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No Evidence – Administration’s MH17 Case Against Russia Falls Apart
The federalists fighting in east Ukraine just took down two more SU-25 ground attack fighters that were bombing their positions. The weapons used against these planes are either simple air-defense guns or short ranged missiles unlike the missiles that allegedly took down the Malaysian passenger jet.
The case the Obama administration made against the federalists and Russia in connection with that MH-17 flight is completely falling apart.
Even the aggressive State Department spokesperson has to admit (vid) there is no real evidence at all. The “mountain of evidence” Secretary of State Kerry talked about is nothing but doctored photos and sound files provided by the Ukrainian coup government. One photo, for example, is supposed to show a missile system in federalists hands in a town in east Ukraine. But two reporters asking locals there can not find anyone who has seen the bulky and loud system. The photo is therefore likely a montage.
After being public criticized for showing no real evidence the Obama administration trotted out some “senior intelligence officials” who then admitted that they have nothing, NOTHING, to connect the case to Russia and only vague circumstantial “social media evidence” that federalists COULD have downed the jet:
But the officials said they did not know who fired the missile or whether any Russian operatives were present at the missile launch. They were not certain that the missile crew was trained in Russia, although they described a stepped-up campaign in recent weeks by Russia to arm and train the rebels, which they say has continued even after the downing of the commercial jetliner.
In terms of who fired the missile, “we don’t know a name, we don’t know a rank and we’re not even 100 percent sure of a nationality,” one official said, adding at another point, “There is not going to be a Perry Mason moment here,” a referenc to a fictional detective who solved mysteries.
Most damning for the case may be this:
The senior intelligence officials said spy agencies were not aware that an SA-11 system was in eastern Ukraine until the attack had happened.
So the alleged transfer of such a big weapon system from Russia was either not observable for the multi-billion dollar, all seeing, all hearing U.S. intelligence or it never happened. Case closed.
But the neolibcons in the Obama administration do not despair yet. The murky Ukrainian company that hired Vice President Biden’s son is now paying more lobbyists in Washington. The bribes will flow in bigger amounts. The lies from the Obama administration, and especially from Kerry, will continue as its tries everything possible to restart a Cold War against Russia or, if possible, even a hot one.
Let the Europeans bleed. As long as the U.S. is safe everything is hunky dory.
@slothrop:
Commentary No. 381, July 15, 2014 “Germany and the United States: Unprecedented Breach”
by Immanuel Wallerstein
…The op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, written by Jacob Heilbrun, was entitled “The German-American Breakup.” The word “breakup” is unequivocal, or almost. After an overview of various German commentaries, Heilbrun ends with this admonition:
“If Obama is unable to rein in spying of Germany, he may discover that he is helping to convert it from an ally into an adversary. For Obama to say Auf Wiedersehen to a longtime ally would deliver a blow to American national security that no amount of secret information could possibly justify.”
If Heilbrun seems to have little hope that his viewpoint will be heard in Washington, it pales before the lead article in Der Spiegel on the same date. The long article is entitled “Germany’s Choice: Will It Be America or Russia?” One section of the article is entitled “The Last Straw.” It cites not someone on the left or someone who has long advocated closer relations with Russia. It cites instead a conservative advocate of the free economy and of rocksolid relations with the United States, who chairs an organization called Atlantic Bridge. In a tone of desperation, he says: “If [the latest allegations about spying] turn out to be true, it’s time for this to stop.” Note that the article says it’s time for it to stop, not that it’s time for further discussions or negotiations about it. Just stop.
One last poignant detail: The U.S. ambassador to Germany speaks no German. The Russia ambassador is so fluent one scarcely notices his accent. Entrance to the U.S. Ambassador’s office is protected by the highest-level security possible, surpassing that which governs the entrance to the White House’s Oval Office. Entrance to the Russian embassy is so casual that it prompts disbelief.
…However, the problem is structural and not the passing mistakes and stupidity of those in power in the United States.
The basic problem is that the United States is, and has been for some time, in geopolitical decline. It doesn’t like this. It doesn’t really accept this. It surely doesn’t know how to handle it, that is, minimize the losses to the United States. So it keeps trying to restore what is unrestorable – U.S. “leadership” (read: hegemony) in the world-system. This makes the United States a very dangerous actor…
That is what Europeans in general, and now Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in particular, are realizing. The United States has become a very unreliable “partner.” So even those in Germany and elsewhere in Europe who are nostalgic for the warm embrace of the “free world” are reluctantly joining the less nostalgic others in deciding how they can survive geopolitically without the United States. And this is pushing them into the logical alternative, a European tent that includes Russia.
