Now that all eyes are on Ukraine and the potential of a bigger war looms, there’s never been a more important time to understand what is at stake.

As WhoWhatWhy readers know, the real reasons surrounding a conflict are often buried under the headlines and rhetoric. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that, behind the scenes, oil and natural gas are driving a big piece of the U.S. response to Russian involvement in Ukraine.

If you want to understand where the rubber meets the geopolitical road in the Ukraine war, you need to learn about the 1,480-mile South Stream natural gas pipeline.

The pipeline is core to the larger battle being fought over Europe between Moscow and Washington. It may even have been a motivation behind Russia’s annexation of Crimea. And if there’s a crack in the unified front between the U.S. and Europe over Russia’s role in Ukraine, South Stream is it.

Why does South Stream matter? It’s a $21.6 billion project to connect Russia’s gas reserves—the world’s largest—to Europe’s markets.  Europe relies on Russia for about 30 percent of its natural gas.

Any delays in finishing the pipeline—scheduled for completion in 2018—can only help Russia’s competitors in the international energy business.  And one player gearing up to challenge Russia in the European energy market is the United States.

This year, the United States became the largest producer of natural gas and oil hydrocarbons in the world, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia. There’s solid evidence that the U.S. is seeking both commercial advantage and political influence by gaining a foothold in Europe’s oil and gas markets.

The evidence comes, in part, from the targets the Obama administration has chosen to punish for Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula. All of this raises the question of how much the confrontation in the Ukraine is about who gets to sell natural gas (and later oil) to one of the world’s biggest energy consumers: Europe.

PIPELINE POLITICS

South Stream owes much of its existence to the 2005-2010 Russia-Ukraine gas disputes, which left as many as 18 European countries cut off from Russian gas. Gazprom, Russia’s state-run energy company, proposed South Stream as a way to circumvent Ukraine and ensure an uninterrupted, diversified flow to Europe. It found a willing partner in the Italy’s state-controlled oil and gas company, Eni S.p.A., and seven other gas-hungry countries.

To truly understand how intrinsic South Stream is to Russian economic influence over Europe, one only has to look at some of the targets of U.S. sanctions against Russian or Russian-linked companies. Two of them were directly aimed at slowing down or stopping South Stream.

The first South Stream-related company the U.S. targeted was Stroytransgaz, which is building the Bulgarian section. Putin ally and billionaire Gennady Timchenko owns it and he’s already on the sanctions list. So Stroytransgaz had to stop construction or risk exposing other companies on the project to the sanctions.

The second entity in the sanctions crosshairs was a Crimean company called Chernomorneftgaz. After the Russian annexation, the Crimean parliament voted to take over the company, which belonged to the Ukrainian government. And guess what that company owned? The rights to the exclusive maritime economic zone in the Black Sea.

That’s important because Russia routed the pipeline on a longer path through the Black Sea that cut out Ukraine. It avoided the Crimean waters, going instead via Turkey’s.

EUROPEAN SPLIT

The European Union attacked South Stream through a non-binding resolution that called for a halt to its construction. EU member states don’t have to pay attention to the resolution, which was mostly designed to put public pressure on Russia.

That’s where split among countries in Europe became evident.

Several that will benefit from the pipeline have spoken out in support of construction or moved ahead with agreements to build it. Italy wants it to proceed, and Austria and Russia signed an agreement to construct a segment, in defiance of the EU’s position that the pipeline may violate anti-competitiveness rules. Germany’s Siemens will supply the instrumentation for the pipeline.

One country that’s trying to avoid getting trampled as the giants fight is Bulgaria. It still has close ties to Russia but is subject to pressure from the U.S.

Both have taken aim at its section of South Stream, which is where the pipeline will come ashore from Russia via the Black Sea. The European Union warned the Bulgarian government that its construction tender broke EU rules. The U.S. sanctioned the company that won the tender, Stroytransgaz.

Bulgaria is arguing to the EU that its position is legally sound, and that its economic stability is at risk without South Stream. Bulgaria has no other secure gas supply so “the national interest must be protected,” Economy and Energy Minister Dragomir Stoynev said.

In the meantime, Bulgaria is hard at work finding a way around the U.S. sanctions. The government may hand the construction job to a subsidiary of Gazprom that’s building the Serbian section. And here’s a neat trick: the Bulgarian government approved an $835 million loan from Gazprom to pay for it, secured by future revenue from the pipeline.

JUST BUSINESS, NEVER POLITICAL

According to Vladimir Putin, South Stream is just a business venture facing ordinary commercial setbacks that have nothing to do with Ukraine. Washington is interfering, Putin said after meeting with his Austrian counterpart in June, because the United States wants to supply the gas to Europe. “It is an ordinary competitive struggle. In the course of this competition, political tools are being used,” he said, referring to the U.S. sanctions.

Undoubtedly, the United States has a massive commercial interest in selling natural gas to Europe. Thanks to the abundant supply created by the domestic shale-gas boom, the U.S. may be able to export liquefied natural gas to European buyers in the near future. Already, Washington has licensed seven export facilities; about 30 more are awaiting approval. The first exports could start by the end of this year.

But since all the infrastructure to ship liquefied gas is not yet in place, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vu?i?, a South Stream proponent, has ridiculed the idea of U.S. gas exports to Europe in a year or two as “fairy tales.” Meanwhile, Putin has pointedly said that piped gas will always be cheaper than the liquid form, and Moscow has consistently claimed that Europe’s gas bill will rise if it chooses alternatives besides Russian natural gas.

However, there’s more than natural gas at play in Europe’s energy future. The Obama administration is negotiating a free trade agreement with Europe that could legalize American oilexports for the first time since 1975. This would bring U.S. exporters in direct competition with Russia, which sells 84 percent of its oil exports to Europe today.

At the moment the South Stream pipeline is projected to generate approximately $20 billion a year in income.  With that much money at stake, the politics behind the armed confrontation in eastern Ukraine takes on a new dimension: Is the shooting war there part of larger, longer-term conflict—a continuing battle between the United States and Russia for global energy dominance?

June 2014 has become the second consecutive record-setting month for heat, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Monday. The averge global temperature last month was 61.2°F (16.2°C), which is 0.2°F than 2010, the previously hottest June, and 1.3° degrees higher than the 20th century average. It is the 352nd hotter than average month in a row.

Derek Arndt, NOAA's climate monitoring chief, said unusually hot oceans — especially the Pacific and Indian oceans — were the driving force behind June's heat. 

"We are living in the steroid era of the climate system," Arndt said.

Heat records were broken on every continent with the exception of Antarctica. New Zealand, northern South America, Greenland, Central Africa and Southern Asia were especially hot regions. However, it was only the 33rd hottest June in the U.S.

Global temperature records go back to 1880. To date, the year is third hottest on record — behind 2010 and 1998 — but it could become the hottest year on record if an El Niño weather pattern develops.

The National Weather Service's  Climate Prediction Center said that there is a 70% chance El Niño will develop by the end of the summer, and an 80% chance that one will develop by the early winter. It's projecting that sea surface temperatures will be warmer than usual but its possible that  the effect will be only "weak to moderate."

The forecast strength of the El Niño was downgraded because Pacific Ocean temperatures near the International Date Line have not continued to rise since earlier this year when they were well above average. 

All 12 of the global monthly heat records have been set after 1997, more than half in the last decade. All the coldest months were before 1917.

Cliff Weathers is a senior editor at AlterNet, covering environmental and consumer issues. He is a former deputy editor at Consumer Reports. His work has also appeared in Salon, Car and Driver, Playboy, and Detroit Monthly among other publications. Follow him on Twitter @cliffweathers and on Facebook.

To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.

Albert Einstein is rumored to have said that one cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that led to it. Yet this is precisely what we are now trying to do with climate change policy.  The Obama administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, many environmental groups, and the oil and gas industry all tell us that the way to solve the problem created by fossil fuels is with more fossils fuels.  We can do this, they claim, by using more natural gas, which is touted as a “clean” fuel -- even a “green” fuel.

Like most misleading arguments, this one starts from a kernel of truth.

That truth is basic chemistry: when you burn natural gas, the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) produced is, other things being equal, much less than when you burn an equivalent amount of coal or oil. It can be as much as 50% less compared with coal, and 20% to 30% less compared with diesel fuel, gasoline, or home heating oil. When it comes to a greenhouse gas (GHG) heading for the atmosphere, that’s a substantial difference.  It means that if you replace oil or coal with gas without otherwise increasing your energy usage, you can significantly reduce your short-term carbon footprint.

Replacing coal gives you other benefits as well, such as reducing the sulfate pollution that causes acid rain, particulate emissions that cause lung disease, and mercury that causes brain damage.  And if less coal is mined, then occupational death and disease can be reduced in coal miners and the destruction caused by damaging forms of mining, including the removal, in some parts of the country, of entire mountains can be reduced or halted.

Those are significant benefits. In part for these reasons, the Obama administration has made natural gas development a centerpiece of its energy policy, and environmental groups, including the Environmental Defense Fund, have supported the increased use of gas. President Obama has gone as far as to endorse fracking -- the controversial method of extracting natural gas from low permeability shales -- on the grounds that the gas extracted can provide “a bridge” to a low carbon future and help fight climate change.

So if someone asks: "Is gas better than oil or coal?" the short answer seems to be yes.  And when it comes to complicated issues that have science at their core, often the short answer is the (basically) correct one.

As a historian of science who studies global warming, I’ve often stressed that anthropogenic climate change is a matter of basic physics: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, which means it traps heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. So if you put additional CO2 into that atmosphere, above and beyond what’s naturally there, you have to expect the planet to warm.  Basic physics.  

And guess what? We’ve added a substantial amount of CO2 to the atmosphere, and the planet has become hotter.  We can fuss about the details of natural variability, cloud feedbacks, ocean heat and CO2 uptake, El Niño cycles and the like, but the answer that you get from college-level physics -- more CO2 means a hotter planet -- has turned out to be correct.  The details may affect the timing and mode of climate warming, but they won’t stop it. 

