[size=18pt]What's behind the French delegation visit to Crimea?[/size]
August 1, 2016 -
By Eduard Popov for Fort Russ
Translated by J. Arnoldski




The visit by a 10-person delegation from the National Assembly and Senate of France to Crimea concluded today. A farewell press conference was held with the delegation members. The head of the delegation, Thierry Mariani, issued a loud statement: the international community should recognize Crimea as part of Russia.

The Russian press has busied itself with discussing an instance from today's press conference, namely, when a Ukrainian journalist posed a “repulsive” question to the delegation’s head, Thierry Mariani [1]. But of much more interest to us is the visit's hidden motivation.

As informed media reports have pointed out, 8 of the 10 members of the delegation that arrived in Crimea represent the Republican Party headed by former president Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy, as we recall, has recently made a number of positive statements about Russia. He recently met with President Vladimir Putin and called upon Russia to lift the counter-sanctions imposed on French agricultural products. In doing so, Sarkozy prepared the ground for the Crimean visit by his party fellows. What’s more, for several of them such as Mariani, this is not their first visit to Crimea since its reunification with Russia.

Russian Crimea is becoming a factor in the internal politics of Western countries, and not only in Europe. We’ve already written about the series of resolutions passed in Northern Italy’s regional councils and in the Parliament of Cyprus supporting the Russian status of Crimea. Literally yesterday, US presidential candidate Donald Trump also called Crimea’s reunification with Russia a realization of the will of Crimeans. Of course, the Crimean issue is not the most important ant not even a secondary issue in the electoral campaign in the US, but it is nonetheless becoming all the more visible as it affects the main nerve of Western foreign policy: relations with Russia.

In Europe and the West as a whole, the tone is set by those who cling to geopolitical archaism positing the “Ukrainian status” of Crimea. French Foreign Minister and socialist Laurent Fabius even said that he was “shocked” by the very idea of a French delegation being sent to Crimea. But it is hardly likely that Mr. Fabius actually experienced real shock over this visit. After all, the French political field’s competitors are preparing for presidential elections in the country set to be held in 2017. Although the thematic platforms of candidates and parties are still being worked out, the Crimean question is already been written in. To radically varying degrees, Nicolas Sarkozy and Marine Le Pen are in favor of lifting the sanctions imposed against Russia caused by the issue of Crimea. Francois Hollande, meanwhile, clings to the opposite position.

French parliamentarians have been moved by the raw balance of affairs and concern over the interests of France and French manufactures who are suffering from the anti-Russian sanctions and Russia’s responsive sanctions. But blaming them would only be the proper case if they didn’t actually care. For example, the court in the EU which has suffered the greatest extent from ceasing to export its products to Russia is Germany, whose Chancellor Angela Merkel remains one of the main supporters of the EU’s anti-Russian policies. She can be blamed much more than French deputies. This anti-Russian position, however, is nowhere near as radical as can be found in the countries of Eastern Europe but, then again, the political and economic weight of Germany is incomparable to the value of the countries of “new Europe.” Opposition to Angela Merkel’s policies is very strong among German business circles. But it is still difficult to imagine any kind of visit by Bundestag deputies to Russian Crimea. But for this there is quite an obvious explanation which we won’t touch on for now.


The upcoming presidential elections in France, the architect of “united Europe” alongside Germany, and the electoral campaigns in swing in a number of other European countries are, if I may say so, lending the Crimean issue an official status in the domestic politics of these countries. Voters will associate recognizing Crimea as part of Russia with the abolition of the onerous sanctions and improving relations with Russia. The European boat of anti-Russian sanctions is rocking against waves all the harsher. And a storm is coming in the form of a series of elections (presidential and parliamentary) in several countries at once. French politicians are too pragmatic and adverse to risk to single-handedly challenge the complicated system of American control over Europe. Therefore, the French parliamentary delegation’s visit to Crimea is not only a French, but a European preparation of public opinion for reconsidering the EU’s positions not only on Crimea, but Russia as a whole. “Recognize Russian Crime and lift sanctions” is a slogan that will be written on electoral banners by several political forces in Europe at once.


[1] Life News reports that during the press conference, a Ukrainian journalist asked Mariani: "How much did they pay you French for the trip to Crimea?" Mariani replied that he would not accept such a question but acknowledged that the fact that such a "repulsive" question could be posed by a journalist in Russia "is evidence that Russia is a free country." Mariani told the journalist that he would hardly get away with asking such questions in his own country.

[size=18pt]French deputy: Crimean Tatars are better off in Crimea than Russians in the Baltics[/size]



August 2, 2016

Topwar.ru


The net continues to buzz about yesterday's press conference of the members of the French parliament visiting Crimea. In the beginning of the press conference, the head of French delegation Thierry Mariani said that it is imperative to inform the Western community that the life of Crimeans is not those horror stories, painted by numerous European and American publications, and that the vast majority of Crimeans are happy, having made a choice in favor of Russia.

When talking about the situation of Crimean Tatars in Crimea, which the Western press, referring to some anti-Russian ideologues, calls "disappointing," a member of the French delegation said the following:

The situation of Crimean Tatars in Crimea is much better than, for example, the situation of Russians in the Baltic States.

At the same time Thierry Mariani noted that the Baltic countries are part of the European Union, where human rights should be a priority.

The most memorable part of the press conference was an exchange between the French deputy with the notorious Ukrainian journalist Tsimbalyuk from UNIAN agency, who asked the following:

How much have you been paid by the Russian government to visit Crimea?

To which Thierry Mariani replied (quoted by RT):

I'm ready to hear comments about the political situation, but I'm not asking you how much you are paid to ask such sh*tty questions. So I'm not going to answer you and I can only express my contempt.

Mariani added that the fact that Ukrainian journalist can ask such questions in Russia speaks that Russia is a free country.

[size=18pt]After recognizing Crimea, Italian party announces exit from the EU[/size]



August 2, 2016

Pravda.ru

Translated from Russian by Kristina Kharlova



Italian party "Northern League" is the first political force in the EU to recognize Crimea as Russian. Its head, a member of the European Parliament Matteo Salvini talked about the thoughts of Italians about Brexit, the dictate of Brussels and Washington and the threat of terrorism coming from Libya.

According to Izvestia, the Italian party "Northern League" is the first political force in the EU to recognize Crimea as Russian. The party is rapidly gaining popularity.

Currently the League has 12 members in Italian Senate, 18 in the chamber of deputies and 5 in the European Parliament. The leader of Italian eurosceptics is very popular in Italy.

According to him, recently, "The British have demonstrated that they do not accept the EU format. Their choice was pragmatic and in the interests of the British state. The British simply ran away from the bureaucratic monster in Brussels. If, or rather when the "Northern League" will come to power in Italy, we will immediately hold a referendum on Ital-exit. And I am confident that the majority of Italians will support the country's withdrawal from the EU."

Salvini also underlined that the Libyan catastrophe was a result of European policies. First to blame is the government of France and Barack Obama. In fact, the U.S. exerted direct pressure on European politicians.

"Italian government, in turn, continues to take in hundreds and thousands of immigrants. We need to follow the example of Hungary and Austria and close our borders. However, the Prime Minister of Italy Matteo Renzi listens to direct orders from Brussels and Washington, which leads to disastrous and dramatic results for our country," - said Salvini.

He added that the welfare state is no longer working as it did a few years ago: there is an economic crisis in Europe. This also affects the standard of living of Italians, so the government should take care first and foremost about the Italians, who have no jobs, or means of subsistence.

"Italy is a country without political and fiscal sovereignty. What can the Italian government do, but to obey the dictate? If the next government will follow a sovereign line, then all these issues will be discussed, and the policy will be different - it will be in the interests of Italians," - concluded the politician.

Prior to today, I had never watched the entire 12 min full length video. Just the abridged version of it where Putin admonished the press about their obligations, asking them why they do not sense the impending danger.

The video is indeed profound.

And why Putin has been dragged into this freak show called the Amerikan presidential elections, I do not know. Talk about misplaced priorities!


Zoharariel, the nyet article is hilarious!

Lol!

