The hopeful email below, sent last Friday at 9:23 AM to a very bright CBC host reporter on the daily CBC TV program Power and Politics, has not yet been acknowledged as received:
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Dear Ms. Rosemary Barton
CBC Power and Politics Host
Please do me the kind favour of acknowledging that you have received this communication and have read it. At the top of page two I recommend two distinguished American investigative reporters for you to interview as soon as you can, and in some depth. I am 72 now and fear desperately for the future of my children and grandchildren.
This was laboriously typed yesterday and appears dangerously close to being too late, in view of the deliberate US missile strike on a Syrian base.
I write because I trust you more than anyone else at the CBC and have some major concerns about mainstream Western media’s coverage of several issues related to Russia – including the recent news about the sarin-related deaths in Idlib, Syria. The MSM are blaming it on Bashar Assad. This blame is an essential component in what seems like an attempt to resurrect the US plan to depose Assad soon, for many reasons – none of them related to his ruthlessness.
No action destroys evil, but only the apparently useless and perfectly patient suffering of it.
Simone Weil, Gateway to God, p. 51 quoted in my diary entry on 10 October, 1984.
My belief in the above to be true, while never total, was stronger over three decades ago, when I was a Christian. The example of Jesus, given by a well-known Jesuit, seemed to confirm Weil’s intuition:
The power of the human person, his secret weapon, is his power to suffer and die.
From The Two-Edged Sword by John L. McKenzie, S.J., from page 25 of the same diary.
Now:
I look at the way the world has been increasingly dominated by a single political entity since I read the above statements, with, seemingly, little but pain and destruction for any peoples whether they dare to oppose it or not.
This dominion has been achieved by a combination of overwhelming military might, the absolute and wanton waste of Mother Earth’s natural resources on weaponry and, since the Reagan years, the gradual extreme control of the West’s mainstream media to the point that, among the smartest of us, there is a dismal, widespread lack of awareness.
I am now far from convinced that there is much hope for the approach of “turning swords into ploughshares.”
By the way, we Christians might be forgiven for thinking that Jesus used this phrase somewhere in the New Testament, but we would be shocked (I was!) to find that this everyday, so hopeful expression comes from the name of a statue completed in 1959 by a Russian sculptor named Evgeny Vuchetich and presented at that time to the United Nations, where it still stands. But New Yorkers may well be aware of this…
Yes, a Russian from, er, Russia! Go figure! The same Russia that is now increasingly, and I am convinced unfairly, vilified on the front pages and TV headlines of all the major organs of the “free press” for doing things that the planet’s paramount hegemon has been doing for just as long, albeit with greater success.
Above: a project of mine that is almost finished. It may just come in handy…
Ever want to just get away from it all? Things just south of where I live seem to be getting a little dodgy. I’m not following it closely – bad for my health – but I get the impression that we (the entire Planet) are in for a frightening amusement park ride, kind of like being on a rickety contraption that has needed maintenance – no, out-and-out modification – for waaayyy too long. Circumstances beyond our control, such as locked iron bars across our laps, forbid escape, yet we might have avoided the crisis by Continue reading “A Voyage… Of Sorts”
February 8, 2015: This post, begun almost seven months ago on August 13, 2014, has recently expanded because MH17 didn’t happen in a vacuum. Over the past 6-7 months since MH17 went down a mystery story has evolved for me. To properly illuminate and present this story, it was necessary to examine the events that led up to MH17 and ultimately spawned its horror.
Good Stuff’s Been Added:
At the top: this new. zippy outline
At the very bottom: A brief timeline listing the dramatic and violent events of the Euromaidan protests that culminated with, essentially, a coup d’état, forcing the elected government of Ukraine to resign, President Viktor Yanukovich to flee on February 21, Crimea to accede to Russia after a 90% referendum vote in March, and Donetsk and Lugansk to proclaim themselves independent peoples republics on April 7, 2014. I will build more data on these events as my seven-month study evolves.
Aware of the tragedy of MH17 and curious about the narrow, one-note Blame Russia Chorus my once-precious CBC and all Western media were singing, I first turned my focused and serious attention to the Ukraine in early August. My attention grew into this “research project.” I check social media daily and post a brief, descriptive comment that describes the gist of the article or event discussed in the embedded link. I try to limit new additions to new stuff that sheds more light.
The post’s scope has broadened from being mainly about MH17 to include the whole Ukraine-USA -EU-Russia situation that has been going on for over 15 months. MH17 would not have happened if the Ukraine hadn’t been destabilized eight months previously and, soon after, “blown up” politically by the USA and Europe in concert and competition with/against each other. It was a slam dunk that Russia would never allow its one warm water port in Crimea to be put in jeopardy by the creeping expansion of NATO and possible absorption of Ukraine into the E.U.
