Saving Face

Guest Post by Dmitry Orlov

The Americans are finding out the hard way that a fact-free zone is not a comfortable place to inhabit. The initial knee-jerk allegations, voiced by Obama, by the screechy UN representative Samantha Power, by John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and any number of talking heads, were that the downing of flight MH17 was all Putin’s fault. These were swiftly followed by a complete and utter lack of official evidence of any Russian involvement but lots of strange, unexplained coincidences pointing to Ukrainian and American involvement. These were, in turn, followed by an uncharacteristically frank admission from US intelligence that there is no proof of Russian involvement. The newly installed Ukrainian oligarch-turned-president Poroshenko (code-name “Piglet”) switched from claiming that he had proof of Russian complicity to being very very quiet. Incompetently concocted fake “evidence” of this and that continues to appear on social media sites, only to be swiftly disproved. Once disproved, the fake evidence vanishes, only to be replaced by more of the same. The latest fake is of Russian artillery bombardment from across the border. All of this has added up to quite an awkward situation for the Americans. Barefaced lying may be fun and profitable, but it does not provide a solid foundation for foreign policy. Nobody wants to go down in history for blowing up the world over some fake Youtube videos.

The list of questions that demand answers is quite extensive. Why did the Ukrainians suddenly choose to activate their Buk M1 air defense system, with several rocket batteries and a radar, in Donetsk region, on the day of the crash? What was the Ukrainian Sukhoi-25 fighter jet (attested by numerous eye-witnesses) doing trailing after the Boeing? Why did Ukrainian air traffic control in Dnepropetrovsk redirect the flight to fly at a lower altitude and over the war zone? What were all those foreigners doing in the air traffic control center in Dnepropetrovsk right after the crash, and what happened to the flight control records they confiscated? What was the experimental US spy satellite doing flying over that exact spot at that exact moment? By the way, was anything interesting happening that day at the American drone base in Kanatov, in Dnepropetrovsk region, which, incidentally, is right on the flight path of MH17? (We know that it’s active; two of their drones have already been shot down by the rebels, one of which landed more or less intact, and the Russians are probably having fun tinkering with it.)

Some people are surmising that the crash was a failed false flag attack orchestrated by the Ukrainians with, at a minimum, American complicity. The idea, this version goes, was to pin the blame on the rebels and, by extension, on Russia, in order to escalate the conflict. This version of events may sound plausible to some people, because false flag operations are part of the standard American playbook. After all, there was that chemical attack in Syria which almost led to a US bombing campaign. The chemical attack was blamed on the Assad regime, but then it turned out to have been a false flag: it was made by the Syrian rebels, on Syrian rebels, with help from Saudi Arabia, in order to smear Assad and escalate the conflict. Russia was able to deescalate the conflict by persuading Assad to give up his chemical weapons stockpile. (It didn’t take much convincing, because Assad no doubt realized that this stockpile was more of a liability than an asset.) The Americans were livid; they had been itching to bomb Syria. Had they done so, the too-evil-for-al Qaeda “Caliphate” known as ISIS, which recently spilled out of Syria and rolled right across northern Iraq, would probably be enthroned in Damascus by now as well.

