The Dutch must now show their papers to live a normal life; it will not stop with Covid.

By Eva VLAARDINGERBROEK

Beginning tomorrow, September 25, everyone in the Netherlands above the age of 13 will need a “Digital Covid Certificate” in order to be allowed into restaurants, bars, theaters, cinemas, and concert halls. Basically, the things that make life enjoyable for most people, will be limited to those who are in possession of a Q.R. code that indicates they are either vaccinated, tested, or have recovered from Covid-19 within the past 160 days.

What is interesting—and, in my view, incredibly telling—about the Dutch situation in particular is that a whopping 85 percent of the Dutch population is currently already fully vaccinated. More than a year and a half into the Covid-crisis, it is estimated that 95 percent of the population has antibodies, and currently only 200 people are in the ICU. Yet it is at this very moment that our government decides to introduce the most far-reaching and invasive measure the Dutch have seen to date. This is only the beginning.

Apparently, the last 15 percent of the Dutch population needs to be jabbed—whatever it takes. The ones who, for whatever reason, choose not to be vaccinated are either doomed to the social life of a hermit or have to travel, sometimes quite far, to a certified test location to get a Q-tip shoved up their noses every single day. That is, if they want to ‘’earn back’’ their right to partake in everyday activities. So even though people are not yet physically forced to be vaccinated, what the government is doing now is something that can only be called coercion.

Since there is no official or legal end-date tied to the enforcement of the Covid pass, there is no reason to believe that the Q.R.-society that we’re turning into won’t become more restrictive, let alone that it will disappear. Just take a look at other European countries, like France, Germany, and Italy. I went to Germany recently, where I experienced first-hand what it felt like to be denied entry to a restaurant for being unvaccinated; the negative test results I had on me didn’t suffice. This will undoubtedly become the case at some point in Holland as well.

Although highly inconvenient and time consuming, testing is currently still an option in the Netherlands and it is still “free” (i.e., paid for by taxpayers’ money). But not for long. The Dutch government has already announced that, sooner rather than later, people will have to start paying for their own tests, making it impossible for most people, especially children and people with low or no income, to do it on a regular basis. It is also a given that the Covid pass won’t remain only used for “non-essential social and cultural facilities.” The Dutch government is currently looking for legal pathways to enforce vaccine passes in the workplace and for health care facilities, as is already the case in countries like France and Italy. As a result of this, many Italians who still refuse to get vaccinated are forced to take unpaid leave; it is a true Kafkaesque nightmare.

Legally, the enforcement of these Covid passes and the far-reaching consequences that they already have clearly form a grave breach of constitutional rights and civil liberties such as bodily integrity, the non-discrimination principle, and freedom of movement. It is often argued that these breaches do not technically form a legal ‘’violation’’ of our constitutional rights, because the breach is justified in view of public health. In my opinion, however, this is simply wrong.

First of all, if this line of argumentation would carelessly be accepted, any constitutional right could be set aside when the definition of a “justification” such as public health is stretched out far enough. This is something most people, especially legal scholars, are usually very wary of. Due to fear, behavioral manipulation, and a general fatigue when it comes to the Covid measures (‘’I just want my freedom back’’), a substantial group of people seem to accept or even want vaccine passports. In other words, people accept this drastic measure for all the wrong reasons.

Let’s start with fear. The Dutch government insisted on classifying the much less dangerous Covid-19 as a so called ‘’A-label disease’’—the same category as Ebola—as this provided them with a legal basis for far-reaching measures like lockdowns, curfews, and now the Covid pass systems. No wonder the government has often been accused of instrumentalizing the virus to enlarge its own legal competences and powers. After all, to most people the virus is not life-threatening at all, especially not to young people, who make up a very large part of the 15 percent of the Dutch population that is not vaccinated. Although of course some people can get very ill from Covid, the mortality rates are nowhere near as high as in the case of a virus like Ebola, which has a mortality rate of 50 percent.

No one will deny the fact that fear forms a great basis for inducing people to abstain from rational thinking and to accept disproportional government control. The Covid pass will not in any way slow down transmission of the virus, since both vaccinated and unvaccinated people can carry and transmit Covid. Yet only unvaccinated people are obliged to take a test in order to gain entry to public facilities. The system doesn’t just make a legally unjustified distinction between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated—discriminating between citizens on the basis of their medical data, which for privacy reasons should not be asked for in the first place—but it is also ineffective.

Although our government is of course well aware of the fact that vaccinated people can still get Covid and pass it on, they still aim to ostracize unvaccinated people and mark them as the enemies of public health. Just like President Joe Biden told American citizens that the government has “been patient, but our patience is wearing thin,” the Dutch minister of public health, Hugo de Jonge, stated that “the freedom of one group [those who do not wish to be vaccinated] cannot continue to threaten the freedom of another group [those who are vaccinated],” reminiscent of John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian harm principle.

This type of divisive rhetoric by the government is incredibly dangerous. Our minister puts forward a completely false dilemma: These two groups do not threaten each other’s freedom. It is actually the government and the government only, here, that poses a fundamental threat to both groups’ freedom. These losses of freedoms are imposed by policy. The vaccine does not protect anyone but the person who takes it. Nevertheless, plenty of people who aren’t afraid of the virus at all, or maybe have already had it and have natural immunity, have taken the vaccine because they fear the government and the social consequences of not being vaccinated more than they do the virus itself. Since when did we start to regard such behavior or choices as ‘’normal’’?

Frustratingly, only a very limited number of people in the West see what is really at stake here. Most fail to see that, once these Q.R. systems are enforced and people have become accustomed to them, these systems can be used for a variety of other purposes as well. It is most likely not a coincidence that a couple of weeks ago, suddenly, a nationwide poll was conducted to enquire how the Dutch viewed the possibility of a “personal carbon credit” system. Nevertheless, a large majority seems to believe—or want to believe—that all of this is for the common good, or that it is at least all temporary and won’t “get that far.”

I hope they are right, but I cannot help feeling that Tocqueville hit the nail on the head, as he often did, when he wrote that the type of despotism democratic people have to fear will in no way look like the despotism and tyranny our ancestors endured: “It would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them,” he wrote in 1840. And, in a way, the fact that it happens more gradually is what makes it arguably even more dangerous. After all, a people that do not realize they are losing their freedom will not fight for it. They will simply let it slip through their fingers.

theamericanconservative.com

(Click on the image to enlarge)

By Ben NORTON

The decade-long dirty war on Syria proved to be a cash cow for some of the most prominent US and UK regime-change operatives. Western government contractors got hundreds of millions of dollars to run schemes to destabilize Damascus – and some of them took a cut for themselves, profiting off of the pillage.