Like I said, desperate times:


Various jihadi factions, including Ahrar al-Sham, al-Jabhat al-Islāmiyyah (the Islamic Front), Jaysh Al-Fateh (Army of Conquest), Ajnad al-Sham and Suqour al-Jabal united efforts in an attempt to break the siege from east Aleppo

https://southfront.org/jihadi-factions-launches-full-scale-operation-to-lift-siege-from-east-aleppo/



Various jihadi factions, including Ahrar al-Sham, al-Jabhat al-Islāmiyyah (the Islamic Front), Jaysh Al-Fateh (Army of Conquest), Ajnad al-Sham and Suqour al-Jabal united efforts in an attempt to break the siege from east Aleppo that had been set up by the Syrian government forces earlier this week. The main goal of the militant advance is to re-open the strategic Castello Highway that leads to the militant-held areas of Aleppo city.

Clashes erupted at south and southeast Aleppo city. According to Ahrar al-Sham’s spokesperson the clashes are ongoing at a 20km long frontline. However, the main efforts of the militants are concentrated at new Syrian army check points that had been set up at the Castello Highway.

Jihadi factions set up tyres in Idlib-Aleppo countryside attempting to limit visibility for Russian and Syrian warplanes.





Ahrar al-Sham official statement announcing the offensive:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji4YRHpHN3Y

scully95:
The game is up in Aleppo, next on the line now is raqqa.. If there is one thing I love about Russia military advisers, it's how they know how to encircle the threat and arrest it.. But the very less educated people I would say thinks they can actually encircle the king of encirclement with NATO crazy basses and not get a total failure.

The level of professionalism in this recent Aleppo is of high standards compared to anything I have seen in a war front. meanwhile when you compared it to the Syrian manbij, the u.s zoo very uneducated decided to kill over 45 civilians claiming to be high value target.

it's time for Assad to declare a no flight zone in Syria while Russia and Syria enforce it. this i think he has started by firstly sending letter to u.s condemning the killing of Syrians, civilians in manbij.

just compare it to Aleppo where the Russia/syria created a corridor for their rebels to escape. super high level of humanity and profesionalism.

omg the difference is huge, too much....

Amerika is leading the Raqqa charge. I am thinking this is a step towards the much harped Syria partitioning.

Change the https to http so that the images show

The writing is on the wall. No wonder Amerika is shamelessly calling for cooperation with Russia in Syria. Their proxies are on the verge of defeat, the seemingly US hatched (or tacitly supported) coup in Turkey failed and Turkey is leaning towards Russia. John Kerry, after the Amerikan government had turned down several overtures from the Russians over the past couple of months, has visited Moscow several times over the past couple of weeks and even had their main proxy, Jabhat al-Nusra rebrand as Jabhat Fateh al-Islam.


Desperate times for the Hegemon.

https://www.nairaland.com/3256581/what-u.s.-russian-deal-syria-goes

Zoharariel:
Vladimirovich Putin did not make that statement because, his boy & loyalist - the 39 year old Ramzan Kadyrov of Chechen is a Muslim.

Not only that, but Russia has got a large Muslim population and the biggest mosque in Europe is located in...... you guessed it....... Russia!

hungryboy:
The partition of Syria and the removal of Assad was and is still is America's primary aim there, so am not surprised by this man's pronouncement.
Funny thing is, the more they Americans and their allies try to destroy Syria by arming every Jihadist and labelling 'em freedom fighters and rebels,
The more the Russians and Assad's forces win back more territories by killing those so called rebels.
Am still glued to my TV set, trying to see how the
Humanitarian corridor and a call for surrender

Assad gave to the rebels will work out in Aleppo.
Long live Assad,
Long live Putin,
And long live every soldier fighting to rid Syria and Iraq of American sponsored Jihadists

I couldn't have said it any better.

God bless you!

Believe that Putin said this and you might as well believe that I am the Pope.....

Putin is behind Brexit, Putin wants Trump to win, Putin is behind the DNC leaks exposing corruption, Putin supports all Euro-skeptic parties in Europe, Putin wants to invade the Baltics and Poland and now..........Putin wants to kill all Muslims

Western media and their crackpot stories is waaay better than Comedy Central

Preface by NairaMinted:

Here is another shill working for your favourite war mongering, arm selling, war profiting think-tank, the Atlantic Council, the same brilliant think-tank which some days ago warned the Poles that big bad, evil Russia would soon invade, making a case for why Al-Qaeda (yes, Al-Qaeda the supposed terror group behind 911 going by the name of Al-Nusra - along with their child beheading affiliates) must be saved from destruction.

American foreign policy at its best. You can't make this sh*t up

False Narrative 1. Moderate rebels::

"I have met with these brave fighters, and they are not Al-Qaeda. To the contrary: They are Libyan patriots who want to liberate their nation. We should help them do it."-Senator John McCain in Benghazi, Libya April 22, 2011 - as an Al- Qaeda flag was hoisted over a Benghazi courthouse......

“Of course they are Muslims, but they are moderates. I guarantee you that they are moderates — I know them, and I have been with them.” Senator John McCain, speaking about the rebels in Syria, Washington, September 3, 2013

“Not true, not true! Frankly, I just disagree… There’s about 70 percent still who are Free Syrian Army.” _ Senator John McCain, Washington, September 18, 2013


False Narrative 2. Targets of Russian military campaign is not targeting ISIS:

October 2015: Amerikan State Department spokesman John Kirby said: “Greater than 90 per cent of the strikes that we’ve seen them take to date have not been against Isil [Isis] or al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists.
“They’ve been largely against opposition groups that want a better future for Syria and don’t want to see the Assad regime stay in power.”


9 Jan 2016:
http://www.ibtimes.com/us-official-says-russian-airstrikes-rarely-target-isis-2257905

Whilst an unnamed senior Amerikan government official lies that over 70% of Russian airstrikes isn't targeting ISIS, this article clearly states that Russia is targeting "rebels" (moderates) in Idlib province. No mention of Al-Qaeda's affiliate Al-Nusra.

The Amerikan government then unequivocally states that the objectives of the Amerikan military campaign and that of the Russians do not align. A narrative mendaciously repeated by bots on here on Nairaland.

All efforts by the Russian Foreign Secretary, Sergei Lavrov; the Russian president, Vladimir Putin and even the Russian PM, Medvedev to fly to Washington and be provided with the a list of vetted "rebels" fall on deaf ears.


The Reality on Ground Today:


Fast forward to July 2016 and in the wake of an impending defeat of Amerika's proxies, Al-Nusra in the Aleppo province, the Amerikan Sekretary of State, John Kerry has shamelessly visited Moscow a couple of times pleading with the Russians to share intelligence & conduct a joint strike of Al-Nusra and ISIS.


Al-Nusra over the past couple of days, in a bid to avoid being bombed under this hopeful joint strike group that Amerika is desperately pushing for, has........you guessed it...... changed it's name and rebranded.
http://thesaker.is/syrian-war-report-july-27-2016-al-nusra-rebranding/

Wait till the 1:30 mark where you watch as Jabhat Al-Nusra transitions into Jabhat Fateh Al Sham on the very same day that John Kerry announces this joint strike group. Perfect timing!


Today, so much for "Russia's fake campaign". Bottomline is that Russia has been targeting Amerika's terror proxies who are the actual formidable fighting force that exist in Syria. They are no formidable moderates in Syria.


End of preface.


Zoharariel, Appleyard, Scully95


[size=18pt]WHAT IF A U.S.-RUSSIAN DEAL IN SYRIA GOES EXACTLY AS PLANNED?[/size]
FAYSAL ITANI
JULY 27, 2016

Syrian-Rebel-Firing

Most critics of the White House’s proposed U.S.-Russian cooperative arrangement against terrorists in Syria, the terms of which were recently leaked, have focused on what could go wrong. Russia may simply violate the terms of any agreement reached thereby undermining the mission, embarrassing the United States, and hurting its local partners. I am far more troubled, however, by what would happen if the agreement goes as planned. A successful Joint Implementation Group (JIG) would likely weaken or eliminate a strong component of the insurgency without compensating for the lost capacity, further tilting the military balance in the regime’s favor. Unless the United States can prevent that, the JIG would make a lasting negotiated settlement in Syria more difficult than it already is, setting the stage for open-ended civil war and further radicalization.

