More Ukrainian Events

[billvon]

Of course they had to fly right over Ukraine and right over the Donetsk and right over the "terrorists" which would most definitely take out the plane at more than 10,000 meters with their primitive Soviet old junk weapons and than get entirely blamed for being true "terrorists" by the entire world.

Yep. When you kill hundreds of innocent people over your political affiliations you risk being labeled a true terrorist. A good way to avoid this problem is to refrain from killing hundreds of innocent people.

 

[youreyes]

Yep. When you kill hundreds of innocent people over your political affiliations you risk being labeled a true terrorist. A good way to avoid this problem is to refrain from killing hundreds of innocent people.

Look at your own country and how many millions were directly and indirectly killed, before you speak. The Ukranian rebels are fighting for their right and their land. The government that was inserted into Kiev by international force is the one that so far killed hundreds of innocent people that Ukranians are fleeing in 30,000 and more to Russia away from the hell that yet again USA created. You hypocricy or idiotism is staggering.

 

[billvon]

The Ukranian rebels are fighting for their right and their land.

By killing unarmed airline passengers? Hmm. Are they going to kill some schoolkids next, just to, you know, fight for their land?

Whatever their cause is, this just set them back in a very big way. A lot of people who didn't care much about the conflict in the Ukraine now realize that the pro-Russian forces there might just put THEIR loved ones at risk. Threatening to kill people's families is a sure way to get them to oppose you.

 

[youreyes]

By killing unarmed airline passengers? Hmm. Are they going to kill some schoolkids next, just to, you know, fight for their land?

Whatever their cause is, this just set them back in a very big way. A lot of people who didn't care much about the conflict in the Ukraine now realize that the pro-Russian forces there might just put THEIR loved ones at risk. Threatening to kill people's families is a sure way to get them to oppose you.

Where is your proof they killed unarmed airline passengers? You are taking the pro-US illigitimate Ukraine government side without any investigation and proof. PATHETIC.

Whatever your cause is for being blind to any facts, but maybe you should go back to school and learn how science and worlds works. It works with facts, so you cant just make up shit on the go without substantial proof to your statement and than go on saying the latter of the statement.

 

[joepistole]

Where is your proof they killed unarmed airline passengers? You are taking the pro-US illigitimate Ukraine government side without any investigation and proof. PATHETIC.

Whatever your cause is for being blind to any facts, but maybe you should go back to school and learn how science and worlds works. It works with facts, so you cant just make up shit on the go without substantial proof to your statement and than go on saying the latter of the statement.

Maybe you should follow your own advice? I haven't seen a single iota of proof from you. When confronted with proof, you just ignore it. You want us now to believe that the Malaysian Airliner shot down by Russian irregulars in Ukraine were armed...seriously? What are they going to lean out the airliner windows with babies on their laps at 33,000 feet and take shots at Russian irregulars in Ukraine...really? And you wonder why people don't believe you.

 

[joepistole]

Look at your own country and how many millions were directly and indirectly killed, before you speak. The Ukranian rebels are fighting for their right and their land. The government that was inserted into Kiev by international force is the one that so far killed hundreds of innocent people that Ukranians are fleeing in 30,000 and more to Russia away from the hell that yet again USA created. You hypocricy or idiotism is staggering.

Well, no they are not fighting for their land. They are fighting for Putin and an opportunity to profit and some are fighting for Putin’s brand of fascism. If they were a popular Ukrainian uprising, they wouldn’t need papa Putin to pay protestors. They wouldn’t need Papa Putin to send in “rebels” (i.e. Russian irregular forces) in addition to military training and supplies. They wouldn’t need Papa Putin to recruit and train those irregular forces inside Mother Russia. If this were a true Ukrainian insurgency, Russians wouldn’t be fighting it under the guise of being Ukrainian rebels.

http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-i-was-a-separatist-fighter/25455466.html

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-08/pro-russian-demonstrators-in-ukraine-paid/5373834

Just some advice, before you go calling someone a hypocrite, you should take a long and serious look at yourself.

 

[joepistole]

I think it is time for more serious sanctions, and I am sure they will be coming in the days ahead.

 

[cosmictraveler]

Dude, what "Russian troops" are you talking about? Pro-Russian rebels who are fighting for their lands are not Russian troops. And this Buk launcher was in the hands of Ukrainian troops, they are the ones assaulting the territory there.

I guess you've put a blindfold on when the TV shows Russian troops side by side those separatists helping them in any way they can. They are not wearing the insignias of the regular troops but they are wearing the clothing of them. Just because you don't see something others do.

 

[billvon]

Where is your proof they killed unarmed airline passengers?

Photos of unarmed dead passengers. Transcripts of them talking to Russian intelligence agents saying "we've shot down a plane." US surveillance records showing a firecontrol radar going on, followed by the IR plume of a missile. Pretty good evidence.

Whatever your cause is for being blind to any facts, but maybe you should go back to school and learn how science and worlds works. It works with facts, so you cant just make up shit on the go . . . .

Exactly. Hence the importance of those photographs, those surveillance records and those transcripts. In the real world, such things are called "evidence." (I am sure in your world they are called "meaningless distorted anti evil blah blah blah" but in the real world they are significant.)

As I said before, this is a sea change in how we are going to treat this conflict. When a government says "hey, we want to get involved in this internal Russian conflict" a lot of people are going to decline to support that. But saying "hey, we are taking action against terrorists who are killing international airplane passengers" you're going to get a lot of support.

