Cui Bono? A Flight Down Over Ukraine

At no juncture during the Ukrainian crisis could the downing of Malaysian Boeing 777 flight MH17 have been more convenient for NATO and its proxy regime in Kiev. Kiev’s forces were being picked apart in eastern Ukraine with several units encircled and destroyed. In the west of the country, dissent was growing by Ukrainians unwilling to march off to fight in the east. NATO’s attempts to bait Russia into moving into Ukrainian territory and shift global opinion against Moscow had repeatedly failed. The final card to be played by the US was another round of sanctions that almost immediately was ridiculed as ineffective and impotent. Even US corporate-financier interests condemned the latest round of sanctions claiming they were “unilateral” in nature and thus limited US enterprise from interacting with Russia while leaving European competitors free to move into the void. An effective US policy of confronting, containing, and undermining Russia would require multilateral sanctions with almost universal support – but the impetus for such sweeping sanctions did not exist – until now.

President Putin's Official Statement on the Plane Crash in Ukraine

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin opened a meeting with top economic advisers late Thursday with comments on the crash of a Malaysian airliner in Ukraine. The text of his remarks, as taken from the Kremlin website and translated by The Associated Press: — Dear colleagues! You know that a terrible event occurred today in the sky over Ukraine, an awful tragedy — a civilian plane was killed, 285 people, according to preliminary information, were killed. On behalf of the Russian leadership and the Russian government, we express condolences to the bereaved families, the governments of those countries whose nationals were on that plane. I ask you to honor their memory.

Bombing Gaza: Was Netanayahu Govt Behind Killings of 3 Israeli Teenagers?

“Justified Vengeance”, The Pretext for Bombing Gaza: Was the Netanayahu Government Behind the Killings of the Three Israeli Teenagers? The pretext for bombing and shelling Gaza was the death of three Israeli teenagers allegedly killed by Hamas. ‘Operation Protective Edge (OPE) directed against Gaza is reminiscent of the infamous 2001 Dagan Plan entitled “Operation Justified Vengeance” in which the deaths of innocent Israeli civilians had been envisaged and foreseen by IDF military planners. The deaths are then used to muster the support of the Israeli public as well as provide a justification for a “legitimate” counter-terrorism operation in the eyes of the international community directed against the Palestinian occupied territories. Contrived behind closed doors in July 2001, the Dagan Plan (named after Mossad chief Meir Dagan) was slated by its IDF and Mossad architects to be “launched immediately following the next high-casualty suicide bombing, would last about a month and is expected to result in the death of hundreds of Israelis and thousands of Palestinians.” (See Ellis Shuman, “Operation Justified Vengeance”: a Secret Plan to Destroy the Palestinian Authority, Intelligence Ploy behind the “Suicide bombings”, Global Research, February 01, 2006)

Islamic State in Iraq and Syria: Bin Laden Won

Osama Bin Laden’s goal in 9/11 was to suck the US into Afghanistan and Iraq, sparking a regional conflagration that would sweep away the imperial legacy and establish a new caliphate. Over a decade later,…

The US arrogance will destroy its empire

Alone among the governments in the world, Washington requires sovereign governments to follow Washington’s laws even when Washington’s laws contradict the laws of sovereign countries. The examples are endless. For example, Washington forced Switzerland to violate and to repeal Switzerland’s historic bank secrecy laws. Washington executes citizens of other countries, as well as its own citizens, without due process of law. Washington violates the sovereignty of other countries and murders the countries’ citizens with drones, bombs, and special forces teams. Washington kidnaps abroad citizens of other countries and either brings them to the US to be tried under US law or sends them to another country to be tortured in secret torture centers. Washington tells banks in other countries with whom they can do business and when the banks disobey, Washington blackmails them into compliance or imposes fines that threaten their existence. Last week Washington forced a French bank to pay Washington $9 billion dollars or be banned from its US operations, because the bank financed trade with countries disapproved by Washington.

ISIS: Spoils of "Great Loot" in M. East

Adding yet more warfare to the current crisis in the Middle East will perpetuate exactly what the imperial powers set out to do: tear an entire region of the world asunder.“So far as Syria is concerned, it is France and not Turkey that is the enemy.” – T. E. Lawrence, February 1915. It was a curious comment by the oddball but unarguably brilliant British agent and scholar, Thomas Edward Lawrence. The time was World War I, and England and France were locked in a death match with the Triple Alliance, of which Ottoman Turkey was a prominent member. But it was nonetheless true, and no less now than then. In the Middle East, to paraphrase William Faulkner, history is not the past; it’s the present. In his 1915 letter, Lawrence was describing French machinations over Syria, but he could just as well have been commenting on England’s designs in the region, which Allied leaders in World War I came to call “The Great Loot”—the imperial vivisection of the Middle East.