One of the main players in the cottage industry of contractors that helped run the Western regime-change war on Syria,  and which was eventually implicated in a massive corruption scandal, was the Mayday Rescue Foundation.

Mayday served as the fiscal sponsor of Syria Civil Defense, known popularly as the White Helmets, a deceptive humanitarian interventionist operation that became a key propaganda weapon in the dirty war on Damascus.

With more than $120 million in funding from numerous Western governments, the White Helmets were portrayed in servile media campaigns and by slick PR films as a noble philanthropic group dedicated to saving civilian lives. In reality, the organization functioned as the de facto civil and medical infrastructure for areas in Syria that were controlled by brutal, theocratic Salafi-jihadist insurgents.

The White Helmets operated exclusively in areas run by the Syrian armed opposition, and collaborated extensively with extremists, including ISIS and al-Qaeda. White Helmets were even filmed assisting in public executions on numerous occasions.

The White Helmets helped NATO member Turkey militarily invade and ethnically cleanse Kurdish-majority towns in northern Syria as part of a plan to repopulate those areas with Sunni Muslim Arabs who supported Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Following the invasion, schoolchildren were indoctrinated with Turkish nationalist propaganda.

A Syria producer at the BBC has even stated that the White Helmets helped stage a fake chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma, to try to pin the blame on the Syrian government and spur Western military intervention against it.

Yet while Western governments were lavishing the White Helmets with praise and funneling huge sums of taxpayer money into their parent organization, the Netherlands-based Mayday Rescue Foundation, they were also quietly investigating the group for fraud.

A series of mainstream Dutch media reports document how the Netherlands knew Mayday had presided over serious financial irregularities, but top officials covered it up, refusing to inform elected lawmakers and even ignoring recommendations from their own regulators to reclaim millions of dollars worth of contracts.

Dutch officials feared that exposing Mayday’s corruption could harm the Western regime-change efforts targeting Syria, and might sully the benevolent image of the White Helmets that was carefully constructed over years of constant promotion and obsequious propaganda.

The scandal is a particularly disturbing illustration of how footsoldiers of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex tug at the heartstrings of Western liberals not only to advance Western foreign policy interests, but also to line their own pockets with millions of dollars flowing through opaque contracts.

The controversy also demonstrates how Western government officials protected war profiteers while keeping the constituents whose tax dollars were wasted away in the dark about the documented corruption in their midst.

The US government-funded White Helmets assist a public execution in Daraa, in rebel-held Syria in 2017

Dutch government investigated White Helmets sponsor Mayday Rescue for fraud – but covered it up

This May 7, the Dutch-language newspaper de Volkskrant published a report revealing that the Netherlands had investigated the Mayday Rescue Foundation for fraud.

Western European governments poured more than €100 million ($121 million) into Mayday to fund the White Helmets, including Britain, Germany, Canada, Denmark, and the Netherlands. The United States also pitched in, sending tens of millions of dollars to the White Helmets.

The Dutch government contributed €12.5 million ($15.2 million) to Mayday. But by late 2018, the Netherlands suspected corruption and stopped funding the organization, “due to concerns in The Hague about financial supervision and the organization,” de Volkskrant wrote.

The Dutch government subsequently investigated, and in mid-2020 the Netherlands’ Central Audit Service advised the government to reclaim more than €3.6 million in tax money that it had given to Mayday.

“It is not certain whether the millions were spent on their intended purpose,” the newspaper stated.

But the Dutch government did not request this money. Instead, the Netherlands’ minister for foreign trade and development cooperation, Sigrid Kaag, decided to halt a final payment of a mere €57,000 to Mayday – just 1.6 percent of what the audit office had recommended be returned to the state’s coffers.

Even this paltry decision was largely symbolic, because Mayday had already spent the more than $120 million in government contracts it received and was bankrupt by the time Kaag decided to halt payments.

Kaag wilde Kamer informeren over fraudemelding bij stichting, ambtenaren hielden brief tegen https://t.co/KT0pZ9UlWm

— de Volkskrant (@volkskrant) May 7, 2021

In a letter to Western governments, the late founder and director of Mayday Rescue, James Le Mesurier admitted to fraud and unethical financial behavior, such as “very high salaries, cash bonuses and unpaid taxes,” de Volkskrant noted.

But the newspaper report makes it clear that the fraud investigation had become a point of conflict inside the Dutch government. Officials who supported the regime-change war on Syria sought to downplay the scandal.

The foreign trade minister, Kaag, wanted to inform the parliament about the fraud investigation, so she wrote a letter, and planned to send it to the Dutch House of Representatives. (De Volkskrant obtained drafts of the document via a public records request.)

But Kaag was pressured to censor the letter. Top officials at the Foreign Affairs Ministry insisted she not send it because she was not legally obligated to do so. They feared the revelation “may unjustly harm” Mayday and the White Helmets.

The result: The letter was never sent, MPs were never informed of the known corruption, and Dutch taxpayers were not able to learn that Mayday mishandled enormous sums of money it received from numerous donor governments, including their own.

White Helmets czar James Le Mesurier admits fraud, then dies days later

In November 2019, the Mayday Rescue Foundation’s founder, former British military intelligence officer James Le Mesurier, died under strange circumstances in Istanbul, Turkey.

Turkish authorities said he committed suicide, jumping to his death.

Le Mesurier had served in the British army in Northern Ireland and former Yugoslavia, before later working for private security companies. By 2014, he founded Mayday Rescue and became the key Western point-man running the White Helmets psychological operation.

While corporate media marketed Le Mesurier as a humanitarian hero, he and his colleagues were cashing in on the regime-change scheme.

Three days before his death, Le Mesurier confessed to serious financial improprieties. On November 8, he sent an email to donor countries admitting that Mayday had committed fraud. He said he had forged receipts, writing, “I take full and sole responsibility for it.”

But Le Mesurier insisted that the corruption must not come to light, because if it were leaked to the media, it would be a “victory for Russia and the pro-Assad trolls.”

De Volkskrant reported this in July 2020, in an article titled “Founder of Foundation behind White Helmets Admits Fraud.”

A journalist who co-authored the report, Ana van Es, noted that the Western governments that had funded the White Helmets had heeded Le Mesurier’s warning and were “keeping quiet about the wrongdoings.”

Kaag wilde Kamer informeren over fraudemelding bij stichting, ambtenaren hielden brief tegen https://t.co/KT0pZ9UlWm

— de Volkskrant (@volkskrant) May 7, 2021

The earlier de Volkskrant report details how a Dutch accountant began investigating Mayday in November 2019, and found that Le Mesurier had forged receipts and paid money that was designated for the White Helmets to himself personally.