But in the case of flight MH17, the false flag theory rests on an untenable assumption: that the Ukrainians, if tasked with shooting it down, would in fact succeed in shooting it down. All previous evidence illustrates that when Ukrainians want to shoot down a plane, they may succeed in shooting down  a nursery school, a maternity ward, an apartment building full of elderly Ukrainians, but never a plane. Conversely, if Ukrainians set out to destroy a maternity ward or a kindergarten (as they are known to sometimes do) odds are that they will hit a Boeing. They inherited a now rather obsolete Buk M1 air defense system from the USSR, which, in skilled hands, is quite capable of shooting down a Boeing flying at cruising altitude, but you’d be wrong to think that they have figured out how it works. They held exactly one training exercise using this system, in 2001, and succeeded in… shooting down a Russian civilian airliner! There were no training exercises in using this system until… it was used to shoot down MH17! It was used in Georgia during the war of 2008 over South Ossetia, where it did shoot down four Russian military aircraft, but there it was commanded by American mercenaries of Polish descent. Ukrainians excell at robbing, selling out, dismantling and destroying their own country; but achieving a specific, precise result as part of a highly coordinated mission? Not so much. Case in point: some Australian and Dutch troops wanted to go and maintain security at the crash site, but couldn’t, because the Ukrainians chose the occasion of their arrival to attack some neighboring towns and villages. You’d think that they would treat the opportunity to get some NATO boots on the ground as a Godsend, and act accordingly, but such rational behavior would be, you know, un-Ukrainian. The proper thing for them to do is to go and strafe some nearby village, and get themselves ambushed and slaughtered to a man by an angry babushka with a Kalashnikov.

Once you discount the theory that the downing of MH17 was a highly orchestrated false flag operation, everything falls into place. Why did the Ukrainians deploy their Buk M1 batteries and radar in Donetsk region, even though there was no enemy for them to shoot at? Because they are idiots. Why was there a Ukrainian Sukhoi 25 jet fighter in the air there? Trailing behind passenger jets and using them as human shields is standard Ukrainian practice. Why did that fighter zoom up into the Boeing’s flight corridor and pop up on air traffic control radar at the exact time the Boeing was shot down? That’s a standard evasive maneuver: the pilot saw a missile being launched, and tried to get out of its way by aiming up. If he hadn’t done that, then the story would have been that Ukrainians shot down their own jet fighter as part of a successful (by Ukrainian standards) exercise, held in the vicinity of an international passenger flight just to spice things up. Why did Dnepropetrovsk APC redirect the flight over the war zone and the Buk M1 batteries? Because the Ukrainians had recently issued an order that closed the airspace over Donetsk, well below the plane’s cruising altitude and away from its flight path, but perhaps something was lost in translation to Ukraine’s wonderfully precise official language, and so the APC redirected the flight right over the closed airspace and told it to fly right above the minimum altitude. Why did the Ukrainians launch the rocket? Well, that was probably something like what happened in the movie The Three Stooges in Outer Space. The stooges find themselves inside a rocket. Moe gets hungry and pushes a button that he thinks says “LUNCH” except that it says “LAUNCH.” Hilarity ensues.

If that is what happened, then that’s really embarrassing, not just for the Ukrainians, for whom embarrassment has become something of a national sport, but for their self-appointed American minders. What’s making this situation even more difficult is that western news teams, following in the wake of the investigative teams visiting the crash site, got a chance to look at, and report on, the carnage and devastation perpetrated by the Ukrainians against their own people. Worse yet, the Ukrainian government, so carefully slapped together out of US State Department-approved dregs of Ukrainian society, has in the meantime come unstuck. The coalition goverment failed after a spectacular fistfight on the floor of the Supreme Rada, with the two rabidly nationalist parties walking out (OK, I won’t call them Nazi, but only today). Prime minister Yatsenyuk (who had been hand-picked for the job and nicknamed “Yats” by Victoria Nuland of the US State Department) has resigned. President Piglet is still there, but it’s unclear what it is he is doing. In fact, it is becoming unclear whether there even is a Ukrainian government; of late, the officials in Donetsk have been receiving very strange, barely coherent missives from Kiev, obviously written in American English and clumsily translated, then signed and stamped by some Ukrainian monkey to make them look slightly more legit. If the Ukrainian translators run away too, then the American minders will be forced to resort to using Google Translate, making it the world’s first experiment in governance through word salad.

The MH17 disaster and Eastern Ukraine are now front page news across the entire world. The circumstances of the crash are anything but clear, but it is clear that they are not what the Americans initially alleged. This they have already admitted. The Ukrainian government is in disarray bordering on nonexistence. The Ukrainian military is either kettled in traps of their own devising and suffering horrific losses, or blasting away at densely populated districts with heavy artillery and rocket fire. The Ukrainian economy is in freefall, with trade links to Russia severed and industry nearing standstill. The country is bankrupt and at the mercy of the IMF. If you feel that the several hundred lives lost aboard MH17 are a tragedy, then you should consider a larger number: 42 million. That’s the population of Ukraine minus Crimea (which will be fine) and that’s the number of lives at risk from civil war and economic collapse.