The JIG’s terms do not overwhelmingly favor Russia, at least not on paper. They place constraints on its military action in Syria in return for intelligence sharing and possible direct operational cooperation against Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate. Russia would also refrain from targeting jointly designated (and presumably opposition-controlled) areas. Russia would compel the regime to ground its air force across much of Syria. Indeed, Russia might find the JIG’s terms too onerous. It can after all continue its own unrestrained war on al-Nusra and the broader insurgency alike without U.S. cooperation.

If Russia does accept the JIG proposal, it could later derail it through cheating. It could simply violate the terms, especially over target designation and rules of engagement. The document does not mention any penalties for violations, but there appear to be none. Russia may fail (or fail to try) to prevent regime aircraft from operating over “safe” areas, just as it has failed to stop the regime from violating the Cessation of Hostilities, which broke down after a few weeks. Of course, there is little goodwill between the United States and Russia over Syria anyway, meaning intelligence sharing is inherently problematic.

In theory however the JIG could unfold exactly as planned: Russia and the United States would jointly weaken al-Nusra as a serious strategic threat to the regimeRussia would limit its attacks to designated targets and areas. And regime aircraft would be grounded across much of Syria. That would save innocents from regime aerial bombardment — a worthy goal in itself. Strategically, however, the JIG should be judged by the extent that it serves key U.S. policy goals in Syria: fighting extremism and enabling a negotiated settlement to the civil war. Weakening al-Nusra will bring some temporary satisfaction, but under the current military balance it would destroy any chance of a political settlement to the civil war. It also has the potential to further radicalize Syrians fighting the regime who would be rid of al-Nusra, but then find themselves even less prepared to resist regime violence and negotiate a lasting peace.

Like any U.S. policy in Syria, the JIG can succeed only to the extent that it accounts for the main context: the civil war. Both al-Nusra and the civilian suffering that the JIG seeks to mitigate are products of this war. Since Russia intervened against the opposition in October 2015, the military balance has increasingly favored the regime, which has made and continues to make important progress against the rebels. The highly strategic province of Idlib (where al-Nusra is strongest) is the insurgency’s most critical remaining stronghold and a staging point for major operations. Here, al-Nusra fights alongside other Islamist and nationalist brigades, but it is likely the single most capable fighting force in that coalition.

The JIG would break al-Nusra as a conventional fighting force, with two important effects. First, all else being equal, without al-Nusra the opposition will lose Idlib and, with it, its position in northern Syria. The insurgency would no longer pose a strategic threat to the regime, eliminating any incentive for the latter to negotiate a meaningful political settlement with the opposition. Indeed, the regime would be well-placed to crush the remaining insurgent groups as well, including U.S.-backed fighters. A successful JIG would prevent a negotiated settlement by eliminating much of al-Nusra’s capability without replacing or compensating for the insurgency’s lost capacity. This would either prolong the war or facilitate regime progress, killing and radicalizing more Syrians.

Second, anti-regime Syrians will see the JIG as a joint U.S.-Russian war on the insurgency writ large. Unlike the Islamic State for example, al-Nusra has built considerable local Syrian acceptance, including among major insurgent groups. It is reportedly considering disassociating itself from al-Qaeda to further bind itself with other Syrian insurgent groups. It will be increasingly difficult to target al-Nusra without harming civilians and other opposition fighters. Even if the United States and Russia do so with relative success, Syrians fighting Assad know the end-results will be a weakened insurgency, an intact regime, and a legitimized Russian role in Syria. Just as predictably, this will further radicalize both insurgents and civilians in targeted areas, especially as the JIG permits regime artillery and rocket strikes on opposition territory where the United States and Russia will also be targeting.

Those wanting to fight extremists and end the Syrian war must concede that any counter-Nusra plan should not strengthen the regime, whose military confidence remains the main driver of radicalization and obstacle to a negotiated settlement. An isolated military effort against al-Nusra would greatly improve Assad’s military position. Al-Nusra should be destroyed of course, but the JIG as currently conceived would very likely sabotage broader U.S. counterterrorism and strategic interests in Syria. An anti-Nusra effort should instead be paired with direct and proxy military pressure on the regime to prevent its capitalizing on a post-Nusra opposition’s weakness. This could include increased qualitative military support to vetted insurgents and a U.S. commitment to punishing any regime targeting of civilians. There are other means, but the aim is to make the military option unpalatable to the regime. Al-Nusra should not be targeted at the price of condemning Syria to endless war and terrorism. If unaccompanied by robust U.S. measures to protect a weakening insurgency and contain an emboldened regime, the JIG will probably destroy the Syrian opposition, rule out any negotiated settlement, and replace one set of radicals with another.



Faysal Itani is a resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, where he focuses primarily on the Syrian conflict and its regional impact. Itani was born and grew up in Beirut, Lebanon. He has repeatedly briefed the United States government and its allies on the conflict in Syria and its effects on their interests.

Preface by NairaMinted:

Here is another shill working for your favourite war mongering, arm selling, war profiting think-tank, the Atlantic Council, the same brilliant think-tank which some days ago warned the Poles that big bad, evil Russia would soon invade, making a case for why Al-Qaeda (yes, Al-Qaeda the supposed terror group behind 911 going by the name of Al-Nusra - along with their child beheading affiliates) must be saved from destruction.

American foreign policy at its best. You can't make this sh*t up

False Narrative 1. Moderate rebels::

"I have met with these brave fighters, and they are not Al-Qaeda. To the contrary: They are Libyan patriots who want to liberate their nation. We should help them do it."-Senator John McCain in Benghazi, Libya April 22, 2011 - as an Al- Qaeda flag was hoisted over a Benghazi courthouse......

“Of course they are Muslims, but they are moderates. I guarantee you that they are moderates — I know them, and I have been with them.” Senator John McCain, speaking about the rebels in Syria, Washington, September 3, 2013

“Not true, not true! Frankly, I just disagree… There’s about 70 percent still who are Free Syrian Army.” _ Senator John McCain, Washington, September 18, 2013


False Narrative 2. Targets of Russian military campaign is not targeting ISIS:

October 2015: Amerikan State Department spokesman John Kirby said: “Greater than 90 per cent of the strikes that we’ve seen them take to date have not been against Isil [Isis] or al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists.
“They’ve been largely against opposition groups that want a better future for Syria and don’t want to see the Assad regime stay in power.”


9 Jan 2016:
http://www.ibtimes.com/us-official-says-russian-airstrikes-rarely-target-isis-2257905

Whilst an unnamed senior Amerikan government official lies that over 70% of Russian airstrikes isn't targeting ISIS, this article clearly states that Russia is targeting "rebels" (moderates) in Idlib province. No mention of Al-Qaeda's affiliate Al-Nusra.

The Amerikan government then unequivocally states that the objectives of the Amerikan military campaign and that of the Russians do not align. A narrative mendaciously repeated by bots on here on Nairaland.

All efforts by the Russian Foreign Secretary, Sergei Lavrov; the Russian president, Vladimir Putin and even the Russian PM, Medvedev to fly to Washington and be provided with the a list of vetted "rebels" fall on deaf ears.


The Reality on Ground Today:


Fast forward to July 2016 and in the wake of an impending defeat of Amerika's proxies, Al-Nusra in the Aleppo province, the Amerikan Sekretary of State, John Kerry has shamelessly visited Moscow a couple of times pleading with the Russians to share intelligence & conduct a joint strike of Al-Nusra and ISIS.


Al-Nusra over the past couple of days, in a bid to avoid being bombed under this hopeful joint strike group that Amerika is desperately pushing for, has........you guessed it...... changed it's name and rebranded.
http://thesaker.is/syrian-war-report-july-27-2016-al-nusra-rebranding/

Wait till the 1:30 mark where you watch as Jabhat Al-Nusra transitions into Jabhat Fateh Al Sham on the very same day that John Kerry announces this joint strike group. Perfect timing!


Today, so much for "Russia's fake campaign". Bottomline is that Russia has been targeting Amerika's terror proxies who are the actual formidable fighting force that exist in Syria. They are no formidable moderates in Syria.


End of preface.