As the Germans, and the Europeans in general, move inexorably in this direction, they have their hesitations. If they can no longer trust the United States, could they really trust Russia? And, more importantly, could they make a deal with the Russians that the Russians would find it worthwhile and necessary to observe? You can bet that this is what is being discussed in the inner circles of the German government today, and not how to repair the irreparable breach of trust with the United States.
*****
As far as Proyect goes, no one cares that he shits on his own kitchen table, but these days too few people visit his house to admire and comment upon his handiwork. So he goes from house to house (Swans-MOA, etc.) and shits on their kitchen tables. When they are less than enthralled with his handiwork, he takes to going about in disguise to gain entrance, although his explosive behavior soon gives him away.
People know he eats out a lot, but his actions — horrific and asocial as they are — reveal a lot about him: He believes his creations (or works of art as he call them — although others refer to them as excreta) are preferable to other’s kitchen tables and angrily defends them. When others clean their kitchen tables, he comes in stealthily at night to make what he laughingly terms “night deposits.” He has no ability to handle corn, in any form, as his digestion leaves him in eternal bad humor. And the stench is militantly inhumane, although he claims that to his nostrils it smells like a daisy in the barrel of a gun at a spring morning protest.
*****
Look slothrop, in relation to World Systems Theory (WST), hegemonic actions in Libya and Syria, by their indisguisable violence, destructiveness and utter hypocrisy, split the left into two camps: those who are cognizant and critical of the work of hegemony, and those that deny that hegemonic behavior even exists, preferring to interpret such actions in altruistic terms: r2p, etc. I would term those the apologetic left (also critiqued as Liberal, or even radical leftist Imperialism, the “Left Man’s Burden”), and put you, Proyect, Amy Goodman, Code Pink, more recent Chomsky, etc. into that camp. (Hang on here, I will return to this. Obviously, there is a spectrum of beliefs, and this precis a simplification for the purpose of explication.) In any event, the sentiments between the two left camps are vitriolic and at this point unbridgeable.
The so-called “Arab Spring,” as it was marketed and promoted by, for instance, both the US State Department and Democracy Now, and the interpretation of those events and their later consequences, was a particularly schismatic and disabling event for the left, and along with the introduction of Obama, I believe, planned to be so — and particularly traumatic for me personally, leading to much introspection, research, and loss of old friendships.
The former left camp, in alliance with the ur-right (or idealistic right), has done much work in recent years in revealing the work of the “Deep” or undemocratic state: dark events like false flags, mind control, systemic bribery of elites, ignorant mercenary armies who literally do not know who they are fighting against or what they are fighting for, etc., and on the other side, “light” events like the ever more intelligent co-optation of dissent through “hip” social media. The latter camp is largely in denial of such work, preferring to read all events at face or surface value.
Recent work by Nader and others point to a possible alliance on a number of points of commonality between the critical left and the ur-right, as does the flow of commentary on this and other blogs. Yes, Nader has unequivocably never rejected Captalism, and the ur-right idealizes the “Free Market,” but both are equally disgusted by the increasing concentration of power, wealth, corruption and hypocrisy at the top and the increasing destruction of the foundation upon which this unholy pyramid is built. (I, for one, as a self identified radical leftist, would feel more comfortable living in a country governed by “rightist” Paul Craig Roberts, than by “leftist” Barak Obama.)
Yes, solutions being considered are more functional than ideological in nature, but, by its very nature, this is a big tent dialogue, and communists, socialists, anarchists, primitivists, Schumacherites, right sizists, distributists, mutualists, etc. would only profit from discarding their paranoia and feelings of superiority, inferiority, and exclusivity, and peaking their heads inside and contributing to the discourse. I believe that the emphasis is on ad-hoc practicality in a time of crisis, and small achievable steps rather than grand theoretical constructs. Long term planning will flow from the vision of achievable steps, rather than the other way around, which has failed in the past generation to produce results.
This functional approach of skirting ideological reefs in looking for solutions, might be termed a “fifth way,” in contra-distinction to Dugin’s spooky mystical/identity structure of a “fourth way.”
Returning to the point above, “Politics” — that is to say, who gets what, and how and why — as the term is currently used, conceals more than reveals. You and I may be very close in the way we ideally wish the world to be, but we differ greatly in how we interpret current events, and what the opportunitities for productive action currently are. Much more can be said about this, indeed a book could be written, teasing out the different strands of meaning, interpretation and possibilities for action that hide beneath the umbrella term, “politics,” — I have put much thought into this area over the past few years — but I will leave it here for now.