 

[joepistole]

American (i.e. Obama) could end this very easily. He could stop financing arms, men through Blackwater-like companies, and money to this fake inserted Mandan government. He could GTFO from a country he has no business being in and withraw his monetary support and sanctions to Russia. This is going to be another failed Syria, he is not going to get the pie. GTFO. I am speaking from entire Russian nation and I know how Russians feel about this whole thing and we will not tolerate this much longer. So while Obama is playing his games and provocations and etc. Time to pay for the sins will come.

And do you have any proofs of your claims? You have been asking others for proofs, so where are your proofs? You have none, because none exist, because what you allege is fiction. And the government in Ukraine was elected under a fair and open election process, which is more than anyone can honestly say for Putin and Russia.

If Ukrainians wanted to secede from Ukraine or if the Ukraine wanted to merge with Russia, all it takes is a fair open election – a majority vote of Ukrainians. But Putin cannot get a majority vote in an open and fair election…hence the violence. If Putin could convince Ukrainians to merge with or come under his control peaceably, the West would have no quarrel with Putin. But he cannot. That is why his troops are occupying Crimea and occupying portions of Eastern Ukraine under the guise of rebels.

What you and Putin don't seem to be able to understand is that it is unacceptable to steal from your neighbors. Putin/Russia is attempting to steal land from its neighbors, first Georgia and now Ukraine. That isn't acceptable.

I don’t see how you think Ukraine is going to turn into a Syria. The two are not even remotely similar. For starters, Ukraine has a duly elected government. Syria does not. And the Ukrainian government isn’t murdering its own citizens, and has been and is peacefully governing most of the country.

There is no pie in Ukraine. The only folks who think there is pie in Ukraine are in Russia. They are folks like you. Ukraine is an underdeveloped backwater. From the perspective of the West, this isn’t about Ukraine. It is about the rule of international law and stopping fascism. We saw what fascism did during WWII and the West is not anxious to repeat WWII. And do you really think the West is quivering in fear that Putin might do something? I hate to tell you, but Russia is a third rate power economically and militarily. The West is exponentially stronger than Russia both militarily and economically. And the West would prefer war to living under a dictatorship. You should get out of Russia and learn how the rest of the world lives.

Putin is in a very difficult position of his own making. He began the nationalist movement to cover his failing economy. Now he has exponentially exacerbated his economic problems not only in the near term but in the long term as well. Businesses would have to be insane to invest in a country as unstable as that ruled by Putin. Putin now has a nationalist movement that he may not be able to control. Putin has set up Mother Russia for yet another cataclysmic failure.

At some point, if Putin continues down the path, the West will go after Putin’s personal wealth. It is going to hurt when Western powers confiscate his 70 billion dollar personal fortune held in foreign banks. At some point you and brother Putin need to stop the scapegoating, and begin acting responsibly. I am not sure when or if that will ever happen. Unfortunately, this isn't going to end well for Mother Russia. Putin has whipped up something he might not be able to control. And he clearly didn't think this thing through very well...kind of reminds me of another dictator who didn't think things through very well.

 

[Bells]

Flew off course? The Ukrainian dispatchers told it to lower its altitude and go that area where it got downed. Don't be a fool, this was a planned coordinated plot.

Putin has saved Crimea from war, that is what he has done. He has saved the vast majority of Russians from participating in this entourage devised by the CIA&USAID.

The downing of Yanukovich, showed just how much US has infiltrated into the military and governing forces of the government, corrupting the system in its entirety.

Nothing Justifies what USA is doing in Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and now Ukraine. Starting revolutions for the sake of control of resources or political agendas with use of complete infiltration of government structures, utilization of private armies, and terrorist tactics.

Bullshit, you snivelling Russian shill.

They were flying at 33,000 feet, in a safe corridor designated as such by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. They were targeted by pro-Russian and Russian trained specialist who boasted about it on Twitter immediately afterwards and in intercepted phone calls, until they realised that instead of a military craft that they have a history of shooting down over the last few weeks, they had targeted a civilian passenger plane at cruising altitude with just under 300 people on board.

I spent yesterday with loved ones, whose parents were on that fucking plane, trying to reach them, in the desperate hope they weren't on that plane, at one point, we were even staring at the gruesome photos being published in the media, seeing if we could spot something of theirs or even them. Do you want to know what that's like? What it was like for them? And you're lying and making excuses for the bastards that did this? Don't you dare try and bullshit your way out of this with unsubstantiated claims that they were made to fly lower by the Ukrainians. It's pure and utter bullshit as you once again suck on the teat of Mother Russia and defend it. A bunch of fucking cowards shooting down a civilian plane with men, women and children on board and then looting their belongings.

There are no words to express the rage at the moment. Absolutely none. But keep defending Mother Russia. A bunch of cold blooded thieving murderers who deliberately shot down 298 innocent men, women and children and then boasted about it online and on video and in phone calls and then went out and stole what they could from them.

Frankly, you can take your mother fucking Russia and shove it up your arse.

 

[pjdude1219]

American (i.e. Obama) could end this very easily. He could stop financing arms, men through Blackwater-like companies, and money to this fake inserted Mandan government. He could GTFO from a country he has no business being in and withraw his monetary support and sanctions to Russia. This is going to be another failed Syria, he is not going to get the pie. GTFO. I am speaking from entire Russian nation and I know how Russians feel about this whole thing and we will not tolerate this much longer. So while Obama is playing his games and provocations and etc. Time to pay for the sins will come.

the US isn't finiacing anything. your just crazy. your alot like draqon was. always had an excuse why russia is entitled to its violent ways.

