Wednesday, July 30, 2014

West's strategy: ignore Gaza, focus on Russia

Western governments have chosen to turn a blind eye towards the horrific killings in Gaza, apart from making anodyne statements that equate Israel's brutal measures with rockets fired ineffectually by Hamas. Instead, they have ratcheted up tensions in Ukraine, aimed clearly at pushing Russia on the defensive through harsher sanctions.

The US and western nations claim that they know it was a Russian missile supplied to pro-Russian separatists that brought down MH-17. Even if true, it is hard to prove that it was a deliberate act of killing. At worst, the separatists would have judged wrongly. The mistake would be no different from the downing of an Iranian civilian airplane by an American warship in Iranian airspace over Iranian territorial waters and in the course of the normal flight of the airplane. That too was a mistake: the Americans mistook the place for a military craft. The Americans refused to apologise and eventually settled for compensation of $62 mn.

In the case of MH-17, the facts have yet to be established clearly. What we have so far is pure speculation from the western propaganda machine. Atimes brilliant columnist Pepe Escobar has some hard-hitting things to say about this and he warns us about what to expect when the black boxes are decoded by the Brits:

Based on the wealth of info now in the open, the top probability of what caused the MH17 tragedy was an R-60M air-to-air missile shot from a Ukrainian Su-25 - and not a BUK (there's also the possibility of a double down; first an R-60M and then a BUK). The R-60M is very fast, with an ideal engagement distance of up to five kilometers. That's how far the Su-25 detected by the Russians (they showed the graphics) was from MH17.

SBU - Ukrainian intel - for its part confiscated the recordings of Kiev control tower talking to MH17. That would certainly explain why MH17 was overflying a war zone (Malaysian Airlines revealed they were forced to). Hefty bets can be made the recordings are now being "doctored".

Then there are the black boxes, which will not de decoded by the Malaysians or by the Dutch, but by the Brits - acting under Washington's orders. As The Saker blogger summed up the view of top Russian specialists, "the Brits will now let the NSA falsify the data and that falsification will be coordinated with the SBU in Kiev which will eventually release the recordings who will fully 'confirm' the 'authenticity' of the NSA-doctored recordings from the UK." To make it more palatable, and erase suspicions about Anglo-American foul play, the Dutch will announce it. Everyone should be forewarned.
Take a look also at a piece by M K Bhadrakumar on how the West is moving resolutely forward to box in Russia. The objective, he argues, is not containment of Russia alone but sustaining US dominance of the world order:
The rest of the world understands perfectly well what the new Cold War is all about. Even the Europeans aren’t duffers, they too comprehend what is going on, as their great reluctance to isolate Russia testified all these weeks and months. 
Most certainly, there is no ideology involved here. It is not a war on socialism or on terrorism, nor is it a war about Ukraine or Russia intrinsically. In plain terms, the new Cold War is about the perpetuation of the US’ global dominance. 
Without the Bretton Woods system, without NATO, without nuclear superiority over Russia, the US faces the prospect of becoming a vastly diminished power over time. Without the trans-Atlantic leadership, it gets reduced to what it used to be before World War I one hundred years ago — an influential regional power in the Western Hemisphere.
In the meantime, hell will continue to be unleashed in Gaza.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well, the hypothesis cannot be ruled out. First it was Iraq, then Gaza and now Russia - the "Power of Politics" continues... will these intensify? General hunch is Yes; its not here to stop; if at all, it may go in abeyance.

The international treaties not getting concluded or renewed, UN gradually becoming a spectator, peace talks short living, nuclear technology getting wide-spread, urge to re-affirm one's dominance over others, terrorism continuing to play role of 'bad guy', weakening world economies exacerbating the want for control over natural resources etc - Are these cues of next cold war and then world war, when viewed from horizon of 2-3 decades - can this extrapolation or exaggeration be ruled out? Worth giving a bet - but the times does not seem to be good.