The immediate cause of the MH17 disaster was a missile shot by pro-Russian forces who mistook it for one of the military aircraft they had been regularly shooting down. It is a terrible tragedy – and tragically not unique. There have been several such events in my lifetime, including the USS Vincennes incident and the Soviet downing of a Korean airliner.
The problem is that Vladimir Putin has revived the Soviet cult of perfectionism – the idea that the state simply cannot make a mistake. That Putin-backed forces could commit an error is therefore unthinkable, as that would imply that Putin made an error in backing and supplying them. Putin cannot make errors. We have therefore seen a stream of desperate propaganda stories emanating from the Russian media, such as the allegation that it was the government in Kiev attempting to shoot down Putin himself. These narratives are aimed at the domestic Russian nationalist audience, but are accepted by the small band of ardent Putin supporters in the West.
Many people in the West, myself included, have been shocked and alienated by the rampant and vicious immorality of Western foreign policy in what I might call the neo-con era, with the ascendancy of Bush and Blair marking a step change in the open use of military force to grab natural resources – a return to the Imperial heyday. The veneer of concern for democracy and human rights layered over Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, the curtailment of long-cherished civil rights at home and the mass compound crimes of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, led to a visceral revulsion.
Putin’s successful opposition to western designs on Syria and Iran gave the impression, quite probably correctly, that a revived Russia was the only effective obstacle to western hegemony, China being passive. But unfortunately this led some who opposed Western neo-imperialism to join in the hero worship of Putin.
The mechanisms of this vary. In my view, the largest number are people who are not psychologically equipped to fight over-mighty power everywhere, which is a lonely path, and prefer the much easier option of joining the entourage of a big power, and convincing themselves that power is good. It is comforting to feel part of a powerful team. Some of course are paid by the Russians, and you see them turning up on Russia Today both as presenters and interviewees, but these are a small section. Some were supporters of the Soviet Union.
What is perhaps most extraordinary is that, the very things which these people criticise most about Western society, Russia and Putin do much worse. At the most fundamental level, the disparity of wealth between rich and poor in Russia is far, far worse than the still appalling level it has reached in the West.
The total Russian economy is 20% smaller than the total British economy. Yet Russia has almost three times as many billionaires as the UK, and the Russian billionaires’ combined wealth is over six times the combined wealth of British billionaires.
Go figure. Yet the delusional continue to contrive to believe that Russia is an alternative to global capitalism.
Russia is not only a much more unequal society than the West. It also much worse in the field of civil liberties and media freedom. Scores of real journalists have been killed, mostly unheard of internationally. The free media has vanished. In the West, the field of opinion reflected in the mainstream media has narrowed right down. In the UK, Andrew Gilligan was sacked for telling the truth about Iraqi WMD, while his source was murdered. But the West is moving in the direction of autocracy; Russia is already there. It in no sense represents an alternative, freer society than the West.
Nor is Russia any less imperialist. Putin is in fact an extremely aggressive nationalist imperialist, as his annexations of Abkhazia and Crimea have shown. Highly significant is the legislation just passed to award Russian nationality to ethnic Russians in former Soviet states. That is racially based legislation. It means for example that 40% of the population of Kazakhstan potentially become Russian citizens, with similar figures in the Baltic states. It is highly aggressive and designed to have destabilising potential.
One fact which has become undeniably clear in the Ukraine is that the pro-Russian insurgency in the East is commanded by members of the Russian military and security forces like Strelkov who are Russian, not Ukrainian citizens, and they are under tactical and strategic supervision from Russia. Again, the self-hating fantasist tendency in the West manage to convince themselves that what is happening in East Ukraine is massive destruction of civilian populations by NATO forces.
People who are that removed from reality cannot be helped.
Much more dangerous are those who do have a grip on reality, who understand exactly what is really happening, and who don’t care. That sums up the position of almost all western governments. The truth is that the financial interests of all those Russian billionaires are completely linked in with those of the super-rich of the West. To take only the UK as an example, these are the people Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson and Boris Johnson lunch and have holidays with. These are the people who employ Gerhard Schroeder and David Owen as lapdogs.
