[quote]Findings of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT)[edit]
On 28 September 2016, the JIT gave a press conference in which it confirmed that the aircraft was shot down with a 9M38 Buk missile which it concluded had been fired from a rebel-controlled field near Pervomaisky, a town 6 km (3.7 mi) south of Snizhne.[116] It also found the Buk missile system used had been transported from Russia into Ukraine on the day of the crash, and then back into Russia after the crash, with one missile fewer.[8][117] During the investigation, the JIT interviewed 200 witnesses, collected half a million photos and videos and analysed 150,000 intercepted phone calls.[116] In June 2016, JIT had announced that it hoped to present its final results "within months" which would be presented as a criminal file to a court or tribunal.[245]
The key conclusion of the Dutch-led criminal inquiry implicating Russia in the 2014 shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 relied heavily on cryptic telephone intercepts that were supplied by the Ukrainian intelligence service and were given incriminating meaning not clearly supported by the words.
The investigators also seemed to ignore other intercepts that conflicted with their conclusions, including one conversation that appeared to be referring to a Ukrainian convoy, not one commanded by ethnic Russian rebels, that was closing in on the Luhansk airport, placing Ukrainian troops deep inside rebel territory.
Although the location of the Ukrainian Buk systems would seem to be crucial to the investigation — at least in eliminating other suspects — JIT operates under an agreement with the Ukrainian government that lets it veto the release of information. Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service, which represented the Kiev government in the JIT, also has among its official responsibilities the protection of secret information that could be damaging to Ukraine.
While the Western mainstream media has given the JIT great credibility, the JIT itself has acknowledged a dependency on Ukraine’s SBU, which shaped the inquiry by supplying its selection of phone intercepts.
Yet, the SBU is far from a neutral party in the investigation, nor does it have clean hands regarding the Ukrainian civil war that followed a U.S.-backed putsch ousting elected President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22, 2014, and sparking an uprising among ethnic Russian Ukrainians who represented Yanukovych’s political base in the east and south.
Earlier this year, an internal report describing the JIT operation revealed how dependent the investigators had become on information provided by the SBU. According to the report, the SBU helped shape the MH-17 investigation by supplying a selection of phone intercepts and other material that would presumably not include sensitive secrets that would implicate the SBU’s political overseers in Ukraine. But the JIT seemed oblivious to this conflict of interest,
Syria is where Russia makes a stand. If Syria falls then they know that they will be next in line for regime change. As simple as that. Better to fight on Syrian soil than on home soil. A little leftfield but the key player for me is China. What will the NeoCons do if China suddenly puts hardware on the ground in Syria in support of the Assad regime?
Doug
You obviously have not had the "aha" moment regarding the mainstream media version of events around MH17. It occurred for me when the BBC presented a documentary at the time of the tragedy fronted by Matt Frei. He showed a Novo-Russian rebel "callously picking through a dead child's belongings". A pro Russian site showed the same video with him saying a prayer over the Teddy Bear before replacing it. Frei also showed the unfeeling rebels throwing the dead bodies into railway cattle trucks. Unfortunately he omitted to mention they were risking their lives to gather these corpses under intermittent shelling from the Kiev Ukrainians. It was extremely hot, the corpses were decomposing rapidly and they had very few resources to deal with the problem. The stock wagons were a very practical solution to extracting the bodies. The Ukrainian shelling made it impossible for foreign teams to do this work.
Contrary to my upbringing I now take everything the BBC says with a big grain of salt.
When it comes to geopolitical matters, the BBC are careful to only project the government line and by proxy the US line. When they get out line slightly the government threatens them with privatisation or a cut in funding.
British newspapers also ran stories that showed locals looting the crash site. They had pictures of then with personal items in their hands. Conclusive evidence. They fail to mention of course that they came from stills from videos which showed the locals putting the personal items back again. Can I make a public apology here at PP for going ballistic at my mother in law when she said how terrible it was that Russia had shot down the plane and were also looting the crash site. When asked (or demanded in a rather loud voice; sorry I couldn’t contain myself) how she knew this, she replied because it said so in the Daily Mail (Britain’s best selling newspaper) and showed me the pictures.
As we know, Doug is especially fond of uncritically accepting anything and everything that comes from "official sources" - something about having a belief system that is not yet ready to accept that authority figures may, in fact, lie to him from time to time.
