What Really Happened to MH17? An Open Source Investigation
by James Corbett
corbettreport.com
July 20, 2014
This post is intended as a round-up of available information on MH17 from various sources around the web. Corbett Report members are encouraged to debate and discuss the situation in the commments thread below, ask questions, suggest links, and otherwise contribute to this investigation. The article will be updated with information as the investigation continues. [Not a Corbett Report member? Sign up today.]
GENERAL INFORMATION ON MH17:
“A Boeing 777-200 passenger plane, operating Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, crashed in the Ukraine, east of Donetsk. All 298 on board were killed. Flight MH17 departed the gate at Amsterdam-Schiphol Airport, the Netherlands at 12:14 hours local time, bound for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It was airborne at 12:30 (10:30 UTC) from runway 36C and reached a cruising altitude of FL310 at 12:53 (10:53 UTC). Ninety minutes into the flight, at 12:01 UTC and just prior to entering Ukrainian airspace, the flight climbed to FL330. This altitude was maintained until last contact by ADS-B receivers of flight tracking websites, about 13:21 UTC.
“At the point of last contact it was flying 1000 feet above airspace that had been restricted as a result of ongoing fighting in the area. Malaysia Airlines reported that MH17 filed a flight plan requesting FL350 throughout Ukrainian airspace. However, the flight was instructed by Ukrainian air traffic control to fly at FL330.”
FLIGHT PATH:
via ZeroHedge:
Perhaps the best visualization of what the issue is, comes from Vagelis Karmiros who has collated all the recent MH-17 flight paths as tracked by Flightaware and shows that while all ten most recent paths pass safely well south of the Donetsk region, and cross the zone above the Sea of Azov, it was only today’s tragic flight that passed straight overhead Donetsk.
via New York Times:
A survey of flights to Asia from Europe in the last week found that some airlines had been flying over eastern Ukraine and some had been avoiding the area. Source: Flight path data from flightradar24.com
RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CRASH:
Ukraine’s Position
ITAR-TASS reported in June that Donetsk defense forces seized BUK missile defence systems from an army unit operating in the region, a point repeated and echoed by NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe General Philip Breedlove in a Pentagon press briefing on June 30. However, this was directly contradicted on July 18th by Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Vitaly Yarema, who told Ukrainian Pravda that militias do not have access to BUK delivery systems or S-300s.
On July 19, Ukrainian intelligence posted what they claim to be intercepted communications showing Russian responsibility for the downing of MH17 along with an English transcript. Numerous alternative media sources claim that the creation timestamp on the video indicates it was created before the crash took place.
Ukraine also claims that a post appeared on the social media account of rebel commander Igor Strelkov exactly 35 minutes after the crash appearing to take credit for the downing. Subsequent reporting, however, pointed out that the post was ambiguously worded and the social media account in question may not be run by Strelkov at all.
The Ukraine security service also published a video on July 18th purporting to show the actual BUK missile launcher used to bring down the plane being shuttled back across the border from Ukraine to Russia. Despite the fact that there is no confirmation from any source when, where or how this video was taken, or whether it in fact shows a BUK system on a Russian transport vehicle, it has been uncritically reported on in much of the western press.
Alternative Positions
In a statement issued late in the day on July 17th, Russian President Putin said: “I want to note that this tragedy would not have happened if there were peace on this land, if the military actions had not been renewed in southeast Ukraine. And, certainly, the state over whose territory this occurred bears responsibility for this awful tragedy.”
A report originally posted to RT.com shortly after the downing suggested that the real target of the missile might have been President Putin’s plane, which was said to have been scheduled to fly over the exact same airspace as MH17 less than an hour after it was shot down. This claim has since been retracted and RT has noted that Putin has been avoiding Ukrainian airspace altogether since the recent coup took place in Kiev.
According to a report circulating widely in the alternative media, a Spanish air traffic controller working in the Ukraine on the 17th tweeted a series of messages indicating that the Ukrainian military shot down the flight and that “Kiev authorities” and “foreigners” subsequently took over the civilian air traffic control center overseeing the disputed airspace in an apparent cover-up. The twitter account (@spainbuca) of the alleged air traffic controller, “Carlos,” was then reportedly removed. [UPDATE: RT has conducted interviews with Carlos, who has been deported from Ukraine.]