Nobody is more annoyed than Angela Merkel at the downing of MH17, not because she cares about those dead people, but because of the massive effort she has put into ensuring that, whatever Russia does in Ukraine, German economic interests will not be affected. Germany gets most of its electricity from Russian gas, and both Siemens and Mercedes, on a daily basis, have been lobbying Merkel to make sure that nothing is done that hurts German economic interests. Cameron has been receiving the same lobbying from his banker mates. In both these cases, the politicians are being talked to by the people who finance them.
The result is that there has been a strong diplomatic push, particularly by Germany, to divert the question of sanctions on to matters of process. The problem is not Russia trying to annex bits of Ukraine and funding, arming and staffing the destabilisation of a European state. The Germans are seeking to define the problem down to whether or not Russia cooperates in various stages of the air crash investigation.
Putin will continue his dangerous expansionist nationalism because it is a self-trapping path for a politician to take; but also he is encouraged that whatever he does, nobody makes any serious moves to stop him. The people on MH17 were killed because of the pusillanimity of Western politicians, financed and guided by the financial elite.
The pathetic “sanctions” adopted by the US and EU so far have been specifically designed to be completely toothless. They target middle and lower ranking individuals without major western links anyway. None of the top ten largest Russian billionaires has been touched.
Russia’s richest man – Alisher Usmanov – is extremely close to Putin and as chairman of Gazprominvestholdings has been directly involved for a decade in pressurising Ukraine, and was also Putin’s chosen instrument for closing down the free media. But you won’t see Usmanov on any sanctions list – he has 10% of Facebook, 29% of Arsenal FC, the most expensive mansion in Surrey and numerous other western connections, not to mention he is Gerhard Schroeder and David Owen’s direct boss.
Much has been said of the 1.2 billion dollars contract for two amphibious assault vessels Russia has ordered from France. Amphibious assault! Where?
But, actually much more interesting, 1.2 billion dollars incredibly happens to be the combined value of four of the World’s largest luxury yachts, which met together off Cap Ferrat and Antibes from 10 to 16 June this year. They are Dilbar, Madame Gu, Grand Bleu and Hermitage.
In Putin’s Russia, government, organised crime and secret services are absolutely integrated. All were well represented at the series of meetings that took place on those yachts, where deals were done on everything from metal prices to heroin – and Ukraine. If US drones had wanted to do some good in the world, there was their target, but they were too busy killing some 16 year old kid, and numerous bystanders, in Waziristan or Yemen for a dangerous interpretation of the Koran. None of the people at those meetings will appear on any sanctions list, though they are the men who rule Russia with Putin. They will all still be very welcome in boardrooms in London, Berlin and New York.
If Europe had followed from the start the excellent leadership offered by Radek Sikorski, the passengers on MH17 would not have died. I should like to think that the European Council will start to listen to Sikorski now. But I doubt it.
Rory Stewart on Newsnight with the gleeful Francine Stark calling for NATO troops into the Baltic States. Sees this as urgent, and sees MH17 as evidence Putin out of control. Looks like US/EU media hysteria to be translated into action… Anyone remember the (unjustified) invasion of Afghanistan after (justifiable) US media hysteria?
Only UK coverage of kidnapping of a British journalist… again, it’s the Daily Mail:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2702649/British-journalist-reported-missing-Donetsk-covering-battles.html
You can feel for the cognitive-dissonance Cuomo must have. He must at least have average intelligence, and so his frustration with his interviewee is something he can control, but at the cost of his job likely.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ded_1406137838
how many know the flt was a KLM flight? deputy to AIDS Prof, who didn’t make the plane because her father was ill, was devastated at news he was on Malaysian airliner because she knew the Prof ONLY FLEW on KLM. 2 mins into the audio:
audio: BBC: “I was just incredulous”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p023gd2d
Bernama: KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Codeshares With MAS For Flight MH17
http://www.bernama.com.my/bernama/v7/ge/newsgeneral.php?id=1054431
do your own searching & see conflicting reports KLM did/didn’t fly the same route pre the crash.
people thought malaysia would analyse black boxes, but it seems because it was a KLM flt, the Dutch got it and handed it to the Brits at Farnborough. LOL.