The article reveals just how suspicious Mayday’s financial dealings were. While the foundation was often portrayed in fawning Western media coverage as a benevolent non-profit humanitarian organization, it actually had for-profit commercial branches in Turkey and Dubai.

“There was no supervisory board, which meant that administrators could decide their own salaries, which in some cases amounted to 26,000 euros a month,” de Volkskrant wrote.

This means that some Mayday staff were being paid around $380,000 per year. “Such figures are above the approved salary ceiling of a subsidised organisation in the Netherlands,” the newspaper noted.

“In addition, Le Mesurier, his wife – also one of the administrators – and a third administrator would pay themselves cash bonuses, on top of their salaries,” the article continued.

James’ wife Emma Le Mesurier has rejected the claims of fraud which her own late husband admitted to, and aggressively trolls virtually any journalists on Twitter who mention the scandal.

However, a new administrator hired to try to clean up Mayday’s reputation, Cor Vrieswijk, acknowledged to the Dutch newspaper that the enormous salaries were indeed “excessive,” but added that the Western “donor countries knew about this and had given their consent.”

Western diplomats covered up White Helmets corruption to “avoid political risks” and ensure “minimal exposure”

The May 2021 report in de Volkskrant revealed that when Western governments learned of the corruption scandal at the Mayday Rescue Foundation, they immediately plotted to cover it up.

When Le Mesurier admitted fraud and died three days later, Western diplomats quickly convened a series of “crisis meetings” in the Dutch consulate in Istanbul, the newspaper said.

“The Netherlands saw itself politically as ‘extra vulnerable,’” de Volkskrant wrote. “After all, Mayday is located in Amsterdam. The millions of payments from the foundation went through Dutch accounts.”

When accountants subsequently investigated and found serious irregularities, the donor countries continued their damage control.

In February 2020, Western diplomats met again in Istanbul, where they discussed “avoiding political risks” and ways to ensure “minimal exposure.”

An accounting firm called Grant Thornton investigated Mayday. It technically said it did not find evidence of fraud beyond what Le Mesurier admitted to, but that was largely because the firm’s finances were such a mess that it was nearly impossible to audit them.

As Dutch government officials told de Volkskrant, “Fraud cannot be proven because ‘critical’ parts of the accounts are ‘not traceable.’”

“The bookkeeping was seriously inadequate,” the newspaper wrote. “There was no internal financial supervision. Payments turned out not to be traceable afterwards.”

De Volkskrant continued:

The report did not allay concerns at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Grant Thornton’s findings raised doubts about the accuracy of financial reports previously submitted by Mayday. According to officials, ‘it could not be established with certainty’ that the Dutch subsidy had indeed been spent on the White Helmets. When an officer asks which expenses cannot be audited, a colleague replies, ‘All expenses to the White Helmets.’

Western government funding for White Helmets continues despite corruption

Despite the corruption documented by the Dutch government, Western state funding for the White Helmets has continued, as the United States and European Union have doubled down on their dirty war against Syria.

The US and EU have imposed one of the most aggressive sanctions regimes in modern history to destabilize Syria and oust its government. The de facto blockade, amounting to collective punishment of millions of civilians, has unleashed a large-scale economic depression, fuel shortage, and food crisis.

Meanwhile, the Netherlands resumed its support for the White Helmets during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, claiming to use the group to provide humanitarian assistance to insurgent-held territory in Syria.

Western governments have been able to continue funding the White Helmets without a hitch, largely because a compliant corporate media has almost without exception refused to acknowledge anything negative about the proxy group.

These Dutch media reports on Mayday’s corruption have  received next to no attention in other countries. This can partially be explained because James Le Mesurier had forged many friendships within the Western press, cultivating journalists as assets in the dirty war by feeding them scoops and even facilitating propaganda trips into Syria across Turkey’s southern border.

The BBC – which The Grayzone exposed for covertly participating in UK Foreign Office information warfare campaigns – even created an error-filled, hagiographic podcast series dedicated to rewriting the history of the dirty war on Syria, sanctifying Le Mesurier, and rehabilitating the image of Mayday. Its subtle title? Mayday.

And Mayday is not the only Western government contractor exposed for corruption.

Another regime-change lobby group called the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) received an estimated €42 million ($50 million) in funding from the United States and Western European nations to wage legal warfare, or lawfare, on Syria – and collaborated with al-Qaeda in the process.

CIJA, too, was investigated for large-scale fraud. As The Grayzone reported, the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) formally accused CIJA of fraud, “submission of false documents, irregular invoicing, and profiteering.” The EU regulator even recommended that legal authorities in the UK, the Netherlands, and Belgium prosecute CIJA.

.@CIJAOnline, a taxpayer-funded outfit that collaborated with al-Qaeda, lied to entrap a British academic in a sting operation.

CIJA’s goal was to discredit critics of the dirty war on Syria – and cover up an EU investigation exposing its corruption. https://t.co/etOI6DrLCu

— The Grayzone (@TheGrayzoneNews) March 27, 2021

But CIJA’s corruption was wholly ignored in corporate media as well. Le Mesurier’s friends and colleagues went to great lengths to depict the thoroughly documented fraud scandal as a malign campaign of disinformation supposedly run out of the Kremlin.

Western governments and their stenographers in the press have helped shield war profiteers from any consequences, as they have defrauded taxpayers in numerous countries out of huge sums of money, all in a desperate crusade to destroy Syria.

Today, a stunning array of mind-blowing scandals involving the dirty war on Syria remain either untouched or covered up by Western corporate media, from the White Helmets’ role in staging false chemical attacks to Western governments silencing and punishing scientific whistleblowers at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Beneath the surface of the corruption scandal involving Mayday and the White Helmets is a seemingly bottomless pit of bloodshed and sleaze.

thegrayzone.com

On Friday, July 3rd, the judge in the Netherlands court case against Russia as having fired a Buk missile that brought down the Malaysian Airlines plane that Ukrainian Air Traffic Control had instructed to fly over Ukraine’s civil-war zone on 17 July 2014 ruled out any consideration of evidence from Russia.

Judge Hendrik Steenhuis “refused to allow Russian military intelligence to reveal where the missile was located between 1987 and July 17, 2014, when the Dutch prosecution claims the missile was fired by a Russian military crew at MH17,” as John Helmer reported on Friday. The Dutch prosecutor says that that Buk missile was fired by Russia’s Government, not by Ukraine’s Government, and that it was owned by Russia and had been maintained by Russia ever since having been manufactured in Russia in 1986, and the Dutch judge announced that he refuses to consider Russia’s evidence to the contrary.