Zoharariel, Appleyard, Scully95


[size=18pt]WHAT IF A U.S.-RUSSIAN DEAL IN SYRIA GOES EXACTLY AS PLANNED?[/size]
FAYSAL ITANI
JULY 27, 2016

Syrian-Rebel-Firing

Most critics of the White House’s proposed U.S.-Russian cooperative arrangement against terrorists in Syria, the terms of which were recently leaked, have focused on what could go wrong. Russia may simply violate the terms of any agreement reached thereby undermining the mission, embarrassing the United States, and hurting its local partners. I am far more troubled, however, by what would happen if the agreement goes as planned. A successful Joint Implementation Group (JIG) would likely weaken or eliminate a strong component of the insurgency without compensating for the lost capacity, further tilting the military balance in the regime’s favor. Unless the United States can prevent that, the JIG would make a lasting negotiated settlement in Syria more difficult than it already is, setting the stage for open-ended civil war and further radicalization.

The JIG’s terms do not overwhelmingly favor Russia, at least not on paper. They place constraints on its military action in Syria in return for intelligence sharing and possible direct operational cooperation against Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate. Russia would also refrain from targeting jointly designated (and presumably opposition-controlled) areas. Russia would compel the regime to ground its air force across much of Syria. Indeed, Russia might find the JIG’s terms too onerous. It can after all continue its own unrestrained war on al-Nusra and the broader insurgency alike without U.S. cooperation.

If Russia does accept the JIG proposal, it could later derail it through cheating. It could simply violate the terms, especially over target designation and rules of engagement. The document does not mention any penalties for violations, but there appear to be none. Russia may fail (or fail to try) to prevent regime aircraft from operating over “safe” areas, just as it has failed to stop the regime from violating the Cessation of Hostilities, which broke down after a few weeks. Of course, there is little goodwill between the United States and Russia over Syria anyway, meaning intelligence sharing is inherently problematic.

In theory however the JIG could unfold exactly as planned: Russia and the United States would jointly weaken al-Nusra as a serious strategic threat to the regimeRussia would limit its attacks to designated targets and areas. And regime aircraft would be grounded across much of Syria. That would save innocents from regime aerial bombardment — a worthy goal in itself. Strategically, however, the JIG should be judged by the extent that it serves key U.S. policy goals in Syria: fighting extremism and enabling a negotiated settlement to the civil war. Weakening al-Nusra will bring some temporary satisfaction, but under the current military balance it would destroy any chance of a political settlement to the civil war. It also has the potential to further radicalize Syrians fighting the regime who would be rid of al-Nusra, but then find themselves even less prepared to resist regime violence and negotiate a lasting peace.

Like any U.S. policy in Syria, the JIG can succeed only to the extent that it accounts for the main context: the civil war. Both al-Nusra and the civilian suffering that the JIG seeks to mitigate are products of this war. Since Russia intervened against the opposition in October 2015, the military balance has increasingly favored the regime, which has made and continues to make important progress against the rebels. The highly strategic province of Idlib (where al-Nusra is strongest) is the insurgency’s most critical remaining stronghold and a staging point for major operations. Here, al-Nusra fights alongside other Islamist and nationalist brigades, but it is likely the single most capable fighting force in that coalition.

The JIG would break al-Nusra as a conventional fighting force, with two important effects. First, all else being equal, without al-Nusra the opposition will lose Idlib and, with it, its position in northern Syria. The insurgency would no longer pose a strategic threat to the regime, eliminating any incentive for the latter to negotiate a meaningful political settlement with the opposition. Indeed, the regime would be well-placed to crush the remaining insurgent groups as well, including U.S.-backed fighters. A successful JIG would prevent a negotiated settlement by eliminating much of al-Nusra’s capability without replacing or compensating for the insurgency’s lost capacity. This would either prolong the war or facilitate regime progress, killing and radicalizing more Syrians.

Second, anti-regime Syrians will see the JIG as a joint U.S.-Russian war on the insurgency writ large. Unlike the Islamic State for example, al-Nusra has built considerable local Syrian acceptance, including among major insurgent groups. It is reportedly considering disassociating itself from al-Qaeda to further bind itself with other Syrian insurgent groups. It will be increasingly difficult to target al-Nusra without harming civilians and other opposition fighters. Even if the United States and Russia do so with relative success, Syrians fighting Assad know the end-results will be a weakened insurgency, an intact regime, and a legitimized Russian role in Syria. Just as predictably, this will further radicalize both insurgents and civilians in targeted areas, especially as the JIG permits regime artillery and rocket strikes on opposition territory where the United States and Russia will also be targeting.

Those wanting to fight extremists and end the Syrian war must concede that any counter-Nusra plan should not strengthen the regime, whose military confidence remains the main driver of radicalization and obstacle to a negotiated settlement. An isolated military effort against al-Nusra would greatly improve Assad’s military position. Al-Nusra should be destroyed of course, but the JIG as currently conceived would very likely sabotage broader U.S. counterterrorism and strategic interests in Syria. An anti-Nusra effort should instead be paired with direct and proxy military pressure on the regime to prevent its capitalizing on a post-Nusra opposition’s weakness. This could include increased qualitative military support to vetted insurgents and a U.S. commitment to punishing any regime targeting of civilians. There are other means, but the aim is to make the military option unpalatable to the regime. Al-Nusra should not be targeted at the price of condemning Syria to endless war and terrorism. If unaccompanied by robust U.S. measures to protect a weakening insurgency and contain an emboldened regime, the JIG will probably destroy the Syrian opposition, rule out any negotiated settlement, and replace one set of radicals with another.



Faysal Itani is a resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, where he focuses primarily on the Syrian conflict and its regional impact. Itani was born and grew up in Beirut, Lebanon. He has repeatedly briefed the United States government and its allies on the conflict in Syria and its effects on their interests.

blackjack21:
Leadership.

Spot on. It's that simple

No one puts it more plainly and direct like Paul Craig Roberts does..

[size=24pt]The Atlantic Council: The Marketing Arm of the Military/Security Complex — Paul Craig Roberts[/size]
July 25, 2016 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: | Print This Article Print This Article
The Atlantic Council: The Marketing Arm of the Military/Security Complex

Paul Craig Roberts

How much did the military-security complex pay the Atlantic Council to publish this sales pitch to Poland to load up on US weapons systems? http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/images/publications/Arming_for_Deterrence_web_0719.pdf

The sales pitch was written by arms salesmen Richard Shirreff, a partner at Strategia Worldwide Ltd., and Maciej Olex-Szczytowski, a “business adviser specializing in defense.”

The sales pitch is titled “Arming For Deterrence.” The Kremlin is unpredictable, say the arms salesmen, and could at any moment decide to attack Poland. However the Russian regime “respects a show of force” and would back down if Poland has a sufficient inventory of US weapons.

The sales pitch encourages Poland to take many aggressive and dangerous steps toward Russia, such as targeting Russia cities and facilities including RT. But before provoking the Bear like this, Poland needs “to join the tactical nuclear capability scheme within NATO, so enabling its F-16s to be carriers of tactical nuclear ordnance.”

Poland also needs to be able to strike deep inside Russia and for this needs to purchase American long-range JASSM air-launched cruise missiles, the Navy Strike missile coastal missiles, and the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems.

Poland also needs “offensive cyber operations” and “more tandem-warhead Anti-Tank Guided Missiles (ATGMs) capable of penetrating reactive armor, and also anti-aircraft (including anti-helicopter) and anti-UAV missiles. “

The bill for this deterrence against non-existent “Russian aggression” comes to
“some US $26 billion” on top of planned expenditures of US $34 billion. “Poland should move forward expeditiously with procurements,” say the arms salesmen or risk being attacked by superior Russian forces.

The zionist neocons get away with their warmongering because it is profitable for the US military/security complex. Whereas the crazed neocons want real war, the military/security complex only wants the propaganda threat of war. The numerous military/foreign policy think tanks funded by the military/security complex provide the propaganda and made-up threat. This is a dangerous game, because the Russians see a real threat in the hostility that is directed at them.