20 July: Times of India: The ministry of civil aviation’s claim that there was no Air India flight near the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 when it was shot down over Ukraine on Thursday appears misleading.
Minutes before the crash caused by a missile strike, the AI pilots had also heard the controller give the Malaysian aircraft MH17 what is called “a direct routing”. This permits an aircraft to fly straight, instead of tracking the regular route which is generally a zig-zag track that goes from one ground-based navigation aid or way point to another. “Direct routing saves fuel and time and is preferred by pilots. In this case, it proved fatal,” said an airline source.
“The AI Dreamliner was less than 25km away from the Malaysian aircraft when the latter was hit by a missile. When the pilots learnt the cause of the crash later, they were stunned…
Soon after the tragedy, the media picked up data from flightradar24, a live flight tracker website which showed the AI aircraft in the vicinity. But the next day, on Friday, the civil aviation ministry issued a statement that “there was no Air India flight near the ill-fated Malaysian plane at the time of the incident”…
MH17 was in the Dnipropetrovsk airspace flying an east-bound track on 33,000feet and the AI Delhi-Birmingham flight was on a west-bound route and had entered Ukraine after crossing Russia when the AI pilots heard the Dnipropetrovsk controller give the Malaysian aircraft a direct routing…
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Air-India-flight-was-90-seconds-away-when-missile-struck-Malaysia-Airlines-Flight-MH17/articleshow/38702536.cms
Boxes not tampered with.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/10303603/MH17-black-boxes-not-tampered-with-Dutch
Compared with this earlier statement from Kiev. Remember Statements are Static they gather dust.
Kiev keeps telling porkies ,I expect they are guilty,they keep getting egg on their Nazi stupid faces.http://www.gmanetwork.com/…/ukraine-claims-pro-russian…
Ukraine claims pro-Russian rebels tampered with MH17 recorders
http://www.gmanetwork.com
Sorry about the previous link .The blame game. http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/371341/news/world/ukraine-claims-pro-russian-rebels-tampered-with-mh17-recorders
If anyone has the expertise to check, that times of India story makes me wonder if it was a Kiev ATC who allowed the diverted flight path.
on 21 July BBC World Sce had lengthier piece on the following stating EU gets oil & coal, lots of gas, plus plenty of nuclear bits & pieces from russia.
BBC – The EU’s nuclear links with Russia
They (European leaders) are reluctant to get tough, much more so than the United States.
The EU could easily end up doing itself a lot of economic harm, most obviously if Russia were to respond by turning down the gas….
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28203907
Russia angst sees EU energy efficiency targets watered down
The EU commission on Wednesday (23 July) tabled a plan to increase the bloc’s overall energy efficiency, but had to water it down amid fears of Russian gas supplies being cut in the ongoing Ukraine crisis…
Planned sanctions against Russia, currently being worked out by the EU commission “should not include oil, gas, coal and uranium imports,” he (Oettinger) said….
http://euobserver.com/economic/125087
obama has promised to provide EU with energy if the EU goes along with tougher sanctions against russia, so believe him if u like, & risk EU energy security. remember all that fracked oil the US claimed they have… well the monterey shale reserves were downgraded by 96% recently.
i’m not left, nor pro-putin, nor anti-west, as people who aren’t in the russia-bashing are being characterised. however –
iraq wmds not there
overthrow of the libyan govt not a good idea
syrian army didn’t carry out chemical weapons attack
whose opinions were the above? who has been proved right?
source re monterey:
21 May –
Reuters – UPDATE 2-U.S. EIA cuts recoverable Monterey shale oil estimate by 96 pct
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Wednesday cut its estimate of recoverable oil in California’s Monterey shale by 96 percent, casting doubt on what was once thought to be America’s next major energy play….
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/21/eia-monterey-shale-idUSL1N0O713N20140521
3 June –
Itar-Tass: Shell halts drilling for shale gas in Ukraine because of military hostilities in east
The Royal Dutch Shell has temporarily halted drilling for shale gas on the border of Ukraine’s Kharkiv and Donetsk regions to protect its personnel from clashes that intensified between anti-Kiev activists in the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Ukrainian army….
