Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Germans want more independence from US

The majority of German citizens, for the first time in history, insist on less dependence on the United States in terms of their national security and diplomacy, according to a major survey released by the German Marshall Fund think-tank.
The study published on Wednesday shows that most Germans want their country to take a more independent position from the United States, especially on issues as vital as national security and sovereign diplomacy.
A majority of 57 percent of German respondents opted for a more independent approach, according to the Transatlantic Trends survey, which is up from only 40 percent back in 2013. What is even more interesting is that just 19 percent of Germans say they want to have a closer relationship with the United States – compared to 34 percent of Americans who wanted their country to get cosier with Germany.
In Europe as a whole, 50 percent of respondents opted for a more independent security relationship with the United States, which is up eight percent from last year.
“The turbulence in transatlantic relations over the past year is mirrored in this year’s Transatlantic Trends data,” says GMF President Karen Donfried, adding that the crises in the Middle East and Ukraine“underscore the importance of strengthened transatlantic cooperation.”
The US and Germany have been at odds in a spying row ever since Edward Snowden's National Security Agency revelations in June 2013. In October, it was revealed the NSA had been spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's calls since 2002. A German parliamentary committee has since been holding hearings on the NSA’s spying activities in Germany.
Reuters / Fabrizio Bensch
Reuters / Fabrizio Bensch

Another spying scandal that took place in July this year escalated the growing political tension between the two states. It happened when two US agents were unmasked, suspected of acting as double agents within the German state security apparatus, and passing secrets to US intelligence contacts. One of them, a 31-year-old, reportedly contacted the US embassy and offered ‘cooperation,’ after which he leaked hundreds of secret documents in exchange for cash payments. In response to the espionage scandal, Germany promptly expelled the Berlin CIA chief.
German government officials readily acknowledge that anti-Americanism – fueled by these revelations of NSA’a spying activities in Europe – plays a significant role in how the public perceives the Ukraine crisis and has bred reluctance among many Germans to side with the US.
The favorability of the United States in Germany has dropped from 68 percent in 2013 to 58 percent this year. However, at the same time 70 percent of respondents are viewing Russia unfavorably.
Meanwhile, a little more than half of EU respondents – with 1,000 adults questioned in each country from June 2 to June 26 this year – said it was desirable that the United States exert strong leadership in world affairs, almost unchanged from 2013. In Germany, however, a positive opinion of US President Barack Obama’s international policies dropped by 20 percentage points to 56 percent, with 38 percent of respondents disagreeing with them. The results back those of a survey in July which showed support for Obama had fallen in Germany.

Putin: Russia Will Not Get Involved In Arms Race

Published time: September 10, 2014 12:33
Edited time: September 10, 2014 14:45

AFP Photo/Byambasuren Byamba-Ochir
AFP Photo/Byambasuren Byamba-Ochir
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Russia is not going to get involved in a new arms race, President Vladimir Putin said as he ordered his government to work out “balanced and realistic” defense strategy for 2016 through 2025.
“Someone really wants to unleash a new arms race,” Russia’s president said at a meeting with senior defense industry officials.“We, of course, are not going to be involved in this race.”
Putin tasked the defense industry to work out a new military doctrine by December. His comments came a week after Russia said Sept. 2 it would review the doctrine, in response to NATO announcing its intentions to expand in Eastern Europe amid Ukrainian crisis.

‘Ukrainian crisis provoked by the West to resuscitate NATO’

Speaking about the situation in Ukraine, Putin blamed Western countries for the bloody conflict in the southeastern regions of the country.
“Recently, as you know, NATO has decided to build up its forces in Eastern Europe. The crisis in Ukraine, which was, in fact, provoked and created by some of our Western partners, is now used for the resuscitation of this military bloc," he said.
All the actions Russia is taking are retaliatory measures of self-defense, Putin said.
“We have been repeatedly saying, warning that we will have to, exactly have to, take appropriate retaliatory measures to ensure our security,” Putin said. “We have said many times that it would be very desirable to avoid excessive hysterics when these decisions will be finally accepted and will be implemented. I want to emphasize that everything we do, is only retaliatory measures,” he added.
At the end of August, NATO announced its plans to bring its forces closer to Russian borders, specifically to the three Baltic States – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – as the situation in Ukraine showed no signs of improvement. NATO’s expansion was the key topic of discussions at the alliance’s summit in Wales at the end of last week.
Russia warned that NATO’s progress towards the east and Ukraine, which the military bloc sees as a potential member, will trigger a strong reaction.
In July, Putin said that NATO’s military build-up near Russia’s borders, which includes the US-built missile defense system, is not just for defensive purposes, but is an “offensive weapon” and an “element of the US offensive system deployed outside the mainland.”
Responding to NATO’s intentions last week, Russia’s envoy to the alliance, Aleksandr Grushko, indicated that this will be “taken into consideration” in Russia’s military planning.