In the case of gas, however, the short answer may not be the correct one.

 The often-touted decrease in greenhouse gas production applies when natural gas replaces other fuels -- particularly coal -- in electricity generation.  That’s important.  Electricity is about 40% of total U.S. energy use.  Traditionally, coal has been the dominant fuel used to generate electricity in this country and most of the world.  (And no one has any serious plan to live without electricity.)  Any measurable GHG reduction in the electricity sector is significant and gains achieved in that sector quickly add up.

But a good deal of the benefit of gas in electricity generation comes from the fact that it is used in modern combined-cycle gas turbine plants.  A combined-cycle plant is one in which waste heat is captured and redirected to drive a mechanical system that powers a generator that creates additional electricity. These plants can be nearly twice as efficient as conventional single-cycle plants.  In addition, if combined with cogeneration (the trapping of the last bits of heat for local home heating or other purposes), they can reach efficiencies of nearly 90%.  That means that nearly all the heat released by burning the fuel is captured and used -- an impressive accomplishment.

In theory, you could build a combined-cycle plant with coal (or other fuels), but it’s not often done. You can also increase coal efficiency by pulverizing it, and using a technique called “ultra super-critical black coal.” An expert report compiled by the Australian Council of Learned Societies in 2013 compared the efficiencies of a range of fuels, including conventional gas and shale gas, under a variety of conditions, and concluded that greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation using efficient forms of coal burning were not that much more than from gas.

What this means is that most of the benefit natural gas offers comes not from the gas itself, but from how it is burned, and this is mostly because gas plants tend to be new and use more efficient burning technologies.  The lesson, not surprisingly: if you burn a fuel using twenty-first century technology, you get a better result than with late nineteenth or twentieth century technology.  This is not to defend coal, but to provide an important reality check on the discussion now taking place in this country.  There is a real benefit to burning gas in America, but it’s less than often claimed, and much of that benefit comes from using modern techniques and new equipment. (If the coal industry weren’t so busy denying the reality of climate change, they might publicize this fact.)

It’s Not Just Electricity

Replacing coal with gas in electricity generation is still probably a good idea -- at least in the near term -- but gas isn’t just used to generate electricity.  It’s also used in transportation, to heat homes and make hot water, and in gas appliances like stoves, driers, and fireplaces.  Here the situation is seriously worrisome.

It’s extremely difficult to estimate GHG emissions in these sectors because many of the variables are poorly measured. One important emission source is gas leakage from distribution and storage systems, which is hard to measure because it happens in so many different ways in so many different places.  Such leaks are sometimes called “downstream emissions,” because they occur after the gas has been drilled.

Certainly, gas does leak, and the more we transport, distribute, and use it, the more opportunities there are for such leakage.  Studies have tried to estimate the total emissions associated with gas using well-to-burner or “life-cycle” analysis. Different studies of this sort tend to yield quite different results with a high margin for error, but many conclude that when natural gas replaces petroleum in transportation or heating oil in homes, the greenhouse gas benefits are slim to none. (And since almost no one in America heats their home with coal any more, there are no ancillary benefits of decreased coal.) One study by researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University concluded that while the probability of reducing GHG emissions at least somewhat by replacing coal with gas in electricity generation was 100%, the substitution of natural gas as a transportation fuel actually carries a 10%-35% risk of increasing emissions.

In the Northeast, the northern Midwest, and the Great Plains, many builders are touting the “energy efficiency” of new homes supplied with gas heat and hot water systems, but it’s not clear that these homes are achieving substantial GHG reductions. In New England, where wood is plentiful, many people would do better to use high efficiency wood stoves (or burn other forms of biomass).

How Gas (CH4) Heats the Atmosphere Much More than CO2 

Isn’t gas still better than oil for heating homes? Perhaps, but oil doesn’t leak into the atmosphere, which brings us to a crucial point: natural gas is methane (CH4), which is a greenhouse gas far more potent than CO2.

As a result, gas leaks are a cause for enormous concern, because any methane that reaches the atmosphere unburned contributes to global warming more than the same amount of CO2.  How much more?  This is a question that has caused considerable angst in the climate science community, because it depends on how you calculate it.  Scientists have developed the concept of “Global Warming Potential” (GWP) to try to answer this question.

The argument is complicated because while CH4 warms the planet far more than CO2, it stays in the atmosphere for much less time.   A typical molecule of CO2remains in the atmosphere about 10 times longer than a molecule of CH4.  In theirFifth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that the GWP for methane is 34 times that of CO2 over the span of 100 years.  However, when the time frame is changed to 20 years, the GWP increases to 86!

Most calculations of the impact of methane leakage use the 100-year time frame, which makes sense if you are worried about the cumulative impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the world as a whole, but not -- many scientists have started to argue -- if you are worried about currently unfolding impacts on the biosphere.  After all, many species may go extinct well before we reach that 100-year mark.  It also does not make sense if you are worried that we are quickly approaching irreversible tipping points in the climate system, including rapid ice loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

It gets worse.  CH4 and CO2 are not the only components of air pollution that can alter the climate.  Dust particles from pollution or volcanoes have the capacity to cool the climate.  As it happens, burning coal produces a lot of dust, leading some scientists to conclude that replacing coal with natural gas may actually increaseglobal warming.  If they are right, then not only is natural gas not a bridge to a clean energy future, it’s a bridge to potential disaster.

Fracking

A great deal of recent public and media attention has been focused not on gas itself, but on the mechanism increasingly used to extract it.  Hydraulic fracturing -- better known as fracking -- is a technique that uses high-pressure fluids to “fracture” and extract gas from low permeability rocks where it would otherwise be trapped.  The technique itself has been around for a long time, but in the last decade, combined with innovations in drilling technology and the high cost of petroleum, it has become a profitable way to produce energy.

The somewhat surprising result of several recent studies (including one by an expert panel from the Council of Canadian Academies on which I served) is that, from a climate-change perspective, fracking probably isn’t much worse than conventional gas extraction.  Life-cycle analyses of GHG emissions from the Marcellus and Bakken shales, for example, suggest that emissions are probably slightly but not significantly higher than from conventional gas drilling.  A good proportion of these emissions come from well leakage.

It turns out to be surprisingly hard to seal a well tightly. This is widely acknowledged even by industry representatives and shale gas advocates. They call it the problem of “well integrity.”  Wells may leak when they are being drilled, during production, and even when abandoned after production has ended.  The reason is primarily because the cement used to seal the well may shrink, crack, or simply fail to fill in all the gaps.

Interestingly, there’s little evidence that fracked wells leak more than conventional wells.  From a greenhouse gas perspective, the problem with fracking lies in the huge number of wells being drilled.  According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, there were 342,000 gas wells in the United States in 2000; by 2010, there were over 510,000, and nearly all of this increase was driven by shale-gas development -- that is, by fracking.  This represents a huge increase in the potential pathways for methane leakage directly into the atmosphere.  (It also represents a huge increase in potential sources of groundwater contamination, but that’s a subject for another post.)

There have been enormous disagreements among scientists and industry representatives over methane leakage rates, but experts calculate that leakage must be kept below 3% for gas to represent an improvement over coal in electricity generation, and below 1% for gas to improve over diesel and gasoline in transportation.  The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) currently estimates average leakage rates at 1.4%, but quite a few experts dispute that figure.  One study published in 2013, based on atmospheric measurements over gas fields in Utah, found leakage rates as high as 6%-11%.  The Environmental Defense Fund is currently sponsoring a large, collaborative project involving diverse industry, government, and academic scientists. One part of the study, measuring emissions over Colorado’s most active oil and gas drilling region, found methane emissions almost three times higher than the EPA’s 2012 numbers, corresponding to a well-leakage rate of 2.6%-5.6%.

Some of the differences in leakage estimates reflect differing measurement techniques, some may involve measurement error, and some probably reflect real differences in gas fields and industrial practices.  But the range of estimates indicates that the scientific jury is still out.  If, in the end, leakage rates prove to be higher than the EPA currently calculates, the promised benefits of gas begin to vaporize.  If leakage in storage and distribution is higher than currently estimated -- as one ongoing study by my own colleagues at Harvard suggests -- then the alleged benefits may evaporate entirely.

And we're not done yet.  There’s one more important pathway to consider when it comes to the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere: flaring.  In this practice, gas is burned off at the wellhead, sending carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It’s most commonly done in oil fields.  There, natural gas is not a desirable product but a hazardous byproduct that companies flare to avoid gas explosions. (If you fly over the Persian Gulf at night and notice numerous points of light below, those are wellhead fires).

In our report for the Council of Canadian Academies, our panel relied on industry data that suggested flaring rates in gas fields were extremely low, typically less than 2% and "in all probability" less than 0.1%. This would make sense if gas producers were efficient, since they want to sell gas, not flare it.  But recently the Wall Street Journal reported that state officials in North Dakota would be pressing for new regulations because flaring rates there are running around 30%.  In the month of April alone, $50 million dollars of natural gas was burned off, completely wasted.  The article was discussing shale oil wells, not shale gas ones, but it suggests that, when it comes to controlling flaring, there’s evidence the store is not being adequately minded. (At present, there are no federal regulations at all on flaring.)  As long as gas is cheap, the economic incentives to avoid waste are obviously insufficient.

Why Gas is Unlikely To Be a Bridge to Renewables

In a perfect world, people would use gas to replace more polluting coal or oil.  Unfortunately, the argument for gas rests on just that assumption: that the world works perfectly.  You don’t need to be a scientist, however, to know just how flawed that assumption is.  In fact, economists have long argued that a paradox of energy efficiency is this: if people save energy through efficiency and their energy bills start to fall, they may begin to use more energy in other ways.  So while their bills stay the same, usage may actually rise. (It’s like going to a sale and instead of saving money, buying more things because of the lower price tags.) In this way, consumers can actually end up using more energy overall and so emissions continue to rise.