Ukraine is a big prize that American neocons and oligarchs from several nations have had in their sights for some years. For the USA, running the Ukraine is a way to encroach upon and destabilize Russia. Ukraine does also possess some natural gas and much prime farmland. The USA maneuvers have forced Russia’s hand in Crimea and caused, some say, as many as 50000 deaths.
Why Russia?
Russia is a major key to the success of the combined nations of Eurasia. Look at a globe for just a moment and see the huge, contiguous, East-West land mass that is Eurasia. Then compare it to the Americas – a much smaller, climatically diverse, North-South land mass with a very long skinny part in the middle – and a relatively small fraction of the world’s population.
Europe’s Gambit Excites Affluent, Educated Western Ukrainians:
In 2013 Europe started to woo the incredibly corrupt, economic mess of Ukraine into economic association. A small amount of money was offered that President Viktor Yanukovich (no doubt with some mathematical coaching from Vladimir Putin) eventually figured out was not enough to be much help. Then the spectre of IMF austerity measures must have occurred to Yanukovich and he decided (15 months ago on November 21, 2013) to postpone signing the EU offer. At this point many well-to-do, pro-Europe Ukrainians in the western cities of Lvov and Kiev started peaceful protests, marching pleasantly behind huge, starry, EU flags. Babies, children and fashionable outfits were welcome.
Dissent in the East and Increasingly Violent Protests in Kiev’s “Euromaidan Square”:
Soon those humbler Ukrainians who did not like the rapprochement with Europe started turning out. Clashes occurred that eventually became extremely violent. The low point in Kiev was February 18, 2014, following three months of large protests that involved frequent violence upon protesters and some upon the police. The violence came at times from police, hotheads from both sides, Right Sector thugs, Svoboda Party Nazis and foreign “specialists,” the latter financed by powerful interests that include the USA and Ukrainian oligarchs. On February 18 over 100 people died. Snipers shot at and killed protestors and police. It is suspected by many that the snipers were foreign “specialists” hired to escalate the violence to such depths that Viktor Yanukovich would have to step down. On March 5 the Guardian wrote that a telephone conversation had been leaked in which EU High Commissioner, Catharine Ashton, was informed by the pro-West Estonian Foreign Minister that bullets found in police and in anti-Yanukovich protesters came from the same guns. This lends credibility to the above suspicion that the snipers, who quickly vanished, were indeed foreign “specialists.”
American Involvement – Opportunism or Deliberate “Mischief?”
Yanukovich declared February 22 and 23 as days of mourning – and fled. Was the USA foxily waiting for the stingy Europe-Ukraine deal to sour? Was the CIA criminally involved in the ousting of Yanukovich? In early February, two weeks or more before the one hundred died, Hillary Clinton had already begun pulling strings to handpick the Ukraine’s new president and cabinet. Clinton used the poetic Victoria Nuland. You will remember Nuland’s “Fuck the EU!” comment on the telephone to Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador to the Ukraine. That gem was uploaded onto YouTube on Feb. 6. Nuland even went across the pond to hand out cookies to the Euromaidan revellers, whose pyrrhic victory has led to enormous financial woes, the loss of Crimea and horrific violence in Donetsk and Lugansk. The USA has spent billions preparing the Ukraine for this historic moment.
Cui Bono?
When one looks to attribute responsibility in a political crisis, the question, “Who benefits?” often provides clues. From the list of beneficiaries, Europe and the Ukraine can quickly be removed. Russia has been victimized without proof. The media have tried to humiliate Vladimir Putin using fiery headlines and put Russia under severe, crippling sanctions. Putin is a formidable leader of a large nuclear power. No, the spoils (good word for this), as of February 8, 2015, go to the USA. The neocons and oligarchs who control Obama want Putin gone. Their aim has been to put a weak puppet in charge of a shamed Russia, allow the oligarchs back in, and own, or neuter, Russia.
Then they will turn their eyes on, or “pivot to” Asia.
The Nuclear Clock Is Ticking; Experienced Hawks Are Critical:
The dangerous, high-stakes, neocon Ukraine/Russia plan could start WW III. The nuclear clock has recently been advanced to 3 minutes before midnight. We are back in the 1980’s, folks. Henry Kissinger has recently called the destabilization of the Ukraine “foolish.” Back in 1997, when Clinton started expanding NATO into former USSR satellites, George F. Kennan wrote in the New York Times that
expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American Policy in the entire post-cold war era.
MH17 Tragedy, some short questions with long answers:
On Purpose? Is it a false flag attempt, possibly with CIA help, involving a Ukrainian Buk missile, Ukrainian Air Traffic Control and/or Ukrainian fighter jets with the intent of enabling lethal sanctions to discredit, humble and remove a demonized Putin?
An accident? Is it a Buk missile error by the pro-Russia rebels, by a careless Ukrainian Buk unit or by a renegade, billionaire-financed unofficial army, such as the Nazi-oriented Azov Battalion?