The anti-Russian propaganda is universal and includes the Olympic Games. Washington wants Russia excluded based on the allegation that only Russians take performance-enhancing substances. What extraordinary nonsense. I have a relative who travels widely to test athletes of every sport, even golf, for the use of performance-enhancing substances.

It is not the Russians who have corrupted “clean sports.” It is the money that the corrupt Americans have poured into sports. To be a champion, to win the Masters at Augusta National, to win a gold medal means to be a multi-millionaire. Sports that people once played for enjoyment are now a lucrative profession.

Money corrupts everything, and it is capitalism that turns everything into a commodity that is bought and sold. In capitalist regimes everything is for sale: honor, integrity, justice, truth.
Everything is reduced to the filthy lucre.

So the sociopath is ahead of the psychopath at the moment huh?

Lol! The Atlantic Council and NATO hard at work

In order to justify its existence, NATO's warmongering had gone into overdrive. This phantom "Russian Aggression" has been trumpeted so much that surely even the bemused Russians are beginning to believe that it must be true.

[size=18pt]Former NATO Chief: Russia to Invade Poland, Start World War III ‘Overnight’[/size]



In a briefing report, NATO’s former European chief suggested that the Alliance must “significantly increase the troop presence in Poland” or else Russia will catch the West by surprise with a sneak attack.


On Sunday, NATO’s former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, General Sir Richard Shirreff, offered a chilling albeit absurdist warning claiming that Russia has troops ready for a lightning takeover of Eastern Europe and that President Vladimir Putin may be willing to set off World War III in a matter of hours.

"It is clear that Russia is capable of surprising the West… with potentially devastating implications for eastern Poland and fatal consequences to the Alliance," warned General Shirreff.
In a briefing document entitled "Arming for Deterrence" for the Atlantic Council think-tank the former military commander said that Putin could easily “artificially generate any pretext that suits his propaganda narrative” to justify war with the West in a matter of hours.

"Even if Moscow currently has no immediate intent to challenge NATO directly, this may unexpectedly change overnight and can be implemented with great speed, following already prepared plans," said the General. "The capability to do so is, to a large extent, in place."

"The biggest threat for NATO today is a miscalculation by Russia that it could outmaneuver the Alliance by creating a quick fait accompli inside NATO’s borders," states the General. "This is based on the Russian assumption that it has a significant time advantage over NATO and that the allies could, through intimidation, uncertainty, and disinformation be influenced not to escalate a limited conflict into a full-fledged one."

The fantastical scenario holds at a premise that the Kremlin somehow ignorant of the legal requirements of the NATO treaty that would require the United States to intervene immediately if a partner nation was under siege by a foreign threat – something that Russian President Vladimir Putin has long assured he is well aware of.

"I think that only an insane person and only in a dream can imagine that Russia would suddenly attack NATO. I think some countries are simply taking advantage of people’s fears with regard to Russia. They just want to play the role of front-line countries that should receive some supplementary military, economic, financial or some other aid," Putin explained near a year ago.

Yet the mystical threat of 'Russian aggression' seems to be a favorite fantasy within the echo chambers of the Western defense establishment that continues to provoke Russia by engaging in a series of massive war games – over 30,000 in the Anaconda War Games not so appropriately timed during the 75th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the former Soviet Union – which led President of the former Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev to question whether NATO’s activities are a pretext to an invasion.

Moscow has responded with its own military drills including several mass mock mobilizations along its border with eastern Europe – a proportionate response to the threat that Russia faces as a result of needless NATO saber rattling. It is this, almost ironically, that raises a parallel concern for General Shirreff as was raised by former President Gorbachev of a sudden attack.

"Turning one of these exercises into an operation against one or several of the Baltic states would give very little warning time to NATO," said the General. "Russia’s forces in the Western Military District can be quickly and substantially reinforced by units and formations from other parts of Russia under the cover of planned or snap military drills."


In a bout of absolute absurdity, General Shirriff’s prescription to remedy the concern facing NATO in the Baltic region I to significantly bolster permanent troop numbers in Poland – the presence of which has been the primary source of escalation in the fabricated conflict.

"There is an urgent need to strengthen Poland’s defense capacity in order to reduce the temptation for Russia to spring a surprise attack," the General’s report concludes.

Hard times for NYT... Caught lying about the sarin gas attack in Ghouta, Syria in 2013 and now about MH17. It should be obvious to all by now that the New York Times and the Washington Post do not report News in regards to Amerikan Foreign. Policy . They spin information and ultimately disseminate disinformation.

Also, the charlatan and hack Elliot Higgins is further exposed


[size=18pt]Will NYT Retract Latest Anti-Russian ‘Fraud’?[/size]
July 22, 2016

Exclusive: In covering the new Cold War, The New York Times has lost its journalistic bearings, serving as a crude propaganda outlet publishing outlandish anti-Russian claims that may cross the line into fraud, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

In a fresh embarrassment for The New York Times, a photographic forensic expert has debunked a new amateurish, anti-Russian analysis of satellite photos related to the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014, labeling the work “a fraud.”

Last Saturday, on the eve of the second anniversary of the tragedy that claimed 298 lives, the Times touted the amateur analysis asserting that the Russian government had manipulated two satellite photos that revealed Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles in eastern Ukraine at the time of the shoot-down.


New York Times building in New York City. (Photo from Wikipedia)

The clear implication of the [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/16/world/europe/malaysia-airlines-flight-17-russia.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FMalaysia%20Airlines%20Flight%2017&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacem]article[/url] by Andrew E. Kramer was that the Russians were covering up their complicity in shooting down the civilian airliner by allegedly doctoring photos to shift the blame to the Ukrainian military. Beyond citing this analysis by armscontrolwonk.com, Kramer noted that the “citizen journalists” at Bellingcat had reached the same conclusion earlier.

But Kramer and the Times left out that the earlier Bellingcat analysis was thoroughly torn apart by photo-forensic experts including Dr. Neal Krawetz, founder of the FotoForensics digital image analytical tool that Bellingcat had used. Over the past week, Bellingcat has been aggressively pushing the new analysis by armscontrolwonk.com, with which Bellingcat has close relationships.

This past week, Krawetz and other forensic specialists began weighing in on the new analysis and concluding that it suffered the same fundamental errors as the previous analysis, albeit using a different analytical tool. Given Bellingcat’s promotion of this second analysis by a group with links to Bellingcat and its founder Eliot Higgins, Krawetz viewed the two analyses as essentially coming from the same place, Bellingcat.

“Jumping to the wrong conclusion one time can be due to ignorance,” Krawetz explained in a blog post. “However, using a different tool on the same data that yields similar results, and still jumping to the same wrong conclusion is intentional misrepresentation and deception. It is fraud.”

A Pattern of Error

Krawetz and other experts found that innocuous changes to the photos, such as adding a word box and saving the images into different formats, would explain the anomalies that Bellingcat and its pals at armscontrolwonk.com detected. That was the key mistake that Krawetz spotted last year in dissecting Bellingcat’s faulty analysis.


Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins

Krawetz wrote: “Last year, a group called ‘Bellingcat’ came out with a report about flight MH17, which was shot down near the Ukraine/Russia border. In their report, they used FotoForensics to justify their claims. However, as I pointed out in my blog entry , they used it wrong. The big problems in their report:

“–Ignoring quality. They evaluated pictures from questionable sources. These were low quality pictures that had undergone scaling, cropping, and annotations.

“–Seeing things. Even with the output from the analysis tools, they jumped to conclusions that were not supported by the data.

“–Bait and switch. Their report claimed one thing, then tried to justify it with analysis that showed something different.

“Bellingcat recently came out with a second report. The image analysis portion of their report heavily relied on a program called ‘Tungstène’. … With the scientific approach, it does not matter who’s tool you use. A conclusion should be repeatable though multiple tools and multiple algorithms.

“One of the pictures that they ran though Tungstène was the same cloud picture that they used with ELA [error level analysis]. And unsurprisingly, it generated similar results — results that should be interpreted as low quality and multiple resaves. … These results denote a low quality picture and multiple resaves, and not an intentional alteration as Bellingcat concluded.

“Just like last year, Bellingcat claimed that Tungstène highlighted indications of alterations in the same places that they claimed to see alterations in the ELA result. Bellingcat used the same low quality data on different tools and jumped to the same incorrect conclusion.”