To ensure that natural gas use doesn’t follow such a path, you’ve got to do something. You could introduce a law, like AB32, the California emissions control law, or put in place the pending EPA carbon rule just introduced by the Obama administration that mandates emissions reductions. Or you could introduce a hefty carbon tax to create a strong financial incentive for people to choose non-carbon based fuels.  But laws like AB32 are at present few and far between, the fossil fuel industry and its political and ideological allies are fighting the EPA carbon rule tooth and nail, and only a handful of political leaders are prepared to stand up in public and argue for a new tax.

Meanwhile, global fossil fuel production and consumption are rising.  A recent article by the business editor of the British Telegraph describes a frenzy of fossil fuel production that may be leading to a new financial bubble.  The huge increase in natural gas production is, in reality, helping to keep the price of such energy lower, discouraging efficiency and making it more difficult for renewables to compete.  And this raises the most worrisome issue of all.

Embedded in all positive claims for gas is an essential assumption: that it replaces other more polluting fuels.  But what if it also turns out to replace the panoply of alternative energies, including solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear?  In Canada, where shale-gas development is well advanced, only a small fraction of electricity is generated from coal; most comes from hydropower or nuclear power. In the U.S., competition from cheap gas was recently cited by the owners of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear power plant as a factor in their decision to close down.  And while the evidence may be somewhat anecdotal, various reports suggest that cheap gas has delayed or halted some renewable power projects. It stands to reason that if people believe natural gas is a “green” alternative, they will chose it over more expensive renewables.

Exports and Infrastructure: The Road to More Climate Change

We’ve all heard about the Keystone XL Pipeline through which Canada proposes to ship oil from the Alberta tar sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast, and from there to the rest of the world.  Few people, however, are aware that the U.S. has also become a net exporter of coal and is poised to become a gas exporter as well. Gas importshave fallen steadily since 2007, while exports have risen, and several U.S. gas companies are actively seeking federal and state approvals for the building of expanded gas export facilities.

Once coal leaves our borders, the argument for replacing it becomes moot because there’s no way for us to monitor how it’s used. If gas replaces coal in the U.S. and that coal is then exported and burned elsewhere, then there’s no greenhouse gas benefit at all.  Meanwhile, the negative effects of coal have been passed on to others.

All of the available scientific evidence suggests that greenhouse gas emissions must peak relatively soon and then fall dramatically over the next 50 years, if not sooner, if we are to avoid the most damaging and disruptive aspects of climate change. Yet we are building, or contemplating building, pipelines and export facilities that will contribute to increased fossil fuel use around the globe, ensuring further increases in emissions during the crucial period when they need to be dramatically decreasing.

We are also building new power plants that will be with us for a long time. (A typical power plant is expected to operate for at least 50 years.)  Once technologies are adopted and infrastructure built to support them, it becomes difficult and expensive to change course.  Historians of technology call this “technological momentum.”

Certain forms of infrastructure also effectively preclude others.  Once you have built a city, you can’t use the same land for agriculture.  Historians call this the “infrastructure trap.”  The aggressive development of natural gas, not to mention tar sands, and oil in the melting Arctic, threaten to trap us into a commitment to fossil fuels that may be impossible to escape before it is too late.  Animals are lured into traps by the promise of food.  Is the idea of short-term cuts in greenhouse gas emissions luring us into the trap of long-term failure?

The institution of rules or incentives in the U.S. and around the globe to ensure that gas actually replaces coal and that efficiency and renewables become our primary focus for energy development is at this point extremely unlikely.  Yet without them, increased natural gas development will simply increase the total amount of fossil fuel available in the world to burn, accelerating what is already beginning to look like a rush towards disaster.

Have U.S. Emissions Really Decreased?

Gas advocates say that while these worries might be legitimate, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions nonetheless fell between 2008 and 2012, partly because of the way gas is replacing coal in electricity generation.  This claim needs to be closely examined.  In fact, it seems as if the lion’s share of that decrease was simply the result of the near global economic meltdown of 2007-2008 and the Great Recession that followed.  When economic activity falls, energy use falls, so emissions fall, too.  Not surprisingly, preliminary data from 2013 suggest that emissions are on the rise again. Some of the rest of the 2008-2012 decline was due to tighter automobile fuel economy standards.

But how do we know what our emissions actually are? Most people would assume that we measure them, but they would be wrong.  Emissions are instead calculatedbased on energy data -- how much coal, oil, and gas was bought and sold in the U.S. that year -- multiplied by assumed rates of greenhouse gas production by those fuels. Here’s the rub: the gas calculation depends on the assumed leakage rate.  If we’ve been underestimating leakage, then we’ve underestimated the emissions. Though the converse is also true, few experts think that anyone is overestimating gas leakage rates. This is not to say that emissions didn’t fall in 2008-2012.  They almost certainly did, again because of the recession.  But the claim that there’s been a large decrease thanks to natural gas remains unproven.

So Why Are So Many People So Enthusiastic About Gas?

The reason for industry enthusiasm isn’t hard to discern: a lot of people are making a lot of money right now in shale gas.  Chalk up the enthusiasm of the Canadian government, politicians in gas-rich states like Texas, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania, and individuals who have made money leasing their properties for gas drilling to the same factor.  In those gas-rich states, employment, too, has benefited (even as the familiar social problems characteristic of boom towns have also increased).

On natural gas, the Obama administration seems to be looking for a compromise that Democrats and Republicans can support, and that does not invoke the wrath of the powerful and aggressive oil and gas industry or voters in states like Pennsylvania.  In the process, it’s surely tempting to demonize the coal industry, with its long history of abusive labor practices, its callous disregard for occupational health, and its catastrophic environmental record.  Since few of us ever see coal in our daily lives, a future without coal seems not only imaginable but overdue.

But when it comes to natural gas, what about the enthusiasm of some environmentalists? What about groups like the Environmental Defense Fund that have a long track record on climate change and no history of love for the oil and gas industry? What about scientists?

In such cases, I think the positive response to the exploitation of natural gas lies in a combination of wishful thinking and intimidation.

The fossil fuel industry and their allies have spent the past 20 years attacking environmentalists and climate scientists as extremists, alarmists, and hysterics.  Their publicists have portrayed them as hair-shirt wearing, socialist watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) who relish suffering, kill jobs, and want everyone to freeze in the dark.  Extremists do exist in the environmental movement as everywhere else, but they represent a tiny faction of the community of people concerned about climate change, and they are virtually nonexistent in the scientific community.  (Put it this way: if there is a hair-shirt wearing climate scientist, I have not met her.)

While the accusations may be false, that doesn’t mean they don’t affect our thinking.  Too often, environmentalists find ourselves trying to prove that we are not what they say we are: not irredeemable anti-business job-killers.  We bend over backwards to seek out acceptable compromises and work with business leaders, even to the point of finding a fossil fuel that we can love (or at least like).

And that leads to the wishful thinking.  We want to find solutions, or at least meaningful steps in the right direction, that command widespread support.  We want gas to be good.  (I know I did.)  Climate change is a gargantuan challenge, and it’s bloody hard to see how we are going to solve it and maintain our standard of living, much less extend that standard to billions more around the globe who want it and deserve it. If gas is good, or at least better than what we have now -- then that feels like a good thing.  If gas moved us substantially in the right direction, then that would be a good thing.

After all, can’t the leakage problem be fixed?  Our panel spent considerable time discussing this question. Industry representatives said, “Trust us, we’ve been drilling wells for 100 years.” But some of us wondered, “If they haven’t solved this problem in 100 years, why would they suddenly solve it now?”  A strong system of monitoring and compliance enforcement could help create incentives for industry to find a solution, but the odds of that developing any time soon seem as remote as the odds of a binding international treaty.

Sometimes you can fight fire with fire, but the evidence suggests that this isn’t one of those times.  Under current conditions, the increased availability and decreased price of natural gas are likely to lead to an increase in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.  Preliminary data from 2013 suggest that that is already occurring. Andglobal emissions are, of course, continuing to increase as well.

Insanity is sometimes defined as doing the same thing but expecting a different result. Psychologists define perseveration as repetitive behavior that interferes with learning. Whatever we call it, that seems to be what is happening. And whatever it is, it doesn’t make sense. Natural gas is not the bridge to clean energy; it’s the road to more climate change.

Naomi Oreskes is Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University and the co-author, with Erik M Conway, of The Collapse of Western Civilization (forthcoming, Columbia University Press and Les Liens qui Liberent).

AMC’s “The Walking Dead” is at the top of the cultural zeitgeist these days, one of the most popular television series on the air. In the show, a virus has ravaged the Earth, killing most of humanity, with the dead corpses rising to terrorize the few remaining living souls. While enormously entertaining, it is not a likely scenario for the end of the human race. Dick Cheney notwithstanding, zombies aren’t real. The end of humanity, however, could be. While it is difficult to envision a world without “us,” there are multiple scenarios staring at us, right here, right now, not far-fetched, that could wipe out all or most of humanity, leaving a wasteland for Mother Nature to reclaim. Here are some of the possible ways the reign of man- and womankind might end, no zombies needed.

1. Global Climate Change

Climate change is the Big Kahuna of all scenarios in which our presence on Earth is ended. Despite what the climate change deniers would have you believe, climate change is real. It is being caused by human beings, with a little help from lots of farting cows emitting methane, plus that giant well of methane lurking under the Arctic ice. As we burn carbon and increase our meat-eating ways, more and more greenhouse gases are building up in the atmosphere. It is pretty easy to see the end game of this scenario. Grab a telescope and look at Venus, a planet with a thick, heat-trapping atmosphere and a surface temperature high enough to, well, melt lead. A few decades ago, climate scientist James Hanson studied Venus, and saw some parallels with what was happening on Earth. What he saw alarmed him, and he testified in Congress in 1988, warning our government that unless we changed our carbon-burning ways, we were on a course for disaster. Hanson got through to a single senator: Al Gore.

