The Downing of Malaysia Flight 17: Sinister Pretext for War with Russia

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By Mike Whitney

Source: Counterpunch

“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.”

– Niles Williamson, “Why have the media and Obama administration gone silent on MH17?”, World Socialist Web Site

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/08/18/ukmh-a18.html

See: 11 minute you tube “MH17 – We know with 99% certainty who shot down MH17

The Obama administration has failed to produce any hard evidence that pro-Russia separatists were responsible for the downing of Malaysia Flight 17.  The administration’s theory– that the jetliner was downed by a surface-to-air missile launched from rebel territory in east Ukraine– is not supported by radar data, satellite imagery, eyewitness testimony or forensic evidence.  In fact, there is no factual basis for the hypothesis at all. It’s merely politically-motivated speculation that’s been repeated endlessly in the media to shape public opinion. The preponderance of evidence suggests a different scenario altogether, that is, that MH17 was shot down by Ukrainian fighters in an effort to frame the pro-Russia separatists and demonize Russia by implication.  This is precisely why the MH17 story has vanished from all the major media for the last three weeks. It’s because the bloody fingerprints point to Obama’s puppet-government in Kiev.

So what are the facts?

Fact Number 1: There were eyewitnesses.

According to the Oxford dictionary, an eyewitness is “A person who has personally seen something happen and can give a first-hand description of it.”  This is why eyewitness testimony is so important in criminal investigations, because what people actually see matters. In a capital case, eyewitness testimony can be just as damning as the bloody fingerprints on a murder weapon. In contrast, theories are of little or no importance at all. The administration’s missile theory is just obfuscating blabber intended to pacify the public with a soothing explanation that is entirely divorced from the facts. Eyewitness accounts help to cut through government bullsh** and uncover what really happened.

So, what did happen to MH17? Check out this blurb from a report by the BBC:

 ”The inhabitants of the nearby villages are certain they saw military aircraft in the sky shortly before the catastrophe. According to them, it was actually the jet fighters that brought down the Boeing.

Eyewitness number one: “There were two explosions in the air. And this is how it broke apart, (Waves her hands to show the plane exploding) And there was another aircraft, a military one, beside it. Everyone saw it….

Yes, yes, It was flying under it, because it could be seen.  It was flying underneath…below the civilian plane.”

Many people saw what happened. Many people saw the Ukrainian fighter rise in a shark-on-seal type motion. Many people saw the explosion. Are these credible witnesses? Are they lying? Do they have a political agenda?

We don’t know, but we do know what they said. They said they saw a fighter (probably a Ukrainian SU 25) stalking MH17 just before it blew up.  That’s significant and it should have a bearing on the investigation.

Fact Number 2: Russia picked up the Ukrainian fighters on their radar.

According to Russian military analysts:

“Russian monitoring systems registered Ukrainian airforce jet, probably an SU 25 fighter, climbing and approaching the Malaysia aircraft. The SU 25 was between 3 to 5 kilometers away from the Malaysian plane. The fighter is capable of reaching an altitude of 10,000 meters for short periods of time. It’s standard armaments include R-60 air-to-air missiles which are capable of locking and destroying targets within a range of 12 kilometers and which are guaranteed to hit their target from a distance of 5 kilometers.

What was a military aircraft doing on a route intended for civilian planes flying at the same time and same altitude of a passenger plane? We would like an answer to this question? …

To corroborate this evidence we have a picture taken at the regional air traffic control center at Rostov….Ukrainian military officials claimed there were no Ukrainian military aircraft in that area of the crash that day. As you can see, that is not true”   (“MH17 Fully Exposed”, The Corbett report; Check minute 34:17 on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWlAARb0fN4video

Repeat:   “Ukrainian military officials claimed there were no Ukrainian military aircraft in that area of the crash that day. As you can see, that is not true.”

Kiev lied. Not only was one of their fighters in the vicinity, but the warplane  also had the capacity to take down a jetliner.

Let’s be clear about how important this information is: We now have hard evidence (Russian radar data and eyewitness testimony) that a Ukrainian fighter was in the vicinity of Malaysia Flight 17 when it was shot down. Thus, the Ukrainian fighter very well may have played a role in the downing of  MH17.  This is a possibility that cannot be excluded if one is basing their judgments on the facts alone.

Then there the story of Carlos who worked at  Kiev’s Air Traffic Control at Borispol but who mysteriously vanished immediately after the crash. Carlos’s twitter feeds on the day of the incident have become something of a legend on the internet, so we would like to narrow our focus to just a few of his communiques.

Carlos tweets on day of MH17 crash:

“Kiev Authorities, trying to make looks like an attack by pro-Russian”…

“warning! It can be a downing, Malaysia Airlines B777 in ukraine, 280 passengers”…

(Military?) “has taken control of ATC in Kiev”….

“The Malaysia Airlines B777 plane disappeared from the radar, there was no communication of any anomaly, confirmed”….

“Plane shot down, shot down, shot down, no accident”….

“Before They remove my phone or they break my head, shot down by Kiev”…

“The B777 plane flew escorted by Ukraine jet fighter until 2 minutes before disappearing from the radar”…

“If Kiev authorities want to tell the truth, It´s gathered, 2 jet fighters flew very close minutes before, wasn’t downed by a fighter”….

“Malaysia Airlines B777 plane just disappeared and Kiev military authority informed us of the downing, How they knew?”…

“all this is gathered in radars, to the unbelieving, shot down by kiev, here we know it and military air traffic control also”…

“military control now officially [say] the plane was shot down by missile”….(“FINAL – Spanish Air Controller @ Kiev Borispol Airport: Ukraine Military Shot Down Boeing #MH17“,  Rebel’s Blog)

Shortly after posting the news on Twitter, the Military took over the tower, the SBU seized the Air traffic Control recordings, and Carlos disappeared never to be seen again.  At the very least, Carlos’s postings lend support to our thesis that one or two SU 25 fighters were in the vicinity of the Boeing 777 at the time of the incident, which is to say they were in a position to shoot it down.

So why have Obama, Kerry and the entire western media excluded the SU 25s from their analysis?  And why are they withholding the satellite and radar data (that everyone knows they have) of the area at the time of the crash?     According to the World Socialist Web Site: “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.”

Indeed, the US does have the capability to track  missiles launches anywhere on the planet, so where is the data to support their theory that a missile took down MH17?  Where is the satellite imagery? Where is the radar data?  What is it Obama doesn’t want the American people to know?

German pilot and airlines expert, Peter Haisenko,  thinks that Malaysia Flight 17 was not blown up by a  missile, but shot down by the type of double-barreled 30-mm guns used on Ukrainian SU-25 fighter planes.  Haisenko presented his theory in an article which appeared on the Global Research website titled “Revelations of German Pilot: Shocking Analysis of the “Shooting Down” of Malaysian MH17. “Aircraft Was Not Hit by a Missile”. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“The facts speak clear and loud and are beyond the realm of speculation: The cockpit shows traces of shelling! 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 30 millimeter caliber projectile….”  (“Revelations of German Pilot: Shocking Analysis of the “Shooting Down” of Malaysian MH17. “Aircraft Was Not Hit by a Missile””, Global Research)

Haisenko notes that the munitions used on Ukrainian fighters–anti-tank incendiary and splinter-explosive shells–are capable of taking down a jetliner and that the dense pattern of metal penetrated by multiple projectiles is consistent with the firing pattern of a 30-mm gun.

Also, Michael Bociurkiw, who was one of the first international inspectors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to reach the crash site and who spent more than a week examining the ruins– appears to be convinced that MH17 was downed by machinegun fire consistent with the myriad bullet-holes visible on the fuselage.  Here’s what he told on CBC World News:

“There have been two or three pieces of fuselage that have been really pock-marked. 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.

We’ve also been asked if we’ve seen any signs of a missile?

Well, no we haven’t. That’s the answer.”

(“Malaysia Airlines MH17: Michael Bociurkiw talks about being first at the crash site,” CBC News. Note: The above quote is from the video)

Now, admittedly, the observations of Haisenko and Bociurkiw could mean nothing, after all, they are just opinions. But for the sake of argument, let’s compare what they have to say to the comments made by Obama and Kerry.

Here’s Obama on the day after the crash:

“Here is what we know so far. Evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile that was launched from an area that is controlled by Russian-backed separatists inside of Ukraine.

We also know that this is not the first time a plane has been shot down in eastern Ukraine. Over the last several weeks Russian- backed separatists have shot down a Ukrainian transport plane and a Ukrainian helicopter, and they claimed responsibility for shooting down a Ukrainian fighter jet.

Moreover, we know that these separatists have received a steady flow of support from Russia.

This includes arms and training. It includes heavy weapons. And it includes anti-aircraft weapons.

Now, here’s what’s happened now. This was a global tragedy. An Asian airliner was destroyed in European skies, filled with citizens from many countries. So there has to be a credible international investigation into what happened. The U.N. Security Council has endorsed this investigation, and we will hold all its members, including Russia, to their word…

Now, the United States stands ready to provide any assistance that is necessary…..

Let’s summarize Obama’s allegations:

1–MH17 was shot down in east Ukraine.

2–The separatists have shot down planes in east Ukraine before.

3–Therefore the separatists shot down MH17

Do you find that argument persuasive, dear reader? Keep in mind, Obama has never veered from his original position on the issue nor has he ever addressed the eyewitness reports or the technical data provided by Moscow. When all the media repeat the government’s version of events word-for-word, the facts don’t matter. In other words, Obama hasn’t changed his story, because he doesn’t have to. He knows the dissembling media will assist him in the cover up. Which it has.

Now let’s take a look at what Kerry had to say two days after the crash when he visited all five Sunday talk shows to blast Putin and blame the rebels for downing MH17. According to the Guardian:

 ”Kerry said all the evidence surrounding the downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 points towards pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine…..

“We have enormous input about this that points fingers,” Kerry told CNN’s State of the Union. “It is pretty clear that this was a system from Russia, transferred to separatists. We know with confidence that the Ukrainians did not have such a system anywhere near the vicinity at that point of time.”…

Kerry said social media reports and US surveillance put the missile system in question in the vicinity of the crash before the tragedy.