​US, EU to ban Exxon, BP and Shell from oil exploration in Russia – Report


Published time: September 10, 2014 20:28
Edited time: September 10, 2014 23:59

AFP Photo / Karen Bleier
AFP Photo / Karen Bleier
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The EU and the US are going to ban energy giants like Exxon Mobil, BP and Shell from searching for crude oil in Russia's Arctic, deep seas and shale formations, three American officials anonymously told Bloomberg.
These sanctions would reportedly not interfere with current oil drilling and production from conventional land-based wells and those along the shallow edges of inland seas, some of which have been pumping crude for decades, according to the officials.
The ban would only target reserves that would not begin providing crude to global energy markets for the next five to 10 years.
All of the officials asked to not be named. The EU has failed to agree on whether to impose its new round of sanctions on Russia. The announcement of the final decision has been held off as the ambassadors from the 28 EU members convene to continue discussions on Thursday.
According to one official who spoke to Bloomberg, the new round of sanctions may target Arctic exploration prospects, as the new ban – if implemented – will further impact sharing “sensitive technologies” and services with Russia. Such exports must be authorized by member states if the products are destined for deep-water oil exploration projects in Russia.
Sources said the new measures will not affect the “conventional land-based wells and those along the shallow edges of inland seas.” Instead, they will focus on future drilling five to 10 years from now.
Earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported that new set limits would prevent Russian oil companies from raising funds with maturities longer than 30 days in the EU's capital markets. Transneft, Rosneft and the oil production subsidiary of state-owned gas company Gazprom would suffer the effect.
Reuters / Jessica Rinaldi
Reuters / Jessica Rinaldi

“If true that new sanctions were to ban technology and services for Arctic, deep-sea and shale exploration, that would be a very big deal,” Jason Bordoff, former energy adviser to President Barack Obama, told the publication in an e-mail. “It would significantly curtail Russia’s future oil production capacity, although it is important to note that it would require close collaboration between Europe and the United States to be effective.”
In the meantime, however, despite the previously imposed sanctions, US oil giant ExxonMobil and Russia’s Rosneft continue their joint exploitation of the Russian Arctic, and last month began drilling a $700 million Universitetskaya-1 well in the Kara Sea that may hold 9 billion barrels of crude, equating to $894 billion.
Exxon currently owns drilling rights across 11.4 million acres in Russia, after it signed a $3.2 billion exploration pact in 2011. “We are assessing the situation,” Alan Jeffers, an Exxon spokesman, told Bloomberg. “We always follow the law.”
The Royal Dutch Shell Plc ventures in Russia may also be affected. “We are continuing to review the latest sanctions to assess the potential impacts on our business, and engaging with the respective authorities to gain further clarity,” Kayla Macke, a Shell spokeswoman, told the publication. “We are taking action to ensure we comply with all applicable sanctions or related measures. We’re keeping the situation under close review.”
BP is also worried about the prospects of its 19.75 percent ownership stake in Rosneft – the biggest direct foreign investment in Russia. “We will look at any new sanctions and we will of course comply with all applicable sanctions,” Toby Odone, a spokesman for BP, told Bloomberg.
Other European oil companies that may suffer if the new sanctions are introduced include French Total SA, and Norwegian Statoil ASA.

