27-07-2014, 04:05 PM
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By William Boardman -- Reader Supported News
U.S. Government Backs Some War Crimes, Not Others
![[Image: 42a7df10-f6d9-4351-9e12-8a80f236-14586-2...28-117.jpg]](http://www.opednews.com/populum/uploaded/42a7df10-f6d9-4351-9e12-8a80f236-14586-2014_07_26_14_12_28-117.jpg)
MH17 remains, July 17, 2014
Are Ukraine and Gaza both part of the samewar?
The same day that Israeli tanks crossed into Gaza, to continue killing civilians and the occasionalHamas fighter, MSNBC decided to ignore the Israeli invasionin favor of wall-to-wall coverage of the presumed shoot-down of MalaysianAirliner MH17 over eastern Ukraine. Why would MSNBC make a choice that looks somuch like propaganda?
The last time the Israelisinvaded Gaza, in 2009, more than 100 Palestinians died for each Israeli killed. The 13 deadIsraelis were soldiers on the attack, the 1,400-plus dead Palestinians weremostly civilians with nowhere safe to go. That hasn't changed much.
The last time someone in Ukraine shot down a civilian airliner, on October 4, 2001, the Kiev government killed 78 people on a Russian plane flying in an international airway to Russia fromIsrael. Kiev denied the shoot-down for nine days before acknowledging that it wasprobably responsible for "an accidental hit from an S-200 rocket firedduring exercises" in Crimea. Ten years later, Kiev issued a report denying thisexplanation, without offering a new one.
What's happening thesedays in both Ukraine and Gaza shares some ugly and dangerous aspects. In bothplaces, quasi-proxies of the United States are on the offensive. The Kievgovernment's assault on separatist-held areas has been as lethal for civiliansas Israel's assault on Gaza (but the war in Ukraine goes almost unreported).Both the governments of Ukraine and Israel prefer to use force against weakeropponents, rather than mediating long-standing, legitimate issues on bothsides. Both Ukraine and Israel are protected by the same patron, the U.S.government, with its apparent determination to dominate both regions, atwhatever human cost is necessary to those who live there.
Even the propagandaspinning through much of the media is the same for both, focusing on ademonized caricature of an enemy, whether Hamas or Putin/Russia.
What do we know, and how do we know it with anycertainty?
The MH17 shoot-down storybroke with a quote from Ukraine president Petro Poroshenko calling it a "terrorist attack." Any time someone uses the word "terrorist" to characterizeanything, it's a red flag signaling manipulation. In Poroshenko's mouth,"terrorist" is also routine Kiev propaganda that always refers to the Ukrainianseparatists as "terrorists," and usually "pro-Russian" as well. Despite theobvious unreliability of accepting any Kiev version of events as accurate, theU.S. government (including president Obama and vice president Biden) andAmerican media ran with unconfirmed and unconfirmable formulations.
MSNBC especiallyreiterated the Kiev story about Russian missiles and how the Russians must haveeither done it or trained the separatists to do it. As MSNBC's Rachel Maddowand others presented it, there was no other possibility. Not even asked was thequestion: does the Kiev government have the same surface to air missilecapability? That seems like a pretty basic question to go unasked in the midstof a story developing with little reliable evidence. Especially since theanswer is that Kiev has the same missiles.
Why hasn't Kiev releasedair controller conversations with MH17? Kiev released dubious tapes ofpurported Russians taking credit for the shoot-down. Why hasn't the U.S. (oranyone else with satellites) released satellite coverage of theshoot-down? One reason, posed by Robert Parry, might be:
WhatI've been told by one source, who has provided accurate information on similarmatters in the past, is that U.S. intelligence agencies do have detailedsatellite images of the likely missile battery that launched the fatefulmissile, but the battery appears to have been under the control of Ukrainiangovernment troops dressed in what look like Ukrainian uniforms.
Thesource said CIA analysts were still not ruling out the possibility that thetroops were actually eastern Ukrainian rebels in similar uniforms but theinitial assessment was that the troops were Ukrainian soldiers.
This is the sort of careful, information-based speculationthat Parry regularly takes mainstream media to task for avoiding. Using theconventional means-motive-opportunity analysis, the Kiev military quicklybecomes one of the obvious suspects. Not only has the Kiev military shot downan airliner before, shooting down MH17 and blaming it on the separatists couldprove useful.