“We know because we observed it by imagery that at the moment of the shootdown we detected a launch from that area,” he said. “Our trajectory shows that it went to the aircraft.” (“MH17 crash: Kerry lays out evidence of pro-Russia separatists’ responsibility“, Guardian)

Needless to say, Kerry has never provided any proof of the satellite “imagery” he referred to on the day of the interview. The administration’s case still depends on the discredited information it picked up on social media and on its own politically-motivated theory. It’s worth noting, that the administration used its shaky claims to great effect by convincing leaders of the European Union to impose more economic sanctions on Russia before any of the facts were known and without any legal process in place for Russia to defend itself.  The sanctions, of course, are still in effect today even though the administrations hysterical accusations have come under increasing scrutiny.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has repeatedly called for a transparent and thorough international investigation, but Washington seems more eager to sweep the whole matter under the rug. Moscow is particularly interested in recovering the Air Traffic Control tapes which were seized by Kiev’s security services immediately following the crash. It’s imperative that these tapes be handed over to international inspectors to analyze communications between the cockpit and the tower. There’s no doubt that Kiev would hand over the recordings if Washington simply demanded that they do so. But Obama has issued no such order. Why is that?

Keep in mind, that the ATC recordings could be much more valuable than the black boxes because they record both sides of every communication on every frequency used by that facility (including frequencies used for communication with other ground facilities and/or agencies), and also on every land line in use at that facility.”

What does that mean? It means that ATC recorders also include communications between ATC operators and, lets say, government or military authorities. They would also have recorded the communications between ATC and any fighters that may have been in the vicinity of Flight 17. In other words, if MH17 was in fact shot down by a SU 25, there’s a good chance the communications would show up in the ATC tapes.

Is this why Obama hasn’t demanded that Kiev surrender the recordings, because he doesn’t really want the truth to come out? Now take a look at this out from the World Socialist Web Site:

“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…..

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.”

(“Why have the media and Obama administration gone silent on MH17?“, Niles Williamson, World Socialist Web Site)

The media has played a pivotal role in this tragedy, deliberately misleading the American people on critical details related to the case in order to shape their coverage in a way that best serves the interests of the government.  The MSM doesn’t care about identifying the criminals who killed 298 passengers. Their job is to demonize Putin and create a pretext for waging war on Russia.   And that’s exactly what they’re doing.

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.

 

Fighting Back Against Western Sanction

President Zuma meeting with BRICS in Mexico

By Ulson Gunnar

Source: NEO

While the impact of sanctions leveled against Russia is being debated, one fact is perfectly clear; the dangerous interdependence cultivated by the concept of “globalization” leaves nations vulnerable amid a global order dominated by hegemonic special interests that use such interdependence as a weapon.

Two rounds of sanctions have been leveled against Russia targeting Russian banking, arms manufacturing, and oil industries. Even as the sanctions are marketed to the world as Russia “paying a price” for its role in “destabilizing” Ukraine, Russia has been busy cultivating ties and expanding markets that are increasingly found outside the West’s spheres of influence and therefore, beyond the reach of these sanctions. Russia is also looking inward to diversify its markets and seek socioeconomic independence.

Instead of viewing the sanctions as an impassable obstacle requiring capitulation to Wall Street and London, Russia has viewed them as a challenge to sever reliance on unstable markets. More so, Russia’s quest for alternative markets is a means of applying its own form of pressure back upon the West. While the West attempts to portray the sanctions as “cutting off Russia,” the restrictions do at least as much to isolate the West itself.

Multipolar World Vs Western Hegemony

In a unipolar world, supranational geopolitical blocs like the EU (European Union), the African Union, ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), and regional free trade agreements serve to consolidate and open up the collective socioeconomic potential of the planet to those at the top of this international order. Currently, this constitutes the special interests on Wall Street, in the city of London, and among the special interests converging in Brussels. Interdependence is intentionally cultivated among the various members of individual blocs and between supranational blocs themselves. This ensures that leverage is constantly maintained over each individual national entity, making individual nations incapable of sidestepping collective initiatives of the blocs they are a part of.

In the European Union, this can be clearly seen as individual nations benefiting from ties with Moscow are attempting with limited success to rebel against broader EU sanctions against Russian industries.

The use of sanctions across several supranational blocs, including North America, the EU, and to a lesser extent, the West’s proxies in nations like East Asia’s Japan, had at one point critically threatened those nations targeted by them. Nations like Iran or Cuba who have suffered under Western sanctions for decades are clearly behind because of them. Behind, but not out.

As technology enables each individual nation to procure wealth on its own it once depended on trade with other nations for, the impact of sanctions is diminishing. The impact of sanctions is also undermined by a growing alternative international order outside of the West’s unipolar paradigm. BRICS, the nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, constitute the leading edge of the rise of the developing world. No longer satisfied with subservience to the Wall Street-London global order, nor eager to find themselves entangled beneath another global empire led by another global superpower, these nations are attempting to redefine international relations in more traditional, multilateral terms.

Becoming self-sufficient economically while redefining international ties in a less interdependent manner, appears to be the defining aspect of the emerging multipolar world BRICS is attempting to create. The creation of international trade outside the traditional framework of the IMF, the World Trade Organization, and other institutions created by the West, for the West, has gradually eroded the impact of sanctions, penalties, and monopolies empowered by Western domination over international finance and global trade.

More to Do

While Russia seems to be taking Western sanctions in stride, the fact that the United States and Europe are targeting Russia in the first place is a warning to all members of BRICS as well as to developing nations around the world. In the capitals of nations residing outside the Wall Street-London international order, the possibility that any one of them could be next should be at the center of economic planning and the future of their respective foreign policy.

Creating alternative markets outside this international order could be a short-term stop gap. In Russia’s case, growing ties with China in terms of energy exports ensures a lasting alternative market for Russian natural gas that is set only to grow in the future as the West attempts to cutoff and isolate both Moscow and Beijing.

Seeking to create economic opportunities and progress domestically could be a more long-term and lasting solution. Russia’s decision to ban the import of food products from nations targeting it with recent sanctions gives BRICS an opportunity to expand in the void left by European, American, and Australian agricultural industries. It also gives an opportunity for Russian producers to expand their operations domestically. In the immediate aftermath of Russia banning imports from the West, stocks in Russia’s agricultural industry soared. While such spikes are more due to speculation than an actual jump in value, the fact that these producers now have an incentive to expand may create long-term value to justify investor confidence today.

But rather than waiting for sanctions to begin disrupting the socioeconomic status quo of a nation residing outside Western hegemony, a disruption the sanctions are designed specifically to create, why shouldn’t BRICS and other developing nations begin the process of developing their domestic markets and alternative international trading regimes beforehand?

If Russia, the largest nation geographically, the ninth most populous, and with one of the most formidable conventional and nuclear military forces on Earth, can be targeted for sanctions aimed to cripple its economy, then any nation can be targeted. Russia, with its resources and leadership is able to cope and adapt to these sanctions and even perhaps come out stronger in spite of them. Other nations might not weather such adversity so gracefully. Across BRICS and other nations in the developing world, a concerted effort must be made to move away from the interdependence of globalization and back toward greater multilateral trade regimes and greater domestic economic self-sufficiency.

Ulson Gunnar is a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

Even More Certain Now: Obama’s Ukrainian Stooges Did Intentionally Down that Malaysian Airliner

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By Eric Zuesse

Source: RINF

Information continues to pour in confirming the retired Lufthansa pilot Peter Haisenko’s reconstruction of how that Malaysian airliner (MH-17) came to be downed over the war-zone in Ukraine, the place to which Obama’s Ukrainian stooges had guided it and then shot it down in order to blame Russia for the tragedy so that Obama’s international sanctions against Russia could be increased. The present article is an updated version of the prior ones I’ve done attempting to present this case as clearly and as fully and honestly as I can. The “PS: at the end here is the main addition to the version I posted yesterday.

We’ll go considerably farther than has yet been revealed by the professional intelligence community, to provide the actual evidence that conclusively shows that (and how) the Ukrainian Government shot down the Malaysian airliner, MH-17, on July 17th.

The latest report from the intelligence community was headlined on August 3rd by Robert Parry, “Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts,” and he revealed there that, “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.”

It’s actually based on lots more than that; it’s based not on an absence of evidence, but on positive proof that the Ukrainian Government shot the plane down, and even proving how it was done. You will see this proof, right here, laid out in detail, for the first time anywhere, as of the present date.

The reader-comments to my July 31st article, “First Examination of Malaysian MH-17 Cockpit Photo Shows Ukraine Government Shot that Plane Down,” provided links and leads to independent additional confirmatory evidence backing up that account, of retired Lufthansa pilot Peter Haisenko’s reconstruction of this event, to such an extent that, after exploring the matter further, I now feel confident enough to say that the evidence on this matter is, indeed, “conclusive,” that Haisenko is right. Here is all of that evidence, which collectively convinces me that Haisenko’s conclusion there, is, indeed, the only one that can even possibly explain this wreckage:

“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.” This remarkable statement comes not from Haisenko, but from one of the first OSCE investigators who arrived at the scene of the disaster. Go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ze9BNGDyk4 and you will see it.

That youtube snippet in an interview with Michael Bociurkiw, comes from a man who is “a Ukrainian-Canadian monitor with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), [who] has seen up close … the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17. Bociurkiw and one other colleague were the first international monitors to reach the wreckage after the jet was shot down over a rebel-held region of eastern Ukraine July 17.” That description of him is from the lead-in to the full interview with him, at the 29 July 2014 CBC news article, “Malaysia Airlines MH17: Michael Bociurkiw talks about being first at the crash site.” The far briefer youtube clip shows only what’s presented on 6:10-6:24 of this CBC interview with Bociurkiw. The CBC reporter in the video precedes the interview by announcing, “The wreckage was still smoldering when a small team from the OSCE got there.” So: he had to have been there really fast. “No other officials arrived for days,” she said.

So: one of the two first international monitors on-site saw conclusive evidence that the Malaysian plane had been hit by “very very strong machine-gun fire,” not by ground-based missile-fire. Peter Haisenko’s reconstruction of the downing of that airliner, was here being essentially confirmed on-site by one of the two first OSCE international monitors to arrive on-site, while the wreckage was still smoldering. That’s as close to virgin, untouched evidence and testimony as we’ll ever get. Unlike a black-box interpretation-analysis long afterward by the Russian Government, or by the British Government, or by the Ukrainian Government, each of which governments 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, and it happens to confirm pilot Peter Haisenko’s theory of what happened. Bociurkiw arrived there fast because he negotiated with the locals for the rest of the OSCE team, who were organizing to come later: Bociurkiw speaks the local languages there — Ukrainian and Russian.