 

[Gremmie]

the US isn't finiacing anything. your just crazy. your alot like draqon was. always had an excuse why russia is entitled to its violent ways.

Ummm yeah...

Do you know why youreyes reminds you of draqon?

Because it is draqon... He fessed up a while back.

I just have to ask any mod... What's the point of a permaban? You just let posters come back with a new screen name.

New names, same old bullshit...

*shrugs*

 

[pjdude1219]

Ummm yeah...

Do you know why youreyes reminds you of draqon?

Because it is draqon... He fessed up a while back.

I just have to ask any mod... What's the point of a permaban? You just let posters come back with a new screen name.

New names, same old bullshit...

*shrugs*

that does explain why the crazy feels so familiar.

 

[Gremmie]

that does explain why the crazy feels so familiar.

Yes, indeed...

 

[joepistole]

International investigators were only given 75 minutes and very limited access to the crash site. Bodies are decomposing in the fields. This isn't what one would expect if Putin's irregulars were innocent. Apparently the black boxes have gone missing.

 

[CptBork]

Michael Bociurkiw, a member of the OSCE team, said their access had been limited despite assurances from the regional rebel commander that they would be allowed into the site.

"A visibly intoxicated armed guard fired his rifle in the air when one of the observers walked out of the prescribed area," Mr Bociurkiw told journalists.​

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28381460

Comrade Youreyes, this is great transgression! Fearless Leader has said you must not play with gun so much, is not enough bullets left to kill journalists after . And I tell you 4 times before, alcohol make your penis look small and embarass Mother Russia!

 

[Mrs.Lucysnow]

By killing unarmed airline passengers? Hmm. Are they going to kill some schoolkids next, just to, you know, fight for their land?

Whatever their cause is, this just set them back in a very big way. A lot of people who didn't care much about the conflict in the Ukraine now realize that the pro-Russian forces there might just put THEIR loved ones at risk. Threatening to kill people's families is a sure way to get them to oppose you.

Interesting. I thought Americans believed in innocence before proof of guilt? You are assuming pro Russian separatists and or Russia downed those planes because you have no evidence. The US government says they BELIEVE that it was pro Russian but belief isn't knowledge of a fact.

As of 20 hours ago there has been no investigation as yet...

Investigators will have to navigate charred wreckage and regional hostility in efforts to uncover answers into the downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which left 298 people dead, including a vacationing family and a World Health Organization official.
The pro-Russian separatists who control the area where the jetliner was brought down agreed to allow investigators safe access to the site to recover bodies and gather evidence, according to a statement from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
It was unclear how soon investigators would begin sifting through the wreckage of the airliner, which went down Thursday in Ukraine near the Russian border. https://gma.yahoo.com/fbi-ntsb-inve...nes-plane-065142791--abc-news-topstories.html

You could very easily have the wrong end of the stick on this one.

 

[Mrs.Lucysnow]

Bullshit, you snivelling Russian shill.

They were flying at 33,000 feet, in a safe corridor designated as such by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. They were targeted by pro-Russian and Russian trained specialist who boasted about it on Twitter immediately afterwards and in intercepted phone calls, until they realised that instead of a military craft that they have a history of shooting down over the last few weeks, they had targeted a civilian passenger plane at cruising altitude with just under 300 people on board.

I spent yesterday with loved ones, whose parents were on that fucking plane, trying to reach them, in the desperate hope they weren't on that plane, at one point, we were even staring at the gruesome photos being published in the media, seeing if we could spot something of theirs or even them. Do you want to know what that's like? What it was like for them? And you're lying and making excuses for the bastards that did this? Don't you dare try and bullshit your way out of this with unsubstantiated claims that they were made to fly lower by the Ukrainians. It's pure and utter bullshit as you once again suck on the teat of Mother Russia and defend it. A bunch of fucking cowards shooting down a civilian plane with men, women and children on board and then looting their belongings.

There are no words to express the rage at the moment. Absolutely none. But keep defending Mother Russia. A bunch of cold blooded thieving murderers who deliberately shot down 298 innocent men, women and children and then boasted about it online and on video and in phone calls and then went out and stole what they could from them.

Frankly, you can take your mother fucking Russia and shove it up your arse.

Where exactly in that article does it say the airliner was brought down by pro Russian separatists? What it does say is "Pro-Russian rebels claimed they had shot down three Ukrainian Sukhoi-25 jets in the days leading up to the Malaysia Airlines attack." All the boasting on twitter would indicate is that if they did indeed bring it down it was a mistake (collateral damage) as they are after military craft. Its a civil war remember.

As for the "cold blooded thieving murderers" Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus at New York University and Princeton University wrote this for The Nation magazine

The regime (Kiev) has repeatedly carried out artillery and air attacks on city centers, creating a humanitarian catastrophe—which is all but ignored by the US political-media establishment. For months, the US-backed regime in Kiev has been committing atrocities against its own citizens in southeastern Ukraine, regions heavily populated by Russian-speaking Ukrainians and ethnic Russians. While victimizing a growing number of innocent people, including children, and degrading America’s reputation, these military assaults on cities, captured on video, are generating intense pressure in Russia on President Vladimir Putin to “save our compatriots.” Both the atrocities and the pressure on Putin have increased even more since July 1, when Kiev, after a brief cease-fire, intensified its artillery and air attacks on eastern cities defenseless against such weapons.