Russia’s Government alleges that it can provide evidence that that missile did not, in fact, bring the airliner down, and that, instead, it was brought down by two Ukrainian Air Force jets that fired directly at and into the airliner’s pilot, but previously the Dutch court had ruled out any consideration of such evidence, though even the Dutch Government’s own investigation included and buried the following information, as I reported just a few days ago on June 24th:

The Dutch Government’s 279-page investigative findings on the “Crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17” were published in October 2015, and reported, on page 84, (under 2.13.2 “Crew autopsy”) that “First Officer Team A … During the body scan of the First Officer’s body, over 120 objects (mostly metal fragments) were detected. The majority of the fragments were found in left side of the upper torso.” Then, it reported, on page 85 (under 2.13.3) “the First Officer, from Team A, who was operating the aeroplane at the time of the crash.”

1. The Dutch Government’s 279-page investigative findings on the “Crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17” were published in October 2015, and reported, on

page 84, (under 2.13.2 “Crew autopsy”) that “First Officer Team A … During the body scan of the First Officer’s body, over 120 objects (mostly metal fragments) were detected. The majority of the fragments were found in left side of the upper torso.” Then, it reported, on

page 85 (under 2.13.3) “the First Officer, from Team A, who was operating the aeroplane at the time of the crash.”

(Note that they buried this crucial information, instead of saying clearly that “The pilot’s upper left torso, immediately to the left of the area of the fuselage that had been shot out, had 120 objects that were mostly metal fragments.”) (Here is a closer picture of that side-panel on the left side of the fuselage, to the pilot’s immediate left, and here is that side-panel shown back on the airliner, so that one can see that this firing had to have been done from below, shooting upward into the pilot.)

This crucial physical finding, that the pilot’s corpse had been loaded with “over 120 objects (mostly metal fragments),” is entirely consistent with the side-panel’s having been shot through by bullets, which would have been coming from a Ukrainian military jet and aimed upward, directly at the pilot. That marksman had to have been highly proficient in order to hit the pilot so accurately with so many bullets.

Nothing else was found to be shot through with anything like such an intensity of “mostly metal fragments,” but only the pilot’s upper left torso. This, alone, is virtually conclusive proof that a Ukrainian military jet plane had fired directly at the pilot in order to bring down this civilian plane. (More will be cited here, in #2 below.)

All of this evidence was entirely buried and ignored by the Dutch Government, revealed deep in the report, and only in sub-clauses, instead of in any direct sentences.

Furthermore: “There have been two or three pieces of fuselage that have been really pockmarked with what almost looks like machine-gun fire, very very strong machine-gun fire.” This remarkable statement comes not from Haisenko, but from one of the first OSCE investigators who arrived at the scene of the disaster. Go to youtube.com and you will see it. [But, now, it has been removed. Here is the information on that video. That video was titled “OSCE monitor mentions bullet holes in MH17”.]

That evidence is consistent with the Dutch Government’s having found (but buried) that the pilot’s corpse had been riddled with “metal fragments.”

Instead, the Dutch Government is charging Russia as having fired a Buk missile at the airliner and thus brought it down.

2. As I reported on 8 March 2020, under the heading “Why do the U.S. and its allies hide these facts from the public?”:

The latest are document-dumps and accompanying detailed explanations and translations of the revealed documents, and are from Bonanza Media. That’s a Finland-based website. Their “Bonanza Leaks” on 24 February 2020 shows photos of the official transcriptions of the witnesses’ testimony to the official Joint Investigative Team (JIT) which the U.S-allied Dutch Government operates in order to convict Russia for the shoot-down of the MH17 Malaysian airliner on 17 July 2014 above the civil-war zone in Ukraine. It includes an accompanying video presentation of these documents, from a day earlier, on February 23rd, titled “Bonanza Media LeaksTalk”. That video includes this: “Australian police confirm that these are authentic documents” (in response to Bonanza Media’s having supplied Australian police with the photos), and “these are original documents,” which their video shows. Then, they showed their documents to the JIT’s own office in Netherlands, which refused to comment. One document, from the Director of the Military Intelligence and Security Service of the Netherlands, to the public prosecutor of the National Prosecutor’s Office on Counter Terrorism, P.O. Box 395, 3000 AJ Rotterdam, dated 21 September 2016, opens (this being the official Dutch translation, but the original Dutch being also shown), “Herewith, I am informing, pursuant to Section 38 of the Intelligence and Security Services Act 2002, of data that is possibly of importance for the criminal investigation into the crashing of flight MH17.” After stating the evidence they had accumulated from witnesses and from allied-Government intelligence agencies, this document closes: “On this basis MIVD [Dutch military intelligence agency] draws the conclusion that from these two Russian ground based air systems near Rostov na Dona [the only two Russian bases that possibly would have been associated with the shoot-down of the MH17] no missile launch took place on 17 July 2014.” More information about the Bonanza Leaks disclosures can be found from the investigative journalist John Helmer in Moscow, headlining on February 25th, “NATO Military Intelligence Agencies Repeatedly Reported in Secret There Was No Evidence of a Russian Buk Missile in Eastern Ukraine or Firing on MH17”.

As I have documented on many occasions, even the JIT’s [‘Joint Investigative Team’s’] own ‘case’ against Russia, regarding the MH17 shoot-down, is founded upon and cites ‘evidence’ which actually disproves Russia’s involvement, and proves that this downing was instead a Ukrainian Government operation. As I said at that link, “U.S. President Barack Obama had become desperate for something to happen that would persuade German Chancellor Angela Merkel to endorse added sanctions against Russia regarding Ukraine, but I had had no idea, until now, as to what direct involvement, if any, he had had in the actual setting-up of the MH17 shoot-down.” But he has hardly been alone in this effort. Not only Barack Obama but also now Donald Trump are implicated in it — Trump for his continuing Obama’s guilt in it and cover-ups about it.

The U.S. is a bipartisan dictatorship. Is that opinion? It is all documented, in the links. This (like the U.S. Government’s having been behind Ukraine’s downing of the MH17) is therefore still news instead of history; but it remains news only because it still remains hidden in the U.S. and its allied regimes; it is NOT “opinion.” It will remain news as long as the U.S.-and-allied blackout of the evidence remains in effect. And the U.S. dictatorship has long been not only domestic but international as well, a dictatorship over what it calls its ‘allies’ and even over some countries which claim to to be ‘neutral’.

Another example of this international dictatorship is that the supposedly U.N.-authorized and not U.S.-controlled OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons), which is really controlled by the U.S. Government, routinely lies when it needs to in order to protect the U.S. Government from being publicly revealed to have perpetrated an international war-crime.