The best that the US can do in this situation is to bug out of Ukraine while continuing to babble incoherently. This shouldn’t be hard; bugging out and babbling incoherently are two things that the Americans are clearly still very good at; just look at Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

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Visitor from Germany
Visitor from Germany

THANK YOU, Mr. Orlov. Admin, too, for reposting it.

God, if you could read what the self-proclaimed german “Qualitätspresse” churns out these days about Putin, Russia and Ukraine – it is hard to believe if you (like me) already were around 35 years ealier, when there was still now and then a hint of “quality” to be found.

I could never have imagined how intellectual and moral standards in the newsmedia could deteriorate to such low levels so fast.

Keep up the good work.

overthecliff

You tube videos seem to be an important part of the decision making process at the US State Department.

Visitor ,I think the press hasn`t changed so much as your perception. Your perception today is right ,not much integrity or moral standards there.

Visitor from Germany
Visitor from Germany

@overthecliff – I am an avid newspaper consumer since I was 12 (=for about 35 years now) and I can tell you: the level of hatred an venom which drips from the editorials of the “upper echelon” of german newsmedia concerning Russia and especially Putin was until now unimaginable for me.

To be precise: I am not talking about yellow press or boulevard rags like BILD or Hamburger Morgenpost. I am talking about what – until now! – was widely seen as premier league concerning integrity, morality, intellectually. ZEIT, Sueddeutsche, FAZ, even Der Spiegel – it is unbelievable! Goebbels reincarnated!

Even 2003, with Saddam Hussein and his alleged WMDs it was hardly THAT bad. I don’t know, something is different this time…I really start to think that a lot of people on both sides of the Atlantic, even, as unbelievable as it seems, on OUR’s, WANT A WAR. NOW!

I am scared.

Stucky

Visitor from Germany

If you have the time …

1. How many “news” corporations are there in Germany? (Here in the USA!, just 6 corporations control 80% or more of the news.)

2. Is German press controlled, or influenced, by Jews?

3. It sounds like government & Big Business determines the news … just as in the USA! … is that correct?

4. Does Germany have internet sites such as TBP … a place where intelligent people gather for TRUTH?

Thanks in advance.

Visitor from Germany
Visitor from Germany

@Stucky

The concentration is not yet as bad as in the U.S., I think, although I have no exact numbers.

There are several regional and over-regional media conglomerates, as well as several public and private TV stations.

There are some Jews, of course. But the main problem seem to be the people who have been interwoven in transatlantic networks such as “Atlantikbrücke”. If you look at the profiles of the most rabid commentators, who often are leading redacteurs of their newspapers as well, you see that being a loyal Transatlantiker, as they are called (“Transatlantician”) is a requisite to build a carriere in german media.

Those people are formed during university, when they get grants to visit and work – and get brain-washed – in the US, paid for by US-endowments and programs.

So, you may say, the same people who control your media control ours too, by proxy.

There are several reliable and integer counterculture newssites, such as telepolis or nachdenkseiten.

http://www.heise.de/tp/default.html
http://www.nachdenkseiten.de/

There I take a break when I tire in fighting the official propaganda, so to speak.

Econman
Econman

The US & Europe are broke & in depressionary spirals.

Gotta blame someone else, create a scapegoat, so of course its someone with lots of natural resources.

The EU & US would love to steal Russia’s oil & gas.

Stucky

Visitor from Germany

I know I said “Thanks in advance”. Nevertheless, I say it again. Really appreciate your thoughtful answer, especially since I’m sure you have other things to do.

I have just ONE more question. It will be the last question, I promise.