Some researchers suggest that the timing of the disaster, coming as it does right after Putin heralded the beginning of the long-awaited BRICS Development Bank is more than coincidental. This theory posits that the crash was staged by the US/EU/NATO or other powers as part of a proxy war taking place in the “new cold war” between Russia (one of the key players in an organization that is seen as a key rival to the so-called “Washington Consensus” institutions, the IMF and the World Bank) and the US.
Some have suggested that the takedown of MH17 was also related to the six passengers on board who were heading to an AIDS conference in Melbourne hosted by the International AIDS society. The theory holds that the researchers were going to question the origins of AIDS and were taken out in a similar manner to Dr. Jonathan Mann.
Yet others point to the numerology of MH17, noting “Flight MH17, a Boeing 777, first flew on 7-17-97 and crashed 17 years later, on 7-17-14.” It has also been linked to a bizarre video of a speech IMF President Christine Lagarde gave at the National Press Club in Washington on January 15, 2014 in which she repeatedly told the audience to pay attention to the “magic number 7″ and made numerological connections to WWI and other events.
VIDEO — Chossudovsky: Russia, Ukraine, and the New World Order
Global Research TV
May 26, 2014
Press TV has conducted an interview with Michel Chossudovsky with the Center for Research on Globalization, about a statement by Vladimir Putin that the US-led world order has failed.
The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.
Press TV: What do you think about what Vladimir Putin has said? Is that a sign that the US has now not reached its goals on a variety of issues and topics around the world and therefore making the Russian president come out with the statement?
Chossudovsky: Of course this statement by the Russian President is a very timely statement because it is made prior to the holding of elections in Ukraine. But I think what we should understand is that the United States and its NATO allies are involved in acts of destabilization simultaneously in several regions of the world.
The strategy is similar. It consists in covert support to extremist groups. In some cases, it’s al-Qaeda as in Syria, in Nigeria it’s Boko Haram which is also … affiliated to al-Qaeda and known to have, to be supported by Western intelligence.
In Ukraine there is support which goes back in fact to the late 40s under the Truman administration to the neo-Nazi groups and paramilitary which are followers of Stepan Bandera and quite deliberately they are self-proclaimed Nazis and they integrate the government.
Then, the question we have to ask ourselves is it possible under those circumstances with an illegal government which came to power in a coup, in a violent coup, is it possible to organize elections when in fact the east and southeast of the country have in fact refused and said no to the coup leaders in Kiev.
Press TV: Quickly if you can, Michel Chossudovsky, one of the things that came out of this conference that was held over in China was this alliance that the Chinese President came out, a security alliance which he mentioned China, Russia and Iran. Are we seeing therefore that this is going to decrease the power and dominance of the US and some as you mentioned NATO allies in the world?
Chossudovsky: This alliance between China, Russia and Iran is nothing new. It’s part of the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement. Although Iran is not a formal member but it is an observer. But the alliance between Russia and China has an old history to it. It certainly is a response to the US-NATO agenda of expansion. It also is characterized as we’ve seen recently in the signing of a major agreement to supply China with natural gas.
That I should say, you either, but it has been formalized, and I think it’s a message to the West that there are other alternatives as far as the new world order is concerned and that a unipolar world dominated by the United States militarily and economically is not necessarily an avenue for everybody in the world, and of course it is a derogation of sovereignty and this new world order is being as I mentioned is being imposed not only through military means and covert operations, but also through economic warfare namely financial destabilization, speculation, institutionalized speculation against national currencies, sanctions regime.
But even that response on the part of the West implies certain contradictions because we now see that one of major victims of the sanctions regime on the Russian Federation is in fact the European Union which relies heavily on the supply of Russian gas, also as part of agreements signed between the European Union and the Russian Federation.
For more articles by Michel Chossudovsky please visit Global Research at http://www.GlobalResearch.ca or click the following link:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/m…
VIDEO — ‘Euro austerity to fling Ukraine into new Maidan’ – investment expert
RT
May 19, 2014
The drama in Ukraine is far from the finale — as the country stands on the brink of civil war, Russia and the West are stirring up the rhetoric. But while politicians blame each other, money still plays a key role in worldly affairs. What will the Ukrainian crisis mean for the world’s finances? Won’t the US-proposed sanctions be the last straw for the already weakened world economy? To find this out, Sophie is joined by investment banker and financial advisor Jack Worthington on SophieCo.
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RT (Russia Today) is a global news network broadcasting from Moscow and Washington studios. RT is the first news channel to break the 1 billion YouTube views benchmark.