The reaction of the Obama administration—as well as the new cold-war hawks in Congress and in the establishment media—has been twofold: silence interrupted only by occasional statements excusing and thus encouraging more atrocities by Kiev. Very few Americans (notably, the scholar Gordon Hahn) have protested this shameful complicity. We may honorably disagree about the causes and resolution of the Ukrainian crisis, the worst US-Russian confrontation in decades, but not about deeds that have risen to the level of war crimes.

* * *

In mid-April, the new Kiev government, predominantly western Ukrainian in composition and outlook, declared an “anti-terrorist operation” against a growing political rebellion in the Southeast. At that time, the rebels were mostly mimicking the initial Maidan protests in Kiev in 2013—demonstrating, issuing defiant proclamations, occupying public buildings and erecting defensive barricades—before Maidan turned ragingly violent and, in February, overthrew Ukraine’s corrupt but legitimately elected president, Viktor Yanukovych. (The entire Maidan episode, it will be recalled, had Washington’s enthusiastic political, and perhaps more tangible, support.) Indeed, the precedent for seizing official buildings and demanding the allegiance of local authorities had been set even earlier, in January, in western Ukraine—by pro-Maidan, anti-Yanukovych protesters, some declaring “independence” from his government. Reports suggest that even now some cities in central and western Ukraine, regions almost entirely ignored by international media, are controlled by extreme nationalists, not Kiev.

Considering those preceding events, but above all the country’s profound historical divisions, particularly between its western and eastern regions—ethnic, linguistic, religious, cultural, economic and political—the rebellion in the southeast, centered in the industrial Donbass, was not surprising. Nor were its protests against the unconstitutional way (in effect, a coup) the new government had come to power, the southeast’s sudden loss of effective political representation in the capital and the real prospect of official discrimination. But by declaring an “anti-terrorist operation” against the new protesters, Kiev signaled its intention to “destroy” them, not negotiate with them.

On May 2, in this incendiary atmosphere, a horrific event occurred in the southern city of Odessa, awakening memories of Nazi German extermination squads in Ukraine and other Soviet republics during World War II. An organized pro-Kiev mob chased protesters into a building, set it on fire and tried to block the exits. Some forty people, perhaps more, perished in the flames or were murdered as they fled the inferno. A still unknown number of other victims were seriously injured.

Members of the infamous Right Sector, a far-right paramilitary organization ideologically aligned with the ultranationalist Svoboda party—itself a constituent part of Kiev’s coalition government—led the mob. Both are frequently characterized by knowledgeable observers as “neo-fascist” movements. (Hateful ethnic chants by the mob were audible, and swastika-like symbols were found on the scorched building.) Kiev alleged that the victims had themselves accidentally started the fire, but eyewitnesses, television footage and social media videos told the true story, as they have about subsequent atrocities.

Instead of interpreting the Odessa massacre as an imperative for restraint, Kiev intensified its “anti-terrorist operation.” Since May, the regime has sent a growing number of armored personnel carriers, tanks, artillery, helicopter gunships and warplanes to southeastern cities, among them, Slovyansk (Slavyansk in Russian), Mariupol, Krasnoarmeisk, Kramatorsk, Donetsk and Luhansk (Lugansk in Russian). When its regular military units and local police forces turned out to be less than effective, willing or loyal, Kiev hastily mobilized Right Sector and other radical nationalist militias responsible for much of the violence at Maidan into a National Guard to accompany regular detachments—partly to reinforce them, partly, it seems, to enforce Kiev’s commands. Zealous, barely trained and drawn mostly from central and western regions, Kiev’s new recruits have escalated the ethnic warfare and killing of innocent civilians. (Episodes described as “massacres” soon also occurred in Mariupol and Kramatorsk.)

Initially, the “anti-terrorist” campaign was limited primarily, though not only, to rebel checkpoints on the outskirts of cities. Since May, however, Kiev has repeatedly carried out artillery and air attacks on city centers that have struck residential buildings, shopping malls, parks, schools, kindergartens, hospitals, even orphanages. More and more urban areas, neighboring towns and villages now look and sound like war zones, with telltale rubble, destroyed and pockmarked buildings, mangled vehicles, the dead and wounded in streets, wailing mourners and crying children. Conflicting information from Kiev, local resistance leaders and Moscow, as well as Washington’s silence, make it difficult to estimate the number of dead and wounded noncombatants, but Kiev’s mid-July figure of about 2,000 is almost certainly too low. The number continues to grow due also to Kiev’s blockade of cities where essential medicines, food, water, fuel and electricity are scarce, and where wages and pensions are often no longer being paid. The result is an emerging humanitarian catastrophe.

Another effect is clear. Kiev’s “anti-terrorist” tactics have created a reign of terror in the targeted cities. Panicked by shells and mortars exploding on the ground, menacing helicopters and planes flying above and fear of what may come next, families are seeking sanctuary in basements and other darkened shelters. Even The New York Times, which like the mainstream American media generally has deleted the atrocities from its coverage, described survivors in Slovyansk “as if living in the Middle Ages.” Meanwhile, an ever-growing number of refugees, disproportionately women and traumatized children, have been desperately fleeing the carnage. In late June, the UN estimated that as many as 110,000 Ukrainians had fled across the border to Russia, where authorities said the actual numbers were much larger, and about half that many to other Ukrainian sanctuaries. By mid-July, roads and trains were filled with refugees from newly besieged Luhansk and Donetsk, a city of one million and already “a ghostly shell.”

