Dutch News Uses Anne [Neocon] Applebaum as Putin Expert

10 Comments

1. 

   Oui on July 20, 2014 at 9:14 am

   The rebels in East Ukraine don’t have a BUK-M1 defence system so the Russians must have delivered one. The rebels don’t have the qualifications to launch a missile from such a complex system, so Russians must have operated the system and pushed the button. Tú entiendes?

   ○ Remarks by Ambassador Samantha Power, Permanent Representative of the
      United States to the United Nations, at the Security Council Meeting on Ukraine

   US building case tying separatists to plane crash by White House correspondent Julie Pace    

   WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States began building a case Friday linking pro-Russian separatists to the shocking downing of a passenger jet in Ukraine. A somber President Barack Obama declared the deaths of those on board, including at least one American, an “outrage of unspeakable proportions.”

   Obama said the U.S. believes the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile launched from an area near the Ukraine-Russia border that is controlled by Kremlin-backed separatists. Even as he cautioned that the exact circumstances were still being determined, the president turned his sights on Russia, saying the insurgents would not be capable of carrying out such an attack without Moscow’s support.

   “We know that they are heavily armed and they are trained, and we know that that’s not an accident,” Obama said. “That is happening because of Russian support.”

   The president spoke shortly after Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, outlined preliminary evidence against Russia and the separatists during an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council. Power said separatists were spotted Thursday with an SA-11 anti-aircraft missile at a location close to the site where the plane came down and that they had boasted on social media sites about shooting down a plane, then later deleted those posts.

   Power joined Obama in calling for an immediate international investigation, and she warned that the separatists and those supporting them would have “good reason to cover up evidence of their crime.” The U.S. has called for evidence from the crash site to remain in Ukraine until investigators determine who is responsible.

   U.N. Security Council calls for probe of Malaysia jet destruction

   Technical assistance from Russian personnel in the downing of a Malaysian jet “cannot be ruled out,” the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Friday as the Security Council began an emergency session in response to the destruction of the passenger plane over eastern Ukraine.

   Early speakers at the emergency council session made clear that the pressure was on Russia to withdraw support for separatist forces in Ukraine and take the lead in ending the conflict that has taken more than 500 lives there.

   Blaming Putin for crisis in Ukraine

   “Russia can end this war. Russia must end this war,” said U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power. She said the jet was flying a normal route, at 33,000 feetwhen it was shot out of the sky, probably by a SA-11, or Buk, missile operated from a separatist location.

   “There was nothing threatening or provocative” about the jet’s actions, Power said, adding that a Buk system operated by separatists was spotted in the area of the jet’s downing shortly before it occurred.

   ○ Ambassador Samantha Power Sets A New Tone
   ○ U.S. ‘Diplomacy’ Dead-Ended In UN Security Council
   ○ Samantha Power, the Monster, and the Libyan Intervention by Frank Schnittger
2. 

   Marie2 on July 20, 2014 at 2:56 pm

   Will they release the evidence that they claim to have for all to see and evaluate?  Or will this be like the Iraq WMD propaganda based on a tissue of lies?

   Odd that the public so quickly accepts an obvious and concerted effort to gain their support without any facts after all the times they’ve been punked.

   Is Europe prepared to freeze next winter?  And get only a bit of relief by buying US LNG at some multiple of the cost of Russian gas?

   • 

     Gaianne on July 21, 2014 at 12:53 am

     Liquified natural gas lies in the future, for the plants to liquify the gas do not yet exist–provided the fracking bubble does not pop and it never happens at all!  

     This winter Europe freezes.  Don’t tell them and spoil the fun!  

     –Gaianne  

     • 

       Marie2 on July 21, 2014 at 1:26 am

       Plants already exist and we’ve been exporting LNG for at least fifteen years.  Not in the quantity needed to keep Europeans warm this winter which is why I said “only a bit of relief.”  Quite silly to think that the US can frack its way to keeping Europe warm and cozy.

3. 

   Oui on July 21, 2014 at 4:21 pm

   Red flag alert:
   Ghouta gas attack
   Sniper killings Maidan revolution
   Downing Malaysian airliner MH-17

   Apparently using the same blueprint to act on gossip, rumor, propaganda and lies as a year ago with the expected bombing raid over Syria.

   What was the purpose of an Ukrainian Su-27 fighter jet flanking the MH-17 passenger plane. More questions than answers. You are moderate, the Dutch right wingers want to send the Marines to Donetsk to pick up the body bags of the victims by military force. Shame.

   The junta in Kiev has intensified its siege on Luhansk and started bombing Donetsk this morning in the neighborhood between the railroad station and the airport. How are the revolutionaries in the Donetsk area able to cope with an assault from the regime and coordinating foreign media, OSCE observers, Dutch forensics have arrived for body identification, Malaysian experts will receive the two black boxes and the train with cooling has started to travel towards Kharkov. The bodies will be taken by the Dutch to the Netherlands for forensics and identification. Due to a number of plane disasters and the Srebrenica massacre, the Dutch are world renowned for their forensics. The Dutch team expressed their appreciation for the status of the collected bodies in the cooling wagons.