Meanwhile, the carbon keeps burning, the CO2 keeps rising, resulting in a slowly rising average Earth temperature despite the occasional freezing cold winter. On average, Earth’s temperature has been rising steadily since the Industrial Revolution unleashed our carbon-burning frenzy, resulting in a slow-moving train wreck. The hottest years in recorded history have occurred in the last decade. Author and environmental activist Bill McKibben outlines the situation:

“The Arctic ice cap is melting [releasing more greenhouse gases], the great glacier above Greenland is thinning, both with disconcerting and unexpected speed. The oceans are distinctly more acid and their level is rising…The greatest storms on our planet, hurricanes and cyclones, have become more powerful… The great rain forest of the Amazon is drying on its margins… The great boreal forest of North America is dying in a matter of years… [This] new planet looks more or less like our own but clearly isn’t."

Many environmentalists think we have already passed the point of no return. Once we pass a certain threshold, Earth will continue warming even if we do manage to cut our CO2 emissions. What we do know is that, if we don’t begin reducing the amount of CO2 we are releasing into the air, and at least minimize the damage, a planet-wide disaster is assured. 

2. Loss of Biodiversity

If we don’t melt ourselves into extinction, another possible route to end times is partly a byproduct of climate change: loss of biodiversity. Human activity is responsible for massive extinctions of countless species on Planet Earth. Environment News Service reported as far back as 1999 that, “the current extinction rate is now approaching 1,000 times the background rate [what would be considered the normal rate of extinction] and may climb to 10,000 times the background rate during the next century, if present trends continue [resulting in] a loss that would easily equal those of past extinctions.” 

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a major environmental report released in 2005, reported 10-30% of mammals, birds and amphibians on the planet are in danger of extinction due to human activity, which includes deforestation (resulting in habitat destruction), CO2 emissions (resulting in acid rain), over-exploitation (such as overfishing the oceans), and invasive species introduction (like boa constrictors in the Florida Everglades). “This rapid extinction is therefore likely to precipitate collapses of ecosystems at a global scale,” said Jann Suurkula, chairman of Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Application of Science and Technology. “This is predicted to create large-scale agricultural problems, threatening food supplies to hundreds of millions of people. This ecological prediction does not take into consideration the effects of global warming which will further aggravate the situation.” 

Amphibians, such as frogs and salamanders, are considered “marker species," meaning they provide important clues to the health of the ecosystem. Right now, the frog population, as well as other amphibians, has been declining rapidly. In any ecosystem, when one species dies, it affects other species, which depended on the now-extinct species for food and perhaps other necessities. When there is a sudden mass extinction of many species, a chain reaction can cause catastrophic results. There have been five mass extinctions in the history of the Earth, and many scientists are saying we are in the midst of the sixth. "We are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change, and exposing organisms to intolerable evolutionary pressure,” states the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), in the biannual State of the Oceans Report. The next mass extinction may have already begun." What would that be like?  Well, in the worst one, 250 million years ago, 96 percent of ocean life and 70 percent of land life perished. What can we expect from mass extinction number six? We probably would prefer not to find out.

3. Bee Decline

Bees are dying—a lot of them, due to CCD, Colony Collapse Disorder. “One of every three bites of food eaten worldwide depends on pollinators, especially bees, for a successful harvest,”  says Elizabeth Grossman, author of Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products, Human Health. Plants depend on spreading their pollen to produce food. Bees are pollinators. No bees, no food (or at least much less). As many as 50% of the hives in the United States and Europe have collapsed in the past 10 years. The suspect in bee deaths is a class of chemicals called neonicotinoids, pesticides used on a massive scale in commercial farming. It is believed the chemicals impair the bees’ sense of direction, preventing them from returning to the hive.

With reduced pollen in the hive, fewer queen bees are produced, and eventually the colonies collapse. The European Commission has imposed a ban on these pesticides after the European Food Safety Agency concluded that they posed a “high acute risk” to honeybees. The United States, however, has declined to join Europe in banning neonicotinoids, citing other possible causes of CCD, including parasites. Meanwhile, as Nero fiddles, Rome is burning and bees are quickly disappearing. It is not hard to imagine a scenario where resulting acute food shortages bring on mass starvation, war and human extinction. 

4. Bat Decline

Bees aren’t the only pollinators dying off. Bats, too, are dropping like flies. As a result of deforestation, habitat destruction and hunting, combined with a fatal fungal disease spreading among the bat population called White Nose Syndrome, bats are disappearing at an alarming rate. Besides contributing to the pollination crisis, the dwindling bat population brings about another possible human extinction scenario. As their habitats are destroyed, bats are increasingly crossing paths with the human population, in search of food and shelter. With bats come bat viruses. "It's very easy to see how pathogens can jump from animals to humans," says Jon Epstein, at the EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit agency dedicated to conservation and biodiversity. Every year, on average, five new infectious diseases pop up, and about 75% of these new diseases come from animals. It is already suspected that human killers like Ebola emerged from the bat population. Might some new human-killing pathogen mutate from bats to humans and decimate mankind?

5. Pandemic

Which leads us to a related extinction scenario: a worldwide pandemic. New diseases emerge every year.  Some have the potential to devastate the population. In 1918, a strain of influenza spread worldwide and killed between 20 and 50 million people—more than were killed in all of World War I. In the past several years, diseases like SARS have come close to igniting into worldwide pandemics, and it is not at all inconceivable that, in our airplane-riding, interconnected world, some other virus could arrive on the scene with the virulence and transmissibility to decimate, if not destroy, the human population. “It is not in the interests of a virus to kill all of its hosts, so a virus is unlikely to wipe out the human race,” says Maria Zambon, a virologist with the Health Protection Agency Influenza Laboratory. “But it could cause a serious setback for a number of years. We can never be completely prepared for what nature will do: nature is the ultimate bioterrorist."

6. Biological /Nuclear Terrorism

In the interim, there are plenty of down-and-dirty, run-of-the-mill terrorists and the grand prize they all hope to get their hands on is a weapon of mass destruction like a nuclear bomb or a vial of smallpox virus. “Today's society is more vulnerable to terrorism because it is easier for a malevolent group to get hold of the necessary materials, technology and expertise to make weapons of mass destruction,” says Paul Wilkinson, chairman of the advisory board for the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrew. “The most likely cause of large scale, mass-casualty terrorism right now is from a chemical or biological weapon.The large-scale release of something like anthrax, the smallpox virus, or the plague, would have a huge effect, and modern communications would quickly make it become a trans-national problem. There is a very high probability that a major attack will occur somewhere in the world, within our lifetimes.” 

As for the nuclear threat, with increasing numbers of unstable countries like Pakistan and North Korea in possession of atomic weapons, the availability to terrorists seems only a matter of when and not if.

7. Super-Volcanoes

There are volcanoes, and then there are super-volcanoes. "Approximately every 50,000 years the Earth experiences a super-volcano. More than 1,000 square kilometers of land can be obliterated by pyroclastic ash flows, the surrounding continent is coated in ash and sulphur gases are injected into the atmosphere, making a thin veil of sulphuric acid all around the globe and reflecting back sunlight for years to come. Daytime becomes no brighter than a moonlit night.”

This lovely scenario is brought to us by Bill McGuire, director of the Benfield Hazard Research Center at University College London. About 74,000 years ago, the most powerful super-volcano eruption in human history occurred in Indonesia. It was close to the equator, and thus gases quickly passed into both hemispheres. Sunlight was blocked, and temperatures on Earth dropped worldwide for the next five to six years, below freezing even in the tropical regions. A super-volcano eruption is 12 times more likely than an asteroid hitting the Earth. Known super-volcanoes exist in Yellowstone National Park in the U.S. and Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia. And then there are the unknown ones….

8. Asteroid Impact

Recent films like Deep Impact and Armageddon have dramatized this human extinction scenario, an asteroid hitting the Earth. Hollywood is Hollywood, but in 2013, a real-life asteroid appeared without warning in Chelyabinsk, Russia. About 20 meters wide, it hurled into the Earth’s atmosphere at over 40,000 miles per hour. Only the angle it came in at and its relatively small size prevented damage and destruction on a massive scale. But what would happen if a not-at-all uncommon mile-wide asteroid hit the Earth at this speed? Quite probably it would wipe out the human race. The tremendous explosion it would cause upon impact would fling so much dust into the atmosphere that the sun would be completely blocked off, plant life and crops would die, severe acid rain would kill ocean life, and fiery debris would cause firestorms worldwide. 

This has already happened at least once. The likely reason you don’t see any dinosaurs around the neighborhood is that they were wiped out by just such an incident. Donald Yeomans of NASA: “We expect an event of this type every million years on average.”

9. Rise of the Machine

We look to Hollywood again to dramatize our next scenario. The Terminator movies entertained us with killer androids from a future where war was being waged on man by super-intelligent machines. OK, we are not there yet, but as we program more and more intelligence into our computers, exponentially increasing their capabilities every year, it is only a matter of time before they are smarter than we are.  Already we entrust computers to run our stock markets, land our planes, correct our spelling, Google our trivia, and calculate our restaurant tips. In development are robots that look like us, talk like us and recognize our facial movements. How long before they are us, as we download our thoughts and memories into our hard drives, the so-called “singularity”? How long before these machines are self-aware?

Futurist and author Ray Kurzwell believes computers will be as smart as us by 2029, and by 2045 will be billions of times smarter than us. What then? Will they decide we are superfluous? Or maybe we ourselves will decide. Sounds far-fetched, I know, but some very smart people buy into this scenario; people like genius physicist Stephen Hawking: “The danger is real that they [super-computers] could develop intelligence and take over the world.”