Everything is consistent with the news-report that I initially published on the last day of 2018 and then updated on 9 January 2018, and which was titled “MH17 TURNABOUT: Ukraine’s Guilt Now PROVEN.”  Among the proofs which were supplied there was that the evidence that the Dutch Government had supplied alleging to prove that a certain Buk missile and launcher, which they showed pictures of, was the specific system that had shot down the MH17, happened to display (though Ukraine seems not even to have noticed this) parts-numbers on them that happened to remain in Russia’s records ever since this equipment had been acquired by the Ukrainian state government in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) back in 1986 immediately after having been manufactured in the Russian state, and had remained consistently in Ukraine’s air force and maintained by the Russian manufacturer ever since, so that if this equipment had shot down the MH17, then Ukraine’s Air Force (now under the national Ukrainian Government) would have shot down the MH17; Russia’s Air Force wouldn’t. The Dutch Government simply ignored this evidence that Russia supplied to them after Holland had blamed that specific equipment-set for having done this shoot-down, but promptly then abandoned its allegation that this equipment had been the specific system that shot down the MH17. That article also included a “missing BBC report” in which the BBC’s reporter Olga Ivshina appeared to have been shocked when locals in the area of the shoot-down all told her of having seen no missile at the time, but instead two Ukrainian jets rising toward the airliner right before that airliner descended from the sky. I concluded my report by saying, “Now, which major news-media in The West will report these solidly documented facts? Isn’t it time, finally, that they should start doing that? Or, do they have no honor, at all?” It’s a damning case against not only the U.S.-allied governments but their ‘news’-media, which still hide all of this crucial evidence from their respective publics. All of them war against their own publics. My report linked to all of this evidence, so that readers can see it for themselves.

3. And, finally, there is now a new report, on June 22nd, from the great independent Australian and American (dual-citizen) investigative journalist John Helmer, who lives in Moscow, headlining “HOW THE DUTCH PROSECUTION AND THE JUDGE HAVE RIGGED THE OUTCOME OF THE MH17 TRIAL ON A CHARGE THAT REQUIRES NO PROOF”. It is the coup de grace, against the Dutch Government, and against the entire U.S.-allied team, which in the MH17 case consisted of not only Holland but also Australia and also Belgium and also (and most especially) Ukraine (which latter country’s Government had intentionally shot down the MH17 so as to blame against Russia (as they are doing) in order to supply to Barack Obama an argument that Angela Merkel could use in order to rally her own country in support of greatly hiked anti-Russian sanctions so that the IMF would follow through with the the next multi-billion-dollar loan to Ukraine, in order for Ukraine to continue paying its soldiers in Ukraine’s ongoing war against its rebelling and now independent former region of Ukraine, Donbas, which area directly borders on Russia in Ukraine’s far east.

In February 2014, Obama had overthrown in a violent coup Ukraine’s democratically elected neutralist Government, which had been elected in 2010 and received around 90% of the vote in Donbas; so, Donbas declared its independence from Ukraine, and Obama and the IMF and the entire U.S. team were demanding Ukraine to conquer Donbas, which conquest needed money that Ukraine didn’t have but had to borrow. Obama’s plan had originally included to turn Russia’s largest naval base, which was located in Crimea, into a U.S. naval base. That part of his plan failed.

After Ukraine shot down the MH17, it demanded, and got (on 7 August 2014), from its then-three partners in the JIT, including Holland, absolute veto-power over any ‘findings’ that the team would publish. Initially, the team’s allegation was that Donbas separatists had shot down the plane, mistaking it for a Ukrainian military plane that was about to bomb them. Then it switched to blaming Russian soldiers. Then the ‘investigation’ just dragged on for years, trying to find evidence which might persuade enough of the public so as not to become an embarrassment. And, finally, as Helmer reports, the Dutch Government has prepared a criminal charge against Russia that reverts back again to blaming Russia for its having been supporting the separatists whose villages were being bombed by Ukraine, but which, in order to be able to impose penalties against Russia, is based upon no “case law that would be relevant to the issue.” This is a last-ditch effort, but it will be able to work if the Dutch judge is corrupt enough to accept it.

If you don’t already know these facts, then you’ve been getting your ‘news’ from lying media (such as the Washington Post), which aim to eliminate the media (such as this one) that have been reporting (instead of ignoring, or outright denying) these facts. This report is thus American samizdat. You are here reading forbidden news. (It’s actually forbidden history, but if it was never before reported to you, then it still is news, to you.)

theduran.com

freewestmedia.com

According to Mayor Femke Halsema, girls and young women are being confronted with sexual intimidation or violence in increasing numbers. Therefore, she is announcing measures, Dutch daily De Telegraaf reported.

Research shows that 51 percent of women in Amsterdam have been confronted with street intimidation. For the ages 15 to 34, the percentage is 81 percent. Many reports come especially from the region around the Central Station, by the red-light district, around the Leidseplein, Bijlmer, Jan Evertsenstraat and the Mercatorplein. Also online there has been a large increase in sexual harassment and violence. These areas happen to be populated by immigrants.

Halsema claims that for a smaller group of girls and women the situation in Amsterdam is “really alarming and almost hopeless due to a negative spiral of abuse and violence, sometimes extended over several generations”. The most unsafe place for women is at home; many perpetrators are ex-partners or family members. In Amsterdam, for example, the number of registered violent incidents went up by 7 percent: from 6 183 in 2017 to 6 608 in 2018.

The figures have been a reason for Halsema to launch a campaign, the focus of which is victims of sexual intimidation and violence, on the street or online. One of the aims is to create a greater readiness to report such incidents, so that the police and the Public Prosecution Service can conduct investigations. A personal approach is also being launched for girls who have repeatedly been victims of sexual violence.

Halsema is also entering into talks with the hotel-restaurant and night club industry because personnel are likely to see the practices of pinching, intimidation and abuse. “Most do not count this as one of their responsibilities.”

For victims, safe places to live have become the most sought after, even outside the city. Social workers are also encouraged to work differently. “Social workers and parents often have little control, and there also seems to be a professional inability whereby the problems are not recognized or cases where people do not communicate properly,” says the mayor. In addition, the existing area ban that the mayor proposed on notorious nuisance offenders will also be put in place for people who annoyingly hang around near a shelter for vulnerable girls, or who are demonstrably sexually intrusive on the street.

The causes of sexual intimidation and violence, just like the situations in which the victims find themselves, are diverse, writes Halsema. Along with classical patterns of power inequality, based on tradition or physical strength, in Amsterdam, “reactionary ideas about the equality of men and women have reappeared”.