Furthermore, this is hardly testimony from someone who is supportive of the anti-Government rebels. Earlier, there had been this, http://pressimus.com/Interpreter_Mag/press/3492, which transcribes the BBC’s interview with Bociurkiw on July 22nd. He said then: “We’re observing that major pieces, and I’m looking at the tail fin as I said, and then there’s also the rear cone section of the aircraft, they do look different than when we first saw them, … two days ago.” So, he had arrived on-scene July 20th at the latest. (Neither the BBC nor the CBC, both of which interviewed him, were sufficiently professional to have reported the specific date at which Bociurkiw had actually arrived on-scene, but, from this, it couldn’t have been after July 20th. The downing had occurred July 17th. If some of the debris was still “smoldering” as the CBC journalist said, then maybe he had arrived there even earlier.)

The youtube snippet of Bociurkiw came to me via a reader-comment to my article, from Bill Johnson, after which I web-searched the youtube clip for its source and arrived then at the 29 July 2014 CBC news article and its accompanying video.

Further, there’s this crucial 21 July photo-reconstruction of that cockpit-fragment positioned into place on the aircraft as it had originally been in that intact-airliner:  https://twitter.com/EzraBraam. (Sometimes that doesn’t work, so here’s another screen of it from someone who copied it.) Looking at that photo-reconstruction, one can easily tell that the SU-25 or other fighter-jet that was firing into the cockpit from the pilot’s left side didn’t just riddle the area surrounding the pilot with bullets, but that it then targeted-in specifically onto the pilot himself, producing at his location a huge gaping hole in the side of the plane precisely at the place where the pilot was seated. Furthermore, this gaping hole was produced by shooting into the plane, precisely at the pilot, from below and to the pilot’s left, which is where that fighter-jet was located — not from above the airliner, and not from beside it, and also not from below it.

In other words: this was precise and closely-targeted firing against the pilot himself, not a blast directed broadly against, and aiming to hit, the plane anywhere, to bring it down.

Haisenko explained how this penetration of the plane, though it was targeted specifically at the pilot, caused immediately a breaking-apart of the entire aircraft.

Other readers have responded to my news-report about Haisenko’s article, by saying that shrapnel from a Buk missile could similarly have caused those holes into the side of the cockpit. However, that objection ignores another key feature of Haisenko’s analysis. Haisenko said there: “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 likeley that of a 30 millimeter caliber projectile. The edge of the other, the larger and slightly frayed exit holes showing 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!”

What this means is that in order to have some of those holes frayed inwardly and the other holes frayed outwardly, there had to have been a second fighter-jet firing into the cockpit from the airliner’s right-hand side. That’s critically important, because no ground-based missile (or shrapnel therefrom) hitting the airliner could possibly have produced firing 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, in that circumstance. This is Haisenko’s main discovery, by his pointing that out. 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.

Peter Haisenko posted an extremely high-resolution image from that photo which he used, and it shows unequivocally that some of the bullet-holes were inbound while others of them were outbound: Here it is, viewed very close-up.

Although the fighter jets that were said to have been escorting the Malaysian plane into the war-zone were alleged to be SU-25 planes, a different type might have been used. SU-25s are designed to be flown up to 23,000 feet without an oxygen-mask, but can go much higher if the pilot does wear that mask, which was probably the case here. Of course, an airliner itself is fully pressurized. That pressurization inside the airliner is, moreover, a key part of Haisenko’s reconstruction of this airliner’s downing. Basically, Haisenko reconstructs the airliner’s breaking apart as soon as that hail of bullets opened and released the plane’s pressurization.

The specific photo of that cockpit-fragment, which Haisenko had downloaded immediately after the disaster, was removed from the Internet, but other photos of this fragment were posted elsewhere, such as at the British publication (which, like the rest of the Western “news” media is slanted pro-Obama, anti-Putin), on July 21st, headlining their anti-Putin missile-theory bias, “MH17 crash: FT photo shows signs of damage from missile strike.” Their “reporters” opened with their blatant anti-Russian prejudice: “The first apparent hard evidence that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was brought down by a surface-to-air missile is emerging from the crash site in eastern Ukraine, after experts confirmed on Monday there were signs of shrapnel damage to the aircraft.” Although they didn’t say in their opener that the “surface-to-air missile” was from the rebels, they made clear their pro-Ukrainian-Government anti-Russian bias by saying, “Over the weekend, western intelligence agencies pointed to mounting evidence that backs Ukraine’s claim that the aircraft with 298 people on board was shot down by mistake by pro-Russian separatists and Russian military personnel with an SA-11 missile launched from a Buk-M1 SAM battery.” Their stenographers (or as they would say “reporters”) stenographed (“reported”) that, “Douglas Barrie of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the photographic evidence ‘was consistent with the kind of damage you would expect to see from the detonation of a high explosive fragmentation warhead of the type commonly used in a SAM system’.” No analyst from the pro-Putin camp  was interviewed by their “reporters.” For example, Russia’s Interfax News Service headlined on July 29th, the same day as the FT’s  article, “Boeing’s downing by Buk missile system unlikely — military expert,” and they stenographed their  “expert,” as follows:

Chief of the Russian Land Forces’ tactical air defense troops Maj. Gen. Mikhail Krush said he doubts that the Malaysian passenger liner was brought down by a Buk surface-to-air missile system. “No one observed a Buk engaging targets in that region on that day, which provides 95 percent proof that Buk systems were not used in this concrete case,” the general said in an interview with the Voyenno-Promyshlenny Kuryer military weekly to be published on Wednesday [July 30th]. “This is no more than a theory for now. However, a guided missile launched by a Buk missile system leaves behind a specific smoke trail as it flies, like a comet. In daylight this trail can be clearly seen within a radius of 20-25 kilometers from the missile system. It cannot remain unnoticed. There are no eyewitnesses to confirm there was any. No one reported a launch. This is one thing,” he said. “Second. The holes left by the strike elements on the Boeing’s outer skin indicate that the warhead blew up from below and sideways. A Buk missile strikes the target from above,” he said. “The damage done to the plane suggests that a different missile was used. Our guidance method is a zoom, when the missile strikes the target from above covering it with a thick cloud of fragments” the general said. “I cannot state categorically, guided by this data, but I can suggest, using my experience, that it was not a Buk missile that hit the Boeing,” the expert said.

General Krush’s statement can fit with Haisenko’s and with Bociurkiw’s, but not with FT’s  or the rest of the “reporters” (just consider them as rank propagandists) in the West.

U.S. President Barack Obama has been saying all along that Russia – against which he is actually systematically building toward war – and not Ukraine (which he’s using as his chief vehicle to do that), is to blame for this airliner-downing. Previously, he had said that the snipers who in February had killed many people at the Maidan demonstrations against the pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych came from Yanukovych’s State Security Service and not from the far-right political parties that were trying to bring Yanukovych down and that Obama’s agent Victoria Nuland selected to run the new Ukrainian government. But that too was an Obama lie. He lies a lot, and it’s just about the only type of statement he ever makes about Russia, and about Ukraine: lies.

If someone wants to verify how rabidly the U.S. Government lies, and has lied since at least the time of George W. Bush’s Presidency, just look at this video, by starting at 16:00 on it and going to 42:00 on it, and you will be shocked. (It pertains to lies by Bush that are still being covered up by Obama.) And when you further consider the many obvious questions it points out, which U.S. “news” media refused to ask and still refuse to ask about the matter, you’ll recognize that we are being lied to systematically and with utter contempt of the public, and with no respect for the public’s right to know the truth, even regarding massive history like that. It’s really brutal.

Ignorant “reporters” sometimes slip-up and include, in their stenography, facts that actually support the opposite side’s narrative of events and that discredit their own story-line. Such has been the case, for example, in the Financial Times  piece, which included the statement that, “Anti-aircraft missiles are not designed to score a direct hit as they are targeted to destroy fast, agile fighter jets. Instead, they are designed to explode within about 20m of their target, sending out a cloud of red hot metal to increase the chances of inflicting as much damage as possible.”

But rather than merely “a cloud of red hot metal,” what actually brought down this plane was what Haisenko has said brought it down: magazines-full of carefully targeted rapid-fire machine-gun bullets pouring forth from below the plane, at both its left and right.

This was a Ukrainian Government job. It was close-in. (No missile fired from the distance more than 30,000 feet down to the ground could have been that precise to target the pilot rather than the far larger target of the plane’s entire body.) It came from the Government that Obama installed there in February and that’s now carrying out an ethnic-cleansing campaign against the residents in Ukraine’s southeast, the places where Yanukovych’s voters live (to the extent that they still can and do live).

Compare that picture with the following one, which I take from a propaganda-site for the U.S. regime, and so which is intended instead to support the Administration’s line on this, certainly not Haisenko’s explanation of how the airliner was downed, though it actually supports Haisenko’s case:

3.August.2014.Screen shot 2014-08-03 at 3.25.30 PM

As you can see there, a plane that’s hit by a ground-fired missile, instead of by bullets fired from an attack-plane only a few yards away, has the damage spread rather widely over its body, not concentrated into a tiny area, such as to where the plane’s pilot is seated. Certainly, the contrast between that photo and this one is enormous.

Furthermore, note also that the shrapnel damage to that plane comes from above it, which is where missiles usually hit a plane from, releasing their shrapnel from above, down onto the plane. By contrast, the hail of bullets to the Malaysian plane’s pilot came from below the plane, aiming upward at the cockpit, from both sides of the cockpit.

Furthermore, note also that all of the holes appear to be inbound into the plane, none outbound.

As regards whether there were actually two fighter jets firing into the Malaysian airliner or only one, a proponent of the single-jet hypothesis, Bill Johnson, posted as a reader-comment to my article on August 4th, a series of extreme close-ups of the side-panel, in which he inferred that the explanation of the apparent left-side (pilot-side) bullets was probably the shape of the bullets. I then asked him why he declined to accept the possible existence of two jets. He said, “from what I could find Russian military radar detected only one Ukrainian fighter jet, not two. I have looked and looked for any type of radar confirmation of a second fighter jet and can not find it.” However, the most virginal, very earliest, online evidence concerning the matter was on July 17th, within moments of the downing, headlining in the subsequent English translation, “Spanish Air Controller @ Kiev Borispol Airport: Ukraine Military Shot Down Boeing #MH17,” and it included, “@spainbuca’s TWITTER FEED,” which included his observation, only minutes after the downing, “2 jet fighters flew very close” to the plane. Furthermore, immediately before that, he had tweeted, “The B777 plane flew escorted by Ukraine jet fighter until 2 minutes before disappearing from the radar.” So, perhaps the second jet appeared distinct to him only immediately prior to the downing. An extensive file of tweets from @spainbuca was posted below the headline story and it included also the note: “LAST MINUTE Air Traffic Controller: The Boeing 777 ‘flew fighters escorted by two Ukrainians’ before disappearing.” (The original Spanish there was: “‘voló escoltado por 2 cazas ucranianos’ antes de desaparecer.”)

