This article appears in the July 25, 2014 issue
of Executive Intelligence Review. This is from last
week - I will send an up-dated report on the escalating danger of a war on
Russia within a few days. Mike Billington
RUSSIA
TARGETED
Malaysian Plane
Downing
Heightens War Danger
by Jeffrey
Steinberg
July 22—While
it may take days or even weeks to reach a competent forensic determination of
the cause of the crash of the Malaysian commercial airliner MH17 over eastern
Ukraine July 17, the cries for a confrontation with Russia are growing louder,
led by President Obama and his top aides, including American UN Ambassador
Samantha Power. As far as Obama and the U.S. establishment media are concerned,
the byword is: “Don’t confuse me with facts—my mind is made up.” In this case,
the determination is that Russian President Vladimir Putin was either directly
or indirectly responsible for the incident, and Russia is to pay a heavy
price.
Washington’s
snap judgment was matched July 21 by British Prime Minister David Cameron,
writing in the London Times, who declared Putin guilty of shooting down
the airliner, and demanded that Europe break decisively with Russia.
While the war
cry from London, Washington, and the Netherlands, in particular, continues, the
United Nations Security Council on July 21 was able to agree on a resolution
mandating an international, independent investigation of the jet crash. Among
other points, the text demands that “the armed groups in control of the crash
site and the surrounding area refrain from any actions that may compromise the
integrity of the crash site and immediately provide safe, secure, full and
unfettered access to the site and surrounding area for the appropriate
investigating authorities.”
In fact, the
OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) monitors declared on
July 20 that they had been given full access to the main crash site. On July 21,
before the UN resolution, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that he
had reached an agreement with the prime minister of the self-declared Donetsk
People’s Republic, whereby Malaysia would receive the remains of 282 people,
which had been recovered and refrigerated by the militias, and would be given
the two “black boxes” which the militias had taken custody of, in fear that they
would be tampered with, if handed over to the Kiev authorities.
An official
Pentagon statement—issued the same day as a phone call between U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov which appeared to
agree on an impartial investigation—identified a Russian-made Buk/SA-11 missile
as the weapon used in the downing, but offered no evidence as to who carried out
the attack.
In contrast,
the Russian Ministry of Defense on July 19 issued a statement, spelling out ten
crucial unanswered questions, directed at Ukrainian authorities, over whose
territory MH17 was flying at the time of the attack (see below).
On Sunday,
July 20, Secretary of State Kerry appeared on a number of TV programs to bolster
Obama’s own “blame Putin” rhetoric. Kerry’s appearance, reminiscent of Dr. Susan
Rice’s now infamous TV appearances days after the Sept. 11, 2012 Benghazi
attacks, claiming they were the result of spontaneous demonstrations against an
anti-Islam video, repeated the claims that the Russians had delivered SA-11
anti-aircraft batteries to rebels in eastern Ukraine and had trained them on the
use of the sophisticated weapons. News leaks also claimed that CIA agents in
Kiev had authenticated an alleged intercepted phone call between Ukrainian
rebels and Russian military personnel right after the plane crash, taking credit
for the incident.
‘A Doctor
Strangelove Situation’
Some sane
voices in the U.S. and around the world have warned that the escalating rhetoric
threatens to trigger a great powers war. Col. Patrick Lang (ret.), former head
of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s human intelligence division, posted a blunt
warning on his widely read website on July 19: “The Yellow Media are creating a
Doctor Strangelove situation. They do not seem to grasp the idea that the war
between Russia and the U.S.A. toward which they are groping will destroy both
countries altogether. Once more, a war between the U.S.A. and Russia will
destroy both countries and much of the rest of the world.”
The BRICS
nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) leaders have all called for
an “objective probe” of the Malaysian Airlines disaster in Ukraine that, if
carried out, would help to avoid the war that Lang is warning against. “I was
shocked,” said Chinese President Xi Jinping at a joint press conference with
Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
“I hope
that a fair and objective probe will be carried out to establish the truth as
early as possible.”
In a separate
statement, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he hopes “the circumstances
of the disaster are established quickly.”
Brazilian
President Dilma Rousseff has also urged a speedy investigation into the terrible
tragedy. “First, it should be established what really happened. The Brazilian
government will give no assessments until the circumstances are clear,” she
said. Rousseff was echoed by South African President Jacob Zuma, who also called
for a thorough, transparent, and independent investigation to determine the
cause of the incident.
Greatly
adding to the danger, is that the Malaysian plane tragedy does not take place in
a vacuum. President Obama, just days before the crash, announced harsh new
sanctions against Russia—despite the fact that the European Union did not go
along with Washington and London’s demands. NATO has announced an expansion of
manuevers in the Baltic countries and Eastern Europe on the Russian
borders.
What is
completely missing from the Washington and London rhetoric is any effort to
determine cui bono—who would benefit from such a brutal act of
terrorism. From that standpoint, Russia stands to lose the most as the result of
the tragedy.
Furthermore,
the downing of the MH17 came at the conclusion of the world-changing BRICS
Summit in Brazil, where the five nations agreed to establish a New Development
Bank and a fund to protect against currency warfare (see this week’s
Feature). These new institutions, while not formally replacing the IMF
and World Bank, offer a clear alternative to the brutal conditionalities and
debt blackmail of the “Washington consensus” system. They come at a time when
even the Bank for International Settlements has been warning about an imminent
debt blowout of the major trans-Atlantic banks as the result of their
out-of-control gambling activities. In the second quarter of the year,
derivatives contracts expanded by an annual rate of 19%, with total global
derivatives estimated at over $1.7 quadrillion.
Mervyn King,
the former head of the Bank of England, recently noted that the biggest
financial crash of the 20th Century took place in the Spring-Summer of 1914, and
led directly into the Guns of August start of World War I. The parallels between
then and now, exactly 100 years later, are stark. The major difference is that
the great powers of 1914 did not have overkill arsenals of thermonuclear
weapons, as the United States, Russia, and China have
today.
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