Predicted resources of the Yuzivka field are valued at 4.054 trillion cubic meters of gas. Industrial mining is to start in 2017. The drilling on the Yuzivka field started in 2013.
http://en.itar-tass.com/economy/734595
finally, it could be true or false that pro-russian rebels or even other anti-kiev rebels shot down, accidentally or on purpose, the malaysian plane.
it could be true or false that the kiev regime alone, or in tandem with others, shot it down to blame it on russia.
that is what we would hope the investigators – if they are truly independent – will establish beyond reasonable doubt.
let them do their job, but keep a close watch.
Odie wrote:
Well lets put our thinking caps on, think really hard and see if we can figure out who got these issues right while the mainstream media’s presstitutes and war-mongering politicians got them all wrong.
iraq wmds not there – Who got it right? Why, the “conspiracy theorists” did.
Overthrow of the libyan govt not a good idea – Who got it right? Why, the “conspiracy theorists” did (again).
syrian army didn’t carry out chemical weapons attack – Who got it right? Why, the “conspiracy theorists” did (again).
“The immediate cause of the MH17 disaster was a missile shot by pro-Russian forces”
Evidence please.
Oh, but someone already said that. LOL.
In a pinch, Craig Murray can always be relied upon to speak for the Empire.
As for all the bollocks about Russia’s pathetic economy, well it is just that, bollocks as I pointed out before.
Russia’s GDP has tripled in the last 15 years, while the US has stagnated or shrunk as jobs have been offshored and real, unmassaged unemployment numbers have climbed.
And anyway what does America’s mighty GDP consist of? About 20% for healthcare for the most obese people in the world. Then there’s the legal services industry, the advertising industry, the porno video industry, plus the porno history industry in Hollywood, plus everyone serving each other toxic fast food and StarBucks coffee. Yeah, the Russians should be so lucky.
Meantime, Russia produces the rocket engines the US needs to launch every one of their communications satellites and recently launched 37 or was if 52 satellites with one rocket.
Oddie and Silvio.
Being right about that stuff doesn’t make you right you know!
Because… because… well because there are things which our rulers know, but can’t tell you about because of national security or something, that would make your hair stand on end and have you pleading with them for more wars to keep you safe… and that’s a well known fact which everyone knows…and if you question it you are a foil-hatted,Putin-loving conspiracy theorist.
Far better to leave your TV on, drink lots of booze and let the corporate media tell you what to think.
CanSpeccy – lmao, excellent post.
“Obviously, the US satellite photos do not support the Obama regime’s lies. If the White House had any evidence of Russian complicity, it would have released it to great fanfare days ago.
We are fortunate that the analytical side of the CIA, in contrast with the black ops side, retains analysts with integrity even after the purge of the agency ordered by Dick Cheney. Incensed that the CIA did not immediately fall in line with all of the Bush regime’s war lies, Cheney had the agency purged. The black ops side of the agency is a different story. Many believe that it should be defunded and abolished as this part of the CIA operates in violation of statutory US law.”
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/07/23/us-intelligence-evidence-russia-paul-craig-roberts/
And when is Craig Murray going to answer the question, “where’s the evidence”?
I’m not holding my breath…
@SB, if you want to put the NCS out of business, the way to do it – maybe the only way – is to ratify the Rome Statute. That deprives them of impunity, which is crucial for their sort of organized crime. Just the commitment to acknowledge the law would scare the black-ops cowards straight. The ratification package would need to void the blatantly arbitrary Central Intelligence Agency Act, which exempts black ops from oversight by any court but even if the government failed to lay that groundwork before ratification, international pressure from the treaty body would mount until they fell in line.
Farnborough: “British Scientists said today …”
LMAO
Why don’t they get that top bloke from RARDE, the one in the brown dustcoat and milk-bottle glasses like Kenny Everett’s DIY enthusiast character who always managed to injure himself -the one with the failed O-level in woodwork (with remedial air crash forensics) that handled the Lockerbie case and other terrible miscarriages of justice?