Additionally, a news story from the Spanish language edition of Russian Television on 8 May 2014, soon after the Odessa massacre, had been headlined in google trans English as “Death threats to a Spanish review in Ukraine crisis” and it said: “Spanish air traffic controller who was threatened by supporters of the Maidan, Carlos, who spoke with RT on the condition of anonymity, has received threats despite not defending any interest. ‘I have my opinion and my view of a normal person, with a separate work [unrelated] or media, or any political party, nor to any association.’” These “supporters of Maidan … threatened to kill him, to send him to ‘do not know what battalion’ and out of the country.” Then on July 17th there was, yet again in google trans from Spanish, “Block a Twitter account accusing Kiev of the demolition of the MH17,” which reported that a controller at “Ukraine’s largest airport said the plane from Malaysia, which crashed in the east with 298 people on board, was escorted by two Ukrainian fighters until minutes before disappearing from radar.”

Another news-report, also on July 17th, came from Global Travel Industry News datelined 17 July and it headlined “Ukraine air traffic controller suggests Kiev military shot down passenger plane.” It said: “This Kiev air traffic controller is a citizen of Spain and was working in the Ukraine. He was taken off duty as a civil air-traffic controller along with other foreigners immediately after a Malaysia Airlines passenger aircraft was shot down over the Eastern Ukraine killing 295 passengers and crew on board. The air traffic controller suggested in a private evaluation and basing it on military sources in Kiev, that the Ukrainian military was behind this shoot down. Radar records were immediately confiscated after it became clear a passenger jet was shot down.” If this is true, then the radar-records upon the basis of which those tweets had been sent out were “confiscated.” That news-story from Global Travel Industry News closed by saying that the report was “based on” “tweets received” and “the statements of one airline controller.”

That person, who called himself anonymously by the name “Carlos,” had produced a file characteristic of someone hostile toward, and personally afraid of, the new Kiev government, and nothing further was heard from him, if he even survived. The Ukrainian Government said that he never existed, though the 8 May 2014 news report of his frictions with the Kiev authorities could hardly have been concocted after July 17th simply out of nowhere; it had pre-existed the airliner-downing, and it fit with his tweets on July 17th.

The best evidence is consistent with the view that those bullet-holes came from two directions not from one. What is virtually certain, however, is that at least one jet fighter was close up and shot down the Malaysian plane targeting the pilot at close range. There is no way that a 33,000-foot-away ground-fired missile could have produced that cockpit side-panel.

And the European Union has been playing along with this hoax. (If you still have any further doubts that it’s a hoax, just click onto that link and look.) And the mass of suckers in the West believe that hoax: it’s succeeding to stir a fever for war, instead of a fever to get rid of our own leaders who are lying us into a war that will benefit only the West’s aristocrats, while it inflicts massive physical and economic harms against everyone else – as if it were the invasion of Iraq except multiplied in this case a thousand-fold, especially with nuclear weapons possibly at the end of it.

If we had a free press, the news media would be ceaselessly asking President Obama why he doesn’t demand accountability against the Ukrainian Government for their massacre perpetrated on May 2nd inside the Trade Unions Building in Odessa, where that newly Obama-installed regime’s peaceful opponents were systematically trapped and then burned alive, which the Obama-installed Ukrainian Government has refused to investigate (much less to prosecute). Basically: Obama had sponsored the massacre. So, our “news” media ignore it, even though it started this civil war on Russia’s doorstep, and thereby re-started the Cold War, as Obama had intended that massacre (his  massacre, and his  subsequent ethnic cleansing) to do. (Similarly, the “news” media, though all of them receive my articles by email, virtually all refuse to publish them, because I won’t let them control what I find and report.)

And while Obama leads this Republican policy, and Vice President Dick Cheney’s top foreign-policy advisor Victoria Nuland actually runs it for Obama, congressional Democrats are just silent about it, and do not introduce impeachment of this fake “Democratic” hyper-George W. Bush neo-conservative President, who’s a “Democrat” in rhetoric only – and though Obama’s policy in this key matter threatens the entire world.

A reader-comment to an earlier version of this news report and analysis objected to my identifying Obama as a Republican-in-”Democratic”-sheep’s clothing, and said: “They may be rethug policies in origin but they are decidedly BI-PARTISAN to anyone who wants to admit FACTS. The democratic party you all think still exists is DEAD and only exists in your brain (the part that doesn’t accept reality).” However, U.S. Senate bill 2277, which invites Obama to provide direct U.S. military support to the Obama-installed Ukrainian regime, has 26 sponsors, and all of them are Republican U.S. Senators. Democratic Senators, by contrast, are just silent on Obama’s turn toward nazism (or racist — in this case anti-ethnic-Russian racist — fascism); the Senate’s Democrats aren’t seeking for it to be stepped up. This is a Republican policy, which congressional Democrats are simply afraid to oppose. Any realistic person knows that however far right Obama turns, the overt  Republican Party will turn even farther to the right, because they have to be to his right in order for them to be able to win Republican primaries and retain their own  Party’s nomination. Just because Obama’s game of moving the American political center as far to the right as he can move it is succeeding, doesn’t mean that the Democratic Party itself should end. It instead means that progressives need to take the Democratic Party over, just like conservatives took the Republican Party over with Reagan. There is no other hope. If a Democrat in the U.S. House will simply introduce an impeachment resolution against Barack Obama, then the right-wing takeover of the Democratic Party might finally end, and the world might yet be saved, because the Democratic Party itself could then reject Obama as being a fake “Democrat,” a Democrat-in-rhetoric-only. It could transform American politics — and American politics needs such a transformation, which would move the Democratic Party back to progressivism, more like the FDR Democratic Party was, so that Republican politicians would no longer need to be so fascist as they now have become (and as they now need to be  in order to be able to win their own  Party’s nomination). If Democrats fail to renounce the conservatism of Obama and of the Clintons, then the Party will end, and needs to be replaced, just like the Republican Party replaced the Whig Party immediately before the Civil War. Nazism has become today’s slavery-type issue – it’s beyond the pale, and Obama’s installation and endorsement of it in Ukraine is like James Buchanan’s endorsement of slavery was during the 1850s: either the Democratic Party will become the progressive party, or else the Democratic Party is over.

But that’s just my own theory of how Obama’s frauds might yet be able to be overcome and defeated, if they still can be; it’s not part of my presentation of the explanation of what brought down the Malaysian airliner, which has been an open case since July 17th, and which is now a closed case. This is past history, not future.

The present news story is being circulated free of charge or copyright to all “news” media in the English-speaking world, in the perhaps vain hope that the cover-ups of our leaders’ constant lies will cease soon enough to avoid a World War III, even though communism is long since gone from Russia and so the ideological excuse wouldn’t make any sense here. This insanity is actually all about aristocratic conquest, like World War I was. It’s not for the benefit of the public anywhere. Silence about it (by “Democrats,” and the “news” media) is a scandal, which needs to stop. The real Democratic Party (the Party of FDR, who loathed and despised nazis — and even mere fascists — yet today Obama installs nazis into power in Ukraine) must be restored, and a real news media needs to become established in America. Even Republicans need it, because the very idea of “victory” in a nuclear war is a vicious fantasy. It is a dangerous lie, though there are some people who find it a very profitable one. And time might be short — let’s hope not already too  short.

After all, Obama’s hoax of having won from Europe the stepped-up economic sanctions against Russia after the government that Obama had installed in Ukraine downed the Malaysian plane and successfully blamed it on “Russian aggression,” is very encouraging to him. And European leaders know that Obama’s entire operation is a very bloody fraud (read the phone-transcript there — it’s a stunner). So, they certainly won’t save the world from it. It’s up to us.

PS (dated August 5th):

Some readers disagree with Peter Haisenko’s reconstruction of the event on account of their not understanding his reconstruction of it (not understanding what I have been trying here to state as clearly as I can, bringing in other evidence). For example, see:

http://rinf.com/alt-news/editorials/evidence-now-conclusive-2-ukrainian-government-su-25-fighter-jets-shoot-malaysian-airliner-buk-missile-ground-shot-involved/

reader-comment:

“Benoit • [c. 8AM on 5 August 2014]

“I do not agree with Peter Haisenko’s conclusions : if external hull of the cockpit is bent outwards, it is not necessarily because some of the bullets came outwards. It may also be because it’s a double hull, and explosive bullet coming inwards may, when exploding, have torn outer aluminium hull outwards. A very careful analysis shows tha the inner hull (the green one) is bent inwards, and that may well in fact confirm the present analysis. Here’s this careful analysis (in french, use Goolgle translate):

“Benoit” links there to:

http://www.agoravox.fr/actualites/international/article/mh17-preuve-de-canonnage-et-155019

“MH17: evidence gunnery and Western Bankruptcy”

by joelim , Wednesday, July 30, 2014, in which is buried its conclusion:

“Anyway, these five aligned and clearly visible impacts directly lead to the conclusion that fire gunnery (not gun, which stops 20 mm) was made precisely to where stood the driver (see here  and here ). The damage (physical, human, decompression) left them no chance. This is the cause of the crash. The plane did not explode which also explains the appearance of debris found.”

Here is the French original on that:

“MH17 : preuve de canonnage et faillite occidentale”

“Quoiqu’il en soit, ces 5 impacts alignés et parfaitement visibles mènent directement à la conclusion qu’un tir de canonnage (et non de mitrailleuse, qui s’arrête à 20 mm) a été effectué précisément à l’endroit où se tenait le pilote (voir ici et ici). Les dégâts occasionnés (matériel, humain, décompression) ne leur laissaient aucune chance. C’est donc la cause du crash. L’avion n’a pas explosé ce qui explique aussi l’aspect des débris retrouvés.”

In other words: “Benoit” couldn’t understand what he was reading, and so he said “I do not agree with Peter Haisenko’s conclusions.” He cited against Haisenko’s theory of the case, an analysis that was published a day after Haisenko’s, which concluded the same as Haisenko did.

The author of that French article refused to even use the word “Haisenko” in his article, much less to credit Haisenko’s article in any way, but the source-photo that he linked to came from Haisenko’s high-definition pdf of the photo that Haisenko was using. He was trying to get credit for Haisenko’s theory of the case.