VIDEO — F$%k the EU! (The EU is F*#ked) – The Geneva Business Insider
Corbett Report
Apr 30, 2014
David L. Smith of the Geneva Business Insider joins us once again to discuss the latest in economics, finance, geopolitics and society. This month we tackle the ongoing Ukrainian crisis and how it will inevitably backfire on the EU and the US, the so-called European recovery, and the European immigration issue.
Transcript and MP3: http://www.corbettreport.com/?p=9145
Odessa Massacre Pushes Ukraine to the Edge
by Tony Cartalucci
New Eastern Outlook
May 3, 2014
Western headlines have attempted to spin into ambiguity the death of over 30 anti-fascist Ukrainian protesters cornered and burned to death in the Trade Unions House in the southern port city of Odessa. The arson was carried out by Neo-Nazi mobs loyal to the unelected regime now occupying Kiev.
Both the London Guardian and the BBC attempted in their coverage to make the perpetrators and circumstances as ambiguous as possible before revealing paragraphs down that pro-regime mobs had indeed torched the building. And even still, the Western press has attempted to omit the presence of Right Sector, the militant wing of the current regime charged with carrying out political intimidation and violence against Kiev’s opponents.
Odessa, north of pro-Russian Crimea, and far west of where clashes are now taking place in eastern Ukraine, has also been a point of contention between Kiev and Ukrainians who refuse to recognize the unelected regime’s authority.
Right Sector, a Neo-Nazi militant group who spearheaded the so-called “Euromaidan” protests, has been visibly operating in Odessa in recent weeks. It’s primary role has been to attack and intimidate political opponents planning to run in upcoming elections. It was therefore already present an well established in Odessa ahead of the attack on the Trade Unions House resulting in dozens of deaths in a single day, and as part of a wider campaign to put down multiplying unrest erupting across the country.
Right Sector can be identified by its members openly wearing Nazi insignia, as well as carrying crimson and black banners. Mobs supporting the Svoboda party are also present among recent clashes, wearing yellow armbands with the Nazi wolfangel symbol upon them.
For NATO – War or Nothing?
The clashes in Odessa in the south and Slavyansk in the east, appear to some to be part of an escalating conflict meant to lure neighboring Russia into a direct conflict with the NATO-backed regime in Kiev. While this is possible, a repeat of the 2008 Georgia-South Ossetia War would most likely take place, with superior Russian forces quickly overwhelming Ukrainian troops and leaving Kiev vulnerable to inevitable regime change.
Immensely unpopular and wholly illegitimate, the regime in Kiev stands little chance in any upcoming election. It is also faced with the self-imposed economic ruination of Ukraine, after willfully accepting IMF conditions which include crippling austerity measures that will only further diminish the regime’s support and stability.
With a socioeconomically hobbled Ukraine still reeling from the loss of Crimea, the “Ukraine” the US and EU had invested in through their “Euromaidan” putsch, no longer exists. With anti-fascist, pro-Russian sentiment running high across what remains of Ukraine (and around the world), and an unpopular regime teetering precariously in Kiev, the West appears instead, intent on burning the country rather than leave it a stable and beneficial neighbor for Russia.
World Affairs Journal has recently lamented in an article titled, “Beyond Crimea: What Vladimir Putin Really Wants,” that:
Ukraine is lost. At least lost as many of us had once imagined it—as a potential member of the European Union and, perhaps one day, of NATO.
This sentiment has been repeated across NATO’s corporate-funded think-tank, the Atlantic Council which recently hosted its “Europe Whole and Free” forum – where the expansion of both the European Union and NATO were the focus. The disruption of this expansion, and perhaps even the threat of its reversal appears to weigh foremost on the minds of Western policy makers.
Creating a disaster along Russia’s borders in Ukraine, while attempting to make progress elsewhere, and thus alleviating itself from the promises it made the regime in Kiev upon its accession to power to “rebuild” Ukraine’s troubled economy, appears to be the current agenda.
Responsibility to Protect?
The United States had used the “responsibility to protect” doctrine as cover for regime change in Libya, and attempted regime change in Syria. All the while it was fabricating atrocities to sway public opinion, it was in reality fueling sectarian extremists who were in reality carrying out the crimes against humanity the West was accusing Libya and Syria of perpetrating in fiction. This formula has been spun around in Ukraine.
