17 was shot down, the
preponderance of the evidence points directly at the Ukrainian regime
and, behind them, the American government and the European powers. They
created the conditions for the destruction of MH17, backing the
fascist-led coup in Kiev this February that brought the current
pro-Western regime to power. The Western media then supported the Kiev
regime’s war to suppress opposition to the putsch in east Ukraine,
turning the region into a war zone in which MH17 was then shot down.
After the murder of the 298 people aboard MH17, in which they played an
important if as-yet unexplained role, Western governments and
intelligence agencies seized upon the tragedy in a reckless and sinister
maneuver to escalate war threats against the Putin regime. Silence
denotes consent, and the deafening silence of the Western media on the
issue of Kiev’s involvement in the MH17 crash testifies to the
criminalization not only of the foreign policy establishment, but also
of its media lackeys and the entire ruling class.
This newsletter is at http://mailstar.net/bulletins/140819-b2444-MH17.rtf
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