There is a lot of lying going on, a lot of misrepresentation. The only way to get to the truth is to base it on the best available evidence, which is what Haisenko did. He found it; he analyzed it; he solved the mystery (though he could have explained it better). To the extent that other “evidence” is reliable, it fits his explanation — an explanation that I shall keep expanding on to the extent that new relevant evidence comes forth, pro and/or con, on it. The important thing to keep in mind, however, is this. It’s even more important than how that plane was brought down.

Barack Obama lies to us. All Republican (or conservative) politicians do. The Democratic Party will die if it fails to state that this is so and to make the case for the charge so that they separate themselves from the Republican Party and be clearly the progressive alternative to conservatism in America. A Democratic impeachment against this Republican President is essential in order to salvage the Democratic Party, and even in order to salvage democracy in America, because no country can be an authentic democracy if the country’s main political parties are all conservative, if none of the main parties is progressive. That’s not a democracy: it is a dictatorship. That’s what we’ve got.

The Real Reasons America Used Nuclear Weapons Against Japan

Hiroshima_Capp

Today marks the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, an event responsible for the deaths of up to 166,000 lives, most of whom were innocent civilians. This was followed by the use of another atomic bomb (using plutonium instead of uranium) on Nagasaki three days later, claiming at least 80,000 (mostly civilian) lives. As the U.S. continues to kill innocent people through long distance weapons such as drones, it’s more important than ever to question official claims about what they are doing in the name of “freedom” and “democracy” and the real reasons why. Historians such as Howard Zinn have long known that official government justifications for the bombings were lies. The fundamental reasons were economic and geopolitical, and much supporting documentation has been helpfully compiled in the following post.

The REAL Reason America Used Nuclear Weapons Against Japan (It Was Not To End the War Or Save Lives)

Source: Washington’s Blog

Atomic Weapons Were Not Needed to End the War or Save Lives

Like all Americans, I was taught that the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to end WWII and save both American and Japanese lives.

But most of the top American military officials at the time said otherwise.

The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey group, assigned by President Truman to study the air attacks on Japan, produced a report in July of 1946 that concluded (52-56):

Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.

General (and later president) Dwight Eisenhower – then Supreme Commander of all Allied Forces, and the officer who created most of America’s WWII military plans for Europe and Japan – said:

The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.

Newsweek, 11/11/63, Ike on Ike

Eisenhower also noted (pg. 380):

In [July] 1945… Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. …the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude….

Admiral William Leahy – the highest ranking member of the U.S. military from 1942 until retiring in 1949, who was the first de facto Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and who was at the center of all major American military decisions in World War II – wrote (pg. 441):

It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

General Douglas MacArthur agreed (pg. 65, 70-71):

MacArthur’s views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed …. When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.

Moreover (pg. 512):

The Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face ‘prompt and utter destruction.’ MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General’s advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary.

Similarly, Assistant Secretary of War John McLoy noted (pg. 500):

I have always felt that if, in our ultimatum to the Japanese government issued from Potsdam [in July 1945], we had referred to the retention of the emperor as a constitutional monarch and had made some reference to the reasonable accessibility of raw materials to the future Japanese government, it would have been accepted. Indeed, I believe that even in the form it was delivered, there was some disposition on the part of the Japanese to give it favorable consideration. When the war was over I arrived at this conclusion after talking with a number of Japanese officials who had been closely associated with the decision of the then Japanese government, to reject the ultimatum, as it was presented. I believe we missed the opportunity of effecting a Japanese surrender, completely satisfactory to us, without the necessity of dropping the bombs.

Under Secretary of the Navy Ralph Bird said:

I think that the Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and, I think, the Swiss. And that suggestion of [giving] a warning [of the atomic bomb] was a face-saving proposition for them, and one that they could have readily accepted.

***

In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb. Thus, it wouldn’t have been necessary for us to disclose our nuclear position and stimulate the Russians to develop the same thing much more rapidly than they would have if we had not dropped the bomb.

War Was Really Won Before We Used A-Bomb, U.S. News and World Report, 8/15/60, pg. 73-75.

He also noted (pg. 144-145, 324):

It definitely seemed to me that the Japanese were becoming weaker and weaker. They were surrounded by the Navy. They couldn’t get any imports and they couldn’t export anything. Naturally, as time went on and the war developed in our favor it was quite logical to hope and expect that with the proper kind of a warning the Japanese would then be in a position to make peace, which would have made it unnecessary for us to drop the bomb and have had to bring Russia in.

Alfred McCormack – Director of Military Intelligence for the Pacific Theater of War, who was probably in as good position as anyone for judging the situation – believed that the Japanese surrender could have been obtained in a few weeks by blockade alone:

The Japanese had no longer enough food in stock, and their fuel reserves were practically exhausted. We had begun a secret process of mining all their harbors, which was steadily isolating them from the rest of the world. If we had brought this project to its logical conclusion, the destruction of Japan’s cities with incendiary and other bombs would have been quite unnecessary.

General Curtis LeMay, the tough cigar-smoking Army Air Force “hawk,” stated publicly shortly before the nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan:

The war would have been over in two weeks. . . . The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.

The Vice Chairman of the U.S. Bombing Survey Paul Nitze wrote (pg. 36-37, 44-45):

[I] concluded that even without the atomic bomb, Japan was likely to surrender in a matter of months. My own view was that Japan would capitulate by November 1945.

***

Even without the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seemed highly unlikely, given what we found to have been the mood of the Japanese government, that a U.S. invasion of the islands [scheduled for November 1, 1945] would have been necessary.

Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence Ellis Zacharias wrote:

Just when the Japanese were ready to capitulate, we went ahead and introduced to the world the most devastating weapon it had ever seen and, in effect, gave the go-ahead to Russia to swarm over Eastern Asia.

Washington decided that Japan had been given its chance and now it was time to use the A-bomb.

I submit that it was the wrong decision. It was wrong on strategic grounds. And it was wrong on humanitarian grounds.

Ellis Zacharias, How We Bungled the Japanese Surrender, Look, 6/6/50, pg. 19-21.

Brigadier General Carter Clarke – the military intelligence officer in charge of preparing summaries of intercepted Japanese cables for President Truman and his advisors – said (pg. 359):

When we didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn’t need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs.

Many other high-level military officers concurred. For example:

The commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, stated that the naval blockade and prior bombing of Japan in March of 1945, had rendered the Japanese helpless and that the use of the atomic bomb was both unnecessary and immoral. Also, the opinion of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz was reported to have said in a press conference on September 22, 1945, that “The Admiral took the opportunity of adding his voice to those insisting that Japan had been defeated before the atomic bombing and Russia’s entry into the war.” In a subsequent speech at the Washington Monument on October 5, 1945, Admiral Nimitz stated “The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war.” It was learned also that on or about July 20, 1945, General Eisenhower had urged Truman, in a personal visit, not to use the atomic bomb. Eisenhower’s assessment was “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing . . . to use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting [negotiations], was a double crime.” Eisenhower also stated that it wasn’t necessary for Truman to “succumb” to [the tiny handful of people putting pressure on the president to drop atom bombs on Japan.]

British officers were of the same mind. For example, General Sir Hastings Ismay, Chief of Staff to the British Minister of Defence, said to Prime Minister Churchill that “when Russia came into the war against Japan, the Japanese would probably wish to get out on almost any terms short of the dethronement of the Emperor.”

On hearing that the atomic test was successful, Ismay’s private reaction was one of “revulsion.”

Why Were Bombs Dropped on Populated Cities Without Military Value?

Even military officers who favored use of nuclear weapons mainly favored using them on unpopulated areas or Japanese military targets … not cities.

For example, Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy Lewis Strauss proposed to Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal that a non-lethal demonstration of  atomic weapons would be enough to convince the Japanese to surrender … and the Navy Secretary agreed (pg. 145, 325):

I proposed to Secretary Forrestal that the weapon should be demonstrated before it was used. Primarily it was because it was clear to a number of people, myself among them, that the war was very nearly over. The Japanese were nearly ready to capitulate… My proposal to the Secretary was that the weapon should be demonstrated over some area accessible to Japanese observers and where its effects would be dramatic. I remember suggesting that a satisfactory place for such a demonstration would be a large forest of cryptomeria trees not far from Tokyo. The cryptomeria tree is the Japanese version of our redwood… I anticipated that a bomb detonated at a suitable height above such a forest… would lay the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they were matchsticks, and, of course, set them afire in the center. It seemed to me that a demonstration of this sort would prove to the Japanese that we could destroy any of their cities at will… Secretary Forrestal agreed wholeheartedly with the recommendation

It seemed to me that such a weapon was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion, that once used it would find its way into the armaments of the world…

General George Marshall agreed:

Contemporary documents show that Marshall felt “these weapons might first be used against straight military objectives such as a large naval installation and then if no complete result was derived from the effect of that, he thought we ought to designate a number of large manufacturing areas from which the people would be warned to leave–telling the Japanese that we intend to destroy such centers….”

As the document concerning Marshall’s views suggests, the question of whether the use of the atomic bomb was justified turns  … on whether the bombs had to be used against a largely civilian target rather than a strictly military target—which, in fact, was the explicit choice since although there were Japanese troops in the cities, neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki was deemed militarily vital by U.S. planners. (This is one of the reasons neither had been heavily bombed up to this point in the war.) Moreover, targeting [at Hiroshima and Nagasaki] was aimed explicitly on non-military facilities surrounded by workers’ homes.

Historians Agree that the Bomb Wasn’t Needed

Historians agree that nuclear weapons did not need to be used to stop the war or save lives.

As historian Doug Long notes:

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission historian J. Samuel Walker has studied the history of research on the decision to use nuclear weapons on Japan. In his conclusion he writes, “The consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time. It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisors knew it.” (J. Samuel Walker, The Decision to Use the Bomb: A Historiographical Update, Diplomatic History, Winter 1990, pg. 110).

Politicians Agreed

Many high-level politicians agreed.  For example, Herbert Hoover said (pg. 142):

The Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945…up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; …if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the [atomic] bombs.

Under Secretary of State Joseph Grew noted (pg. 29-32):

In the light of available evidence I myself and others felt that if such a categorical statement about the [retention of the] dynasty had been issued in May, 1945, the surrender-minded elements in the [Japanese] Government might well have been afforded by such a statement a valid reason and the necessary strength to come to an early clearcut decision.

If surrender could have been brought about in May, 1945, or even in June or July, before the entrance of Soviet Russia into the [Pacific] war and the use of the atomic bomb, the world would have been the gainer.