She refers to a study in which it is alleged that rising religious fundamentalists as well as “secular extreme-right movements” encourage and justify hate toward women. “Under the mask of a restoration of traditional role patterns, whereby women are subordinate to the demands and wishes of men, a woman’s ‘no’ is openly doubted or ignored. With the presence of religious fundamentalism in our local society, there is even talk of the re-entry of age-old and forbidden phenomena such as forced marriages and female circumcision.”

Femke Halsema represents the party GroenLinks, which has never questioned immigration as the only possible reason for the surge of crimes targeting women and girls. Instead, she is trying to blame men in general and in particular conservative men. The irony was not lost on Geert Wilders, who tweeted in response: “How did that happen?” with a picture of Muslim men verbally harassing a Dutch girl.

Hoe zou dat nou komen?#stopislam https://t.co/ltPo8mKvKS via @telegraaf

— Geert Wilders (@geertwilderspvv) February 4, 2020

Halsema writes that almost all woman in Amsterdam have felt unsafe, either in public spaces or in the private domain. “The same goes for LGBHQ people. Walking hand in hand can be risky. Being alone can put your safety and physical integrity at risk. Not only on the street, but also behind closed doors, in houses, hotels and schools, the security and freedom of a portion of Amsterdamers cannot always be guaranteed. This is not only sad, it is also unacceptable.”

Amsterdam earlier introduced a ban on street intimidation, but it is not enforced in the capital city because the court in the Hague earlier ruled that the similar Rotterdam provision is not legally valid. According to the judges, such a ban can only be introduced by the Second and First Chambers of Parliament.

freewestmedia.com

Halbe Zijlstra quit in shame on Monday as the country’s foreign minister after admitting that a story he had peddled about personally hearing Putin plotting to create a “greater Russia” was false. That then forced premier Rutte to endure a “no confidence” motion from parliamentarians. In the end, Rutte survived the vote. If a majority had voted against his leadership, his coalition government may have collapsed.

But the deep damage done to the Dutch authorities will not be so easily repaired by Rutte’s survival as premier. What has been exposed this week is a senior member of government recklessly telling bare-faced lies in an attempt to slander Russia, poison international relations, and ratchet up already dangerous geopolitical tensions.

Zijlstra had claimed two years ago, in 2016, that he had personally witnessed Russian leader Vladimir Putin boasting about creating a “greater Russia” which, it is claimed, would incorporate Ukraine, the Baltic states, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

The newly resigned Dutch top diplomat claimed he heard Putin making the remarks while present with others at the Russian leader’s dacha (summer house) back in 2006. 

This week, Zijlstra finally came clean and admitted before parliament that he hadn’t in fact been present at the alleged gathering. He still maintains, however, that a confidant who was among the guests at Putin’s dacha informed him of the alleged “greater Russia” plan. But how can we now trust the word of a self-confessed liar?

Zijlstra’s boss, Prime Minister Rutte, also sought to downplay the debacle, claiming that his foreign minister had made “a big mistake” – but that “lying was not a deadly sin”.

Rutte is in for a rude awakening due to his complacent thinking. For indeed his government has been caught telling a very grave lie whose ramifications concern issues of war and peace in Europe.

Disgraced former minister Zijlstra stands accused of gross distortion of Russia’s foreign policy.

Since the US and European-backed illegal coup in Ukraine in early 2014, geopolitical reality has been turned upside-down. American and European corporate media have peddled relentless anti-Russia propaganda accusing Moscow of “aggression” and “expansionism” in Europe.

This torrent of Russophobia spewed out by Washington, the Pentagon, NATO and the European Union has created the worst crisis in relations with Russia since the Cold War ended nearly three decades ago. There are real fears that the mounting crisis could escalate into an all-out war involving nuclear powers.

Zijlstra’s offense therefore is not merely a “mistaken” lie. His flagrant public distortion has contributed directly to the grave deterioration in geopolitical relations. One could even argue such reprehensible remarks amount to incitement of war, which is a cardinal crime under Nuremberg legal principles.

Lamentably, the mendacious senior Dutch politician is not an isolated case. Recall how former Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski was caught out telling similar defamatory lies about Russia in 2014.

Sikorski, who has been an ardent supporter of NATO force build-up against Russia, reportedly claimed that he personally overheard Vladimir Putin in 2008 plotting to annex Ukrainian territory in a covert plot. Sikorski claimed that he heard Putin propositioning then Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk with a carve-up deal of Ukraine between Poland and Russia.

Sikorski was obliged to swiftly retract the claims published in US media, and awkwardly admitting that he was not present at the alleged meeting with Putin, and that his quoted remarks were meant as a “surreal joke”.

But, again, this is no joke or mistake. It is deadly serious disinformation by senior government officials, which is recklessly inciting war tensions with Russia. Sikorski is prominently associated with pro-NATO think-tanks like the hawkish American Enterprise Institute. He is married to Anne Applebaum who makes a living from writing anti-Russian screeds for news outlets like the Washington Post.

Zijlstra and Sikorski join the ranks of Russophobia regurgitated by other European foreign ministers like Britain’s Boris Johnson who issued the outlandish claim earlier this year that Russia is “targeting” British infrastructure; or French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian who has impugned Russia for chemical weapons use in Syria – only for the French President Emmanuel Macron to admit this week that his government has actually no evidence about the use of such weapons in Syria.

Macron has made his own contribution to Russophobia by leveling unsubstantiated allegations that his presidential election campaign last year was “hacked” by Kremlin agents. He has since banned Russian news media from attending his press conferences.

All these senior government figures are irresponsibly fueling a climate of demonization against Russia which is compounding other unhinged claims made by politicians in Washington and the Baltic states. Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, for example, recently claimed that Russian Iskander missiles based on Russian sovereign territory of Kaliningrad were targeting half of Europe, an alarmist claim which has been amplified by US secretary of defense James Mattis in the Pentagon’s recent Nuclear Posture Review.

The climate of hysteria – based on false, fevered official claims – is militating against normal political and diplomatic relations, which is, in turn, exacerbating the war in Ukraine and leading to wider war tensions with Russia across Europe.

A good question is why the ousted Dutch minister decided to own up this week to his lies about Putin.

The answer may be related to the bigger credibility crisis of the Dutch government and its NATO allies with regard to the whole Russophobia propaganda war.

Next month, the Netherlands is to hold a national referendum on extending powers of Dutch state intelligence to monitor public electronic communications. To convince the Dutch public to vote for more snooping powers, the authorities are relying on the hackneyed claims about Russian “meddling” and “interference”.