10. Zombie Apocalypse

I know. I said zombies aren’t real. But there is a parasite called toxoplasmosa gondii. This terrifying little bug infects rats, but it can only reproduce inside the intestines of a cat, so it evolved a nifty little trick wherein it actually takes over the rat’s brain and compels it to hang out around cats. Naturally, the cat eats the rat. The cat is happy. The parasite is happy because it gets to reproduce in the cat’s intestines. The rat? Not so happy, one would suppose. Why should we care about unhappy rats? Because rats and humans are actually very similar, which is why we conduct so many medical experiments on rats. And humans are infected with the toxoplasmosa gondii parasite. About half the population of the Earth, in fact. Now it so happens that toxoplasmosa gondii  does not affect humans the way it does rats. But what if it did? Viruses mutate. Viruses are manipulated in bio-weapons laboratories. Suddenly half the population would have no instinct for self-preservation. Half the population unable to think in a rational manner. Half the population suddenly very much resembling zombies. Nah. Couldn’t happen. Could it?

Forget the future. The world already is nearly five times as dangerous and disaster prone as it was in the 1970s, because of the increasing risks brought by climate change, according to  a new report from the World Meteorological Organization.

Imagine a room “smart” enough to know just how hot or cold you’re feeling throughout the day. Better yet, imagine that this room is capable of regulating the bubble of air around you to the perfect temperature for maximum comfort. No more sweaty summer days or icy winter mornings at the office. It’s almost like a dream come true, right?

MIT’s Senseable City Laboratory has designed a localized-heating technology coined, “Local Warming,” that does just this. As if out of a science fiction novel, the lab’s new technology is able to measure individual building occupant’s personal temperatures in order to adjust their ambient heating levels accordingly. The technology makes use of WiFi-based motion sensing and ceiling-mounted dynamic heating elements to provide direct heating or cooling to indvidual occupants of a building.

Beyond solving the perpetual workplace sweater-weather struggle, the lab’s design also drastically cuts down on wasted energy. Since commercial buildings account for over 20 percent of US energy consumption, highly-localized heating can reduce both carbon emissions and utility costs.

The Local Warming venture is just one among a diverse set of projects in the Senseable City Lab’s portfolio, each of which challenge the status quo of urban design. Inspired by the democratizing effect of user-controlled social media technologies and open source data networks, this pioneering lab’s researchers are looking to build sustainable cities by engaging with, and empowering its denizens.

Why such a focus on cities? You may ask. Well, because now, for the first time in anthropological history, more than half of the human population lives in urban as opposed to rural landscapes. And because more and more urban dwellers have access to, and are using, hand-held smartphones and other mobile devices.

“I think architecture means reinventing the interface between people and the outside world. New technologies have a key role in this process, as they are giving us the true possibility to control and manage our cities in a more intelligent way, and to improve our lifestyle,” says lab director Carlo Ratti.

The lab’s Copenhagen Wheel, for example, transforms a regular bicycle into an interactive, hybrid “e-bike.” This fashionable wheel is controlled through the cyclist’s smartphone and maps out pollution levels, traffic congestion, and road conditions in “real-time.” It also gathers data on the cyclist’s surroundings, including road conditions, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, noise, temperature, and humidity levels. This data can be shared with friends or, if the user chooses, with all the cohabitants of his/her city.

Inspired by the New York City Green Initiative, another of the lab’s projects, TrashTrack, similarly looks to gather useful data on urban landscapes. Small, mobile trackers are placed on discarded parcels of trash to digitally map what the Lab terms, the “removal-chain,” of metropolitan refuse.

These projects are, in a way, more about capturing what you don’t see.  The power of the lab’s sensory technologies lies in their capacity to reveal and share information about urban areas on a scale that was previously unimaginable.

“Over the past decade, digital technologies have begun to blanket our cities, forming the backbone of a large, intelligent infrastructure,” Ratti says. In combination with growing open source databases, urbanites have more opportunity to understand and directly contribute to the design of metropolitan areas. “Our cities are quickly becoming like ‘computers in open air,’” Ratti says.

A crucial component that connects each of the lab’s projects, Ratti stresses, is collaboration. This collaboration extends beyond the mere collection of data from smartphones, and into the realm of urban planning itself. Ensuring public involvement within the design process is key for building what Ratti calls, “our common urban future.” This is where some of the research team’s most recent work comes into play.

“In terms of methodology,” Ratti says, “we want to push the boundaries of collaboration — trying to develop an 'Open Source' methodology for design.”

The concept of Open Source Architecture or, “OSArc,” is a cocktail of social justice with a splash of community-based politics and hint of radical theory. The key ideas of OSArc are empowerment and decentralization. The recent outcry over London’s spikey barbs placed along edges of covered rotundas and walkways to deter the city’s homeless would not, for example, be conceivable under an OSArc model of active citizen design.

“OSArc relies upon amateurs as much as experienced professionals — the genius of the mass as much as that of the individual — eroding the binary distinction between author and audience,” states a recent MIT editorial.

“I recall that during my teenage years, I read quite a bit of science fiction literature. I liked these kinds of novels but such descriptions of the future, in retrospect, were almost comical,” Ratti says. “I thought that as designers we had the possibility not to just predict, but to concretely help shape our future, along the lines of Alan Key's axiom, ‘the best way to predict the future is to invent it.’” And if the work produced by the Senseable City Lab were any indicator, the best designs for the future are drawn from a cross-section of people, not from a single mind.

The Russian military has released military monitoring data which challenge allegations circulating in the media pertaining to the MH 17 crash in the Donetsk Region of Eastern Ukraine on July 17 2014. Questions have been raised about Kiev military jets tracking MH 17, Ukrainian air traffic controllers and the deployment of Buk missile systems. Kiev should also release military data on the circumstances leading to the crash. So should the Pentagon which reportedly has relevant intelligence and satellite data.

Since military data is hardcore information, Kiev and Washington should be persuaded to be transparent and accountable. The UN Secretary-General can play a role in this since there is a specialized agency within the UN, the ICAO, dedicated to international civil aviation. Military data from Moscow, Kiev and Washington should be scrutinized by the independent international panel that is supposed to probe the MH 17 catastrophe.

Such data carries much more weight than videos purportedly revealing the role of the pro-Russian rebels and the Russian government in the crash. One such video showing a Buk system being moved from Ukraine to Russia is a fabrication. The billboard in the background establishes that it was shot in a town --- Krasnoarmeisk --- that has been under the control of the Ukrainian military since May 11. Similarly, a You Tube video showing a Russian General and Ukrainian rebels discussing their role in mistakenly downing a civilian aircraft was, from various tell-tale signs, produced before the event.

The public should be wary of fabricated “evidence” of this sort, after what we have witnessed in the last so many years. Have we forgotten the monstrous lies and massive distortions that accompanied the reckless allegation that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) which led eventually to the invasion of that country in 2003 and the death of more than a million people? Iraq continues to bleed to this day. What about the Gulf of Tonkin episode of 1964 which again was a fabrication that paved the way for wanton US aggression against Vietnam that resulted in the death of more than 3 million Vietnamese? The “babies in incubators” incident in Kuwait in 1990 was yet another manufactured lie that aroused the anger of the people and served to justify the US assault on Iraq. Just last year we saw how an attempt was made by some parties to pin the blame for a sarin gas attack in Ghouta, Syria upon the Assad government when subsequent investigations have revealed that it was the work of some militant rebel group.
From Tonkin to Ghouta there is a discernible pattern when it comes to the fabrication of evidence to justify some nefarious agenda or other. As soon as the event occurs before any proper investigation has begun, blame is apportioned upon the targeted party. This is done wilfully to divert attention from the real culprit whose act of evil remains concealed and camouflaged. The colluding media then begins to spin the “correct” version with the help of its reporters and columnists who concoct “fact” out of fiction. Any other explanation or interpretation of the event is discredited and dismissed derisively to ensure that the “credibility” of the dominant narrative remains intact. As the narrative unfolds, the target often embodied in a certain personality is demonized to such a degree that he arouses the ire of the public and becomes an object of venom.

The pattern described here is typical of what is known as a “false flag” operation in which blame for some dastardly deed is consciously transferred to one’s adversary. It has happened right through history and many contemporary nation-states --- and not just the United States --- are guilty of flying false flags.

To protect ourselves from being deceived by such operations, the general public should always ask: who stands to gain from a particular episode? Cui Bono is in fact an important principle in the investigation of a crime. In the case of the MH 17 carnage, the pro-Russian rebels do not benefit in any way from downing a civilian airliner. Their goal is independence from the Kiev government which is why they are fighting Kiev through sometimes violent means including shooting down its military planes. Massacring 298 passengers in a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur does not serve their cause. Moscow which backs the rebels to an extent also gains nothing from involving itself in such a diabolical carnage.

10 days after the carnage, it is now clear who is trying to reap benefits from that terrible tragedy in the skies. The demonization of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, orchestrated from various Western capitals, including Kiev, after Crimea voted to join the Russian Federation, thus thwarting one of the primary strategic goals of NATO’s eastward expansion, has now reached its pinnacle. After MH 17, it has become a lot easier to convince people--- even without an iota of evidence --- that Putin is a “mass murderer”. The tarnishing of Putin’s image is crucial for those in the West who want to curb Russia’s political re-assertion so that the US and its allies can perpetuate their global dominance without hindrance.

MH 17 has helped the elite in Washington in yet another sense. It has strengthened its push for tougher sanctions against Russia which began after the Crimea vote. Given their extensive economic ties with Russia, many European countries such as Germany, France, Netherlands and Italy have been somewhat lukewarm about widening and deepening sanctions. But will that change now? Will an outraged European public, incensed by the MH 17 massacre, demand that their governments punish Moscow?
It is obvious that those who seek to punish Russia and the pro-Russian rebels, namely, the elite in Washington and Kiev, are poised to gain the most from the MH 17 episode. Does it imply that they would have had a role in the episode itself? Only a truly independent and impartial international inquiry would be able to provide the answer.
In this regard, we must admit that while elites in Kiev and Washington may stand to gain from MH 17, those who actually pulled the trigger may be some other group or individual with links to the powerful in the two capitals. It is quite conceivable that a certain well-heeled individual equipped with the appropriate military apparatus and with access to air-control authorities in the region may have executed the act of evil itself.