It is true, of course, that anti-Kiev rebels in these regions are increasingly well-armed (though lacking the government’s arsenal of heavy and airborne weapons), organized and aggressive, no doubt with some Russian assistance, whether officially sanctioned or not. But calling themselves “self-defense” fighters is not wrong. They did not begin the combat; their land is being invaded and assaulted by a government whose political legitimacy is arguably no greater than their own, two of their large regions having voted overwhelmingly for autonomy referenda; and, unlike actual terrorists, they have not committed acts of war outside their own communities. The French adage suggested by an American observer seems applicable: “This animal is very dangerous. If attacked, it defends itself.”

* * *

Among the crucial questions rarely discussed in the US political-media establishment: What is the role of the “neo-fascist” factor in Kiev’s “anti-terrorist” ideology and military operations? Putin’s position, at least until recently—that the entire Ukrainian government is a “neo-fascist junta”—is incorrect. Many members of the ruling coalition and its parliamentary majority are aspiring European-style democrats or moderate nationalists. This may also be true of Ukraine’s newly elected president, the oligarch Petro Poroshenko, though his increasingly extreme words and deeds since being inaugurated on June 7—he has called resisters in the bombarded cities “gangs of animals” and vowed to take “hundreds of their lives for each life of our servicemen”—collide with his conciliatory image drafted by Washington and Brussels. Equally untrue, however, are claims by Kiev’s American apologists, including some academics and liberal intellectuals, that Ukraine’s neo-fascists—or perhaps quasi-fascists—are merely agitated nationalists, “garden-variety Euro-populists,” a “distraction” or lack enough popular support to be significant. (A Council on Foreign Relations specialist even assured Wall Street Journal readers that these extremists are among Kiev’s “good guys.”)

Independent Western scholars have documented the fascist origins, contemporary ideology and declarative symbols of Svoboda and its fellow-traveling Right Sector. Both movements glorify Ukraine’s murderous Nazi collaborators in World War II as inspirational ancestors. Both, to quote Svoboda’s leader Oleh Tyahnybok, call for an ethnically pure nation purged of the “Moscow-Jewish mafia” and “other scum,” including homosexuals, feminists and political leftists. (Not surprisingly, physical attacks on Kiev’s LGBT community are increasing, and on July 5 authoritieis in effect banned a Gay Pride parade.) And both organizations hailed the Odessa massacre. According to the website of Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh, it was “another bright day in our national history.” A Svoboda parliamentary deputy added, “Bravo, Odessa…. Let the Devils burn in hell.” If more evidence is needed, in December 2012, the European Parliament decried Svoboda’s “racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views [that] go against the EU’s fundamental values and principles.” In 2013, the World Jewish Congress denounced Svoboda as “neo-Nazi.” Still worse, observers agree that Right Sector is even more extremist.

Nor do electoral results tell the story. Tyahnybok and Yarosh together received less than 2 percent of the May presidential vote, but historians know that in traumatic times, when, to recall Yeats, “the center cannot hold,” small, determined movements can seize the moment, as did Lenin’s Bolsheviks and Hitler’s Nazis. Indeed, Svoboda and Right Sector already command power and influence far exceeding their popular vote. “Moderates” in the US-backed Kiev government, obliged to both movements for their violence-driven ascent to power, and perhaps for their personal safety, rewarded Svoboda and Right Sector with some five to eight (depending on shifting affiliations) top ministry positions, including ones overseeing national security, military, prosecutorial and educational affairs. Still more, according to the research of Pietro Shakarian, a remarkable young graduate student at the University of Michigan, Svoboda was given five governorships, covering about 20 percent of the country. And this does not take into account the role of Right Sector in the “anti-terrorist operation.”

Nor does it consider the political mainstreaming of fascism’s dehumanizing ethos. In December 2012, a Svoboda parliamentary leader anathematized the Ukrainian-born American actress Mila Kunis as “a dirty kike.” Since 2013, pro-Kiev mobs and militias have routinely denigrated ethnic Russians as insects (“Colorado beetles,” whose colors resemble a sacred Russia ornament). On May 9, at the annual commemoration of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, the governor of one region praised Hitler for his “slogan of liberating the people” in occupied Ukraine. More recently, the US-picked prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, referred to resisters in the Southeast as “subhumans.” His defense minister proposed putting them in “filtration camps,” pending deportation, and raising fears of ethnic cleansing. Yulia Tymoshenko—a former prime minister, titular head of Yatsenyuk’s party and runner-up in the May presidential election—was overheard wishing she could “exterminate them all [Ukrainian Russians] with atomic weapons.” “Sterilization” is among the less apocalyptic official musings on the pursuit of a purified Ukraine.

Confronted with such facts, Kiev’s American apologists have conjured up another rationalization. Any neo-fascists in Ukraine, they assure us, are far less dangerous than Putinism’s “clear aspects of fascism.” The allegation is unworthy of serious analysis: however authoritarian Putin may be, there is nothing authentically fascist in his rulership, policies, state ideology or personal conduct.