9/11 After 13 years


Paul Craig ROBERTS | 10.09.2014

9/11 After 13 years

Paul Craig ROBERTS | 10.09.2014 | 12:00
he tragedy of September 11, 2001, goes far beyond the deaths of those who died in the towers and the deaths of firefighters and first responders who succumbed to illnesses caused by inhalation of toxic dust. For thirteen years a new generation of Americans has been born into the 9/11 myth that has been used to create the American warfare/police state. 
The corrupt Bush and Obama regimes used 9/11 to kill, maim, dispossess and displace millions of Muslims in seven countries, none of whom had anything whatsoever to do with 9/11. 
A generation of Americans has been born into distain and distrust of Muslims.
A generation of Americans has been born into a police state in which privacy and constitutional protections no longer exist.
A generation of Americans has been born into continuous warfare while needs of citizens go unmet.
A generation of Americans has been born into a society in which truth is replaced with the endless repetition of falsehoods.
According to the official story, on September 11, 2001, the vaunted National Security State of the World’s Only Superpower was defeated by a few young Saudi Arabians armed only with box cutters. The American National Security State proved to be totally helpless and was dealt the greatest humiliation ever inflicted on any country claiming to be a power.
That day no aspect of the National Security State worked. Everything failed.
The US Air Force for the first time in its history could not get intercepter jet fighters into the air.
The National Security Council failed.
All sixteen US intelligence agencies failed as did those of America’s NATO and Israeli allies.
Air Traffic Control failed.
Airport Security failed four times at the same moment on the same day. The probability of such a failure is zero.
If such a thing had actually happened, there would have been demands from the White House, from Congress, and from the media for an investigation. Officials would have been held accountable for their failures. Heads would have rolled.
Instead, the White House resisted for one year the 9/11 families’ demands for an investigation. Finally, a collection of politicians was assembled to listen to the government’s account and to write it down. The chairman, vice chairman, and legal counsel of the 9/11 Commission have said that information was withheld from the commission, lies were told to the commission, and that the commission «was set up to fail.» The worst security failure in history resulted in not a single firing. No one was held responsible.
Washington concluded that 9/11 was possible because America lacked a police state.
The PATRIOT Act, which was awaiting the event was quickly passed by the congressional idiots. The Act established executive branch independence of law and the Constitution. The Act and follow-up measures have institutionalized a police state in «the land of the free.»
Osama bin Laden, a CIA asset dying of renal failure, was blamed despite his explicit denial. For the next ten years Osama bin Laden was the bogyman that provided the excuse for Washington to kill countless numbers of Muslims. Then suddenly on May 2, 2011, Obama claimed that US Navy SEALs had killed bin Laden in Pakistan. Eyewitnesses on the scene contradicted the White House’s story. Osama bin Laden became the only human in history to survive renal failure for ten years. There was no dialysis machine in what was said to be bin Laden’s hideaway. The numerous obituaries of bin Laden’s death in December 2001 went down the memory hole. And the SEAL team died a few weeks later in a mysterious helicopter crash in Afghanistan. The thousands of sailors on the aircraft carrier from which bin Laden was said to have been dumbed into the Indian Ocean all wrote home that no such burial took place.
The fairy tale story of bin Laden’s murder by Seal Team Six served to end the challenge by disappointed Democrats to contest Obama’s nomination for a second term. It also freed the «war on terror» from the bin Laden constraint. Washington wanted to attack Libya, Syria, and Iran, countries in which bin Laden was known not to have organizations, and the succession of faked bin Laden videos in which bin Laden grew progressively younger as the fake bin Laden claimed credit for each successive attack, had lost credibility among experts.
Watching the twin towers and WTC 7 come down, it was obvious to me that the buildings were not falling down as a result of structural damage. When it became clear that the White House had blocked an independent investigation of the only three steel skyscrapers in world history to collapse as a result of low temperature office fires, it was
apparent that there was a coverup.
After 13 years people at home and abroad find the government’s story less believable.
The case made by independent experts is now so compelling that mainstream media has opened to it. Here is Richard Gage of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth on C-SPAN:  
After years of persistence a group in New York has secured the necessary number of valid signatures to put on the ballot a vote to investigate the cause of the collapse of the three WTC buildings. The official account, if correct, means that existing fire and building codes are insufficient to protect the public and that all other steel high rise structures are subject to the same failure. The group has been clever to frame the issue in terms of public safety and not in terms of 9/11 truth.
New York authorities, of course, continue to oppose the initiative. The question now rests on a judge’s ruling. It is difficult to imagine a judge going against the government in such a major way, but the group will have made the point that the government has no confidence in the truth of its own story .
Over these 13 years, physicists, chemists, architects, engineers, pilots, and first responders have provided massive evidence that completely disproves the official account of the failure of the three skyscrapers. The response to experts has been for non-experts to call experts «conspiracy theorists.» In other words, the defenders of the government’s story have no scientific or factual basis on which to stand. So they substitute name-calling. 
9/11 was used to fundamentally alter the nature of the US government and its relationship to the American people. Unaccountable executive power has replaced due process and the checks and balances established by the US Constitution. In the name of National Security, executive power knows no restraints. Essentially, Americans today have no rights if the government targets them.
Those Americans born after 9/11 were born into a different country from the rest of us. Having never experienced constitutional government, they will not know what they have lost.
The anthrax attacks of October 2011 have been forgotten, but Professor Graeme MacQueen in The 2001 Anthrax Deception (Clarity Press, 2014) shows that the anthrax attacks played an essential role in setting the stage for the government’s acquisition of unaccountable police state power. Two Democratic Senate committee chairmen, Thomas Daschle and Patrick Leahy, were disturbed by the Bush regime’s overreach for carte blanche power, and were in a position to block the coming police state legislation and the ability of the executive branch alone to take America to war.
Both senators received anthrax letters, as did major news organizations. The TV network news anchors, such as Dan Rather, who compared the collapse of WTC skyscrapers to buildings brought down by controlled demolition, had not yet been fired by Republicans on framed-up charges. 
Initially, the anthrax letters, which caused the deaths of some USPS employees, were seen as the second stage of the 9/11 attack. Fear multiplied. The senators and media shut up. Then it was discovered that the anthrax was a unique kind produced only by a US government military facility. 
The response to this monkey wrench thrown into the government’s propaganda, was the FBI’s frame-up of a dead man, Bruce Edwards Ivins, who had been employed in the military lab that produced the anthrax and was driven to suicide by the false charges. The dead man’s colleagues did not believe one word of the government’s false story, and nothing in the dead man’s past indicated any motive or instability that would have led him to such a deed.
Initially, the US government tried to frame up Steven Jay Hatfill, but despite the best efforts of the New York Times and Nicholas Kristof the attempt to frame Hatfill failed. Hatfill received $5 million from the US government for the false accusation that ruined his life. So the corrupt US government moved on to Ivins.
Ivins was dead and couldn’t defend himself, but his colleagues did.
The entire episode stinks to high heaven. Justice is something that exists outside the borders of the United States. Never expect to find justice within the United States.
Most Americans are unaware of the extent to which the federal government owns the experts who can contradict its fairy tales. For example, no competent physicist can possibly believe the official story of the destruction of the three WTC buildings. But physics departments in US universities are heavily dependent on federal money. Any physicist who speaks his mind jeopardizes not only his own career but also the career of all of his colleagues. Physicist Steven Jones, who first pointed to the use of thermite in the destruction of the two towers had to agree to having his university buy out his tenure or his university was faced with losing all federal financing.
The same constraints operate in the private sector. High rise architects and structural engineers who express doubts about the official explanation of the collapse of three skyscrapers are viewed by potential clients as Muslim apologists and conspiracy kooks.
The clients, of course, have no expert knowledge with which to assess the issue, but they are indoctrinated with ceaseless, endless, repetition that 9/11 was Osama bin Laden’s attack on America. Their indoctrination makes them immune to facts.
The 9/11 lie has persisted for 13 years. Millions of Muslims have paid for this lie with their lives, the destruction of their families, and with their dislocation. Most Americans remain comfortable with the fact that their government has destroyed in whole or part seven countries based on a lie Washington told to cover up an inside job that launched the crazed neoconservatives’ drive for Washington’s World Empire.
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2014/09/10/9-11-after-13-years.html 
Tags: CIA US