Although Krawetz posted his dissection of the new analysis on Thursday, he began expressing his concerns shortly after the Times article appeared. That prompted Higgins and the Bellingcat crew to begin a Twitter campaign to discredit Krawetz and me (for also citing problems with the Times article and the analysis).

When one of Higgins’s allies mentioned my initial story on the problematic photo analysis, Krawetz noted that my observations supported his position that Bellingcat had mishandled the analysis (although at the time I was unaware of Krawetz’s criticism).

Higgins responded to Krawetz, “he [Parry] doesn’t recognize you’re a hack. Probably because he’s a hack too.”

Further insulting Krawetz, Higgins mocked his review of the photo analyses by writing: “all he has is ‘because I say so’, all mouth no trousers.”

Spoiled by Praise

Apparently, Higgins, who operates out of Leicester, England, has grown spoiled by all the praise lavished on him by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian and other mainstream publications despite the fact that Bellingcat’s record for accuracy is a poor one.

[img]http://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Capture-mh17DSB2-300x183.png.[/img]
The Dutch Safety Board’s reconstruction of where it believed the missile exploded near Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014.

For instance, in his first big splash, Higgins echoed U.S. propaganda in Syria about the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack — blaming it on President Bashar al-Assad — but was forced to back down from his assessment when aeronautical experts revealed that the sarin-carrying missile had a range of only about two kilometers, much shorter than Higgins had surmised in blaming the attack on Syrian government forces. (Despite that key error, Higgins continued claiming the Syrian government was guilty.)

Higgins also gave the Australian “60 Minutes” program a location in eastern Ukraine where a “getaway” Buk missile battery was supposedly videoed en route back to Russia, except that when the news crew got there the landmarks didn’t match up, causing the program to have to rely on sleight-of-hand editing to deceive its viewers.

When I noted the discrepancies and posted screenshots from the “60 Minutes” program to demonstrate the falsehoods, “60 Minutes” launched a campaign of insults against me and resorted to more video tricks and outright journalistic fraud in defense of Higgins’s faulty information.

This pattern of false claims and even fraud to promote these stories has not stopped the mainstream Western press from showering Higgins and Bellingcat with acclaim. It probably doesn’t hurt that Bellingcat’s “disclosures” always dovetail with the propaganda themes emanating from Western governments.

It also turns out that both Higgins and “armscontrolwonk.com” have crossover in personnel, such as Melissa Hanham, a co-author of the MH-17 report who also writes for Bellingcat, as does Aaron Stein, who joined in promoting Higgins’s work at “armscontrolwonk.com.”

The two groups also have links to the pro-NATO think tank, Atlantic Council, which has been at the forefront of pushing NATO’s new Cold War with Russia. Higgins is now listed as a “nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Future Europe Initiative” and armscontrolwonk.com describes Stein as a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

Armscontrolwonk.com is run by nuclear proliferation specialists from the Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey, but they appear to have no special expertise in photographic forensics.

A Deeper Problem

But the problem goes much deeper than a couple of Web sites and bloggers who find it professionally uplifting to reinforce propaganda themes from NATO and other Western interests. The bigger danger is the role played by the mainstream media in creating an echo chamber to amplify the disinformation coming from these amateurs.

Just as The New York Times, The Washington Post and other major outlets swallowed the bogus stories about Iraq’s WMD in 2002-2003, they have happily dined on similarly dubious fare about Syria, Ukraine and Russia.


The controversial map developed by Human Rights Watch and embraced by the New York Times, supposedly showing the reverse flight paths of two missiles — from the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin attack — intersecting at a Syrian military base. As it turned out, one missile contained no sarin and the other had a range of only two kilometers, not the nine kilometers that the map assumed.

And just as with the Iraq disaster, when those of us who challenged the WMD “group think” were dismissed as “Saddam apologists,” now we’re called “Assad apologists” or “Putin apologists” or simply “hacks” who are “all mouth, no trousers” – whatever that means.

For instance, in 2013 regarding Syria, the Times ran a front-page story using a “vector analysis” to trace the sarin attack back to a Syrian military base about nine kilometers away, but the discovery of the sarin missile’s much shorter range forced the Times to recant its story, which had paralleled what Higgins was writing.

Then, in its eagerness to convey anti-Russian propaganda regarding Ukraine in 2014, the Times even returned to a reporter from its Iraq-falsehood days. Michael R. Gordon, who co-authored the infamous “aluminum tubes” article in 2002 that pushed the bogus claim that Iraq was reconstituting a nuclear weapons program, accepted some new disinformation from the State Department that cited photos supposedly showing Russian soldiers in Russia and then reappearing in Ukraine.

Any serious journalist would have recognized the holes in the story since it wasn’t clear where the photos were taken or whether the blurry images were even the same people, but that didn’t give the Times pause. The article led the front page.

However, only two days later, the scoop blew up when it turned out that a key photo supposedly showing a group of soldiers in Russia, who then reappeared in eastern Ukraine, was actually taken in Ukraine, destroying the premise of the entire story.

But these embarrassments have not dampened the Times’ enthusiasm for dishing out anti-Russian propaganda whenever possible. Yet, one new twist is that the Times doesn’t just take false claims directly from the U.S. government; it also draws from hip “citizen journalism” Web sites like Bellingcat.

In a world where no one believes what governments say the smart new way to disseminate propaganda is through such “outsiders.”

So, the Times’ Kramer was surely thrilled to get fed a new story off the Web that claimed the Russians had doctored satellite photographs of Ukrainian Buk anti-aircraft missile batteries in eastern Ukraine just before the MH-17 shoot-down.

Instead of questioning the photo-forensic expertise of these nuclear proliferation specialists at armscontrolwonk.com, Kramer simply laid out their findings as further corroboration of Bellingcat’s earlier claims. Kramer also mocked the Russians for trying to cover their tracks with “conspiracy theories.”

Ignoring Official Evidence

But there was another key piece of evidence that the Times was hiding from its readers: documentary evidence from Western intelligence that the Ukrainian military did have powerful anti-aircraft missile batteries in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, and that the ethnic Russian rebels didn’t.


Makeshift memorial at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport for the victims of the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 which crashed in the Ukraine on July 17, 2014, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, killing all 298 people on board. (Roman Boed, Wikipedia)

In a report released last October, the Netherlands’ Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said that based on “state secret” information, it was known that Ukraine possessed some older but “powerful anti-aircraft systems” and “a number of these systems were located in the eastern part of the country.” MIVD added that the rebels lacked that capacity:

“Prior to the crash, the MIVD knew that, in addition to light aircraft artillery, the Separatists also possessed short-range portable air defence systems (man-portable air-defence systems; MANPADS) and that they possibly possessed short-range vehicle-borne air-defence systems. Both types of systems are considered surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). Due to their limited range they do not constitute a danger to civil aviation at cruising altitude.”

Since Dutch intelligence is part of the NATO intelligence apparatus, this report means that NATO and presumably U.S. intelligence share the same viewpoint. Thus, the Russians would have little reason to fake their satellite photos showing Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile batteries in eastern Ukraine if the West’s satellite photos were showing the same thing.

But there is a reason why the Times and other major mainstream publications have ignored this official Dutch government document – because if it’s correct, then it means that the only people who could have shot down MH-17 belong to the Ukrainian military. That would turn upside-down the desired propaganda narrative blaming the Russians.

Yet, that blackout of the Dutch report means that the Times and other Western outlets have abandoned their journalistic responsibilities to present all relevant evidence on an issue of grave importance – bringing to justice the killers of 298 innocent people. Rather than “all the news that’s fit to print,” the Times is stacking the case by leaving out evidence that goes in the “wrong direction.”

Of course, there may be some explanation for how both NATO and Russian intelligence could come to the same “mistaken” conclusion that only the Ukrainian military could have shot down MH-17, but the Times and the rest of the Western mainstream media can’t ethically just pretend the evidence doesn’t exist.

Unless, of course, your real purpose is to disseminate propaganda, not produce journalism. Then, I suppose the behavior of the Times, other MSM publications and, yes, Bellingcat makes a lot of sense.