Do Germans feel that THEY are in control of their own destiny or, do they feel they are simply puppets of the USA!USA!USA? (I am of the opinion that Merkel licks Obama’s balls, figuratively speaking.)

BTW … I am STILL basking in the glow of Germany’s 4th World Cup victory.

Rise Up
Rise Up

“The first casualty when war comes is truth.”

– Hiram Johnson a Republican U.S. Senator from California, 1917

Visitor from Germany
Visitor from Germany

@Stucky – my pleasure. Ask as many question as you like, I will find the time to answer them, if I can.

Now…I think that the appraisal that Merkel sometimes receives as “Worlds most powerfol woman” is FAR overrated. Powerful, yes – but only as long as her power is directed in the lines her US puppetteers command. But act against their wishes? Hardly. It may have to do with her past in East Germany – most probably she knows that the US has pillaged information from the Stasi (STAatsSIcherheit, the East German NSA), which would ruin her reputation, since as the “Arschkriecherin” she is and always was, she would also have made a good career if East Germany had persisted.

In fact, most of the more political aware and independet thinking people feel like I gather YOU feel: that democracy nowadays is a sham, that elections mean nothing, that it is more or less without meaning, which party “wins” and governs, because ALL of them are bought and paid for by special interests, the oligarchs who own half the country and are on the warpath to aquire the other half. Control of our own destiny? No. Not in the least.

Greetings!
VfG

Stucky

” … most of the more political aware and independent thinking people feel …. that democracy nowadays is a sham, that elections mean nothing,” —– Visitor from Germany

vielen Dank

You confirmed what I suspected. I have relatives in Austria with whom my parents telephone about monthly. They used to discuss, among other things, politics. But, in the past few years such discussions have become fewer, and much, much shorter. My Tante Linde often cuts that conversation short by saying ‘shit on all of them!” …. and she’s not just talking about Austrian politicians. She especially — God Bless her heart — despises our Chief Neegrow.

It IS a big conundrum. That PEOPLE all over the world just HATE their politicians …. yet, those fuckers keep getting elected and re-elected. Amazing.

Visitor from Germany
Visitor from Germany

@Stucky

“amazing” – yes, it is. Somehow.

On the other hand – why am I not a member of one of Germany’s political parties? Seeking election to an office, to impose my will….eehmm…I mean, to better the lot of my underprivileged co-citizens…?

The problem – concerning myself – is: I am not the character to succeed in (german, don’t know about U.S.) politicts. If you want to succeed in (german) politics, you have to be somebody who is willing and able to

1. sacrifice several evenings every week for years to
2. drink a lot and
3. smoke a lot during party conventions to
4. socialize and network and be able to on command
5. deepsix all your priciples and make “Faule Kompromisse” and “Kuhhändel” if need be
6. from your 16. birthday.

Well…I complain about our politicians. On the other hand – where were I when THEY did all of the above, for YEARS and decades? Living and enjoying my live, obviousliy…fatal error. Now those psychopaths run the country while I complain in some foreign forum *sob*

Concerning your “Chief Neegrow” – never had problems with Blacks. Our Blacks are the Turks. However…well, there is a quit racist, but seldom used racist phrase in german for “taking a crap” – “einen Neger abseilen”.

Welll…for 2 – 3 years now I use a modification of this phrase (I hope your german is good enough to get the pun): “Ich gehe jetzt einen FriedensnobelpreisNEGER abseilen…”

Again: Sorry. No Problems with coloureds in general…only in special, so to speak.

Stucky

“Again: Sorry. No Problems with coloureds in general…only in special, so to speak.”
————— Visitor from Germany

No need to apologize. When my parents immigrated to this country many years ago, they didn’t have any problems with Colored People either. Then you live with them. Then one’s opinion changes. It’s like a miracle.

“Ich gehe jetzt einen FriedensnobelpreisNEGER abseilen…”

Excellent pun. Hard to translate. But it’s not just the Noble Peace Prize …. Obama shits all over the US Constitution
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