Craig wrote: “In Putin’s Russia, government, organised crime and secret services are absolutely integrated.”
Not that the CIA doesn’t have lots of skeletons in its own closet regarding its own profit making enterprises in collusion with criminal elements. As former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts wrote of the black ops side of the CIA (see Scouse Billy’s post above – July 24 2:47am): “The black ops side of the agency is a different story. Many believe that it should be defunded and abolished as this part of the CIA operates in violation of statutory US law.”
For a more in depth insight into what Roberts might be referring to, I’d suggest checking out the website and published material of the investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker who has published material(including a book “Welcome to Terrorland”) exposing various US intelligence and security agencies operatives routinely engaging in drug smuggling, working with drug smuggling cartels and having connections to Florida flight schools where some of the alleged 9/11 hijackers like Mohammed Atta were known to have trained.
His most recent post of July 15th is illustrative of the material he covers:
This is absurd: “The immediate cause of the MH17 disaster was a missile shot by pro-Russian forces who mistook it for one of the military aircraft they had been regularly shooting down.”
Two days ago Robert Parry reported a US intel source saying that the US has satellite images that point to the Ukraine military as the source of the missile. Men in Ukraine uniforms were seen at the site of a missile battery. Also reported were bottles of alcohol strewn about (quite a good image). Today, Parry’s intel source says the new theory is this. The people in the satellite image were actually defectors wearing uniforms of the Ukraine military. Apparently, they hadn’t had time to find new garb after defecting.
Your assertion is so assured and so unsupported you sound like the bloviating John Kerry.
I was expecting something more from this blog but all I see is the same apologies and propaganda that flow from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave and #10 Downing Street.
btw has anything the public has been told by the MSM been true?
Forbes: HIV/Aids Experts Killed In MH17 Attack
Earlier reports put the toll among researchers and activists at 100, but Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, the current president of the society, dismissed that count. “It might be a little higher [than six] but not the numbers” in some reports, she said, adding: “The extent of our loss is hard to comprehend or express.”..
http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulrodgers/2014/07/19/hivaids-experts-killed-in-mh17-attack/
this also came up in the full bbc world have your say program linked to earlier. mind u, no-one in the world was allowed to call in or email or send in a text to be read out. it was tightly controlled by the beeb as always with not a hint about kiev’s so-called “social media” evidence being debunked as fast as it was produced.
yet every day someone remarks about how terrible it was that a hundred AIDS researchers were killed. oh well.
The big dilemma for the powers at be is that information is instantaneous.Social media has provided the public with pictures and proof of events happening making history difficult to change after the event.
So the powers at be have to obfuscate, skew , invent and withhold until the picture is anything but clear,allowing them to still manipulate our perception of events.
Snowden just 2 weeks ago told us how GCHQ was manipulating social media sites.Meaning they could use Rebel FB accounts to say anything they want to say.Or tweet misinformation.
It’s no coincidence that black boxes have a habit of disappearing when there is an air accident.
ATC transcripts are normally released within hours of a crash. 1 week and still waiting.
All the US has left us with are social media posts.The rush to pin the blame without proof smells like WMD , Syria , Ghadafi’s slaughter in Benghazi,sarin gas.
At the same time, the rebels hit two fighters yesterday proving to everyone how good they are at air defence.
Meantime back in Kiev ,there’s a brawl between the extreme right and the rest in Ukraine’s parliament as the US led bloody coup becomes unpopular.They won’t be able to blame fighting in the East on Putin.
“Where’s the evidence?”
That’s an outrageous demand to make of Craig, Scouse Billy, as it plainly hasn’t yet been fabricated. But give Farnborough time.
Nil satis nisi optimum
Silvio. 4 15am
Re American-registered Gulfstream II luxury jet (N987SA) which, with four tons of cocaine abourd crash-landed in Mexico in 2007.
This incident happened in a week when the Irish MSM was full of cocaine-related articles following the death by cocaine of a gorgeous, high profile model Katy French. Do you think they covered this story?
As Roger Waters put it so well: “But it was only a fantasy, The wall was too high as you can see, No matter how he tried he could not break free, And the worms ate into his brain”.