 
Paul Craig ROBERTS
The Honorable Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan Administration. As a presidential appointee to a secret committee, he played a role in the Reagan / Gorbachev negotiation of the end of the Cold War. In 1961 Roberts was a member of the US/USSR student exchange program.  In 1989 and 1990, Roberts addressed the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow on the subject of liberty. His book, Alienation and the Soviet Economy (1971 and 1990) is widely accepted as the explanation of the ideological origin and failure of the Soviet economy. Roberts was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and Scripps Howard News Service.   He has had many university appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University where his colleagues were Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and James R. Schlesinger.

More Evidence U.S. Supports Nazis in Ukraine

EDITOR'S CHOICE | 10.09.2014 | 09:50
 
The video was shot by Norwegian broadcaster TV2 last week. “We were filming a report about Ukraine’s AZOV battalion in the eastern city of Urzuf, when we came across these soldiers,” Oysten Bogen, a correspondent for the television station, told NBC News.
It was formed and armed by Ukraine’s interior ministry. It is linked to Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna (“The Fatherland”) party through Arsen Avakov, who became the new Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine after the U.S. State Department sponsored violent coup ousted the elected Yanukovich government.
Azov is openly fascist, although this is not mentioned by NBC News.
The battalion’s commander is Andriy Biletsky, the head of the neo-nazi social-nationalist political groups Social National Assembly and Patriot of Ukraine.
The stated aim of the organization is “to prepare Ukraine for further expansion and to struggle for the liberation of the entire White Race from the domination of the internationalist speculative capital” and “to punish severely sexual perversions and any interracial contacts that lead to the extinction of the white man,” according to the BBC.
“Azov, which has an estimated personnel of 500 people, is one of about 50 volunteer battalions formed by Maidan activists and ultranationalists of the Right Sector group,” RT reported in August. “These newly formed units have been brought to eastern Ukraine to form the backbone of the forces fighting against the local self-defense militia advocating independence from Ukraine.”
It “actively participated in Kiev’s so-called ‘anti-terrorist operation’ and, like most of the volunteer and National Guards units, has been accused of committing war crimes against civilians,” the Russian news agency claims.
“Azov fighters do more than wave a Swastika-like flag,” writes Robert Parry, “they favor the Wolfsangel flag of Hitler’s SS divisions, much as some of Ukraine’s neo-Nazis still honor Hitler’s Ukrainian SS auxiliary, the Galician SS. A Ukrainian hero hailed during the Maidan protests was Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera whose paramilitary forces helped exterminate Jews and Poles.”
Ukrainian ultranationalists consider Russians and Poles their primary enemies. “The Jews in the USSR constitute the most faithful support of the ruling Bolshevik regime, and the vanguard of Muscovite imperialism in Ukraine,” Ukrainian nationalists declared in 1941 during the Nazi occupation.
Considering the fact the Kiev government has actively fielded a battalion of neo-Nazi racists determined to cleanse Ukraine of what it considers untermenschen, the resistance effort by Russian-speaking Ukrainians in Donetsk and Luhansk is understandable.
infowars.com

Malaysia Airlines Whodunnit Still a Mystery

 by Robert Parry 10.09.2014 | 22:09

Beyond confirming that Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 apparently was shot down on July 17, the Dutch Safety Board’s interim investigative report answered few questions, including some that would seem easy to address, such as the Russian military radar purporting to show a Ukrainian SU-25 jetfighter in the area, a claim that the Kiev government denied.
Either the Russian radar showed the presence of a jetfighter “gaining height” as it closed to within three to five kilometers of the passenger plane – as the Russians claimed in a July 21 press conference – or it didn’t. The Kiev authorities insisted that they had no military aircraft in the area at the time.
A Malaysia Airways’ Boeing 777 like the one that crashed in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. (Photo credit: Aero Icarus from Zürich, Switzerland)
But the 34-page Dutch report is silent on the jetfighter question, although noting that the investigators had received Air Traffic Control “surveillance data from the Russian Federation.”
The report is also silent on the “dog-not-barking” issue of whether the U.S. government had satellite surveillance that revealed exactly where the supposed ground-to-air missile was launched and who may have fired it.
The Obama administration has asserted knowledge about those facts – initially pointing the finger at ethnic Russian rebels using a powerful Buk anti-aircraft missile system supposedly supplied by Russia – but the U.S. government has withheld satellite photos and other intelligence information that could presumably corroborate the charge.