Now the West is expending resources to cover up atrocities to prevent the “responsibility to protect” from being invoked against them. The massacre in Odessa would have been marked as a turning point by the West for military intervention had it not been their own proxies who carried it out. Instead, the US has claimed, according to the BBC, that ongoing violence carried out by the regime in Kiev is “proportionate and reasonable.”
With the West not only covering up the atrocities being carried out by the regime in Kiev, but in fact aiding and abetting them, the violence will only escalate further. Beyond Odessa, helicopter gunships, armored columns, and special forces have been sent by Kiev into eastern Ukraine and are attempting to overrun and occupy towns and cities that refuse to recognize the unelected regime. This includes the city of Slavyansk where deaths have been reported on both sides and military aircraft have been shot down.
Ukraine is being pushed to the edge of a much larger and destructive conflict that if started, may be difficult to stop. If the West commits to a proxy war and has been able to mobilize enough militants to carry it out, it can leave Ukraine a destabilized failed state Russia may spend years managing. Russia’s attempts to deescalate the conflict have been met only by belligerence from the West. Its patience, and the patience of pro-Russian factions in Ukraine may be the only factor that helps push Ukraine back from that edge.
Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
VIDEO — Lavrov: Russia, US, EU, Ukraine agree on de-escalation roadmap
RT
Apr 17, 2014
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov holds a press conference following a Geneva meeting of top diplomats from the EU, Russia, Ukraine and the United States, who held talks on the recent crisis in Ukraine. READ MORE: http://on.rt.com/nvzlcj
RT LIVE http://rt.com/on-air
[related:
VIDEO — Chossudovsky: Who Are the Mercenaries Being Used in Ukraine?
RT
Apr 10, 2014
Kiev has hired foreign mercenaries to take over law enforcement duties as well as most covert operations in eastern Ukraine, as the country struggles to regain control of its security apparatus, economist Michel Chossudovsky told RT.
RT: Activists in Kharkov are saying that policemen from other Ukrainian regions arrived in the city and they were the ones, who provoked the violence. What were they trying to achieve in your opinion?
Michel Chossudovsky: First of all the Kiev government has lost control of its security forces, its law enforcement in Eastern Ukraine. And this, they’ve realized several weeks back, because Ukraine’s interim government confirmed they were hiring a private military company, named Greystone Ltd, a company that was founded by (former) British SAS in the heyday, but actually they’re bringing in private mercenaries, which are now most probably integrating with the police forces, but they are also acting outside the realm of official law enforcement agencies.
And witnesses said that these people came in, they could have been agent provocateurs, I suspect they were, which also integrates the US, NATO-supported military company which is acting in Eastern Ukraine. At the same time there is also the role of the neo-conservative, neo-Nazis given the fact that we know that the two extreme right parties Svoboda and the Right Sector are in control of the committee for national security and defense, which plays a key role. And I would suspect that the government in Kiev is also divided between the ministry of interior on the one hand and the right wing extremists on the other.
RT: With protests swelling up in the south-east of the country, Kiev is threatening ‘a harsh response’. What does that mean do you think?
MC: First of all that government does not really control the shots. It is an instrument of the puppet masters namely the US, NATO, and to a lesser extent the EU. They obey orders and we have seen the position, they’ve taken with regard to the IMF reforms. They simply stated, we will accept whatever reforms proposed to us by the IMF. And essentially what they have accepted is the impoverishment of the entire population, from West to East, because that reform package is going to create a further process of impoverishment of a country which has already been impoverished in the course of the last 20 years. This reform package essentially destroys the livelihood of the Ukrainian population and the people in Eastern Ukraine are now protesting against this government which is committed to the impoverishment of the masses of people. And they actually have acknowledged that this is going to impoverish the population.
RT: The Russian foreign ministry said that the most troubling thing is that there are mercenaries from an American private security firm among them. What do you think about this?
MC: I’m going by a report that was published on March 25 by a Russian news agency. It was based on the statements made by the interim government to the effect that a US private military company, in fact it is not a US registered private military company, it is registered somewhere in the Caribbean, on an island. It is Greystone Ltd., and this particular company was hired with a view to essentially taking over law enforcement activities as well as most probably covert operations in eastern Ukraine. It is not in the interest of Russian government to see this process erupting in the form of a violent protest movement or a process that will ultimately destabilize eastern Ukraine. There is no evidence that the Russian government is anyway interfering with the unfolding events in eastern Ukraine. This is a spontaneous movement which is emanating from grassroots, which also has considerable support within the Ukrainian population of eastern Ukraine.
PN 