Two journalists in a media-war skirmish over MH-17 here.
Make up your mind which brain is full of worms.
Mary confessed – “That demonstrates the level of my interest in the subject. Nil.”
An unexpected sliver of honesty there. Nearly three hundred civilians blown out of the sky, many experts in life-saving AIDS research and all the interest that Mary (the one for Truth and Justice) can muster is “Nil”.
So much for the tears she claims to cry for the innocents. Maybe the civilian victims were just the wrong colour. Or was it the embarrassment that the object of her disturbed affections (Putin) might have unwittingly facilitated this tragedy?
On the subject of evidence that incriminates the pro-Russian separatists and/or Russian military, will anyone here accept evidence produced by UK/US aviation crash investigators if it points to involvement of the above parties?
“Nil satis nisi optimum”
I think you’ll find Scouse Billy supports the RS. COYB!
(Apologies to those who don’t know what I’m talking about).
It looks as though the wreckage is probably that of MH370. A comparison of the flag positions with respect to the windows on the right hand side of both aircraft shows that the flag and windows on the wreckage matches MH370, not MH17. Early wreckage pictures appeared here on the 17th July:
http://kl.coconuts.co/2014/07/18/alleged-images-flight-mh17-crash-site-emerge-social-media
Note the flag in relation to the windows.
Veterans Today questioned the identity of the crashed aircraft on the 20th July:
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/07/20/wrong-aircraft-identified-as-malaysia-flt-mh-17-fuels-doubts/
It highlights the different tail numbers for MH17 (9M-MRD) and MH370 (9M-MRO) and then shows a picture of a piece of wreckage that landed, quite fortuitously of course, in such a way as to display the letters ‘MRD’ to their best advantage. The ‘9M’ is obscured by a piece of bent outer skin just to emphasise the point, making a statement to the world that this is indeed MH17. To a casual observer it would be the real deal – the VT comments are similar.
Do you remember the person (Cor Pan) who tweeted a picture of MH17 before he boarded – just in case it vanished? Well, the VT article reproduces the picture with the letters RC highlighted on the nose-gear door, which shows that it is 9M-MRC. That, it seems, last flew the MH17 route on 11th July. It’s lucky for Cor Pan that he boarded the wrong plane.
The killer information appeared in Before It’s News on the 22nd July:
http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2014/07/breaking-photos-prove-crashed-malaysian-jet-was-mh-370-2997698.html
This is where the significance of the flag in relation to the windows in the July 17th wreckage photo is established. 9M-MRO (MH370) did not have a window to the left of the flag but 9M-MRD (MH17) did. The piece of wreckage, showing the missing window, appears to be from MH370. How did it end up in a Ukrainian field?
Jim Stone is now covering it on:
http://www.jimstonefreelance.com
Then there is the curious statement from a rebel commander, that the bodies had been dead for some time before take-off, followed by the rush get the bodies out of the way as quickly as possible – even to the extent of cutting into parts of the wreckage to find any others. (Or were they looking for serial-numbered items?) And how will it be established that the bodies arriving back in the Netherlands are the same as the decaying corpses that the rebel commander described?
It will be interesting to learn what is on the flight data and cockpit voice recorders. Maybe, just like those CCTV cameras that never seem to be working when needed, there will be nothing.
In all of this we must not forget the unique ‘coincidence’ of a major carrier loosing two identical aircraft in the space of four months, both in highly controversial circumstances.
Hi MJ,
Yes, I gathered where Scouse Billy’s loyalties fall. But no matter, contrary to Shanks, there are any number of things more important the football, and I’m delighted to share his side in this fight.
And yours, too, fellow-Bluenose.
http://youtu.be/gURiuq926tE
“fellow-Bluenose”
Cool!
“It’s lucky for Cor Pan that he boarded the wrong plane”
Nick Turner: if there’s any truth in what you’re saying then I fear Cor Pan was not lucky. He’s likely dead and in deep freeze somewhere, ready for the next incident involving a Malaysian Airlines 777.
MJ – I believed you meant “Red Side” by your RS reference 😉
Anyway, as Paul says, we’re on the same side on the more important matters…
YNWA