It seems significant that Dutch media reported last month that the country’s secret services allegedly “hacked into” Russian state hackers who were allegedly penetrating the American Democratic party’s databases during the US presidential elections back in 2015-2016. As usual, no evidence was provided to support the claims. We know from other credible reports that the Democratic party was quite possibly not hacked at all, but rather was leaked from inside by a Democrat staffer. So the Dutch intel story smearing Russia is highly dubious.

But it seems that the purported “good deed” performed by the Dutch intelligence services was pitched in the media as a way to ingratiate bona fides with the Netherlands public. The aim being to dispose the public toward voting in the referendum next month to give the Dutch state more intrusive powers over citizens to “protect” them from “nefarious Russians”.

Now, if the Dutch minister had held on to his office any longer there was a risk that his lies may have become public embarrassingly close to the March referendum, which could have resulted in the public rejecting the authorities’ desire for more snooping powers.

Perhaps then the decision was taken in high office for the minister to take the fall now in order to get rid sooner of an embarrassing story concerning his lies over Russia.

Whatever the explanation about the timing, the admission of Dutch government lying about Russian aggression in Europe is nevertheless an illuminating and appalling insight into how Russophobia and war is being fomented by the US and its European NATO allies.

Abominably, European government officials are willing to risk plunging millions of citizens into a war with Russia based on lies and warped, self-serving prejudices.

As the diplomatic squabble between Turkey and the Netherlands continues to fester, concerns are raised about whether — and to what extent — the tensions will harm bilateral relations, particularly in economics where the two countries have robust trade and investment connections.

For Turkey, the Netherlands offers a large and expanding export market. Trade between the two countries has roots in the 17th century when the Ottomans exported wool and cotton (later tobacco as well) to the Netherlands and imported clothes and linen in return. Commerce between the two countries remained strong into modern times; in 2016 the bilateral trade volume was US$6.6 billion.

The Netherlands is the 10th largest export destination for Turkey, and perhaps more importantly from the Turkish perspective, it is also a fast-growing market. Last year Turkish exports to the Dutch market amounted to $3.6 billion, against $3 billion in imports. And while the annual increase in imports was 3.4%, exports expanded much faster, at 13.8%. For the Turkish economy, which is suffering an acute current-account deficit, the increasing trade surplus with the Dutch is a precious commodity.

Turkey is home to 2,700 companies funded by Dutch capital. This figure includes those transnational companies registered in the Netherlands for legal and tax-related purposes. This sizeable Dutch involvement in the Turkish economy benefits both sides. For Dutch multinationals such as Unilever, ING Bank, Philips, Perfetti, Royal Dutch Shell and Philip Morris, Turkey is not only a favorable production base but also a lucrative market and a trading and logistics hub for access to the Middle East and North Africa, Balkans, Caucasus and Central Asia. More Dutch investment is set to come to Turkey, such as the recent purchase by Vitol Group of the Turkey-based fuel products distribution company Petrolofisi for $1.47 billion. Investment needs a stable political climate, and the diplomatic spat between Turkey and the Netherlands doesn’t help.

It is also worth nothing that while the amount of Turkish investment in the Netherlands is considerably smaller, there are several large Turkish firms that have set up subsidiaries enabling access to the larger EU market.

For the past week, Dutch pundits have been commenting that Turkey is more dependent on the Netherlands, so possible sanctions imposed by Ankara would only mean “shooting themselves in the foot.” Turkish authorities have imposed political sanctions over the Dutch government’s refusal to allow Turkish ministers to meet with members of the Turkish diaspora there, including halting high-level political discussions between the two countries and the closing of Turkish airspace to Dutch diplomats. But Ankara has carefully ruled out economic sanctions. Turkey’s economics minister, Nihat Zeybekçi said: “If we take these steps, both sides would be hurt.” Ömer Çelik, minister of EU affairs said the Dutch business community, which is “investing in Turkey, doing commerce and generating employment” is “certainly not a part of this crisis,” and “Dutch investment in Turkey is by no means under risk”.

Economic sanctions between Turkey and the Netherlands don’t seem likely at the moment, but longer-term threats remain. First, even if no sanctions are imposed, the significant loss of confidence caused by recent events will take a toll on bilateral economic relations for some time.

Second, the sizeable Turkish diaspora in the Netherlands, as well as the relatively smaller Dutch community living in Turkey, will face uncertainty, and this will have an economic impact too. An estimated 400,000 Turks live in the Netherlands, according to a diaspora association, and there are 25,000 businesses with Turkish owners, most of them smaller enterprises. Many of these companies are doing business with Turkey, and they are negatively affected by the current dispute between the two governments. So is the much smaller Dutch community in Turkey. But it is equally active in the economy, especially in the tourism sector. Declining tourist numbers will hurt Turkish and Dutch operators alike, and it might take some time to recover to pre-crisis levels of business.

Third, the diplomatic spat is likely to have a negative effect on efforts to revise the Turkish-EU Customs Union. The union, which took effect in 1996, is outdated, failing to catch up with the requirements of today’s global trade. Ankara and Brussels had begun talks to improve the deal, but the current circumstance is likely to overshadow attempts based on economic rationality.

This week Turkish football team Beşiktaş played the Greek side Olympiakos in the European cup. The Turks won 4-1 helped by two goals from Ryan Babel, the Amsterdam-born Dutch striker. Turkey and the Netherlands have links that are closer than many realize, and it will benefit both to keep them intact.

atimes.com

Is it really so if you get to the bottom of it?

The future of Europe remains to be at stake, including the UK, Germany and France. Will the concept of United Europe exist in one form or another? Will Scotland stay in the United Kingdom? Will Germany and France distance themselves from the United States? Some of these questions could be answered sooner than expected.

This year may become a turning point with the votes to take place in Germany, France and, probably, Italy. In a month, France will have a new president and Germans will have a new parliament elected in September. The example of the Netherlands may have little influence on the votes.

Let’s look at the facts. Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom made a substantial gain. It won 20 seats (of 150) according to the preliminary results, which is 5 seats more than in the previous election in 2012. The two governing parties got half as many seats as at the last election in 2012. The prime minister’s Party for Freedom and Democracy lost 8 seats and its coalition partner, the Labor Party (PvdA), lost 29 – an impressive defeat!

Actually, it’s a significant loss for those who ruled the country and a big gain (not big enough but still) for the right wing Eurosceptics led by Wilders. Many key points of the Party for Freedom’s program were «borrowed» by PM Mark Rutte’s People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) and Christian Democrats. The popularity was raised due to the tough stance taken in the conflict with Turkey – something Wilders had been calling for. Actually, Prime Minister Rutte was riding to power on a wave of anti-migrant, anti-Islam sentiments.