Curiously, too, the Dutch report, released on Tuesday, states that the investigation received “satellite imagery taken in the days after the occurrence.” Obviously, the more relevant images in assessing blame would be aerial photography in the days and hours before the crash that killed 298 people on the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
In mid-July, eastern Ukraine was a high priority for U.S. intelligence and a Buk missile battery is a large system that should have been easily picked up by U.S. aerial reconnaissance. The four missiles in a battery are each about 16-feet-long and would have to be hauled around by a truck and then put in position to fire.
Just days after the July 17 shoot-down, a source who was briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts told me that the analysts were examining satellite imagery that showed the crew manning the suspected missile battery wearing what looked like Ukrainian army uniforms.
Then, on July 22, at a briefing given to journalists from major U.S. publications, a U.S. intelligence official suggested that a Ukrainian military “defector” might have launched the Buk missile against the airliner, possibly explaining the issue of the uniforms.
The Los Angeles Times reported that “U.S. intelligence agencies have so far been unable to determine the nationalities or identities of the crew that launched the missile. U.S. officials said it was possible the SA-11 [Buk anti-aircraft missile] was launched by a defector from the Ukrainian military who was trained to use similar missile systems.”
The briefers also theorized that the rebels hit Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 by mistake, thinking it was a Ukrainian military aircraft.
Yet, while the U.S. government has released a variety of satellite photos to bolster various allegations lodged against ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine and the Russian government, the Obama administration has balked at providing satellite imagery relating to the Flight 17 case, instead basing much of its public case on “social media.”
Russian Satellite Images
The Dutch report’s reference to only post-crash satellite photos is also curious because the Russian military released a number of satellite images purporting to show Ukrainian government Buk missile systems north of the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk before the attack, including two batteries that purportedly were shifted 50 kilometers south of Donetsk on July 17, the day of the crash, and then removed by July 18.
Russian Lt. Gen. Andrey Kartopolov called on the Ukrainian government to explain the movements of its Buk systems and why Kiev’s Kupol-M19S18 radars, which coordinate the flight of Buk missiles, showed increased activity leading up to the July 17 shoot-down.
The Ukrainian government countered these questions by asserting that it had “evidence that the missile which struck the plane was fired by terrorists, who received arms and specialists from the Russian Federation,” according to Andrey Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine’s Security Council, using Kiev’s preferred term for the rebels.
Lysenko added: “To disown this tragedy, [Russian officials] are drawing a lot of pictures and maps. We will explore any photos and other plans produced by the Russian side.” But Ukrainian authorities have failed to address the Russian evidence except through broad denials.
On July 29, amid escalating rhetoric against Russia from U.S. government officials and the Western news media, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity called on President Barack Obama to release what evidence the U.S. government had on the shoot-down, including satellite imagery.
“As intelligence professionals we are embarrassed by the unprofessional use of partial intelligence information,” the group wrote. “As Americans, we find ourselves hoping that, if you indeed have more conclusive evidence, you will find a way to make it public without further delay. In charging Russia with being directly or indirectly responsible, Secretary of State John Kerry has been particularly definitive. Not so the evidence. His statements seem premature and bear earmarks of an attempt to ‘poison the jury pool.’”
However, the Obama administration failed to make public any intelligence information that would back up its earlier suppositions.
Then, in early August, I was told that some U.S. intelligence analysts had shifted away from the original scenario blaming the rebels and Russia to one focused more on the possibility that extremist elements of the Ukrainian government were responsible. But then chatter about U.S. intelligence information on the shoot-down faded away.
Given the intense global interest in the tragedy, there were high hopes that the Dutch Safety Board, which is heading up the international investigation, would at least begin clarifying the evidence and sifting through the conflicting claims. However, more than seven weeks after the crash, the preliminary report fails to address any of the evidence regarding who actually fired the missile and from precisely what location.
The Dutch Safety Board promised a final report before the first anniversary of the crash on July 17, 2015. By then, however, the slaughter of those 298 people could well become a cold case with little hope of finding the perpetrators – whoever they might be – and bringing them to justice.
By Robert Parry, consortiumnews.com
Tags: Malaysia Ukraine