Additionally, theSecretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, the man in charge of the military, is Andriy Parubiy, who achievedhis position after the Kiev coup in February. Parubiy was among the more militarized elements of the Euromaidan protests and has a long history of neo-Naziactivity. (As Parry pointed out, the Washington Post quoted Parubiy as a sourcewithout mentioning any unpleasant truth about him.)
Is there enough evidence yet to indict anyone?
A week after theshoot-down, it's not at all clear who's responsible, or even if it was adeliberate act.
The Russian government ismaintaining a relatively low profile, while seeming to behave appropriately --calling for a neutral investigation, voting with everyone else at the UnitedNations (despite Samantha Power's over-the-top ranting and raving and all butbanging her shoe on the table).
Nobody calls the Donetsk People's Republic government particularly competent, or even much ofa government, but they've managed to get some things right -- retrieving andproperly refrigerating most of the bodies, turning over the black boxes (whichare red) to the Malaysian government, allowing increased access tointernational investigators (including Australians). To get the black boxes, the Malaysian governmentin effect recognized the government of the Donetsk People's Republic --something even the Russians haven't done.
The Kiev government hasboth withheld relevant evidence and put out scare stories unsupported byevidence. Given that MH17 went down in a war zone where the Kiev government hasbeen on the offensive, one might expect Kiev to call for a ceasefire to allowfor a safer clean-up. Instead the offensive continues, on the ground, in theair, and out of the mouth.
The U.S. governmentcontinues to fulminate and froth, but can't seem to think of anything actuallyhelpful to do, unless withholding evidence is helpful.
Kiev air controllers diverted MH17 about 200 miles to the north, over the Donetsk war zone. When the pilot asked to fly at 35,000 feet, the air controllers ordered him to fly at 33,000 feet. Part of the political attack on Russia is theclaim that Russia provided the missiles that shot down MH17, which Kiev and Washington say they knew inadvance. This raises the question of why MH17 was ordered to fly within rangeof known missiles with a range up to 70,000 feet.
The conventionalinternational lemming view still being pushed by the U.S. and othersis that somehow Putin is responsible for whatever happened and Putin can fixit. This is even less credible than arguing that Obama is responsible forwhatever Ukraine or Israel does, and Obama can fix that.
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Who Shot Down MH17 over Ukraine?
By William Boardman [/TD][TD="width: 16%"][/TD]
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By William Boardman -- Reader Supported News
U.S. Government Backs Some War Crimes, Not Others
MH17 remains, July 17, 2014
Are Ukraine and Gaza both part of the samewar?
The same day that Israeli tanks crossed into Gaza, to continue killing civilians and the occasionalHamas fighter, MSNBC decided to ignore the Israeli invasionin favor of wall-to-wall coverage of the presumed shoot-down of MalaysianAirliner MH17 over eastern Ukraine. Why would MSNBC make a choice that looks somuch like propaganda?
The last time the Israelisinvaded Gaza, in 2009, more than 100 Palestinians died for each Israeli killed. The 13 deadIsraelis were soldiers on the attack, the 1,400-plus dead Palestinians weremostly civilians with nowhere safe to go. That hasn't changed much.
The last time someone in Ukraine shot down a civilian airliner, on October 4, 2001, the Kiev government killed 78 people on a Russian plane flying in an international airway to Russia fromIsrael. Kiev denied the shoot-down for nine days before acknowledging that it wasprobably responsible for "an accidental hit from an S-200 rocket firedduring exercises" in Crimea. Ten years later, Kiev issued a report denying thisexplanation, without offering a new one.
What's happening thesedays in both Ukraine and Gaza shares some ugly and dangerous aspects. In bothplaces, quasi-proxies of the United States are on the offensive. The Kievgovernment's assault on separatist-held areas has been as lethal for civiliansas Israel's assault on Gaza (but the war in Ukraine goes almost unreported).Both the governments of Ukraine and Israel prefer to use force against weakeropponents, rather than mediating long-standing, legitimate issues on bothsides. Both Ukraine and Israel are protected by the same patron, the U.S.government, with its apparent determination to dominate both regions, atwhatever human cost is necessary to those who live there.
Even the propagandaspinning through much of the media is the same for both, focusing on ademonized caricature of an enemy, whether Hamas or Putin/Russia.
What do we know, and how do we know it with anycertainty?