[For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com’s “MH-17: Two Years of Anti-Russian Propaganda” and “NYT Is Lost in Its Ukraine Propaganda.”]

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

.

[size=18pt]‘Fraud’ Alleged in NYT’s MH-17 Report[/size]
July 19, 2016

Exclusive: An amateur report alleging Russian doctoring of satellite photos on the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 case – a finding embraced by The New York Times – is denounced by a forensic expert as an “outright fraud,” reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

Forensic experts are challenging an amateur report – touted in The New York Times – that claimed Russia faked satellite imagery of Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile batteries in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, the day that Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot out of the sky killing 298 people.

In a Twitter exchange, Dr. Neal Krawetz, founder of the FotoForensics digital image analytical tool, wrote: “‘Bad analysis’ is an understatement. This ‘report’ is outright fraud.”


A Malaysia Airways’ Boeing 777 like the one that crashed in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. (Photo credit: Aero Icarus from Zürich, Switzerland)

Another computer imaging expert, Masami Kuramoto, wrote, “This is either amateur hour or supposed to deceive audiences without tech background,” to which Krawetz responded: “Why ‘or’? Amateur hour AND deceptive.”

On Saturday, The New York Times, which usually disdains Internet reports even from qualified experts, chose to highlight the report by arms control researchers at armscontrolwonk.com who appear to have little expertise in the field of forensic photographic analysis.

The Times article suggested that the Russians were falsely claiming that the Ukrainian military had Buk missile systems in eastern Ukraine on the day that MH-17 was shot down. But the presence of Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile batteries in the area has been confirmed by Western intelligence, including a report issued last October on the findings of the Dutch intelligence agency which had access to NATO’s satellite and other data collection.

Indeed, the Netherlands’ Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) concluded that the only anti-aircraft weapons in eastern Ukraine capable of bringing down MH-17 at 33,000 feet belonged to the Ukrainian government, not the ethnic Russian rebels. MIVD made that assessment in the context of explaining why commercial aircraft continued to fly over the eastern Ukrainian battle zone in summer 2014. (The MH-17 flight had originated in Amsterdam and carried many Dutch citizens, explaining why the Netherlands took the lead in the investigation.)

MIVD said that based on “state secret” information, it was known that Ukraine possessed some older but “powerful anti-aircraft systems” and “a number of these systems were located in the eastern part of the country.” MIVD added that the rebels lacked that capacity:

“Prior to the crash, the MIVD knew that, in addition to light aircraft artillery, the Separatists also possessed short-range portable air defence systems (man-portable air-defence systems; MANPADS) and that they possibly possessed short-range vehicle-borne air-defence systems. Both types of systems are considered surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). Due to their limited range they do not constitute a danger to civil aviation at cruising altitude.”

I know that I have cited this section of the Dutch report before but I repeat it because The New York Times, The Washington Post and other leading U.S. news organizations have ignored these findings, presumably because they don’t advance the desired propaganda theme blaming the Russians for the tragedy.

In other words, the Times, the Post and the rest of the mainstream U.S. media want the Russians to be guilty, so they exclude from their articles evidence that suggests that some element of the Ukrainian military might have fired the fateful missile. Such “group think” is, of course, the same journalistic malfeasance that led to the false reporting about Iraq’s WMD. Doubts, even expressed by experts, were systematically filtered out then and the same now.

Dishonest Journalism

Further, it is dishonest journalism to ignore a credible government report that bears directly on an important issue, especially while running dubious Internet analyses and accepting propaganda claims from self-interested U.S. officials seeking to make the case against Russia.


Quinn Schansman, a dual U.S.-Dutch citizen killed aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014. (Photo from Facebook)

For instance, the Dutch report contradicted The Washington Post’s early reporting on MH-17. On July 20, 2014, just three days after the crash, the Post published an article with the title “Russia Supplied Missile Launchers to Separatists, U.S. Official Says.”

In the article, the Post’s Michael Birnbaum and Karen DeYoung reported from Kiev that an anonymous U.S. official said the U.S. government had “confirmed that Russia supplied sophisticated missile launchers to separatists in eastern Ukraine and that attempts were made to move them back across the Russian border.”

This official told the Post that Russia didn’t just supply one Buk battery, but three. Though this account has never been retracted, there were problems with it from the start, including the fact that a U.S. “government assessment” – released by the Director of National Intelligence on July 22, 2014, (two days later) – listed a variety of weapons allegedly provided by the Russians to the ethnic Russian rebels but not a Buk anti-aircraft missile system.

In other words, two days after the Post cited a U.S. official claiming that the Russians had given the rebels three Buk batteries, the DNI’s “government assessment” made no reference to a delivery of one, let alone three Buk systems. And that absence of evidence came in the context of the DNI larding the “government assessment” with every possible innuendo to implicate the Russians, including “social media” entries. But there was no mention of a Buk delivery.

The significance of this missing link is hard to overstate. At the time eastern Ukraine was the focus of extraordinary U.S. intelligence collection because of the potential for the crisis to spin out of control and start World War III. Plus, a Buk missile battery is large and difficult to conceal. The missiles themselves are 16-feet-long and are usually pulled around by truck.

U.S. spy satellites, which supposedly can let you read a license plate in Moscow, would have picked up these images. And, if for some inexplicable reason a Buk battery was missed before July 17, 2014, it would surely have been spotted during an after-action review of the satellite imagery. But the U.S. government has released nothing of the kind.

In the days after the MH-17 crash, I was told by a source that U.S. intelligence had spotted Buk systems in the area but they appeared to be under Ukrainian government control. The source who had been briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts said the likely missile battery that launched the fateful missile was manned by troops dressed in what looked like Ukrainian uniforms.

At that point, the source said CIA analysts were still not ruling out the possibility that the troops might have been eastern Ukrainian rebels in similar uniforms but the initial assessment was that the troops were Ukrainian soldiers. There also was the suggestion that the soldiers were undisciplined and possibly drunk, since the imagery showed what looked like beer bottles scattered around the site, the source said. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “What Did US Spy Satellites See in Ukraine?”]

Subsequently, the source said, these analysts reviewed other intelligence data, including recorded phone intercepts, and concluded that the shoot-down was carried out by a rogue element of the Ukrainian government, working with a rabidly anti-Russian oligarch, but that senior Ukrainian leaders, such as President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, were not implicated. However, I have not been able to determine if this assessment was a dissident opinion or a consensus within U.S. intelligence circles.

Another intelligence source told me that CIA analysts did brief Dutch authorities during the preparation of the Dutch Safety Board’s report but that the U.S. information remained classified and unavailable for public release. In the Dutch reports, there is no reference to U.S.-supplied information although they do reflect sensitive details about Russian-made weapons systems, secrets declassified by Moscow for the investigation.

An NYT Pattern?

So, what to make of the Times hyping an amateur analysis of two Russian satellite photos and reporting that they showed manipulation. Though the claim seems to be designed to raise doubts about the presence of Ukrainian Buk missile batteries in eastern Ukraine, the presence of those missiles is really not in doubt.


A photograph of a Russian BUK missile system that U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt published on Twitter in support of a claim about Russia placing BUK missiles in eastern Ukraine, except that the image appears to be an AP photo taken at an air show near Moscow two years earlier.

And it makes sense the Ukrainians would move their anti-aircraft missiles toward the front because of fears that the powerful Ukrainian offensive then underway against ethnic Russian rebels might provoke Russia to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Shifting anti-aircraft missile batteries toward the border would be a normal military preparation in such a situation.

That’s particularly true because a Ukrainian fighter plane was shot down along the border on July 16, 2014, presumably from an air-to-air missile fired by a Russian plane. Tensions were high at the time and the possibility that an out-of-control Ukrainian crew misidentified MH-17 as a Russian military jet or Putin’s plane cannot be dismissed.

But all this context is missing from the Times article by reporter Andrew E. Kramer, who has been a regular contributor to the Times’ anti-Russian propaganda. He treats the findings by some nuclear arms control researchers at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies as definitive though there’s no reason to believe that these folks have any special expertise in applying this software whose creator says requires careful analysis.