Why Then Were Atom Bombs Dropped on Japan?

If dropping nuclear bombs was unnecessary to end the war or to save lives, why was the decision to drop them made? Especially over the objections of so many top military and political figures?

One theory is that scientists like to play with their toys:

On September 9, 1945, Admiral William F. Halsey, commander of the Third Fleet, was publicly quoted extensively as stating that the atomic bomb was used because the scientists had a “toy and they wanted to try it out . . . .” He further stated, “The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment . . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it.”

However, most of the Manhattan Project scientists who developed the atom bomb were opposed to using it on Japan.

Albert Einstein – an important catalyst for the development of the atom bomb (but not directly connected with the Manhattan Project) – said differently:

“A great majority of scientists were opposed to the sudden employment of the atom bomb.” In Einstein’s judgment, the dropping of the bomb was a political – diplomatic decision rather than a military or scientific decision.

Indeed, some of the Manhattan Project scientists wrote directly to the secretary of defense in 1945 to try to dissuade him from dropping the bomb:

We believe that these considerations make the use of nuclear bombs for an early, unannounced attack against Japan inadvisable. If the United States would be the first to release this new means of indiscriminate destruction upon mankind, she would sacrifice public support throughout the world, precipitate the race of armaments, and prejudice the possibility of reaching an international agreement on the future control of such weapons.

Political and Social Problems, Manhattan Engineer District Records, Harrison-Bundy files, folder # 76, National Archives (also contained in: Martin Sherwin, A World Destroyed, 1987 edition, pg. 323-333).

The scientists questioned the ability of destroying Japanese cities with atomic bombs to bring surrender when destroying Japanese cities with conventional bombs had not done so, and – like some of the military officers quoted above – recommended a demonstration of the atomic bomb for Japan in an unpopulated area.

The Real Explanation?

History.com notes:

In the years since the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, a number of historians have suggested that the weapons had a two-pronged objective …. It has been suggested that the second objective was to demonstrate the new weapon of mass destruction to the Soviet Union. By August 1945, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States had deteriorated badly. The Potsdam Conference between U.S. President Harry S. Truman, Russian leader Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill (before being replaced by Clement Attlee) ended just four days before the bombing of Hiroshima. The meeting was marked by recriminations and suspicion between the Americans and Soviets. Russian armies were occupying most of Eastern Europe. Truman and many of his advisers hoped that the U.S. atomic monopoly might offer diplomatic leverage with the Soviets. In this fashion, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan can be seen as the first shot of the Cold War.

New Scientist reported in 2005:

The US decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was meant to kick-start the Cold War rather than end the Second World War, according to two nuclear historians who say they have new evidence backing the controversial theory.

Causing a fission reaction in several kilograms of uranium and plutonium and killing over 200,000 people 60 years ago was done more to impress the Soviet Union than to cow Japan, they say. And the US President who took the decision, Harry Truman, was culpable, they add.

“He knew he was beginning the process of annihilation of the species,” says Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington DC, US. “It was not just a war crime; it was a crime against humanity.”

***

[The conventional explanation of using the bombs to end the war and save lives] is disputed by Kuznick and Mark Selden, a historian from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, US.

***

New studies of the US, Japanese and Soviet diplomatic archives suggest that Truman’s main motive was to limit Soviet expansion in Asia, Kuznick claims. Japan surrendered because the Soviet Union began an invasion a few days after the Hiroshima bombing, not because of the atomic bombs themselves, he says.

According to an account by Walter Brown, assistant to then-US secretary of state James Byrnes, Truman agreed at a meeting three days before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima that Japan was “looking for peace”. Truman was told by his army generals, Douglas Macarthur and Dwight Eisenhower, and his naval chief of staff, William Leahy, that there was no military need to use the bomb.

“Impressing Russia was more important than ending the war in Japan,” says Selden.

John Pilger points out:

The US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was “fearful” that the US air force would have Japan so “bombed out” that the new weapon would not be able “to show its strength”. He later admitted that “no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb”. His foreign policy colleagues were eager “to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip”. General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: “There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis.” The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Truman voiced his satisfaction with the “overwhelming success” of “the experiment”.

We’ll give the last word to University of Maryland professor of political economy – and former Legislative Director in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and Special Assistant in the Department of State – Gar Alperovitz:

Though most Americans are unaware of the fact, increasing numbers of historians now recognize the United States did not need to use the atomic bomb to end the war against Japan in 1945. Moreover, this essential judgment was expressed by the vast majority of top American military leaders in all three services in the years after the war ended: Army, Navy and Army Air Force. Nor was this the judgment of “liberals,” as is sometimes thought today. In fact, leading conservatives were far more outspoken in challenging the decision as unjustified and immoral than American liberals in the years following World War II.

***

Instead [of allowing other options to end the war, such as letting the Soviets attack Japan with ground forces], the United States rushed to use two atomic bombs at almost exactly the time that an August 8 Soviet attack had originally been scheduled: Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9. The timing itself has obviously raised questions among many historians. The available evidence, though not conclusive, strongly suggests that the atomic bombs may well have been used in part because American leaders “preferred”—as Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Martin Sherwin has put it—to end the war with the bombs rather than the Soviet attack. Impressing the Soviets during the early diplomatic sparring that ultimately became the Cold War also appears likely to have been a significant factor.

***

The most illuminating perspective, however, comes from top World War II American military leaders. The conventional wisdom that the atomic bomb saved a million lives is so widespread that … most Americans haven’t paused to ponder something rather striking to anyone seriously concerned with the issue: Not only did most top U.S. military leaders think the bombings were unnecessary and unjustified, many were morally offended by what they regarded as the unnecessary destruction of Japanese cities and what were essentially noncombat populations. Moreover, they spoke about it quite openly and publicly.

***

Shortly before his death General George C. Marshall quietly defended the decision, but for the most part he is on record as repeatedly saying that it was not a military decision, but rather a political one.

Related Articles:
Truman Knew
The Bombing of Nagasaki August 9, 1945. Unwelcome Truths for Church and State

Kiev Losing, Sanctions Flopped, Airliner Down, War Back On?

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By Tony Cartalucci

Source: New Eastern Outlook

With Kiev’s forces being encircled and decimated in eastern Ukraine, western Ukrainians in Kiev protesting the war, and US sanctions receiving global ridicule as feckless – the downing of a Malaysian Boeing 777 airliner with over 280 on board in eastern Ukraine – allegedly shot down over a conflict zone – will undoubtedly be exploited by NATO to vilify Kiev’s opponents, particularly fighters in the east and Russia who NATO accuses of “destabilizing eastern Ukraine.”

Preceding the downing of Malaysian flight MH17, just hours beforehand, Ukraine claimed Russia had shot down one of its SU-25 ground attack aircraft. The BBC’s article, “Ukraine conflict: Russia accused of shooting down jet,” stated that:

A Ukrainian security spokesman has accused Russia’s air force of shooting down one of its jets while it was on a mission over Ukrainian territory. 

Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for the Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council, said an Su-25 ground attack plane was downed on Wednesday evening. 

Russia’s defence ministry called the accusation “absurd”, Russian state media reported. 

Rebels in eastern Ukraine say they shot down two Su-25 jets on Wednesday. 

Ukraine also alleges rockets were fired at its forces from Russian territory.

While the weapon systems used to down the Ukrainian SU-25′s were not mentioned, previous aircraft lost to separatists in eastern Ukraine were most likely hit by Igla man-portable anti-air systems. The downed 777 was flying at an altitude of 33,000 feet – unreachable by the Igla system. To down it would require a sophisticated weapon system most likely inaccessible to eastern Ukrainian fighters. This was confirmed by the regime in Kiev itself. New York Daily News reported in an article titled, “Malaysia Airlines plane feared shot down in Ukraine near Russian border,” that:

Anton Gerashenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Minister, said on Facebook that the plane was flying at an altitude of 33,000 feet when it was hit by a missile fired from a Buk launcher, reported Interfax, a Ukranian news agency.

The Buk system is maintained by both Russia and Ukraine. Russia would most likely not supply the sophisticated weapon system to fighters in Ukraine even if it were backing them militarily, because it would be nearly impossible to prevent its use or abuse from being traced directly back to Moscow. Ukrainian Buk systems, had the regime in Kiev lost control of one or more, should have been reported missing and international precautions taken to divert vulnerable aircraft around the conflict zone.

Western Reaction

US Senator John McCain, who had been standing in Kiev on stage with Neo-Nazis of the Svoboda Party shortly before they overthrew the elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych, stated in an NBC interview:

“To leap to conclusions could be very embarrassing and really inappropriate until we have more information,” he told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “But there have been, as you mentioned, previous incidents of shot down of Ukrai

nian aircraft. This was an airliner headed towards Russian air space. And it has the earmarks, and I’m not concluding, but it has the earmarks of a mistaken identification of an aircraft that they may have believed was Ukrainian.

“If that’s true, this is a horrible tragedy event which was certainly unanticipated by anybody, no matter who they are,” he said. “And there will be incredible repercussions if this is the case. Exactly what those will be will have to be determined by how we find out who was responsible.”

McCain added, “If it is a result of either separatists or Russian actions mistakingly believing that this was a Ukrainian warplane, I think there’s going to be hell to pay and there should be.”

McCain never mentioned what should or could happen if it was the regime he helped put into power that was responsible for downing the airliner.

With the most likely weapon system responsible being the Buk launcher, and the regime in Kiev ascertaining so quickly how the plane was downed and who was responsible, it is now up to Kiev to explain how a Buk system ended up in the hands of separatists and why they would have fired at a plane flying at 33,000 feet heading toward the Russian border at speeds consistent with an airliner.

Cui Bono?

The remote possibility that separatists obtained a sophisticated Buk anti-air missile system, was able to maintain and operate it, failed to identify the Malaysian 777, and exercised the poor judgement to fire on it – would make the tragedy a catastrophic case of mistaken identify – for the separatists have no conceivable reason to fire on a Malaysian passenger liner – and absolutely nothing to gain by doing so.

However, for the regime in Kiev facing decimated and unraveling military forces in the east, growing dissent in the west, and Western sponsors who are unable to materialize any form of meaningful aid militarily, economically, or politically – shooting down a civilian airliner and blaming it on the separatists could unite public opinion and the leadership of European nations behind NATO and the US for a more direct intervention on behalf of Kiev and change the tide of what is now a battle they will otherwise inevitably lose.

