Remember That Plane Those Rebels Shot Down?

August 19, 2014 in Montana

by lizard

It’s been a little over a month since Malaysian flight 17 was shot down from the skies over Eastern Ukraine. Considering the subsequent month featured a (ongoing) Israeli slaughter of Palestinians and a (ongoing) police/military occupation of Ferguson, Missouri, it is somewhat understandable that most Americans don’t have the mental capacity for continued reflection of a month-old atrocity that significantly escalated the warming Cold war between western governments and Russia.

Well, there are some people who are interested in following through on investigative efforts, like the Dutch:

Ten Dutch prosecutors and 200 police officers are involved in gathering and preparing the evidence for a criminal trial.

There are three main questions about the eventual MH17 trial: Where will it be conducted? What crimes will the accused be charged with? How long before we see the suspects in court?

The Dutch prosecutors are still in the initial stages of the criminal investigation, but they have already dismissed speculation that the trial could be held at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Pepe Escobar has a different take on who may be responsible, and is also more interested in what Malaysia may have to say about this geopolitical mess:

The Pentagon, with 20-20 vision over Ukraine, knows what happened. Russian intelligence not only knows what happened but offered a tantalizing glimpse of it in an official presentation, dismissed by the “West”. The best technical analyses point not to “Putin’s missile” – a BUK – but to a combination of R-60 air-to-air missile and the auto-cannon of an Su-25.

A reader led me to this fair assessment by former USAF and Boeing engineer Raymond Blohm: “With proper vectoring, a Su-25 need not be quite as fast as a Boeing 777 in cruise. It just has to get to a missile-firing position. Since the 777 was not maneuvering, it would be simple to pre-calculate when to get in a certain spot in the sky below the 777. From there, it’s the missile that has the speed and altitude capability to hit the 777. (The R-60 is a very capable missile.) After the missile takes out an engine, both the 777’s max speed and its max altitude are well within the Su-25 fighter’s speed & altitude capabilities. Then, the Su-25 can show off its cannon power.”

Follow the engine wreckage. Follow the cockpit wreckage. Follow the motive. One cannot even imagine the tectonic geopolitical plates clashing were the Kiev regime to be deemed responsible. It would be the vanishing point for the whole – warped – notion of the Empire of Chaos’s “indispensable” exceptionalism.

So as MH370 totally vanished, the MH17 story must also totally vanish. The Dutch and the British might eventually come out and hold a high-profile press conference telling the world what His Master’s Voice finally redacted. Still, one may count on certified, residual outrage, if not puzzlement, by a large number of grieving Dutch families. And one may count on certified outrage by Malaysia as a nation.

On August 7th, Malaysia just came right out and accused Kiev:

A Thursday article in the New Straits Times, Malaysia’s flagship English-language newspaper, charged the US- and European-backed Ukrainian regime in Kiev with shooting down Malaysian Airlines flight MH 17 in east Ukraine last month. Given the tightly controlled character of the Malaysian media, it appears that the accusation that Kiev shot down MH17 has the imprimatur of the Malaysian state.

The US and European media have buried this remarkable report, which refutes the wave of allegations planted by the CIA in international media claiming that Russian president Vladimir Putin was responsible for the destruction of MH17, without presenting any evidence to back up this charge.

The New Straits Times article, titled “US analysts conclude MH17 downed by aircraft,” lays out evidence that Ukrainian fighter aircraft attacked the jetliner with first a missile, then with bursts of 30-millimeter machine gun fire from both sides of MH17. The Russian army has already presented detailed radar and satellite data showing a Ukrainian Sukhoi-25 fighter jet tailing MH17 shortly before the jetliner crashed. The Kiev regime denied that its fighters were airborne in the area, however.

There is still no substantive evidence (save the pathetic reliance on sketchy social media accounts) being presented by US authorities backing up the immediate assertion it was Russian-backed rebels who shot down the plane, killing 298 people. And now there is no real mainstream media attention at all.

It doesn’t look good for the demonize Russia crowd. In the aftermath of this tragedy, James Conner threw a tantrum over our justified skepticism of the western propaganda narrative, calling JC and myself anti-American.

If one thing is certain, it’s that most Americans won’t think about something if it’s not being reported by MSM sources. We are on to other tragedies, like an American journalist being beheaded by ISIS. This ghastly execution is sure to increase public support for Obama’s new war in Iraq. Unfortunately the context of how jihadists were armed by US proxies in Syria to topple Assad, and then mutated into a fighting force capable of taking large parts of Iraq, won’t be a part of our national propaganda reporting.

Without the context of recent history, moving from tragedy to tragedy, Americans are a malleable population very vulnerable to state propaganda. It would be nice if that would change. I doubt it ever will.

Amanda Curtis Should Attack Obama and Daines Over the Trans-Pacific Partnership

August 19, 2014 in Montana

by lizard

The Daines campaign will predictably try to tie Amanda Curtis to the Obama regime. Knowing this, I have a wild suggestion for the Curtis campaign: tie Steve Daines to Obama.

How?

Start talking about Obama’s support for the corporate Pandora’s Box known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

For a union gal like Curtis, this should be an easy position to take. The link is an interview with Adam Weissman and lays out quite succinctly the serious global threat of corporate control this partnership poses. Curtis can both distinguish herself from the Obama regime and talk about the damage to American labor past trade agreements like NAFTA have already caused.

I don’t think Steve Daines has taken a position on the TPP yet, but the Curtis campaign should try to get Daines to say if he supports fast-tracking legislation. If he won’t respond to take a position, emphasize the secrecy involved in all the negotiations that have thus far taken place. Tie Daines to Obama that way; say both men want to please their corporate overlords in secret because if people knew what was being planned with this quiet corporate coup, they would be up in arms over it.

This is a critical issue for what remains of our democratic process in this country. Amanda Curtis can take this issue and aggressively separate herself from the corporate neoliberal Democrats that helped spawn NAFTA while associating the corporate empty suit of Steve Daines with the Obama regime.

Just a thought.