    « click for more info
   Distraught civilians in eastern Ukraine pass beneath a railroad bridge blown up July 7
   over the main highway between Donetsk and Slovyansk. (Dmitry Lovetsky / Associated Press)

   ○ “30 Hours Earlier. Ukraine Crisis”

   h/t Susan Sunflower. Yes, more dogs that don’t bark … Anne Applebaum’s article in Slate and a NYT editorial from yesterday are both notably “demur” when it comes to specifying exactly what concrete aid Russia/Putin has given the rebels … not ringing endorsement of the “it must have been highly trained Russian assets operating inside rebel territory who fired that rocket.” Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post: The End of the Russian Fairy Tale.

   ○ NY Times Opinion: Russia’s Anti-West Isolationism by Maxim Trudolyubov
   ○ NATO policy towards ‘containment’ of Russia, making it a pariah state by Ivo Daalder
   ○ Kerry Preaching Policy Contra Russia @Atlantic Council

   See my diary – Dutch News Uses Anne [Neocon] Applebaum as Putin Expert.

4. 

   Oui on July 21, 2014 at 6:43 pm

   [sic] Obama and his team have really hit the RESET button. Brave warrior Joe Biden.

   U.S. Expert Pushes for Soviet Debt Write-Off by Alexei Germanovich, Maxim Trudolyubov, Yulia Ulyanova    

   (Moscow Times) June 18, 2001 – One of Washington’s most influential security experts has said that the United States could call for a total write-off of Russia’s Soviet-era debt, even if the move stirs the ire of Western allies such as Germany.

   Richard Perle, who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense under former U.S. President Ronald Reagan and is regarded by some observers as an unofficial advisor to the current administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, told Vedomosti that “under certain circumstances” it would be possible to consider writing off Russia’s Soviet debt.

   Debts inherited from the communist era should not burden a country trying to build a new society, he said.

   Perle — now a resident fellow at the influential American Enterprise Institute, a conservative public policy research institute in Washington — first suggested the write-off earlier this month at a round table in Lisbon, shortly before Bush’s debut European tour.

   The issue of Russia’s debt did not come up during Bush’s one-day summit with President Vladimir Putin on Saturday. But some observers speculated that Perle’s write-off idea was floated as a potential bargaining chip in Washington’s debate with Moscow over the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, or ABM— which Bush wants to scrap as a “relic of the past,” while Moscow clings on, insisting the treaty is the cornerstone of international security.

   One well-known political analyst, who asked that his name not be used, said different groups in the Bush administration were debating various ways of pressuring Russia on the ABM treaty, with one faction pushing for debt relief as the main bargaining chip, while another group is calling for military aid and arms deals— such as the purchase of S-300 missile systems — as the best means of softening Moscow’s stance on the treaty.

   The analyst added that defense experts, especially “Cold Warriors” like Perle and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, seem to be supporting the debt relief approach to ABM talks— which suggests that the U.S. Defense Department is wary of cooperating with Russia on security issues.

   Perle’s position on U.S.-Russia relations — at least in public statements — seems to have softened under Bush. Last year, when the White House was controlled by Democrat Bill Clinton, Perle said in an interview with Radio Liberty that he was wary of Putin, a former KGB spy who seems quite proud of his former profession and place of employment.

   But last week, Perle spoke with the same cautious optimism prevalent at Saturday’s Bush-Putin summit.

   U.S. attempts to build a new “constructive relationship” with Russia are long overdue, he said, adding that the Cold War ended long ago and it is strange that the process has proceeded so slowly.

   [All links added are mine – Oui]

   ○ Pentagon Advocates More Diplomacy, Less Confrontation, in New Strategy Proposal – May 1992

5. 

   Oui on July 21, 2014 at 6:57 pm

   British And American Covert Operations In Chechnya

   “The Clinton administration followed up by providing strong support to the KLA, even though it was known that the Kosovo Liberation Army supported the Muslim mujahadeen. Despite that knowledge, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had the KLA removed from the State Department list of terrorists. This action paved the way for the United States to provide the KLA with needed logistical support. At the same time, the KLA also received support from Iran and Usama bin Laden, along with ‘Islamic holy warriors’ who were jihad veterans from Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. Swiss journalist Richard Labeviere, in his book, ‘Dollars for Terror,’ said that the international Islamic networks linked to bin Laden received help from U.S. intelligence community. Indeed, Chechen sources claim that U.S. intelligence also aided them in their opposition to Russia. Given that U.S. policy in the post-Cold War period has not only been anti-Russian but anti-Iranian, the United States worked closely with Pakistan’s predominantly Sunni Inter-Services Intelligence organization. Through ISI, the United States recruited Sunni mujahadeen by staging them in Chechnya to fight in Bosnia and later in Kosovo.”