The West is already working hard to set the stage for such a scenario. The BBC in an article titled, “Malaysia airliner crashes in east Ukraine conflict zone,” stated that:

Sir Tony Brenton, a former UK ambassador to Russia, told BBC News it would not be a huge surprise if suspicion initially fell on the rebels.

“That would be very damaging both for them and for their Russian supporters,” he said.

“The Russians have undoubtedly been supplying them with weapons, almost certainly with anti-aircraft weapons, so Russia would very likely be implicated and that would raise the volume of international criticism of Russia.”

Only the West and their proxies in Kiev would stand to benefit from this – and commentators like Tony Brenton and the BBC intentionally prey on the ignorance of their audience in hopes that they don’t know the difference between the Igla systems separatists most likely have, and the Buk system they most likely don’t have or are unable to operate.

This is the second Malaysian 777 to be lost under extraordinary circumstances this year. Malaysian flight MH370 disappeared in March, 2014, and has yet to be found despite unprecedented international search efforts.

In the RT timeline of the event, the following report was posted:

13:07 GMT: Ukraine’s traffic controllers ordered the Boeing-777 to lower by 500 meters when the aircraft entered Ukrainian airspace, says a statement on the Malaysia Airlines official website.

“MH17 filed a flight plan requesting to fly at 35,000ft (10,660 meters) throughout Ukrainian airspace. This is close to the ‘optimum’ altitude. However, an aircraft’s altitude in flight is determined by air traffic control on the ground. Upon entering Ukrainian airspace, MH17 was instructed by Ukrainian air traffic control to fly at 33,000ft (10,058 meters).”

Related Article: Obama Definitely Caused the Malaysian Airliner to Be Downed

 

The U.S. Elite Run a Ukrainian Genocide While American Public Are Ignorant of It

By Eric Zuesse

Source: Washington’s Blog

On Wednesday, July 2nd, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko resumed unlimited war against the residents of southeastern Ukraine, whom he calls “terrorists” for their wanting not to be killed by his troops. European leaders (especially Merkel of Germany, Hollande of France, and Putin of Russia) urged him not to resume his bombing campaign against the southeast, but the U.S. (specifically President Obama) supports the bombings, and that’s enough for Poroshenko; so, he did it. As the U.S. State Department said, “he has a right to defend his country.” Reuters reports that Poroshenko gave as his reason for the resumption, “to rid Ukraine of ‘parasites’.”  Adolf Hitler had given the same reason for ethnically cleansing his country.

Here are videos and photos of the Obama Administration’s sponsored ethnic cleansing to reduce the population in the areas of Ukraine that had voted overwhelmingly “the wrong way” in Ukraine’s final nationwide election, in 2010:  the areas of Ukraine that overwhelmingly chose as Ukraine’s President the man whom Obama’s coup overthrew in February 2014. After this ethnic cleansing, maybe Ukraine can have another nationwide election, which will produce the type of outcome that the U.S. Government likes. But on 25 May 2014, we held in Ukraine an election where people voted only in the pro-American portion of Ukraine, and only leaders who were acceptable to the U.S. White House were allowed onto the ballot.

America’s “news” media are not reporting on America’s ethnic-cleansing program in Ukraine. It’s happening in the dark, as far as the American public are concerned: they don’t know about it. But, here it is: this, is what they are hiding from you.

Washington’s people do not call this ethnic cleansing operation what it is; they instead call it Ukraine’s “Anti Terrorist Operation,” or “ATO” for short. The people we’re massacring are “Terrorists.” What they actually  are is simply the residents in the parts of Ukraine that had voted overwhelmingly for Viktor Yanukovych on 7 February 2010 to become President, the final nationwide election in Ukraine. And here these millions of “Terrorists” are now, being bombed by us, and fleeing to refuge in Russia (you can see it, and hear it happening, right there: those “Terrorists,” fleeing our bombs) — it’s part of our ethnic-cleansing operation, not of any Anti Terrorist Operation, at all. Because it is we, the United States itself, that are terrorizing them, to flee. And “we” — our Government, as if they  really represented us (which they obviously do not) — are therefore mass-murdering them. This is what the U.S. “news” media have been hiding from us, by stenographically reporting Obama’s lies, as if those lies represented truths instead of lies — just like Bush’s lies about “Saddam’s WMD” did, and the U.S. media did, before we invaded Iraq on 19 March 2003.

And the Government that Obama put in place in Kiev, which is a government by Ukrainian oligarchs whom Obama’s agent Victoria Nuland selected and placed in control, is now advertising on the television stations that those oligarchs own, advertising that the people who live in Ukraine’s southeast are destroying the country and must therefore be destroyed by patriotic Ukrainians. The government’s Defense Minister announces publicly that concentration camps are being established in order to deal with any who don’t flee. The message to those “Terrorists” is clear: flee, or else die. The government has even announced that the military volunteers who go to the southeast to do the killing are patriots, whose reward will be that they will receive the properties of everyone they kill.

A google-search of “Ukraine” at a typical U.S. news site yields little — and nothing at all about this slaughter that our Government is financing and put into place there. For example, at Huffington Post, the search produces articles about supposed “aggression” by Russia for its accepting Crimea back into the Russian Federation after all public opinion polls and a public referendum in that region, which had been Russian until 1954, showed massive public support there for rejoining Russia. (And a recent Gallup poll of Crimeans confirmed that they craved to rejoin Russia and are now delighted that they did.) HuffPo has only news-wire reports about Ukraine, mainly AP and Reuters, and typical headlines there are like “Russia Resumes Military Buildup Near Ukraine Border,” and “Ukraine Vows To Punish Rebels Who Downed Plane.” There’s nothing about the genocide. For example, there’s no mention that this “plane” had been carrying 49 troops to murder civilians in the southeast where a genocide is taking place to clear the land and terrify the residents to flee into Russia. It’s a classic ethnic-cleansing campaign, and Obama put it into place. Americans don’t know.

One article is a March 3rd poll, which showed “Few Americans want the United States getting involved in policing the political turmoil in Ukraine.” The presumption there was that “we” shouldn’t fix “their” problems.” Who knew that “we,” our own President, is the mastermind behind that “turmoil,” and of this actual ethnic cleansing campaign?

Similarly, http://www.pollingreport.com/ukraine.htm has many such poll-results, all showing a widespread public assumption that Russia initiated the “turmoil” and that the U.S. are just nice guys regarding Ukraine.

To see what a lie that impression is — a deception of the U.S. public by not only the “news” media but by the U.S. Government that’s behind this “turmoil” — click here and here and here and here and here, because you will then learn a great deal about this made-in-America horror story, which will only grow as the years roll by, just as is already happening in Iraq.

Remember Iraq? This one will be vastly worse. You’ll see. Just click on those links. You’ll see.

Because, if the American public doesn’t start investigating this now, then the results for all of us will be far worse, especially because this one could end in a nuclear war. And here is a video exposing the lies of the Obama Administration and its stooge-regime in Kiev about the May 3rd massacre in Odessa that sparked Ukraine’s civil war — our ethnic cleansing of the people who live in Ukraine’s southeast.

Barack Obama’s Ukrainian gambit is the most evil and worst part of his entire Presidency, and you will be shocked to learn about it, and how evil it is. Because the American press hasn’t told you about it. But it’s not too late for you to find out. (If you already know about it, please pass this article along to any of your friends who might not, and otherwise get the word out, by distributing this article far and wide, so that maybe this horror can be stopped if enough people learn of it.)

 

Understanding the Tyranny of Terrorism

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By Andrew S. MacGregor

Source: Memory Hole

In Dedication to Michael Hastings, Jan. 28, 1980 – June 18, 2013

The Rolling Stone journalist who was murdered after discovering this story

Terrorism: systematic intimidation as a method of governing or securing political or other ends

To properly understand the events surrounding Malaysian Airlines ‘flight MH370’ on the 8th of March 2014, a person firstly has to realise that it was a ‘terrorist’ attack’.  Now ‘terrorists’ do not hi-jack an aircraft simply to fly it around until it runs out of fuel and crashes; the hi-jacking has to have a ‘political’ agenda’. 

To understand what this ‘political agenda’ was, one has to consider why the aircraft was hi-jacked, and what the target was to have been.  General Wesley Clarke gave us the ‘agenda’ in 2001, which was for America to attack certain nations starting with Iraq and ending with Iran.  However there was a ‘further’ agenda, and that agenda involved Russia and to be more specific, the Ukraine.

The main impediment for any American attack on Iran, is that Iran has treaties with two major world players; China and Russia.  There is another problem; Iran has been aware of the impending attacks for over a decade and has built defences to her front.  She has, however, been dependent on Russia to defend her back door.

Russia has been finding its ‘superpower’ status again, and America has been endeavouring to stifle Russia’s growth, especially in the military arena.  Russia’s best known naval base is Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula on the Black Sea, which was part of the Ukraine.  The American political agenda has been to win the Ukraine away from Russia, into the European Union.  This would have removed the Russian naval base from the Russians and turned it over to the EU. 

However, Russia would not have stood idly by and permitted such political actions to go unheeded, so an ‘excuse’ would be required to place European and American forces in the Ukraine.  Those forces would naturally be designated NATO. What was needed was a ‘suitable’ terrorist target which was not American, but of a NATO member, that would permit an immediate retaliatory reaction from that country and NATO.  The only possible ‘terrorist’ targets for this agenda at this time were the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, honeymooning in the Maldives.

Thus we have the motives for two political agendas, attacking Iran and weakening Russia.  There is also a third agenda, and that is to separate China from Iran and Russia.  This third agenda was highlighted by ‘Air Force 1’ being booked on the 3rd of March 2014, five days prior to the ‘Terrorist attack’ which claimed the lives of 153 Chinese nationals to fly to China on the 19th of March, 2014.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/michelle-obama-china-visit-march

The ‘Terrorist agenda’ of MH370

The ‘terrorist’ agenda was set when it was announced on the 8th of March 2014, that two ‘false’ passports were detected within the group of passengers that boarded ‘flight MH370’.  It was also initially stated that there were ‘other’ suspects who had also boarded ‘flight MH370’.

Now ‘terrorist’ attacks involving aircraft are not new, they date back to at least the 1960’s when one remembers the hi-jacked passenger airliner that was landed at the Entebbe Airport in Uganda, and subsequently rescued by Israeli commandos, of whom the only casualty they suffered was ‘Jonathon Netanyahu’, the older brother of Benjamin Netanyahu.  Then in the 1980’s, there was a new form of terrorism and aircraft, that being the ‘bomb’ planted within the luggage area and exploding in mid-flight and the most recognised was the crash at Lockerbie in Scotland, of which the ‘Americans’ were extremely quick on the scene and took total control of the investigation. 