Indeed, equating Putin with Hitler, as eminent Americans from Hillary Clinton and Zbigniew Brzezinski to George Will have done, is another example of how our new cold warriors are recklessly damaging US national security in vital areas where Putin’s cooperation is essential. Looking ahead, would-be presidents who make such remarks can hardly expect to be greeted by an open-minded Putin, whose brother died and father was wounded in the Soviet-Nazi war. Moreover, tens of millions of today’s Russians whose family members were killed by actual fascists in that war will regard this defamation of their popular president as sacrilege, as they do the atrocities committed by Kiev.

* * *

And yet, the Obama administration reacts with silence, and worse. Historians will decide what the US government and the “democracy promotion” organizations it funds were doing in Ukraine during the preceding twenty years, but much of Washington’s role in the current crisis has been deeply complicit. As the Maidan mass protest against President Yanukovych developed last November-December, Senator John McCain, the high-level State Department policymaker Victoria Nuland and a crew of other US politicians and officials arrived to stand with its leaders, Svoboda’s Tyahnybok in the forefront, and declare, “America is with you!” Nuland was then caught on tape plotting with the American ambassador, Geoffrey Pyatt, to oust Yanukovych’s government and replace him with Yatsenyuk, who soon became, and remains, prime minister.

Meanwhile, President Obama personally warned Yanukovych “not to resort to violence,” as did, repeatedly, Secretary of State John Kerry. But when violent street riots deposed Yanukovych—only hours after a European-brokered, White House–backed compromise that would have left him as president of a reconciliation government until new elections this December, possibly averting the subsequent bloodshed—the administration made a fateful decision. It eagerly embraced the outcome. Obama personally legitimized the coup as a “constitutional process,” inviting Yatsenyuk to the White House. The United States has been at least tacitly complicit in what followed, from Putin’s hesitant decision in March to annex Crimea and the rebellion in southeastern Ukraine, to the ongoing civil war and Kiev’s innocent victims.

How intimately involved US officials have been in Kiev’s “anti-terrorist operation” is not known, but certainly the administration has not been discreet. Before and after the military campaign began in earnest, Kerry, CIA director John Brennan and Vice President Joseph Biden (twice) visited Kiev, followed, it is reported, by a continuing flow of “senior US defense officials,” military equipment and financial assistance to the bankrupt Kiev government. Indeed, American “advisers” are now “embedded” in the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. Despite this essential support, the White House has not compelled Kiev to investigate either the Odessa massacre or the fateful sniper killings of scores of Maidan protesters and policemen on February 18–20, which precipitated Yanukovych’s ouster. (The snipers were initially said to be Yanukovych’s, but evidence later appeared pointing to opposition extremists, possibly Right Sector. Unlike Washington, the Council of Europe has been pressuring Kiev to investigate both events.)

As atrocities and humanitarian disaster grow in Ukraine, both Obama and Kerry have all but vanished as statesmen. Except for periodic banalities asserting the virtuous intentions of Washington and Kiev and alleging Putin’s responsibility for the violence, they have left specific responses to lesser US officials. Not surprisingly, all have told the same Manichean story, from the White House to Foggy Bottom. The State Department’s neocon missionary Nuland, who spent several days at Maidan, for example, assured a congressional committee that she had no evidence of fascist-like elements playing any role there. Ambassador Pyatt, who earlier voiced the same opinion about the Odessa massacre, was even more dismissive, telling obliging New Republic editors that the entire question was “laughable.”

Still more shameful, no American official at any level appears to have issued a meaningful statement of sympathy for civilian victims of the Kiev government, not even those in Odessa. Instead, the administration has been unswervingly indifferent, tacitly endorsing Kiev’s preposterous claims that its innocent bombing victims were killed by Russian or “separatist” forces, as it did again on July 15, when at least eleven people died in an apartment building. When asked again and again if her superiors had “any concerns” about the casualties of Kiev’s military campaign, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki has repeatedly answered “no.” Even worse, the German, French and Russian foreign ministers having urged Poroshenko to extend the ceasefire, his decision instead to intensify Kiev’s military campaign was clearly taken with the encouragement or support of the Obama administration.

Indeed, at the UN Security Council on May 2, US Ambassador Samantha Power, referring explicitly to the “counterterrorism initiative” and suspending her revered “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine, gave Kiev’s leaders a US license to kill. Lauding their “remarkable, almost unimaginable, restraint,” as Obama himself did after Odessa, she continued, “Their response is reasonable, it is proportional, and frankly it is what any one of our countries would have done.” (Since then, the administration has blocked Moscow’s appeal for a UN humanitarian corridor between southeastern Ukraine and Russia.)

Contrary to the incessant administration and media demonizing of Putin and his “agents” in Ukraine, the “anti-terrorist operation” can be ended only where it began—in Washington and Kiev. Leaving aside how much power the new president actually has in Kiev (or over Right Sector militias in the field), Poroshenko’s “peace plan” and June 21 cease-fire may have seemed such an opportunity, except for their two core conditions: fighters in the southeast first had to “lay down their arms,” and he alone would decide with whom to negotiate peace. The terms seemed more akin to conditions of surrender, and were probably the real reason Poroshenko unilaterally ended the cease-fire on July 1 and intensified Kiev’s assault on eastern cities, initially on the smaller towns of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, which their defenders abandoned—to prevent more civilian casualities, they said—on July 5–6.