WST is a framework for understanding human civilizational development. Are all relations between core and periphery immutable? Is WST merely a mechanistic model to be passively observed as the Empire founders, or is there space for constructive human intervention? Must all relations be one-sided and extractive in nature, or is mutally beneficial exchange possible? What role do human social values, such as fairness, and explicit or implicit social contracts play in political organization? What lessons do the actions of the former Soviet Union, of Cuba, Venezuela, of ALBA, of the BRICS, of new investment models, have to teach us? Wallerstein, in particular, has been sympathetic to the rights of indigenous peoples, as has John Perkins, by the way. Their struggles are almost at right angles with struggles over centers of power. Certainly, the case of India, for instance, and the critical work of Arundhati Roy and Vandana Shiva, among others, points very clearly to the limitations of the BRICS model for human poly-cultural survival, and these dangers are not to be minimized. Like Wallerstein, I , certainly, am not naively optimistic (in actuality I am as darkly pessimistic of the human future as Ivan Illich), but a productive dialogue along these lines could be developed.
*****
Question: Do people fight for freedom, or against extreme oppression? There is a balance between freedom and responsibility, which for ideological purposes the West rarely acknowleges.
*****
Eno is good, especially in calming the dyspepsia that considerations of Proyect bring on, but the last several weeks I have been getting in touch with my inner Ramones, and remembering the summer days of past when I lived across the street from their loft on 2nd St. between 2nd Ave. and the Bowery, the back of CBGB’s visible behind the parking lot and the row of almost oriental-looking ineradicable ailanthus trees — sadly all gone now, devoured by the neo-liberal leviathan, NYU. Hearing them rehearse, dressing in all black, after-hour dinners at the Kiev… Who could have imagined that I would one day think back wistfully to my hopeless attempts of duct taping pillows to my windows on those rare nights when I had to get to sleep before 4 AM.
Posted by: Malooga | Jul 24 2014 18:49 utc | 113
“…Wallerstein, Frank, Amin, Arrighiri, are structuralist Marxists, crudely speaking. People are forced to do things they don’t want to do in order to maintain accumulation in the global economy.
“So, even very powerful people are tethered to this system. The rest of us are diminishing sources of labor power needed to create surplus value. This is a real crisis, and could be included in the analysis of the present Ukrainian conflict…”
So here we are again, bowing in awe before, his ineffable majesty, the god of Nature, invisible hand and all. Slothrop is one of those who cannot believe that man makes his own history, a Menshevik, infected by the disease of Victorian positivism.
Man makes his own history. And, if he does not, the evolution of international trade will not make it on his behalf.
The system has no trajectory, it will not die unless it is killed, there is no end to the horrific forms that the greed and enslavement which is capitalism could take if it is not euthanised.
History is not a spectacle, any more than the lives of the poor are an amusement, or massacres in the middle east a passing detail.
The last time that Slothrop appeared here to sneer at b and the locals, it was to sketch for us the, laughable, notion that b had a portrait of Eric Honecker in his study.
Slothrop regards it as axiomatic that the GDR was not just a bad regime but clearly worse than the one which waged wars in Korea and Vietnam and treated Africa, Latin America and Asia like plantations on the Mississippi. He suggests that b must be a secret admirer of Honecker, perhaps even drive a Brabant!
The reality is that Slothrop and his ilk are quite reconciled to Harry Truman and look back fondly at Eisenhower, probably cast their first votes for LBJ and their most recent ones for Obama. And are, even now, thinking about Bernie Sanders (Democratic Socialist!!) or Elizabeth Warren. And none of the above is fit, despite all his failings and all the faults of his governments, to lick Eric Honecker’s arse.
Why? Because the GDR poured vast and very scarce resources into rebuilding the ruins of North Korea, diverting assistance, of all kinds to national liberation movements, to the likes of Che Guevara and (the never forgotten) General Giap, peasant pedant soldier and victor over the Empire.
b, according to Slothrop is a loon, because he bothers.
Slothrop has more sense- he doesn’t give a fuck. It’s all one when History is God and we and our consciences and our preferences are so much chaff in the wind.
Slothrop wouldn’t bother, (he rarely visits the site, he has more important matters to attend to, papers to mark, students to impress, names to drop, cheques to cash, genitals to play with…) but he will not stand idly by and witness, in effect, a celebration of the soviet policies of opposing imperialism with suspect, nay, impure motives. That is to ask too much of his patience. So he visits us, like a missionary picking his way through a crowd of naked cannibals, and his message is that the Universe is unfolding, just as Karl, Kautsky that is, prophesied.
If Marx returned to earth, for a day, the thing that would puzzle him most would be the number of otherwise intelligent people who, despite his injunctions to criticise received ideas and study unfolding empirical reality, insist upon the validity of guesses that he made-such as those to do with falling rates of profit and the accumulation of capital-that have long since been exploded as irrelevant.
If he stayed a day longer, he would realise what a wonderful excuse dogmatism had become for inaction and indifference.
Posted by: bevin | Jul 25 2014 2:07 utc | 128
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