The MH17 shoot-down storybroke with a quote from Ukraine president Petro Poroshenko calling it a "terrorist attack." Any time someone uses the word "terrorist" to characterizeanything, it's a red flag signaling manipulation. In Poroshenko's mouth,"terrorist" is also routine Kiev propaganda that always refers to the Ukrainianseparatists as "terrorists," and usually "pro-Russian" as well. Despite theobvious unreliability of accepting any Kiev version of events as accurate, theU.S. government (including president Obama and vice president Biden) andAmerican media ran with unconfirmed and unconfirmable formulations.
MSNBC especiallyreiterated the Kiev story about Russian missiles and how the Russians must haveeither done it or trained the separatists to do it. As MSNBC's Rachel Maddowand others presented it, there was no other possibility. Not even asked was thequestion: does the Kiev government have the same surface to air missilecapability? That seems like a pretty basic question to go unasked in the midstof a story developing with little reliable evidence. Especially since theanswer is that Kiev has the same missiles.
Why hasn't Kiev releasedair controller conversations with MH17? Kiev released dubious tapes ofpurported Russians taking credit for the shoot-down. Why hasn't the U.S. (oranyone else with satellites) released satellite coverage of theshoot-down? One reason, posed by Robert Parry, might be:
WhatI've been told by one source, who has provided accurate information on similarmatters in the past, is that U.S. intelligence agencies do have detailedsatellite images of the likely missile battery that launched the fatefulmissile, but the battery appears to have been under the control of Ukrainiangovernment troops dressed in what look like Ukrainian uniforms.
Thesource said CIA analysts were still not ruling out the possibility that thetroops were actually eastern Ukrainian rebels in similar uniforms but theinitial assessment was that the troops were Ukrainian soldiers.
This is the sort of careful, information-based speculationthat Parry regularly takes mainstream media to task for avoiding. Using theconventional means-motive-opportunity analysis, the Kiev military quicklybecomes one of the obvious suspects. Not only has the Kiev military shot downan airliner before, shooting down MH17 and blaming it on the separatists couldprove useful.
Additionally, theSecretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, the man in charge of the military, is Andriy Parubiy, who achievedhis position after the Kiev coup in February. Parubiy was among the more militarized elements of the Euromaidan protests and has a long history of neo-Naziactivity. (As Parry pointed out, the Washington Post quoted Parubiy as a sourcewithout mentioning any unpleasant truth about him.)
Is there enough evidence yet to indict anyone?
A week after theshoot-down, it's not at all clear who's responsible, or even if it was adeliberate act.
The Russian government ismaintaining a relatively low profile, while seeming to behave appropriately --calling for a neutral investigation, voting with everyone else at the UnitedNations (despite Samantha Power's over-the-top ranting and raving and all butbanging her shoe on the table).
Nobody calls the Donetsk People's Republic government particularly competent, or even much ofa government, but they've managed to get some things right -- retrieving andproperly refrigerating most of the bodies, turning over the black boxes (whichare red) to the Malaysian government, allowing increased access tointernational investigators (including Australians). To get the black boxes, the Malaysian governmentin effect recognized the government of the Donetsk People's Republic --something even the Russians haven't done.
The Kiev government hasboth withheld relevant evidence and put out scare stories unsupported byevidence. Given that MH17 went down in a war zone where the Kiev government hasbeen on the offensive, one might expect Kiev to call for a ceasefire to allowfor a safer clean-up. Instead the offensive continues, on the ground, in theair, and out of the mouth.
The U.S. governmentcontinues to fulminate and froth, but can't seem to think of anything actuallyhelpful to do, unless withholding evidence is helpful.
Kiev air controllers diverted MH17 about 200 miles to the north, over the Donetsk war zone. When the pilot asked to fly at 35,000 feet, the air controllers ordered him to fly at 33,000 feet. Part of the political attack on Russia is theclaim that Russia provided the missiles that shot down MH17, which Kiev and Washington say they knew inadvance. This raises the question of why MH17 was ordered to fly within rangeof known missiles with a range up to 70,000 feet.
The conventionalinternational lemming view still being pushed by the U.S. and othersis that somehow Putin is responsible for whatever happened and Putin can fixit. This is even less credible than arguing that Obama is responsible forwhatever Ukraine or Israel does, and Obama can fix that.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass