Friday 1 August 2014

MH17: What did US spy satellites see in Ukraine?

Investigative journalist, Robert Parry, who was awarded the George Polk Award for National Reporting in 1984, has been the editor of ConsortiumNews.com since 1995.

On 20 July 2014, he published What Did US Spy Satellites See in Ukraine? in that journal.

Here is an edition of this essay:
"In the heat of the U.S. media’s latest war hysteria, rushing to pin blame for the crash of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet on Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, there is the same absence of professional scepticism that has marked similar stampedes on Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, with key questions not being asked or answered.

The dog-not-barking question on the catastrophe over Ukraine is: what did the U.S. surveillance satellite imagery show? It’s hard to believe that, with the attention that U.S. intelligence has concentrated on eastern Ukraine for the past half year, that the alleged trucking of several large BUK anti-aircraft missile systems from Russia to Ukraine and then back to Russia didn’t show up somewhere...
BUK missiles are about 16 feet long and they are usually mounted on trucks or tanks. Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 also went down during the afternoon, not at night, meaning the missile battery was not concealed by darkness.

So why hasn’t this question of U.S. spy-in-the-sky photos, and what they reveal, been pressed by the major U.S. news media? How can the Washington Post run front-page stories, such as the one on Sunday with the definitive title 'U.S. official: Russia gave systems,' without demanding from these U.S. officials details about what the U.S. satellite images disclose?

Instead, the Post’s Michael Birnbaum and Karen DeYoung wrote from Kiev: 'The United States has confirmed that Russia supplied sophisticated missile launchers to separatists in eastern Ukraine and that attempts were made to move them back across the Russian border after the Thursday shoot-down of a Malaysian jetliner, a U.S. official said Saturday.

‘We do believe they were trying to move back into Russia at least three BUK [missile launch] systems,’ the official said. U.S. intelligence was ‘starting to get indications … a little more than a week ago’ that the Russian launchers had been moved into Ukraine, said the official'...

Catch the curious vagueness of the official’s wording: 'we do believe'; 'starting to get indications.' Are we supposed to believe... that the U.S. government with the world’s premier intelligence services can’t track three lumbering trucks each carrying large mid-range missiles?

What I’ve been told by one source, who has provided accurate information on similar matters in the past, is that U.S. INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES DO HAVE DETAILED SATELLITE IMAGES OF THE LIKELY MISSILE BATTERY THAT LAUNCHED THE FATEFUL MISSILE, BUT THE BATTERY APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN UNDER THE CONTROL OF UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT TROOPS DRESSED IN WHAT LOOK LIKE UKRAINIAN UNIFORMS.

The source said CIA analysts were still not ruling out the possibility that the troops were actually eastern Ukrainian rebels in similar uniforms but the initial assessment was that the troops were Ukrainian soldiers. There also was the suggestion that the soldiers involved were undisciplined and possibly drunk, since the imagery showed what looked like beer bottles scattered around the site, the source said.

Instead of pressing for these kinds of details, the U.S. mainstream press has simply passed on the propaganda coming from the Ukrainian government and the U.S. State Department, including hyping the fact that the BUK system is 'Russian-made'...

To use the 'Russian-made' point to suggest that the Russians must have been involved in the shoot-down is misleading at best and clearly designed to influence ill-informed Americans. As the Post and other news outlets surely know, the Ukrainian military also operates Russian-made military systems, including NUK anti-aircraft batteries, so the manufacturing origin has no probative value here.

Much of the rest of the known case against Russia comes from claims made by the Ukrainian regime, which emerged from the unconstitutional coup d’etat against elected President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22. His overthrow followed months of mass protests, but the actual coup was spearheaded by neo-Nazi militias that overran government buildings and forced Yanukovych’s officials to flee.

In recognition of the key role played by the neo-Nazis... the new regime gave these far-right nationalists control of several ministries, including the office of national security which is under the command of long-time neo-Nazi activist Andriy Parubiy...
It was this same Parubiy whom the Post writers turned to seeking more information condemning the eastern Ukrainian rebels and the Russians regarding the Malaysia Airlines catastrophe. Parubiy accused the rebels in the vicinity of the crash site of destroying evidence and conducting a cover-up, another theme that resonated through the MSM.

Without bothering to inform readers of Parubiy’s unsavory neo-Nazi background, the Post quoted him as a reliable witness declaring: 'It will be hard to conduct a full investigation with some of the objects being taken away, but we will do our best.'

In contrast to Parubiy’s assurances, the Kiev regime actually has a terrible record of telling the truth or pursuing serious investigations of human rights crimes. Still left open are questions about the identity of snipers who on Feb. 20 fired on both police and protesters at the Maidan, touching off the violent escalation that led to Yanukovych’s ouster.


Also, the Kiev regime has failed to ascertain the facts about the death-by-fire of scores of ethnic Russians in the Trade Union Building in Odessa on May 2...
What Americans have seen again is the major U.S. news outlets, led by the Washington Post and the New York Times, publishing the most inflammatory of articles based largely on unreliable Ukrainian officials and on the U.S. State Department which was a principal instigator of the Ukraine crisis.
In the recent past, this sort of sloppy American journalism has led to mass slaughters in Iraq – and has contributed to near U.S. wars on Syria and Iran – but now the stakes are much higher. 
As much fun as it is to heap contempt on a variety of 'designated villains,' such as Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad, Ali Khamenei and now Vladimir Putin, this sort of recklessness is careening the world toward a very dangerous moment, conceivably its last."
The world is run by nuts, ladies and gents. 

Nuts whom you vote for. When these nutcases, who happen to be pathologically dishonest as well as insane, tell you stuff, most of you, even now, believe them.

You don't investigate. You don't find out out. You'd rather just believe what you're told. That way you don't have to get up off your lazy behinds and do something. That way you can carry on watching the football, Coronation Street, X-Factor and Big Brother without hindrance.

Anyway, you can't really complain when that last 'dangerous moment' consigns you to oblivion, can you?

Pity about your kids though. You know, that there isn't a 'responsible adult' around who will take time out from the lager, crisps and the TV screen to safeguard their future.

1 comment:

  1. You know, when I hear older people complaining that they can't get a seat on the bus, they can't get health care quick enough, their pensions are under attack, I ask them if they ever voted for the BNP or NF. When they look shocked and taken aback, I tell them, "you voted for your own downfall and refused to open your eyes, so this is where it got you".

    I have become increasingly unsympathetic to fellow white people who absolutely refuse to open their eyes. They stand by and smilingly watch their ethnic neighbours flourish, while their own children struggle continuously because they don't stand a chance of help with housing/get overlooked for work while ethnics benefit from positive discrimination.

    I don't know what the answer is though, can't see how the decades of indoctrination can be overturned.

    ReplyDelete