Just some of the things that make this look really fishy:
the only proper evidence yet presented (Rostov radar evidence) points to the presence of Ukrainian fighter planes near MH17 when it went down. This evidence has not yet been proven false.
the USA reacted with immediate, categorical statements that Russia was guilty. Very quickly this changed to mere word-tricks and innuendo for the last six months.
the USA has never provided the satellite evidence it claims it has. If It pointed at Russia, they would be burying us repeatedly in it. So it probably points at the Ukraine.
Russia’s statement that an experimental satellite operated by the USA was in place over the area at the time when MH17 went down has not been denied by the USA
The Ukraine, early on, interfered with the ability of experts to view the site, forbidding people to go (“too dangerous”) and shelling the area with 2-metre deep holes for good measure
the Western media have presented none of the many alternatives to the “pro-Russian rebel” story
the Dutch investigations appear to be designed to prolong the crisis and thereby the sanctions
the Ukraine, admitted by the Dutch JIT to be possibly involved, has a veto over what the investigation(s) eventually publish. Ludicrous!
the Western media are stepping up the attacks on Putin – at least three CBC stories in the past week: Feb. 1 to 6, 2015!
the West has relied on websites like bellingcat.com and correct!v.org that collect suspect social media posts and weave very tangled webs of so-called proof whose stories keep changing. Correct!v.org is financed by millions of Euros that came from a fund started by a German billionaire. Both these investigative sites started in July 2014. Coincidence?
Ukraine security immediately confiscated all air traffic control recordings and has not released them.
Pro-Russia rebels properly presented, intact, the black boxes to Malaysian officials, who hastily handed them over to the “trustworthy” Brits. Still secret almost 7 months later!
Ukraine videos attempting to show pro-Rebel soldiers stealing from and disrespecting the victims were proven later to be falsely presented when the whole videos found were presented in context by Russian media. Damage to public opinion conveniently done, Western MSM ignored this.
Comments on signs of “very strong machine gun fire” and “no missile evidence noticed by me” made by Canadian-Ukrainian OSCE spokesperson, Michael Bociurkiw, a first responder. It was a precious minute and a half when aired on a CBC interview with Susan Ormiston in late July. I guess the kaka hit the fan at some point; to my knowledge, though parts of that program have been aired again, I have not seen this tiny, important segment.
There is intense competition between:
the current geopolitical primate, the United States (with Israel, Europe, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia (the “West”) and
the emerging power base: the huge and geographically contiguous supercontinent of Eurasia that has been recently flexing its muscles in the areas of finance and in how oil will be traded. Eurasia has developed an increasing politico-economic involvement in resource-rich Africa. As scarcities appear, Africa will be something to war over. Again, the poor will suffer. In places like Nigeria there is already desperation over the stuff that comes with the ‘Black gold.”
For my detailed list of findings and links simply, as I said before, go HERE.
David Schraven is the latest star tenor in the Blame Russia Chorus. His website, correct!v.org, began right about the time that MH17 went down with a grant of 1 million euro per year for three years from the Bröst Foundation, an organization formed with a gift of €300 million from Anneliese Bröst, a billionaire heiress. Schraven’s credentials appear to be pretty good, but the timing of correct!v.org’s startup, the extremely generous funding from Mrs. Bröst’s foundation and the similarly opportune startup timing of the website, bellingcat.com, which he uses as part of his evidence, make me think twice about trusting his work. We are all aware of how funding can influence both the goals and often the data of pharmaceutical research, for example.
correct!v.org is a data-centric investigative journalism outfit. It is newly formed; this article that announced its formation was written on – wait for it – July 17, 2014 – the date MH17 went down! The man in charge of the latest Blame Russia article is David Schraven, founder of correct!v.org. The article takes 35 minutes to read even without checking out Schraven’s anonymous sources like “Rupert Smid.” He and his team (writers Marcus Bensmann and David Crawford and editors, Daniel Drepper, Jonathan Sachse, Benedict Wermter and Julia Brötz) have pinned it on a Buk operated by the 53rd Russian Air Defence Brigade.
In addition to its own investigative stuff, the Schraven article uses “research” done by Elliot Higgins, well known for his suspect social media approach to finding the “bad guys” guilty by chasing all over the web for Buk sightings. Higgins is behind bellingcat.com, which is critiqued by this WikiSpooks article. Elliot Higgins founded bellingcat on July 15, 2014, two days before MH17 went down. Before then he was on Twitter as @BrownMoses and ran the Brown Moses blog. Higgins appeared to work faster than light and found photos of a “Buk on a Truck” only one day after (or, was it, egad, July 17?) the tragic downing that killed 298 passengers and crew. There is much to suspect about the accuracy of this work and the quickness with which this first photo was found.