Because of who he is, and where his loyalties lie, that individual may have also decided to target Malaysia. Was he giving vent to his anger over our principled stand on the question of justice for the Palestinians? Was he also attempting to divert public attention from Israel’s ground offensive against Gaza which time-wise coincided with the downing of the Malaysian airliner?

As we explore MH 17 from this angle, would we be able to connect the dots between MH 17 and MH 370, between July 17 and March 8, 2014?

We should not rest till the whole truth is known and the evil behind these two colossal catastrophes punished severely.

We owe this to every soul who perished on those fateful flights.

(This article is dedicated to the cherished memory of all those on MH 17 --- especially the 80 children who were on board).

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

Deleted BBC Report. “Ukrainian Fighter Jet Shot Down MHI7″, Donetsk Eyewitnesses

By Global Research News

29 July, 2014
Global Research

The original BBC Video Report was published by BBC Russian Service on July 23, 2014.

In a bitter irony, The BBC is censoring its own news productions.

Why did BBC delete this report by Olga Ivshina?

Is it because the BBC team was unable to find any evidence that a rocket was launched in the area that the Ukrainian Security Service (“SBU”) alleges to be the place from which the Novorossiya Militia launched a “BUK” missile?

Or is it because every eyewitness interviewed by the BBC team specifically indicated the presence of a Ukrainian military aircraft right beside the Malaysian Airlines Boeing MH17 at the time that it was shot down?

Or is it because of eyewitness accounts confirming that the Ukrainian air force regularly used civilian aircraft flying over Novorossiya as human shields to protect its military aircraft conducting strikes against the civilian population from the Militia’s anti-aircraft units?

Highlights of Witness statements (see complete transcript below)

Eyewitness #1: There were two explosions in the air. And this is how it broke apart. And [the fragments] blew apart like this, to the sides. And when ...

Eyewitness #2: ... And there was another aircraft, a military one, beside it. Everybody saw it.

Eyewitness #1: Yes, yes. It was flying under it, because it could be seen. It was proceeding underneath, below the civilian one.

Eyewitness #3: There were sounds of an explosion. But they were in the sky. They came from the sky. Then this plane made a sharp turn-around like this. It changed its trajectory and headed in that direction [indicating the direction with her hands].

Video: The Catastrophe of #MH17: #BBC in the Search of the “#BUK”

by slavyangrad.wordpress.com

Introductory Paragraphs to the BBC Video Report

Intro of BBC Report (For Full Transcript see below)

The “black boxes” of the crashed Malaysian Boeing have finally been transferred into the hands of the experts. However, how much can they tell us?

The recorders logged the coordinates and the heading of the aircraft at the time of the incident and may have recorded the sound of the explosion. However, they will not tell us what exactly caused the explosion.

The inhabitants of the nearby villages are certain that they saw military aircraft in the sky shortly prior to the catastrophe. According to them, it actually was the jet fighters that brought down the Boeing.

The Ukrainian government rejects this version of events. They believe that the Boeing was shot down using a missile from a “BUK” complex that came in from Russia.

The Ukrainian Security Service has published photographs and a video, which, in its opinion, prove that the Boeing was shot down with a “BUK” missile.

BBC reporter Olga Ivshina and producer Oksana Vozhdayeva decided to find the place from which the missile was allegedly launched.

 

Original BBC Video Report: Preserved by Google Web-cache

Transcript of the BBC Video Report
DPR Representative: Here it is.

Olga Ivshina, BBC: The black boxes from the crashed Boeing are finally being transferred into the hands of the experts. However, how much can they tell us?

The recorders logged the coordinates and the heading of the aircraft at the time of the incident and may have recorded the sound of the explosion. However, they will not tell us what exactly caused the explosion.

The inhabitants of the nearby villages are certain that they saw military aircraft in the sky shortly prior to the catastrophe. According to them, it actually was the jet fighters that brought down the Boeing.

Eyewitness #1: There were two explosions in the air. And this is how it broke apart. And [the fragments] blew apart like this, to the sides. And when ...

Eyewitness #2: ... And there was another aircraft, a military one, beside it. Everybody saw it.

Eyewitness #1: Yes, yes. It was flying under it, because it could be seen. It was proceeding underneath, below the civilian one.

Eyewitness #3: There were sounds of an explosion. But they were in the sky. They came from the sky. Then this plane made a sharp turn-around like this. It changed its trajectory and headed in that direction [indicating the direction with her hands].

Olga Ivshina, BBC: The Ukrainian government rejects this version of events. They believe that the Boeing was shot down using a missile from a “BUK” complex that came in from the direction of Russia.

Vitaliy Naida, Department of Counterintelligence of SBU [Ukrainian Security Service]: This was a BUK M1 system from which the aircraft was shot down. It came to Ukraine early in the morning on the 17th of July. It was delivered by a tow truck to the city of Donetsk. After that, it was redeployed from Donetsk, as part of a column of military equipment, to the area of the city of Torez, to the area of Snezhnoye, to the area of Pervomaisk.

Olga Ivshina, BBC: The Ukrainian Security Service has published photographs and a video, which, in its opinion, prove that the Boeing was shot down with a “BUK” missile. We attempted to verify these photographs and information at the location.

One of the photographs showed a landscape not far from the city of Torez, on which smoke could be seen coming from the presumed location of the missile’s launch. We attempted to find this location, and it appears that we were successful.

We are now on the outskirts of the city of Torez. Behind me, approximately five kilometres away, is the city of Snezhnoye. And the landscape here matches the landscape that we can see on the photograph published by the Ukrainian Security Service.

To find the place from which the smoke was allegedly coming from, we adopted as markers these three poplars and the group of trees. Presumably, this is the place that can be seen on the photograph published by the SBU. And here are our markers: the three solitary poplars and the small group of trees in the distance.

The smoke that can be seen on the photograph came from somewhere over there [pointing behind her], behind my back. The SBU believes that this is a trace coming from the launch of a “BUK” missile.

However, it must be noted that there are here, approximately in the same place, the Saur-Mogila memorial, near which the fighting continues almost unabated, and a coalmine. It turns out that the smoke with the same degree of probability could have been coming from any of these locations.

Having circled around the nearby fields, we were unable to find any traces of a missile launch. Nor did the local inhabitants that we encountered see any “BUK” either.

At the ruins of an apartment building in the city of Snezhnoye, the topic of the jet fighters that may have been escorting civilian aircraft comes up again. A bomb dropped from above took away the lives of eleven civilians here.

Sergey Godovanets, Commander of the Militia of the city of Snezhnoye: They use these civilian aircraft to hide behind them. It is only now that they stopped flying over us – but, usually, civilian aircraft would always fly above us. And they hide [behind them]. [The experience in] Slavyansk had demonstrated that they would fly out from behind a civilian aircraft, bomb away, and then hide, once again, behind the civilian aircraft and fly away.

Olga Ivshina, BBC: The commander of the local militia emphasizes that they have no weaponry capable of shooting down a jet fighter [flying] at a significant height. However, he says that if such weaponry were to appear, they would have tried to.

Sergey Godovanets: If we know that it is not a civilian aircraft, but a military one, then – yes.

Olga Ivshina, BBC: So, could the Boeing have been shot down by the militias that had mistaken it for a military aircraft? There is as yet no unequivocal confirmation of either this or any other version [of what took place]. The international experts are just beginning their work with the information obtained from the crashed airliner. It now appears that it is difficult to overstate the importance of this investigation. Olga Ivshina, BBC.

The Catastrophe of #MH17:

#BBC in the Search of the “BUK” – The Video Report Deleted by BBC

Translation by: Valentina Lisitsa
http://slavyangrad.wordpress.com

Copyright © 2014 Global Research

HABITAT DESTRUCTION

The global ecological system is collapsing and dying. Humanity wantonly destroys natural ecosystems and climatic patterns that provide all life's environmental habitats. Our one shared, overpopulated, ecologically diminished, abjectly unfair biosphere is careening toward scarcity, war, disease, and social, economic and ecosystem collapse.

Threats facing the global environment are far more than climate change and include deterioration of water, forests, food, and oceans which cumulatively threaten all life’s very being. Large, intact old-growth forests and other naturally evolved ecosystems maintain local and regional ecological habitability and livelihoods. Without large, natural ecosystems and agro-ecology as humanity's surrounding context, our own and all other species face abrupt climate change and biosphere collapse.

What sharpens the problem on climate change and ecosystem loss is that we think we have time, when the biosphere is well into collapse. We face an unprecedented global ecological emergency as natural life-giving ecosystems collapse and die under the weight of human industrial growth. Our overpopulated, over-consuming, inequitable, human decimated Earth continues to wildly careen toward ecosystem collapse unless we find a way to come together as one human family and change fast.

END OF BEING

Global ecosystem collapse is causing increased war, pestilence, poverty, migration and rise of authoritarian corporatism. Ecosystem loss, overpopulation, rising inequity, nationalistic warmongering, abject poverty, and lack of justice threaten Earth's and humanity's very being. Either humanity immediately comes together to embrace universal liberty, ecology, fairness and justice, or alone we each face a violent, gut wrenching end of being.

Humanity has become an ignorant overbreeding scourge upon Earth, too self-obsessed to notice we are devouring our own habitat to fleetingly consume more stuff. Our ecologically dying world spirals toward perma-war, epidemics, famine, fascism, chaos, mass death, and biosphere collapse. Centuries of social progress are threatened by abrupt climate change, ecosystem collapse, and rising authoritarianism.

The child immigration crises we see on the Mexico/US border, between Africa and Europe, and elsewhere are the result of ecosystem collapse, overpopulation and centuries of exploitative imperialism by the rich waged on the poor. All children everywhere must be cared for as we restore ecosystems and provide incentives for small families. Any one of us could be a refugee at any time, and many of us will be as entire regions collapse ecologically, and then the biosphere dies.