And then in 2001 there was the ultimate ‘terror’ event that was even given direct media coverage as ‘hi-jacked’ passenger aircraft were flown into the two towers of the World Trade Centre, and Benjamin Netanyahu was there to say that ‘this was good for Israel’!  Of course there is little coverage of the fact that Dick Cheney was ‘in charge’ of American ‘Military exercises’ that supplied ‘cover’ for this event.

This very same scenario was again in operation as the Malaysian Airlines ‘flight MH370 left KL International Airport on the 8th of March 2014 and then flew northeast over Malaysia and into the South China Sea, into an area where America and Thailand were holding ‘Military Exercises’, and then vanished!

Flight MH370 is the latest 911 terrorist attack

Matthias Chang, the former top political advisor to Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia, noted that the bizarre disappearance of MH370 coincided with the US-run Cobra Gold and Cape Tiger military exercises – just as previous “disasters” have mirrored suspiciously-timed drills and exercises:

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/04/04/mh370chang/

Whatever happened with the ‘commercial’ radar that the Malaysian Air Traffic Control were using to monitor ‘flight MH370’ entry into Vietnamese Air Traffic Control at 0121 hours, the Vietnamese Air Traffic Control in Ho Chi Minh City waited 17 minutes before they inquired from Malaysian Air Traffic Control as to the whereabouts of flight MH370. Malaysia then claimed that the Malaysian Air Traffic Control then requested another Malaysian Airlines aircraft in the vicinity to try and contact flight MH370, and that contact was raised at 0138 hours Malaysian time. 

http://rt.com/news/156208-missing-plane-malaysia-report/

This is the media report from the 10th March 2014:

According to Malaysia’s New Straits Times newspaper, contact was briefly made with the aircraft before it vanished. It was being flown by Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a highly experienced pilot, and first officer Fariq ab Hamid.  “We managed to establish contact with MH370 just after 1.30am and asked them if they have transferred into Vietnamese airspace,” a pilot on another Malaysia Airlines flight told the New Straits Times.”

“The voice on the other side could have been either Captain Zaharie or Fariq, but I was sure it was the co-pilot.  “There were a lot of interference … static … but I heard mumbling from the other end. That was the last time we heard from them, as we lost the connection,” he said.

So sometime after 0119 hours, Malaysian Air Traffic Control has asked another aircraft in the region where flight MH370 had vanished off their radar screen, to try and contact via radio MH370, and there was some contact, sufficient for the pilot of that aircraft to identify the voice of the 1st Officer, Fariq ab Hamid.  Thus the supposed actual last radio contact with flight MH370 was at 0138 hours!

There is something very wrong with this story.  If everything had been normal, then flight MH370 would have contacted the Vietnamese Air Traffic Control, once they had moved out of the Malaysian Air Traffic Controls area.  This has not happened for at least 17 minutes.  Again, with the supposed contact between the two Malaysian Airliners, the contact was not clear and precise.  Something is extremely wrong.  If flight MH370 did have radio communication, then it should have logged in with the Vietnamese Air Traffic Control.

So at 0138 hours the Malaysians know something is very wrong, but what are they doing about it?  Absolutely nothing!  Why!  Is this the same scenario that occurred in America with 911?

Initial reports were that flight MH370 had crashed in the South China Sea

The initial reports of ‘flight MH370’ were that it had crashed in the South China Sea.  This is why the first couple of days search for the ‘missing’ aircraft was north of Malaysia.  However local fishermen on the north side of Malaysia reported seeing a low-flying aircraft, which simply means the authorities were informed and well aware that flight MH370 had not crashed in the South China Sea.

Authorities are also investigating several reports of locals claiming to have seen the lights of a low-flying aircraft in an area off the Malaysian coast, just below the Malay-Thai border.  It is this area which is now included in the widened search area for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

A fisherman who was in his boat at sea, says that at about 1.30am he saw the lights of a low-flying aircraft in the area of Kuala Besar.  Azid Ibrahim told The Star newspaper in Malaysia that the plane was flying so low that the lights were “as big as coconuts”.  And another man, about 30km south of Kota Bharu, is reported to have seen “bright white lights” from what he thought was a fast-descending aircraft at about 1.45am on Saturday morning.  He has since reported what he saw to authorities after seeing the lights from his home that evening.

In this search, both the Australian Sydney Morning Herald and the ‘New Strait Times’ reported on the 10th of March that the Malaysian Government was being ‘assisted by the FBI, the American ‘Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Boeing has joined an official US team investigating the disappearance, saying it would act as technical adviser to the US National Transportation Safety Board team already in South-East Asia to offer assistance.

http://www.news.com.au/world/playboy-pilot-at-controls-of-mh370-had-a-track-record-of-inviting-pretty-passengers-into-his-cockpit-where-he-smoked-and-posed-for-snaps/story-fndir2ev-1226850952131

In other words, the ‘search for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370’ is not a Malaysian government investigation but a full on American investigation orchestrated by the FBI’s CIRG!

The FBI members ‘assisting’ the Malaysian Government would have to have expertise in both ‘terrorism’ and ‘hijacking’.  This means they would belong to the FBI’s “Critical Incident Response Group (CIRG)”.  To understand exactly what type of person these FBI members are, let me refresh what I had written about James F Yacone and his involvement in the Aurora Theatre massacre in Colorado in the article; ‘Fitzpatrick’s Law’

Read the full article here: http://memoryholeblog.com/2014/06/18/understanding-the-tyranny-of-terrorism-2/#more-11463

Andrew S. MacGregor is an experienced military and law enforcement officer. Born in 1947 in Yarraville, Melbourne, Australia, Mr. MacGregor served in the Citizens Military Forces of the Victoria Scottish Regiment and as Senior Constable with the Victoria Police. Since 1998 he has conducted extensive research on the Port Arthur Massacre and other Australian ‘lone-nut’ shootings. MacGregor began playing the Bagpipes at age ten, and was active for 14 years as a member of the Victoria Police Highland Pipe Band.

Is Open-Ended Chaos the Desired US-Israeli Aim in the Middle East?

98412608_second day of war in Iraq

By Thomas S. Harrington

Source: Counterpunch

During the last week we have seen Sunni militias take control of ever-greater swathes of eastern Syria and western Iraq. In the mainstream media, the analysis of this emerging reality has been predictably idiotic, basically centering on whether:

a) Obama is to blame for this for having removed US troops in compliance with the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) negotiated and signed by Bush.

b) Obama is “man enough” to putatively resolve the problem by going back into the country and killing more people and destroying whatever remains of the country’s infrastructure.

This cynically manufactured discussion has generated a number of intelligent rejoinders on the margins of the mainstream media system. These essays, written by people such as Juan Cole, Robert Parry, Robert Fisk and Gary Leupp, do a fine job of explaining the US decisions that led to the present crisis, while simultaneously reminding us how everything occurring  today was readily foreseeable as far back as 2002.

What none of them do, however, is consider whether the chaos now enveloping the region might, in fact, be the desired aim of policy planners in Washington and Tel Aviv.

Rather, each of these analysts presumes that the events unfolding in Syria and Iraq are undesired outcomes engendered by short-sighted decision-making at the highest levels of the US government over the last 12 years.

Looking at the Bush and Obama foreign policy teams—no doubt the most shallow and intellectually lazy members of that guild to occupy White House in the years since World War II—it is easy to see how they might arrive at this conclusion.

But perhaps an even more compelling reason for adopting this analytical posture is that it allows these men of clear progressive tendencies to maintain one of the more hallowed, if oft-unstated, beliefs of the Anglo-Saxon world view.

What is that?

It is the idea that our engagements with the world outside our borders—unlike those of, say, the Russians and the Chinese—are motivated by a strongly felt, albeit often corrupted, desire to better the lives of those whose countries we invade.

While this belief seems logical, if not downright self-evident within our own cultural system, it is frankly laughable to many, if not most, of the billions who have grown up outside of our moralizing echo chamber.

What do they know that most of us do not know, or perhaps more accurately, do not care to admit?

First, that we are an empire, and that all empires are, without exception, brutally and programmatically self-seeking.

Second, that one of the prime goals of every empire is to foment ongoing internecine conflict in the territories whose resources and/or strategic outposts they covet.

Third, that the most efficient way of sparking such open-ended internecine conflict is to brutally smash the target country’s social matrix and physical infrastructure.

Fourth, that ongoing unrest has the additional perk of justifying the maintenance and expansion of the military machine that feeds the financial and political fortunes of the metropolitan elite.

In short, what of the most of the world understands (and what even the most “prestigious” Anglo-Saxon analysts cannot seem to admit) is that divide and rule is about as close as it gets to a universal recourse the imperial game and that it is, therefore, as important to bear it in mind today as it was in the times of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, the Spanish Conquistadors and the British Raj.

To those—and I suspect there are still many out there—for whom all this seems too neat or too conspiratorial, I would suggest a careful side-by side reading of:

a) the “Clean Break” manifesto generated by the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS) in 1996

and

b) the “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” paper generated by The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in 2000, a US group with deep personal and institutional links to the aforementioned Israeli think tank, and with the ascension of  George Bush Junior to the White House, to the most exclusive  sanctums of the US foreign policy apparatus.

To read the cold-blooded imperial reasoning in both of these documents—which speak, in the first case, quite openly of the need to destabilize the region so as to reshape Israel’s “strategic environment” and, in the second of the need to dramatically increase the number of US “forward bases” in the region—as I did twelve years ago, and to recognize its unmistakable relationship to the underlying aims of the wars then being started by the US in Afghanistan and Iraq, was a deeply disturbing experience.

To do so now, after the US’s systematic destruction of Iraq and Libya—two notably oil-rich countries whose delicate ethnic and religious balances were well known to anyone in or out of government with more than passing interest in history—, and after the its carefully calibrated efforts to generate and maintain murderous and civilization-destroying stalemates in Syria and Egypt (something that is easily substantiated despite our media’s deafening silence on the subject), is downright blood-curdling.

And yet, it seems that for even very well-informed analysts, it is beyond the pale to raise the possibility that foreign policy elites in the US and Israel, like all virtually all the ambitious hegemons before them on the world stage, might have quite coldly and consciously fomented open-ended chaos in order to achieve their overlapping strategic objectives in this part of the world.

Thomas S. Harrington is a professor of Iberian Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and the author of the recently released  Livin’ la Vida Barroca: American Culture in a Time of Imperial Orthodoxies.