“Since 2010 he is head of investigations at Funke Mediengruppe (ed. – see below) one of the largest European media holdings for regional newspapers including Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.” “He was the founder of the German Newspaper “taz ruhr”. Later he worked as a reporter on energy issues for the Axel Springer Group.” (Axel Springer founded Axel Springer GmbH in 1946 – see below also for more info on Springer’s flagship tabloid, Bild) “Then in 2010 he went on with his researches as head of investigations at Funke Mediengruppe.” (See below also)
Springer founded Bild in 1952, a photo tabloid paper like the Sun, complete with nudity, sensational news, etc. It was attacked by the radical left in the late 60’s for its political opinion. Bild is Conservative by German standards. Very pro-State of Israel. Very, very popular. Bild stories are often based on dubious evidence. Wiki describes the tabloid as “unabashedly conservative and nationalist.” Funke Mediengruppe, the new name for the publishing company that was owned by the Bröst family, having been founded by social democrat Erich Brost. Funke bought out the Bröst shares in 2012. Read this for more on the interesting history of Brost and Funke. Anneliese Bröst (see above) inherited her fortune from Erich Bröst, her husband. She died in 2010.
The following two paragraphs are quoted from a New York Times tribute to George F. Kennan on March 18, 2005. Kennan, who died at 101 in 2005, was a major architect of the Cold War. He was no friend of Russia and was hard-nosed about waging political warfare with the USSR, but had a healthy respect for the importance of avoiding unnecessary, stupid conflict with that powerful political adversary.
“In February 1997, Mr. Kennan wrote on The New York Times’s Op-Ed page that the Clinton administration’s decision to back an enlargement of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to bring it to the borders of Russia was a terrible mistake. He wrote that
expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold war era.
Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking,” he wrote. His views, shared by a broad range of policy experts, did not prevail.”
That was waaayyy back in 1997. What we see now is the U.S. and the E.U. playing serious “chicken” games with/against each other and Vladimir Putin in a dangerously destabilizing game of craps for the Ukraine. Forcing a bear into a corner is never a smart move.
January 13, 2017 Key Update: Christopher Black of New Eastern Outlook posted this on January 11: Trump and MH17: Just One Step Too Far? In it he ties the extraordinary detention at, for God’s sake, Amsterdam‘s Schiphol Airport, of journalists Michael Spekkers and Stefan Beck and seizure of all their cameras and electronic devices plus pieces of the MH17 wreckage still in the Donbass that they found with the help of Graham Phillips. All of their material, photos and data have been looked through but we’ll not get the chance to see it.
This is yet one more piece of evidence that implies that NATO and its “servants,” the Dutch authorities, are very worried about evidence being revealed that neither the Russians nor the Eastern Ukrainians were, in any way, responsible for the shootdown of MH17. The guilty parties are very likely the Ukrainians for shooting down MH17, either accidentally or deliberately, and the Americans would then be guilty of hiding evidence at a minimum and, if the shootdown was a deliberate false flag, actual criminal involvement before, during and after the July 17, 2014 event.
The article summarizes the MH17 event succinctly and highlights the key smelly points. Mr. Black, an international lawyer based in Toronto, adds that the relentless onslaught of propaganda and incredible, as yet unproven, machinations against President-Elect Trump add serious gravity to the suspicions of thoughtful observers who haven’t let this farce go. The neocons are seriously spooked at the possibility that Trump will launch a proper investigation into MH17, one that I suspect will be hugely embarrassing to the American security apparatus, to the Obama democrats and humiliating to the American people themselves.
Below is a lot of information that I’ve collected in my study (ongoing since August 2014, less than a month after the shootdown) of MH17 and the Ukraine coup and its own background. Immediately following are other updates, and if you scroll down far enough you will see a very thorough chronological set of events and articles with links so that you, yourself, can analyze this puzzle to your heart’s content.
2016 Introduction
September 11, 2016: This post, begun on August 13, 2014, was expanded to include the Ukraine coup d’état in February 2014 financed and organized by the US State Department. MH17 didn’t happen in a vacuum. Since MH17 went down 26 months ago on July 17, 2014, a mystery story has evolved for me that goes back to 2013.
Background: To properly illuminate and present this story, it was necessary to examine the events that led up to MH17 and ultimately spawned its horror. So, some time ago, at the bottom of this long post, a brief timeline listing the dramatic and violent events of the Euromaidan protests that began in November, 2013, three months before the coup, that forced the elected President Viktor Yanukovich to flee on February 21, 2014. The replacement of Yankovich with puppets selected by the US State Department alienated the citizens of Crimea and the Eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk. Crimea acceded to Russia after a 90% referendum vote in March, and Donetsk and Lugansk proclaimed themselves independent peoples republics on April 7, 2014.
Above: a project of mine that is almost finished. It may just come in handy…