SEEK TRUTH OR PERISH

There exists a brief window of opportunity to together transition to global ecological sustainability, or alone we face biosphere collapse and the end of being. But it depends upon embracing unpleasant truths: War is murder. Industrial development is ecocide. God is a myth. Inequity is evil. Nations don't exist.

Truth is the answer. The human family must come together globally for ecology – and other truths such as liberty, justice, workers, and fairness – or else all is lost.

Again, there are no countries or gods, just the human family and kindred species, sharing the fruits of one living biosphere. From the tiniest creatures to the global ecosystem, we are all part of the same natural evolutionary journey, and we must love all being like kin. It is absolute societal madness that the human family can't take responsibility for its actions and won't stop destroying ecosystem habitats, instead learning to share and live in peace in order to avert the coming ecological apocalypse.

Large portions of Earth's remaining forests, oceans and other natural ecosystems must be protected and restored to sustain the biosphere. Well-funded mainstream environmental bureaucracies are woefully failing to promote a sufficient vision and course of action to achieve global ecological sustainability and should be defunded, to support small-scale, community-based ecological advocacy, sustainable development, and transition communities.

As climate change and ecosystem collapse ravage the environment, further fossil fuel and old-growth forest logging are crimes against Earth and humanity. To survive and thrive, humanity must choose to end fossil fuels, protect and restore natural ecosystems, embrace agro-ecology and end industrial agriculture, and have fewer kids (while caring well for those they do have).

For planetary and human survival large old-growth forests and agro-ecological permaculture must remain our ecological context. Ecological salvation can be found in your garden – growing organic food, restoring natural ecosystems, cutting emissions – as you go back to the land.

Life is all about green liberty – maintaining your duties to the environment and all life's well-being as you remain radically free. Dissent and peace are patriotic! War, ecocide, ignorance, corporatism, conspicuous overconsumption, and inequity are not. Be a patriot, not a nationalist. Love your country – but love the human family, all life, and Earth more. Know how patriotism differs from nationalism and militarism.

It is up to each and every one of us to commit our full being to sustaining ecology and living gently upon Earth... or our ONE SHARED BIOSPHERE collapses and being ends.

Dr. Glen Barry is the President and Founder of Ecological Internet (EI). He is recognized internationally by the environmental movement as a leading global visionary, ecological policy critic and public intellectual committed to communicating the severity of global ecological crises - and related justice, rights and equity issues - while actively organizing with others sufficient solutions

London: Well-informed, well-read, and by nature compassionately optimistic, a dear friend recently expressed our collective concern: ?I am more worried about the state of the world now than at any time in my lifetime.?

Given the fires raging throughout the world it is difficult to remain hopeful for the future of humanity or the planet. With the Middle East tearing itself to pieces, extremism and intolerance reasserting themselves and far right groups in a variety of countries gaining support, and in many cases political influence, not to mention the worldwide environmental mayhem, man-made climate change (the most serious single issue facing us) and the suffering of billions of people living in suffocating poverty, these are indeed deeply worrying times.

However, at the risk of being labelled a deluded dreamer, these are also times of tremendous opportunity. Transitional times of pain and discord, potentially of growth and renewal as we inch forward, stepping cautiousl y out of the familiar and into the new and undefined, and begin to discuss alternative, more sane ways of living.

Throughout the world large numbers of frustrated and angry people have been coming together: peacefully marching calling for change ? broad and often undefined, but heartfelt. Others in groups and forums discuss alternative ways of living together, a myriad of sharing schemes have sprung up facilitated by that miracle of the age, the worldwide web. The Occupy Movement (unfairly criticised by those firmly rooted in the past, for being vague and lacking positive suggestions), fuelled protests and occupations in 95 cities across 82 countries, including 600 communities in America; a phenomena albeit flawed, it ?lit a spark? Noam Chomsky said, and ?changed the entire framework of discussion of many issues. There were things that were sort of known, but in the margins, hidden, which are now right up front ? such as the imagery of the 99% and 1%; and the dramatic facts of sharply rising inequality over the past roughly 30 years, with wealth being concentrated in actually a small fraction of 1% of the population.? The creation of a neutral, non-ideological space in which open-minded discussion can take place and develop was key to Occupy, and is crucial in encouraging a creative debate exploring alternative ways of organizing society, and crucially redesigning the outdated, defunct economic system, which is the poisonous source of many of our problems and much of the suffering in the world. Change this, establish an economic system with sharing at its core and see the flowering of justice, the cultivation of trust and the erosion of much social tension and anxiety.

Any movement for change evokes its opposite ? it has always been so. And, as the people, particularly the young cry out for a new way, for social justice and freedom, true democracy and the observation of human rights, the reactionary forces of the world resist and use all their powers (military, economic, media etc.) to maintain the status quo that has served them so well. One thinks of Egypt, Libya, Brazil and Turkey, to say nothing of the carnage that is Syria, as examples of repressive, brutal and in many cases criminal regimes, that will do anything it seems to cling on to power and imprison the people, who they are constitutionally in office to serve.  

From crisis to change 

The crisis facing humanity is a crisis of values, and as such could be rightly termed a spiritual crisis. Not in some vague, undefined manner, but a crisis revealing starkly clear choices between what we might describe as ?spiritual values', of sharing, justice, tolerance and cooperation, and more purely materialistic ideals based on a strong identification with form, which promote selfishness, greed, consumerism and competition. It is not a religious crisis, although totalitarianism as manifest in fundamentalist religions is a poisonous part of the chaos , as totalitarianism more broadly is. It is a spiritual crisis focussed in the political-economic spheres, and it is there, in the polluted world of corporate politics, that it must be fought out and resolved.

It is a battle between those who see from left to right, and are wedded to ideologies that no longer serve humanity (if indeed they ever have), and those who long for a just world at ease with itself, free from ideologies, free from imprisoning ?isms completely Despite reactionary resistance and the seemingly inexhaustible ability to regroup and carry on (the economic melt down of 2009 e.g. which many thought was the dying cry of a system in terminal meltdown), change and the emergence of a ?the new,' is inevitable. The time for social justice and freedom, denied to so many for so long, is upon us. The only issue is when fundamental change will occur, not if. Differing viewpoints on how change should take place and what a new society should look like are inevitable, and tolerance on all sides of the developing debate needs to be applied. Not everyone shares the same values, or holds them to the same degree; opinions vary as to what certain values mean and manifestly look like.

For change to be sustainable it needs to be gradual and carry the support of the majority, not 51%, of as little as 40% of the voting population as is currently the case under our so-called democratic systems of governance; political systems dominated by big business in which fewer and fewer people are engaged. Few vote, particularly the young; marginalised and uninterested they distrust all politicians - ambitious men and women, who, the world over, say one thing to gain power, and do another when elected. The people are awake to their duplicity and in many cases despise them. Look not to the current crop of inadequate politicians: they lack vision, are ideologically constrained and on the whole are wedded to the past. Democracy is synonymous with participation and social responsibility, responsibility not just for oneself but for the wider community. As the Dalai Lama puts it: " I believe that to meet the challenge of the next century, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not just for his or her own self, family or nation, but for the benefit of all mankind.? The new ways, the ideas and structures will and must emerge from the people; this is already beginning to happen and augers well for the future.  

Unity: a cornerstone of the new

The formation of pragmatic, common sense solutions and ways of living, based on ideas rooted in perennial values is needed. Systems need to be built that meet the needs of the majority and are not designed simply to comfort and satisfy the wealthy elite. Economic and social models encouraging ways of living that broaden the notion of what it means to be a human being, allow for creative self-enquiry and natural happiness, and meet the basic needs of us all .

There are certain primary colours, ?principles of goodness' we could call them, that should, and let's strike a further note of optimism and hope ? will, sit at the heart of the new systems, guiding and fashioning the re-construction of society. ? All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family? , proclaimed Mahatma Gandhi , affirming the fact, repeatedly stated throughout the ages, of the realit y of our relationship ? with one another, the natural environment and indeed with that impelling, Omnipresent Life we call God. The political, economic and social forms that fashion our societies need to be designed to encourage the realisation of this oneness; systems encouraging cooperation instead of competition, that foster tolerance and unite people. Group work and sharing ? of the world's resources as well as knowledge and skills ? will support the development of a sense of connection, facilitating relationship and unity.

Although politics is still largely driven by national/self-interest there are encouraging signs of cooperation amongst nations (at least those with common concerns) and grass root groups; however the all-pervasive neo-liberal economic system, and its ideals of greed, competition and personal ambition, has infiltrated all areas of society, strengthening divisions, isolating individuals, denying unity. Many of us within western societies, and increasingly developing countries where globalisation has invaded and homogenisation begun, live what Noam Chomsky calls atomised lives: ?people are alone, and not by chance. From the point of view of the power systems ? business and government, the perfect social unit is a dyad, a pair consisting of you and your television set, not talking to anyone else? Huge efforts have been made to try to atomise the society (by the 1%), implemented by economic changes that make it possible? And the result is a society of people who are pretty much separated from each other.?

Globalisation insists on uniformity, the forcing of society (world society ) into a predictable, market-friendly, neatly packaged definable entity. Not united, but the same. All areas of life have been discoloured by this ideological principle, particularly education. Within the classroom and lecture halls the stench of competition and conformity pollutes the atmosphere, promoting inhibiting stereotypes, conditioning the pliable, drowning the sensitive. Inside this bubble, people, including children, are not seen as individuals with their own quirky idiosyncrasies but consumers (or potential employees if you happen to be in school or university), men and women, teenagers and children measured up and filed into a particular social and economic demographic. Individuality is stifled or at best assimilated; conformity insisted upon.

Ideological, systemic change which places sharing, sustainability and cooperation not competition and abundance at its heart; cultivates tolerance, and encourages individuality not conformity, will help to break up the ?Atomised Society', building trust and social unity; unity rich with individual diversity.