The new report was based on the filtering software Tungstene designed by Roger Cozien, who has warned against rushing to judge “anomalies” in photographs as intentional falsifications when they may result from the normal process of saving an image or making innocent adjustments.

In an interview in Time magazine, Cozien said, “These filters aim at detecting anomalies. They give you any and all specific and particular information which can be found in the photograph file. And these particularities, called ‘singularities’, are sometimes only accidental: this is because the image was not well re-saved or that the camera had specific features, for example.

“The software in itself is neutral: it does not know what is an alteration or a manipulation. So, when it notices an error, the operator needs to consider whether it is an image manipulation, or just an accident.”

In other words, anomalies can be introduced by innocent actions related to saving or modifying an image, such as transferring it to a different format, adjusting the contrast or adding a word box. But it is difficult for a layman to assess the intricacies involved.

To buttress the new report, Kramer cited the work of Bellingcat, a group of “citizen journalists” who have made a solid business out of reaffirming whatever Western propaganda is claiming, whether about Syria, Ukraine or Russia.

Bellingcat’s founder Eliot Higgins also had raised doubts about the Russian photos – using Dr. Krawetz’s FotoForensics software – but those findings were subsequently debunked by Dr. Krawetz himself and other experts. While Kramer cited Higgins’s earlier analysis, the Times reporter left out the fact that those findings were disputed by professional experts.

Dr. Krawetz also found the new photographic analysis both amateurish and deceptive. When I contacted him by email, he declined an interview and noted that Bellingcat fans were already on the offensive, trying to shut down dissent to the new report.

In an email to me, he wrote: “I have already seen the Bellingcat trolls verbally attack me, their ‘reporters’ use intimidation tactics, and their CEO insults me. (Hmmm … First he uses my software, then his team seeks me out as an expert, then he insults me when my opinion differs from his.)”

If it’s true that the first casualty of war is truth, the old saying also seems to apply to a new Cold War.

[For more on Bellingcat and its erroneous work, see Consortiumnews.com’s “MH-17 Case: ‘Old’ Journalism vs. ‘New.’”]

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

Another Amerikan backed pig sent off to Virgin Heaven...

[size=18pt]SYRIAN ARMY ELIMINATED US-BACKED ‘REBEL’ WHO BEHEADED 12-YO BOY IN ALEPPO (GRAPHIC)[/size]


US-backed moderate rebels & friends

The Syrian army has reportedly eliminated the terrorist who beheaded a 12-yo Paletsinian boy near the city of Aleppo. According to pro-government social media accounts, the terrorist have been killed in clashes with the Syrian Army and its allies near the Mallah Farms.

This week the US-backed “moderate opposition” group Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki has captured a palestinian kid, accused him of being “pro-Assad” and beheaded him for this (CAUTION GRAPHIC). The fact was covered by Western media outlets as an “individual mistake” and the US State Department said that it will concsider some actions over the topic if the report is confirmed (It looks the video is not enough for this).

"The state department need time to think about wether they will keep supporting the rebels who beheaded a kid. https://www.rt.com/usa/352193-pause-support-syrian-rebels-beheading-boy/ Its such a difficult decision. They need time to see if they can white wash the crime and continue arming them like they did when the heart eater video came out. Remember when the #CIA was complaining that #Russia was bombing their CIA vetted child be-headers Harakat Nour al-Zenkii? http://www.businessinsider.com.au/cia-vetted-syrian-rebels-fighting-assad-2015-10 That article admits the CIA personally trained them, and i'm sure that included the art of head chopping. Are we supposed to continue trusting their vetting process? What really annoys me is the brainwashing is so successful, people are posting the video and continuing to think it was IS, not the moderate rebels."

vedaxcool:
This thread only confirms the extreme stewpidity cowardminted and assad share. It takes an inappropriately daft individual to overlook the many civilians killed by Assad and Russia bombings. Assad rushing to the UN is hilarious, the same UN he frustrated its plans in feeding besieged Syrians being starved to death by Assad forces. This thread only goes to confirm the mental illness I suspect cowardminted suffers from.

Oh my! What an unmitigated idi0t you really are! You just keep affirming it at every turn. Oh my!

I'll be back at this thread in a minute.

If only these savages accepted "regime change", Amerika wouldn't need to drop bombs of democracy on them all the bloody time!

I wonder if the State Department would hold a press conference accusing Amerika of crimes against humanity?

Zoharariel, Scully95, Appleyard, thoughts?

[size=18pt]‘Bloody massacres’: Syria appeals to UN after French & US airstrikes ‘kill over 140 civilians’[/size]


is demanding the UN take action after it says French war planes killed more than 120 civilians during airstrikes on Tuesday near the Turkish-Syrian border. The deaths came just a day after US air assaults killed a further 20 people in Manbij.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry sent letters to the UN secretary general and to the president of the UN Security Council, which at present is Japan.

Damascus wants the organization to look into atrocities committed by France, which is a member of the US-led international coalition, after it targeted the village of Toukhan Al-Kubra, located near the Turkish-Syrian border and the city of Manbij.

“The French unjust aggression claimed the lives of more than 120 civilians, most of them are children, women and elderly, in addition to tens of wounded citizens, the majority of them are also children and women as reports say that the fate of scores of other civilians who still under debris are unknown too,” the Syrian Foreign Ministry wrote, as cited by the Syrian Arab News Agency.

The mass death toll in Toukhan Al-Kubra came just a day after US war planes killed around 20 people, mainly women and children, while many more were injured in and around the city of Manbij, the Foreign Ministry states.

“The government of the Syrian Arab Republic condemns, with the strongest terms, the two bloody massacres perpetrated by the French and US warplanes and those affiliated to the so-called international coalition which send their missiles and bombs to the civilians instead of directing them to the terrorist gangs… Syria also affirms that those who want to combat terrorism seriously should coordinate with the Syrian government and army,” the ministry added.

In the letter, the Syrian Foreign Ministry added that it condemns the continued support by the US, France, Saudi Arabia, the UK and Qatar to terrorist organizations such as Al-Nusra Front and Jaish Al-Islam, despite these groups having clear links to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and Al-Qaeda.

The human rights watchdog Amnesty International also hit out at the US-led coalition, saying that it needs to do more to prevent the deaths of civilians.

"Anyone responsible for violations of international humanitarian law must be brought to justice and victims and their families should receive full reparation," Amnesty's interim Middle East director Magdalena Mughrabi said, as cited by Reuters.

A spokesman for the US Department of Defense says that it is aware of the loss of civilian life in Syria.

"We are aware of reports alleging civilian casualties near Manbij, Syria, recently. As with any allegation we receive, we will review any information we have about the incident," Matthew Allen said in a statement.

"We take all measures during the targeting process to avoid or minimize civilian casualties or collateral damage and to comply with the principles of the Law of Armed Conflict," he added.

The US-led coalition has been providing air support to the rebel group the Syrian Arab Coalition, which is involved in heavy fighting around the city of Manbij, currently under the control of Islamic State.

The terrorist group has been in control of the city since it seized large swathes of Syria and Iraq in the summer of 2014.

In an interview with NBC News last week, Syrian President Bashar Assad said that the US is not interested in defeating terrorists in Syria as it really wants “to control and use them.”

“The reality is telling that, since the beginning of the American airstrikes, terrorism has been expanding and prevailing,” he told the channel, specifying that “during the American and alliance airstrikes, ISIS was expanding and taking over new areas in Syria.”

“It’s about being serious, having the will. The United States doesn’t have the will to defeat the terrorists. It had the will to control them and to use them as a card, like they did in Afghanistan. That will reflect on the military aspect of the issue,” Assad said.

Amerika won't be supporting this group of "moderates" any longer but it would certainly be focusing on others - or perhaps as soon as these ones can get a name change and rebranding completed

Waiting on the State Department's Elizabeth Trudeau (or whoever appears as the new talking bird) to mumble, cuss, stutter, stall and lie his/her way through this in 1,...2,...3.....

ValerianSteel:
The US no longer backs the FSA,It's been established some rebel units within the FSA are rogue from ISIS elements that have infiltrated the group.

What did I just say: "There will be a perfectly reasonable explanation for what these 'moderate ' rebels are doing on behalf of the 'indispensable and exceptional' country"