The Sybrand Buma's Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) is all but certain to participate in the next governing coalition with 19 seats won (12, 5%) – an increase of 6 seats. The party has gained ground by adopting a tough line similar to Rutte's on immigration, adding a focus on communal values and a touch of nationalism to tap voter concerns about Dutch identity. It has proposed introducing singing the national anthem in schools and mandatory community service. According to Sybrand Buma, Her Majesty Queen Máxima should renounce her Argentine citizenship (she was born in Buenos Aires). The CDA presence in government would ensure a conservative stamp on any coalition.

Media rarely mention the fact that another right wing anti-EU and anti-migrants party – the Forum for Democracy – took part in its first election to win 2 seats (1,8%) – not a bad start for a party created only in September 2016. It calls for restoring ties with Russia among other things.

The main result is opposite to what it appears to be at first glance. The outcome of the Dutch election conforms to the current trend – Euroscepticism is on the rise across Europe. The winning forces are often called populist but in reality they are anti-establishment movements which emerged as a result of voters being fed up with left or right windbags. People want them gone and the entire political landscape in Europe fundamentally changed.

Socialists have few chances in France and the chances of Angela Merkel becoming Chancellor again are dim enough. Martin Schultz is a serious rival to reckon with.

Newly founded or old anti-establishment parties continue to make gains. Perhaps not today, but they will come to power. In a couple of months Marine Le Pen may become President of France to radically reform European politics. Even if she loses, Le Pen will remain the most popular politician in the country who is able to win the presidential election in 2022. Artificial creations designed by experts for a particular task, like Emmanuel Macron, for instance, can’t stop it. Nothing can prevent the new wave of politicians from coming to power.

The Dutch election has not changed anything. It has failed to turn the tide. The EU continues to fall apart. The European integration will never be the same. More and more EU members challenge the existing pattern.

The March 16 vote in the Netherlands is far from being a harbinger of Eurosceptics’ movements fading away. Quite to the contrary, it has confirmed the trend – the Old Continent is going through changes. We’ll never have the EU we once knew. The process may temporarily slow down but it’s too late to stop it.

Without any skepticism, the West’s mainstream media is embracing the new allegations implicating Russia in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, but there are key evidentiary and logical gaps including the presumed route followed by the supposed Buk missile convoy.

According to the Joint Investigation Team (JIT), which while “led” by the Dutch was guided by the Ukrainian SBU intelligence service, the Russians delivered the Buk anti-missile battery at a border crossing about 30 miles southeast of Luhansk on the night of July 16-17, 2014. From that point, there would have been an easy and logical route to the JIT’s claimed firing site.

The convoy would have followed one of two roads west to H21 and then taken H21 southwest to the area around Snizhne before getting onto a back road to Pervomaiskyi where the JIT says the launch occurred.

Instead, according to the JIT account, the convoy took a strange and circuitous route, skirting south of Luhansk to Yenakiieve, a town that sits along highway E50, which incidentally offered another easy route south to Snizhne. Instead of going that way, according to the JIT, the convoy proceeded southwest to the city of Donetsk, stopping there before turning east on H21 passing through a number of towns on the way to Snizhne.

Not only does this route make no sense, especially given the extreme sensitivity of the Russians providing a powerful anti-aircraft missile battery to the rebels, an operation that would call for the utmost secrecy and care, but the eventual positioning of the Buk system in the remote town of Pervomaiskyi makes little military sense.

According to the JIT’s video narrative, the presumed purpose of the Russians taking such a huge risk of supplying a Buk system was to protect rebel troops from Ukrainian military aircraft firing from heights beyond the range of shoulder-fired MANPADs.

So why would the Russians position the Buk battery in the south far from the frontlines of the heaviest fighting which was occurring in the north and then have the crew shoot down a commercial airliner when, according to the JIT, there were no military aircraft in the area?

To accept the JIT’s narrative, you have to swallow a large dose of credulity, plus assume that the Russians are extremely incompetent, so incompetent that they would send a highly secret operation on a wild ride across the eastern Ukrainian countryside, ignoring easy routes to the target location (only about 70 miles from the Russian border) in favor of a route more than twice as long (about 150 miles) while passing through heavily populated areas where the convoy could be easily photographed.

Then, the Russians (or their rebel allies) would have placed the Buk system in a spot with marginal if any military value, misidentify a commercial airliner as some kind of military aircraft, and – with a sudden burst of efficiency and competence – shoot it down.

The JIT’s claim about the exfiltration of the remaining Buks has similar problems of logic. The JIT asserts that rather than take the most direct (and most discreet) route back to Russia by heading east, the missile battery supposedly traveled north to Luhansk before crossing back into Russia, a longer trip through more populous areas, another head-shaker.

Russian Fears

After the MH-17 shoot-down, which killed 298 people, I’m told the Russian government did fear that somehow one of its field operatives might have been responsible and conducted an intensive investigation, including an inventory of its equipment, concluding that all its Buk missiles were accounted for.

I was also told that at least some CIA analysts shared the doubts about Russia’s guilt and came to believe that the MH-17 shoot-down was the work of a rogue and out-of-control Ukrainian team with the possible hope that the airliner was a Russian government plane returning President Vladimir Putin from South America.

Another fallacy of the JIT’s report is to assume that in July 2014 there were fixed lines of control between the Ukrainian government and the eastern Ukrainian rebels, something like the trenches of World War I. Indeed, the fluidity of the battle lines – and Ukraine’s ability to penetrate deep into rebel “territory” – was underscored by one of the SBU’s telephone intercepts published by the JIT on Wednesday.

According to the JIT, the conversation revealed a Ukrainian military convoy passing through the town of Sabivka, which is about five miles west of Luhansk, and moving toward an airport, possibly Luhansk’s airport south of the city. If that JIT account is correct, it shows that armed Ukrainian convoys could move almost at will across much of rebel “territory.”

And that would suggest that the assumption that the Buk missile must have been fired by Russians or Russian rebels because the firing location was inside rebel “territory” is suspect. According to Dutch intelligence  (which really means NATO intelligence), the Ukrainians had several high-powered anti-aircraft missile systems in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, the day MH-17 was shot down.

The JIT report makes no effort to explain where those Ukrainian Buks were positioned, presumably because Ukraine was part of the JIT investigation and thus had the right to veto the release of any information. While steering the Dutch, Australians and others toward blaming the Russians, Ukraine’s SBU was never going to allow evidence that would put the spotlight on Ukraine.

In addition, by issuing the report in video form, the JIT made it difficult for the public to focus on the logical inconsistencies in the findings, such as the alleged convoy route. Further, complicating the process of evaluation, JIT enhanced its presentation by mixing in real-looking computer graphics with images found on social media.

[For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Troubling Gaps in New MH-17 Report.”]

consortiumnews