So no surprise he's back repeating the JIT report without, I would bet, having read it or read around looking for holes in this report.
There were only two suspects that could have launched a BUK from the area that day; the Ukrainian government or the rebels. Of the two, only the Ukrainians were known by all parties to have a complete BUK system- the rebels were known to have the missiles but not the radar truck necessary to actually use one.
Therefore there were two shooting suspects, but while both of them had bullets, only one of them had a gun too.
One of those suspects was not only allowed inside the "investigation" but they were allowed to supply "evidence" in the form of easily doctored audio recording, but also to veto information.
So let's examine just one of the critical claims, that the rebels got themselves a fully functioning, intact, BUK system from Russia. Here's the data:
Regarding JIT’s claim that the Buk missile system crossed over from Russian territory, the video report states: “All telecom data and intercepted telephone calls that have been examined by the investigation team demonstrates that the Buk/TELAR (the self-contained operating system) was brought into Ukraine from the Russian Federation.”
But as evidence the JIT cites one phone intercept, which – according to the JIT’s translation – does not use the word Buk though referencing a piece of equipment that can move on its own or be transported by truck. That could be a Buk system but could apply to many other weapons systems as well.
In the intercepted call, one speaker said, “it crossed, crossed the line.”
The narrator of the JIT video report then adds, “The Buk/TELAR crossed the line, in other words, it passed the border.” But there are two assumptions here: that the unidentified weapon is a Buk and that the “line” means border. That could be the case but other interpretations are possible.
Another key point, the disputed location of the so-called “getaway” video of a Buk missile system missing one missile, is simply asserted as fact without an explanation as to how the JIT reached its conclusion placing the location near Luhansk.
While the Western mainstream media has given the JIT great credibility, the JIT itself has acknowledged a dependency on Ukraine’s SBU, which shaped the inquiry by supplying its selection of phone intercepts.
Yep, that's the data they have. A telephone intercept supplied by the SBU that says "It crossed the line."
So you have to believe that "it" is a fully functioning BUK system and you have to believe "the line" is the border with Russia and you have to further believe that Russia, knowing full well the international condemnation that follows shooting down an airliner causes, decided to go ahead with this plan for some reason.
How's that for evidence and logical reasoning?
Alternatively, we could make a very strong case that the Ukranians would benefit enormously from shooting down a civilian airliner and then blaming it on the rebels. And that's exactly what happened, the world revolted, quickly blamed Putin himself, and gave more attention and aid to the nazi thugs in Kiev…so it's really a shame that the US has refused to release any of its satellite data from that day and that Ukraine was allowed to be on the very inside of the JIT investigation the entire way.
You really have to be either blinkered by beliefs or especially gullible or simply naive to geopolitical realities to believe the JIT report. It's there for public consumption only and no serious intelligence analyst or major player would ever think of ingesting it as "truth" or anything close to it.
I feel terrible for the families of the people on MH17 because there's now no chance of justice being served. It's impossible for any conclusions drawn from having a key suspect on the inside of the investigation to be trusted and the other governments involved were, of course intelligent enough to know this, and so we have to wonder why they did not exclude the Ukranians from the beginning?
Political optics on an investigation like this are exceptionally important.
To use a CHS device, lets flip it. Suppose the JIT had excluded Ukraine, but had included Russia and took all of its key evidence from Russia and then concluded it was Ukraine that did it? How would that look?
That's right, pretty awful.
Investigations have to be conducted in an impartial way or they are kind of useless.
The Dutch had the Black Box. They got their gold, Germany didn't get their gold. Join the dots.
What motivation did Russia have to shoot down a passenger jet? None. What motivation did the Ukranians have for instructing that airliner to fly low and slow over a battle field? Luisitania redux?
Like Judas of old You lie and deceive A world war can be won You want me to believe But I see through your eyes And I see through your brain Like I see through the water That runs down my drain
If you haven't seen this report it's because, there has been no mainstream coverage, no official acknowledgement and has such remains unconfirmed. With no 'official' presence It has also not had as much 'reactive' play in alternative media either. ( I believe T2H cited it here in a forum) However given the provenance of the news release and the players involved the scenario is very plausible and the timing and logic fits well with events and rhetoric of this escalation.
Wow Chris, you have lots of say on these issues!
First the article.
And now all the follow ups in the comments.
Chris, do you know what has happened historically with debts, after a war comes along?