The Obama administration continues to make the situation worse. Despite opposition by several NATO allies and even American corporate heads, the president and his secretary of state, who has spoken throughout this crisis more like a secretary of war than the nation’s top diplomat, have constantly threatened Russia with harsher economic sanctions unless Putin meets one condition or another, most of them improbable. On June 26, Kerry even demanded (“literally”) that the Russian president “in the next few hours…help disarm” resisters in the Southeast, as though they are not motivated by any of Ukraine’s indigenous conflicts but are merely Putin’s private militias. On July 16, Obama imposed more U.S. sanctions, which will be politically difficult to remove and thus will serve only to deepen and prolong the New Cold War. And the tragic shoot-down of a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine, on July 17, makes everything even more perilous.

In fact, from the onset of the crisis, the administration’s actual goal has been unclear, and not only to Moscow. Is it a negotiated compromise, which would have to include a Ukraine with a significantly federalized or decentralized state free to maintain longstanding economic relations with Russia and banned from NATO membership? Is it to bring the entire country exclusively into the West, including into NATO? Is it a long-simmering vendetta against Putin for all the things he purportedly has and has not done over the years? (Some behavior of Obama and Kerry, seemingly intended to demean and humiliate Putin, suggest an element of this.) Or is it to provoke Russia into a war with the United States and NATO in Ukraine?

Inadvertent or not, the latter outcome remains all too possible. After Russia annexed—or “reunified” with—Crimea in March, Putin, not Kiev or Washington, has demonstrated “remarkable restraint.” But events are making it increasingly difficult for him to do so. Almost daily, Russian state media, particularly television, have featured vivid accounts of Kiev’s military assaults on Ukraine’s eastern cities. The result has been, both in elite and public opinion, widespread indignation and mounting perplexity, even anger, over Putin’s failure to intervene militarily.

We may discount the following indictment by an influential ideologist of Russia’s own ultra-nationalists, who have close ties with Ukraine’s “self-defense” commanders: “Putin betrays not just the People’s Republic of Donetsk and the People’s Republic of Lugansk but himself, Russia and all of us.” Do not, however, underestimate the significance of an article in the mainstream pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia, which asked, while charging the leadership with “ignoring the cries for help,” “Is Russia abandoning the Donbass?” If so, the author warned, the result will be “Russia’s worst nightmare” and relegate it to “the position of a vanquished country.”

Just as significant were similar exhortations by Gennady Zyuganov, leader of Russia’s Communist Party, the second-largest in the country and in parliament. The party also has substantial influence in the military-security elite and even in the Kremlin. Thus, one of Putin’s own aides publicly urged him to send fighter planes to impose a “no-fly zone”—an American-led UN action in Qaddafi’s Libya that has not been forgotten or forgiven by the Kremlin—and destroy Kiev’s approaching aircraft and land forces. If that happens, US and NATO forces, now being built up in Eastern Europe, might well also intervene, creating a Cuban missile crisis–like confrontation. As a former Russian foreign minister admired in the West reminds us, there are “hawks on both sides.”

More recently, Kiev’s stepped-up assaults on eastern Ukrainian citizens, the fall of Slovyansk and other small shattered cities, and the repeated shelling of Russia’s own bordering territory, which killed a resident on July 13, have fueled more outrage in Putin’s own establishment over his military inaction. The dean of Moscow State University’s School of Television, a semi-official position, even suggested that the Kremlin was part of “a strange conspiracy of silence” with Western governments to conceal the number of Kiev’s innocent victims. He warned that “those who permit murderers to win…automatically have the blood of peaceful citizens on their hands.” And the state’s leading television news network demanded that the Kremlin take immediate military action, repeating the call for a “no-fly zone.”

Little of this is even noted in the United States. In a democratic political system, the establishment media are expected to pierce the official fog of war. In the Ukrainian crisis, however, mainstream American newspapers and television have been almost as slanted and elliptical as White House and State Department statements, obscuring the atrocities, if reporting them at all, and generally relying on information from Washington and Kiev. Why, for example, have The New York Times, The Washington Post and major television networks not reported regularly from eastern Ukraine’s war-ravaged cities, instead of from Moscow and Kiev? Most Americans are thereby being shamed, unknowingly, by the Obama administration’s role. Those who do know but remain silent—in the government, media, think tanks, and universities—share its complicity.http://www.thenation.com/article/180466/silence-american-hawks-about-kievs-atrocities

Its funny how a well oiled propaganda machine can create a necessary enemy and have you all upset and up in arms over "Mother Russia". Same kind of stuff that had Americans rushing into Iraq after 9/11 bloated with self-righteous indignation.

 

[Bells]

The lies, slandering the dead, stealing from the dead and hiding evidence continues..

THE Russian government has allegedly been busted editing a Wikipedia entry on the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 disaster to blame Ukraine.

A Twitter bot which monitors edits made on the site by Russian government IP addresses picked up the changes which were made on a page listing civil aviation accidents, the UK’s Telegraph reported.

The original entry stated that the plane was shot down “by terrorists of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic with Buk system missiles, which the terrorists received from the Russian Federation”.

It was changed to read: “the plane [flight MH17] was shot down by Ukrainian soldiers”.

http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/malaysia-airlines-plane-mh17-shot-down-on-ukrainerussia-border/story-fnizu68q-1226992889461

FOOTAGE has emerged that reportedly shows the BUK rocket launcher that blasted Flight MH17 out of the sky — killing 298 people — two hours after the disaster.