    « click for more info
   US Vice-President Joe Biden and former KLA leader and "Prime Minister" of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci

   “As the intelligence newsletter Stratfor — which Time magazine ranked as the nation’s top intelligence site in 2003, and which Barron’s described as ‘a private quasi-CIA’ — pointed out a few months ago, with Ukraine now firmly in the West’s orbit, America, with NATO and the EU, has managed to succeed exactly where Hitler and Napoleon failed: it has dismantled the Russian empire, leaving the rump state exposed, weakened and essentially at the West’s mercy…. In the wake of the Beslan massacre in September, 2004, in which hundreds of children were killed during a Chechen separatist seizure of a school in southern Russia, President Putin went on television and blamed certain foreign powers for supporting the terrorists with the aim of defanging Russia for good, breaking it apart, and seizing its valuable resources. He did not name the United States, but it was clear whom he meant. …..Stratfor, whose politics could be described as something between patriotic-American and realpolitik, agreed.

   From Madeleine to Hillary: The US Secretary of State’s “Love Affair” with the KLA

   ○ Council of Europe says Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci was the head of a “mafia-like” network
      that dealt weapons, drugs and human organs
   ○ The New Yorker: Kosovo’s leaders have been accused of grotesque war crimes
6. 

   Oui on July 21, 2014 at 7:19 pm

   Victoria Eastwood CNN @Vic_EastwoodCNN

   #MH17 black boxes now transferred from the self
   declared PM to the Malaysian delegation tonight
   in Donetsk #CNN pic.twitter.com/NI1rMJsEhX

    « click for more info
   A senior separatist leader, Aleksander Borodai, handed over two black boxes.

   RT: Ukrainian Su-25 fighter detected in close approach to MH17 before crash – Moscow

7. 

   Oui on July 22, 2014 at 4:48 am

   Due to damaged tracks and bombed infrastructure in Donetsk Region, the train had a delay of 16 hours and is expected to arrive in Charkov at 12:00 [-1:00]. Dutch government ofiicials have communicated solely with the western regime in Kiev. Large swats in East Ukraine are under control of local militia and international groups like OSCE provide the contact with a diverse network of rebels. The official term used by the OSCE is non-state actors. Malaysia experts have had talks with the local ‘rebel’ leaders to secure the release of the two black boxes.

   `Industrial scale’ tampering of evidence at MH17 site, says Aussie PM

   (Malaysia Insider) – Abbott, whose government was behind a UN Security Council resolution that Monday unanimously demanded full access to the site in rebel-held east Ukraine, admitted progress had been made but said more needed to be done. “There is still a long, long way to go,” he told a press conference of the quest to repatriate bodies and bring those responsible for the 298 deaths to justice.

   “After the crime comes the cover-up,” he added. “What we have seen is evidence tampering on an industrial scale. That has to stop.”

    « click for more info
   View of crash site near town of Shakhtars'k

   His comments came as pro-Russian separatists, who are accused of shooting down the plane, finally conceded to a furious international clamour for the bodies and the jet’s black boxes to be handed over to international investigators. It followed days of bitter wrangling in which rebels hampered experts from gaining access to the site and were accused of tampering with evidence.

   “This site has been trampled from the beginning and we haven’t just seen all sorts of random individuals roaming around the site, picking over the remains, picking over the wreckage. We’ve seen heavy equipment coming onto the site,” Abbott said. “The more recent footage suggests it’s more like a building demolition. And this again is unacceptable.”

   Dutch report of train to Charkov (Kharkiv) – LIVE!

   Our correspondent Roeland Termote posted some pictures of the testing of the track on which the train with the remains of the victims is transported near the place where it will arrive in Kharkiv.

   Roeland Termote @RoelandTermote  

   Testing the tracks. pic.twitter.com/9mB1T5Dlvt

    « click for more info
   Before arrival of the refrigerated wagons with the bodies in Charkov, the local tracks need to be tested. (Nrc)

   Google map of route from Torez to Charkov – 372 km

   Departure of Train With MH17 Crash Bodies to Kharkiv Delayed – OSCE

   MOSCOW (RIA/Novosti) – The departure of a Kharkiv-bound train carrying bodies of victims of last week’s Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crash in eastern Ukraine was delayed because of a damaged railway, an OSCE official in Ukraine said.

   A spokesman for the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, Michael Bociurkiw, told reporters in Kiev that the departure of the train will be discussed later in the day.

   So far 272 bodies of Malaysia Airlines plane crash victims have been discovered, of which 251 were loaded into a refrigerated train at a station in the town of Torez near the crash site, according to Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

   Earlier in the day, a group of Dutch forensic experts arrived at the train station and said that bodies of the crash victims were stored in suitable environment.

   On Sunday, the prime-minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic Alexander Borodai, said that the train would remain in Torez until arrival of international experts.

8. 

   Oui on July 22, 2014 at 7:34 am

   I’ve had serious issues with the writing from Pat Lang, but is this an indication of mutiny inside the CIA?

   ○ MH-17 = Ghouta Redux? by Confused Ponderer  [blog Sic Semper Tyrannis]