Have the debts or other obligations been wiped out due to the war?
Thanks a lot!
That article on "russia preparing for a nuclear war" is chock full of threat assessments of weapon systems that do not exist. What's more, the writer also makes some painfully simple-minded errors in assessing US vulnerability to a disarming first strike.
Example:
The Sarmat will weigh at least 100-tons and carry a 10-ton payload. That means the missile could carry as many as 15 independently targeted thermo-nuclear warheads. It has a range of at least 6,000 miles. Once it is operational, it will be the largest ICBM ever built.
Missile doesn't exist yet. If and when it finally is deployed, it will just serve to replace the old SS-18 that are reaching the end of their service lifetime. SS-18 had a similar-sized payload - maybe it was just a bit less capable. The Russians will decomm the SS-18s, and replace them with Sarmats. Am I scared by this? I am not.
In a surprise attack scenario, the U.S. may be able to get some missiles off at the Russians, but the Russians also have the most advanced anti-ballistic missile systems in the entire world. In fact, it is believed that the S-500 system will be able to intercept any of our missiles before they even get to Russia. The following info about the S-500 comes from military-today.com…
Yeah, the super-advanced walks-the-dog-and-mixes-the-drinks S-500 system doesn't exist either. It has been delayed 4 years already. As with all ABM systems, it is just vaporware until its been tested. And of course, it hasn't been tested yet. Wake me up once it successfully intercepts a warhead. And then wake me up once again after they've actually deployed more than a couple of launchers. From wiki:
While Russian media has said that S-500 prototypes were “expected to enter service in late 2016 or 2017” to replace the S-300, U.S. observers say they have not yet been deployed and it is still in development, and question whether that timeline can be kept. Of particular uncertainty is the deployment of the 77N6 missile giving the S-500 ABM capability; while the U.S. conducted rigorous testing of ABM systems over a long period before fielding effective technology, there is little evidence that the Russians have carried out such testing.[21]
Once it stops being vaporware and it actually functions, the full deployment (taking four years) will eventually have all of 12 launchers. Just one of our missile boats would easily be able to overwhelm all the S-500 launchers Russia plans on deploying. Each missile boat can launch roughly 200 warheads. Just do the math. 200 >> 12. An umbrella doesn't do much during a hurricane. Assuming they actually have an umbrella, which of course, they don't.
Another thing that has raised a lot of eyebrows is a massive “civil defense drill” in Russia that just concluded that involved 40 million people. Many believe that the primary purpose of this drill was to prepare the population for a nuclear war. The following comes from a major British news source…
Again, a sub force strike against Russia will leave the place a smoking, radiating ruin. There won't be a city over 100,000 people left standing. Civil defense is just pissing in the wind if you are living near a target. Plus - they might have "some place to go", but they'd have less than 20 minutes to get there. That's the flight time of an ICBM...and its much less than that if the sub is off the Russian coastline.
... These stealth submarines are so quiet and so invisible that they can come right up to our coastlines without us even knowing that they are there.
So someday a fleet of Russian submarines may suddenly surface just off both coasts, launch a barrage of nuclear missiles at us, and we would only have moments to try to decide what to do before our cities, our nuclear forces and our leadership started getting hit by nukes.
Super scary. But once more, our sub force would survive any such surprise missile attack on the continental US, and its return strike would reduce Russia to a smoking, radiating ruin. From a strategic perspective, the Russian subs will not give them the ability to execute a successful first strike.
The writer is desperately uninformed. He is scared by Russian hardware that doesn't exist, he has no idea what capabilities the US has, and how survivable our forces are to an attempted disarming first strike.
I'm totally against trying to execute regime change in Syria, but seeing what sometimes passes for "informed strategic commentary" in the alt.media - well its just embarrassing. Why would anyone take us seriously when this is the kind of crap our "experts" put out?