Ukraine’s defence ministry has posted a video to its YouTube account which officials say shows the UK missile system being smuggled by pro-Russian separatists to the Russian border — with at least one missile missing.

The grainy footage, allegedly filmed by a Ukrainian intelligence agent, purportedly shows the rocket launcher being driven towards the Russian border after the attack, which killed 28 Australians on board MH17.

The video has not been independently verified. Ukrainian officials have said they believe Russian separatists near the town of Torez shot the airliner down with the Soviet-era BUK mobile anti-aircraft missile system.

Experts are examining other images, including one that allegedly shows the BUK surface-to-air missile rumbling slowly along an empty road towards a pro-Russian defensive site, possibly the launch site.

http://www.news.com.au/world/is-this-the-buk-m2-rocket-launcher-that-blasted-malaysia-airlines-flight-mh17-out-of-the-sky/story-fndir2ev-1226994397743

THERE are reports of bodies rotting in the fields as horrific details emerge about the chaotic state of the crash scene of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.

Pro-Russian separatists are keeping a strong hold over the wreckage, with reports that rebels shot at and harassed members of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), sent in to investigate the disaster.

A surface-to-air missile shot down the Boeing 777 and it crashed to the ground over cornfields in a separatist-held region of eastern Ukraine on Thursday.

The OSCE mission’s spokesman, Michael Bociurkiw, told the ABC that bodies at the crash site were “exposed to the elements” and “already starting to decompose”.

“It is a very, very gruesome scene and it boggles the mind that this could go on. We are going into day two or three now,” he said.

“It is kind of the world’s biggest crime scene right now.”

Mr Bociurkiw said the separatists were “very aggressive” and may have been under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

An adviser to the Ukrainian Government has posted online that people have begun looting the dead bodies.

“Just now I have received information that terrorists — death-hunters were collecting not only cash money and jewellery of the crashed Boing died passengers but also the credit cards of the victims (sic),” Anton Gerashchenko posted to Facebook.

Speaking to the media about 1pm today, Prime Minister Tony Abbott confirmed that “bodies remain strewn over the fields of the eastern Ukraine and armed rebels are trampling the site”.

“Overnight, a monitoring mission from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe did gain temporary access, but it was driven off by gunfire presumably from the Russians and rebels,” Mr Abbott said.

“This does highlight though the difficulty and danger of this mission.”

Mr Abbott said efforts to “sanitise” the site would not be tolerated.

“The site needs to be secure … and frankly anyone who tries to obstruct this is no friend of justice and is no friend of peace,” Mr Abbott said.

WHERE IS THE BLACK BOX?

It is the one piece of evidence that could definitively explain who’s responsible for the tragedy of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.

The Boeing 777’s black box flight recorder could hold vital clues to what really happened when it was shot down over rebel-held eastern Ukraine on Thursday.

As the world grapples with the unspeakable reality that all 298 people on board perished when the plane crashed at the village of Grabove, a crucial question remains: Where is the plane’s black box and will crash investigators get to see it?

OSCE investigators were given limited access to the crash site overnight but were blocked from going further by armed pro-Russian separatists “for their own” safety.

They were only permitted to stay on the site for about 75 minutes and examined only 200m of the expansive scene, which spreads over several kilometres, before being forced to leave, CNN reports.

Reporters on the ground tweeted yesterday that the separatists fired warning shots when the OSCE mission approached the wreckage.

http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh17-black-box-sought-as-world-leaders-including-barack-obama-and-tony-abbott-condemn-prorussian-separatists/story-fnizu68q-1226994383389

THE Dutch are fuming that rebel separatists are trawling through the belongings of the dead passengers of MH17 and publishing their “trophies’’ on social networking sites.

The brutality of losing nearly 192 of their fellow citizens, many of them children on their summer break, has stirred an inner anger in the Dutch national psyche as the initial shock of the catastrophic downing of MH17 in a surface missile strike starts to wear off.

Mireille Kossen-Warnaar said she was increasingly “sick’’ of the intrusive display of celebration and disrespect for the dead, especially as a large proportion of the Dutch victims were young families

“It is horrible this,” she told De Telegraaf. “Keep your arms off the belongings. No respect for the dead people. Terrible.’’

http://www.news.com.au/world/mh17-grieving-dutch-relatives-angry-at-reports-of-looting-at-crash-scene/story-fndir2ev-1226994573009

There are no words. Absolutely none. And then to add insult to injury.. Because shooting down a plane load of innocent men, women and children was not enough, if stealing from their corpses was not enough, if lying and hiding and destroying evidence of their crime was not enough, if denying investigators access to the site was not enough, we have this..

A TOP pro-Russia rebel commander in eastern Ukraine has given a bizarre version of events surrounding the Malaysian jetliner crash — suggesting many of the victims may have died days before the plane took off.

The pro-rebel website Russkaya Vesna quoted Igor Girkin as saying he was told by people at the crash site that “a significant number of the bodies weren’t fresh,” adding that he was told they were drained of blood and reeked of decomposition.

http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/rebel-leader-gives-bizarre-account-of-plane-crash/story-fnizu68q-1226994524959

Our loved ones are strewn across over 12km's of farmland and fields, left exposed to the elements. They are not allowing anyone to even remove the bodies or begin the investigations.. And this dickhead has the nerve to say this? This is the type of lies they are peddling?

:bawl::bawl::bawl:

As for Putin.. Who is meant to come to our home State later this year. Let's hope he doesn't show his face here. It's not welcome.