Lavrov: Shanghai Cooperation Organization May Begin to Expand Later This Year

News | 10.09.2014 | 10:36
 
Pakistan, India and Iran may be able to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in the near future, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
"At the summit in Dushanbe, we will make decisions that will complete the formation of the legal, administrative and financial conditions for the admission of new members to the SCO. This will provide an opportunity to begin the expansion process during the Russian presidency," Lavrov said in an article published on Wednesday in Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
Lavrov recalled that Pakistan, India and Iran have already expressed their wish to become full members of the organization.
The minister noted that Russia intends to give priority to further enhancement of the SCO’s efficiency, the consolidation of efforts in order to ensure an adequate response to the events in the region and the whole world.
SCO’s true priority is still the regional security, in particular – the increase in opportunities for joint fight against terrorism, extremism, drug trafficking, especially against in the light of the situation in Afghanistan, the minister said.
On September 11-12, an SCO summit will be held in Dushanbe. It will be attended by the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, heads and representatives of observers and guests of the summit, as well as international organizations. Immediately after the meeting, Russia will become the chairman of the organization for one year, till the next summit.
 
Tags: Shanghai Cooperation Organization Russia Lavrov

nachdenKEN über: Stoppt Putin jetzt?! Spiegel-Redakteure hetzen mehr! wwwKenFMde /Ken Jensen You Tube

nachdenKEN über: Stoppt Putin jetzt?! Spiegel-Redakteure hetzen mehr!

Veröffentlicht am 28.07.2014
Die Zeichen in Europa 2014 stehen auf Krieg. In der West-Presse wird gegen Putin gehetzt, als gäbe es kein Morgen mehr. Was mit der Krim nicht geklappt hat, soll jetzt die havarierte MH 17 richten, und die deutsche Presse, der Spiegel ganz vorne mit dabei, orientiert sich stark an der britischen Krawall-Presse. Was der australische Historiker Clark in seinem Werk "Die Schlafwandler" beschrieb, das Hineintaumeln in