A very insightful article Chris. The US Government now runs on a single principle. Hypocrisy. The US Government works to undermine or crush democratically (or otherwise constituted) governments around the world year after year without any legal support whatsoever but has the gall to accuse Russia of supposedly undermining our elections while actively and blatantly working to cause an outright regime change for them! The US claims Russia is committing war crimes while continuing a 16 year rampage of mindless destruction through one country after another, with drone strikes on countless innocent human beings (they are not 'collateral' damage any more than our own families would be) and even US citizens, without trial, when deemed advantageous. Why was Obama so concerned about allowing legal suits against Saudi Arabia for 9/11? With that precedent now in place, how long will it be until he himself will be hounded by international lawsuits from at least half a dozen countries where he has overseen the deaths of thousands? If any other country did a tenth of what the US has perpetrated since 1999, they would be termed a 'rogue' nation. The Neo-Cons have studied Stalin - 'A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic'. It boggles any rational mind that the US government thinks it has any moral high ground at all when accusing other countries of lesser forms of their own 'unconscionable' behaviors. The US as purveyors of peace? Give me a break. What does the US know of making peace? Putin, Duerte and others are no angels but compared to the recent string of US presidents they are just pikers at committing violence on populations. What kind of chutzpah do people like Obama (and Bush before him) need to actually try to lecture anyone on civilized behavior? The last remaining power the US holds over the world is fear through economic and military terrorism. If ever other countries stop fearing the US (see Duerte in the Philippines, China and Saudi Arabia's recent treatment of Obama and Russia standing up to us militarily) then the 'empire' is done and the looting of it will begin. Have you ever seen what happens to the schoolyard bully when someone finally knocks them down? Trump and Bernie this year have been symptoms of the US population starting to rise up against the madness internally as well. Those in power need an external enemy upon which to focus the population's fear and anger soon, else it will consume them.
Sounds like most of us agree that the West, the USA, is being run by maniacs intent on some kind of war to prove…something. I guess a neocon agenda. So what then do we, as "free" citizens in a "democracy", do to change the tide? I've written letters to my congress-critters, voted in the past, and exercise certain (at least at this point) constitutional rights to protect me and mine. What can we do, beyond chatting here, to make a difference and put some pressure to bear on TPTB to, literally, save our own skins? Is the military beyond reach (thinking of that "Oathkeeper" thing…) of rational thought and action? Is some kind of domestic "sabotage" a viable plan? I remember a young man who lost his legs trying to block a munitions train in Port Chicago during the Vietnam war. I'm trying not to worry, but I'm vastly troubled, and flummoxed. WTH do we DO? Aloha, Steve
I'd imagine countermeasures are in place; not sure what those would entail or how effective they might be. Perhaps Dog's In A Pile might have some insight.
Given an Topol-M SS-27 "Sickle B" as a baseline (800 kt nominal yield), here's Bangor, Seattle and JBLM NukeMap plots for reference.
This is your white pill where red and blue are just two colors in a wide spectrum
You are witnessing the exclusive fight club where the fight between two individuals is fought with armies and nations, where you are nothing more than collateral damage or wealth.
And you, you rather rant about the imminent evaporation of your family and friends and all living creatures around you in a nuclear war (or economic/climatic/ecologic/ you name it) or anarchy (fuck this bullshit gold fantasy) you rather rant about that individual or another while millions are about to be unleashed on each other, thousands miles away from their woman, kids, family and friends while nuclear fire or nuclear winter is killing the ones they sworn to protect.
Instead of being a man and save your family and their habitat, save your kids, save others’ kids: who in the world is letting kids die when he can prevent it?
You rather report another escalation and express again that you are furious on bits of 1 and 0 of the virtual world while your physical world is falling apart and soon to be gone in a mushroom of fire.
You supposed to be smart, you know your enemy, you know how its systems works and operate, you know each one of the controller of each system of destruction, distraction and deceive – you prove it in all your analysis, you prove it with your knowledge or your interest in that knowledge, you have all the knowledge and mental abilities you need to outsmart your enemy, that’s the weapon that they are afraid of most, that’s why they made the population dumb and docile, that’s why they silencing you and now censoring you: knowledge is their enemies’ stronger weapon and you holding a space programs type of knowledge and brain.
Knowledge is the combination of curiosity, sensitivity and objectivity and you are all showing strong signs of PTSD in the face of the horror show of a dying planet that is played in front of our eyes escalated exponentially and you the “exponential” flock can’t even recognizes the last doubling passing before your eyes in one minute.
How long? How long before you sound the alarm and openly declare war on the true enemies of everyone’s family, friends, neighbors and the rest of the people in all classes other then the 5% of every country?
How long before you openly organize and overwhelm the poor mercenaries of the 5%?
You deleted my previous post, you should have pay attention.
Please swallow the white peel and be like the bonobo but wear your chimpanzee mask now