Graham Peebles is Director of The Create Trust, www.thecreatetrust.org A UK registered charity (1115157). Running education and social development programmes, supporting fundamental Social change and the human rights of individuals in acute need. Contact , E: graham@thecreatetrust.org

Lets not mince words.   Israelis are committing genocide in Gaza.   But the United Nations is loath to use the ?G? word and it us using the ?C? (condemn) word instead.   Why?  Money talks.     The top financier of the United Nations is America with a whopping 22.00% in direct funds (followed by Japan 10.83%, Germany 7.14%, France 5.59%, and GB 5.18%),  if the United Nations called out the genocide in Gaza, its top financier would have to be punished for its complicity.

According to Article 3 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide , persons committing genocide or complicity in genocide shall be punish ed ? whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.?  The United States not only supports and funds the ongoing genocide in Gaza, replenishes Israel with more funds and weaponry, but it also uses its political clout to enable Israel to continue its ruthless crimes against humanity.   

While many have not been shy about calling these crimes genocide,  they have  come under attack for using the ?G? word.  Is genocide an appropriate term to use?   Well, it is if one has respect for international law and the rules of the genocide convention.    Article 2 of the Convention clearly spells out:

?In the present Convention, genocide means any [emphasis added]of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part [emphasis added], a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

? (a) Killing members of the group;

? (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

? (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

? (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

? (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.?

There is little argument and ample evidence that Israel's actions against the people of Gaza in particular, and Palestine as whole, constitute the term genocide.  

While the pro-Israel Western media has been unable to conceal the daily, indiscriminate killing of anything that breathes and moves in Gaza (Article 2a) and the terrorization of children, the young and the old (mental harm) with the constant bombardment, bulldozers, and drones (Article 2b), the media has been apt at hiding the horrific effects of the blockade ? the deliberate infliction of condition of life calculated to bring about physical destruction in whole or in part (Article 2c).

In 2010, Amnesty International's report Suffocating Gaza - the Israeli blockade's effects on Palestinians detailed the reality of life in Gaza including restricting the entry of basic goods,  food and fuel . On January 28, 2014, the daily Haaretz ran an article entitled ? In Gaza, water - and time - are running out; Experts say Gaza water shortage likely to bring about illness.?  The situation has only exasperated.

Yet, in spite of the evidence, the United Nations Secretary General Ban ki-Moon, ignoring all other atrocities, calls an attack on a UN school which killed innocent civilians ?outrageous?.   Perhaps he ought to be reminded of, and heed his predecessor, Kofi Annan who acknowledged responsibility for not having done more to prevent or stop the Rwanda genocide. In his July 2004 address to the Commission on Human Rights , Mr. Annan said:

?If we are serious about preventing or stopping genocide in future, we must not be held back by legalistic arguments about whether a particular atrocity meets the definition of genocide or not.  By the time we are certain, it may often be too late to act.  We must recognize the signs of approaching or possible genocide, so that we can act in time to avert it.?

Ban ki-Moon must have missed the speech and the memo; although in July 2012, he did appoint Adam Dieng of Senegal as his Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide ?  only to refrain from the ?G? word it would seem.

The American government is not alone in its complicity in genocide or in its incitement.   Mainstream media networks and commentators who paint a picture of an Israel ?self-defense? to give room to the continued genocide are complicit and must be punished.  But in the opinion of this writer, the vilest partners in this crime are the Egyptian and Saudi leaders committing fratricide.

Egypt's military coup leader and the illegitimate president of Egypt, al-Sisi, whom the Israel ambassador called a ? hero for all Jews' , has trapped the Gazans so that Israel can eliminate them all.   Genocide will prove to be lucrative business for the Egyptians.   Piping Israeli gas (stolen from Gaza) to liquefaction plants in Egypt to beconverted into LNG and exported across the world.

[SIDE BAR: In 2009, David Wurmser writing for the Jewish policy Center opined ? Israel and its neighbor now sit atop roughly two years' worth of European consumption?.  He further suggests ?even modest amounts of Israeli gas exports can carry significant strategic leverage?. Citing Europe's gas vulnerability, Wurmser wrote ?Europe's grim reality could represent a unique window of opportunity for Israel to nail down long-term agreements and align export policy with a broader effort to reset Israeli-European relations.?

The MH 17 was brought down four hours after Israel's ground invasion of Gaza.  Europeans reluctant to enforce further sanctions on Russia was no longer so reluctant. END SIDE BAR.]

Israel's interest in Egypt and its opposition to the elected president of the Egyptian people, Mohammad Morsi, went beyond a gas transit and the Palestinians.    On May 30, 2013, The Times of Israel reported that the construction on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (on the Blue Nile) had sparked a major diplomatic crisis with Egypt ? a concern shared with Saudi Arabia and its plans to divert water from the Nile.  In 2012, it was reported that Saudi Arabia had claimed a stake in the Nile.

The Saudi regime showered the coup government with aid after the overthrow of Morsi.    In January, Egypt received a further $4 billion to Egypt, and in May, Saudi Arabia showered the Egyptians with another $3billion while Egypt trapped Gazans to be slaughtered by Israel.    

Never has the world witnessed so much impunity.    The United Nations refuses to acknowledge genocide and takes no part in preventing or punishing it.   The silence of those guarding our rights and our laws makes them  the silent partners in this crime against humanity.  As Jonathan Swift said: ? ?I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.?

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is an independent researcher with a focus on U.S. foreign policy and the influence of lobby groups. 

We'll go considerably farther than has yet been revealed by the professional intelligence community, to provide the actual evidence that conclusively shows that (and how) the Ukrainian Government shot down the Malaysian airliner, MH-17, on July 17th.

The latest report from the intelligence community was headlined on August 3rd by Robert Parry,  "Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts,"  and he revealed there that, "Contrary to the Obama administration's public claims blaming eastern Ukrainian rebels and Russia for the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, some U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded that the rebels and Russia were likely not at fault and that it appears Ukrainian government forces were to blame, according to a source briefed on these findings. This judgment -- at odds with what President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have expressed publicly -- is based largely on the absence of U.S. government evidence that Russia supplied the rebels with a Buk anti-aircraft missile system that would be needed to hit a civilian jetliner flying at 33,000 feet, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity."

It's actually based on lots more than that; it's based not on an absence of evidence, but on positive proof that the Ukrainian Government shot the plane down, and even proving how it was done. You will see this proof, right here, laid out in detail, for the first time.

The reader-comments to my July 31st article,  "First Examination of Malaysian MH-17 Cockpit Photo Shows Ukraine Government Shot that Plane Down,"  provided links and leads to independent additional confirmatory evidence backing up that account, of retired Lufthansa pilot Peter Haisenko's reconstruction of this event, to such an extent that, after exploring the matter further, I now feel confident enough to say that the evidence on this matter is, indeed, "conclusive," that Haisenko is right. Here is all of that evidence, which collectively convinces me that Haisenko's conclusion there, is, indeed,  the only one that can even possibly explain this wreckage:

?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  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ze9BNGDyk4  and you will see it.

That youtube snippet in an interview with Michael Bociurkiw, comes from a man who is ?a Ukrainian-Canadian monitor with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), [who] has seen up close ... the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17. Bociurkiw and one other colleague were the first international monitors to reach the wreckage after the jet was shot down over a rebel-held region of eastern Ukraine July 17.? That description of him is from the lead-in to the full interview with him, at the 29 July 2014 CBC news article,  "Malaysia Airlines MH17: Michael Bociurkiw talks about being first at the crash site ."  The far briefer youtube clip shows only what's presented on 6:10-6:24 of this CBC interview with Bociurkiw. The CBC reporter in the video precedes the interview by announcing, "The wreckage was still smoldering when a small team from the OSCE got there." So: he had to have been there really fast. "No other officials arrived for days," she said.

So: one of the two first international monitors on-site saw conclusive evidence that the Malaysian plane had been hit by ?very very strong machine-gun fire,? not by ground-based missile-fire. Peter Haisenko's reconstruction of the downing of that airliner, was here being essentially confirmed  on-site by one of the two first OSCE international monitors to arrive on-site, while the wreckage was still smoldering . That's as close to virgin, untouched evidence and testimony as we'll ever get. Unlike a black-box interpretation-analysis long afterward by the Russian Government, or by the British Government, or by the Ukrainian Government, each of which governments has a horse in this race, this testimony from Bociurkiw is raw, independent, and comes from one of the two earliest witnesses to the physical evidence. That's powerfully authoritative testimony, and it happens to confirm pilot Peter Haisenko's theory of what happened. Bociurkiw arrived there fast because he negotiated with the locals for the rest of the OSCE team, who were organizing to come later: Bociurkiw speaks the local languages there -- Ukrainian and Russian.

Furthermore, this is hardly testimony from someone who is supportive of the anti-Government rebels. Earlier, there had been this,  http://pressimus.com/Interpreter_Mag/press/3492 , which transcribes the BBC's interview with Bociurkiw on July 22nd. He said then: "We're observing that major pieces, and I'm looking at the tail fin as I said, and then there's also the rear cone section of the aircraft, they do look different than when we first saw them, ... two days ago." So, he had arrived on-scene July 20th at the latest. (Neither the BBC nor the CBC, both of which interviewed him, were sufficiently professional to have reported the specific date at which Bociurkiw had actually arrived on-scene, but, from this, it couldn't have been after July 20th. The downing had occurred July 17th. If some of the debris was still "smoldering" as the CBC journalist said, then maybe he had arrived there even earlier.)

The youtube snippet of Bociurkiw came to me via a reader-comment to my article, from Bill Johnson, after which I web-searched the youtube clip for its source and arrived then at the 29 July 2014 CBC news article and its accompanying video. 

Further, there's this crucial 21 July photo-reconstruction of that cockpit-fragment positioned into place on the aircraft  as it had originally been in that intact-airliner:  https://twitter.com/EzraBraam . (Sometimes that doesn't work, so  here's another screen of it from someone who copied it .) Looking at that photo-reconstruction, one can easily tell that the SU-25 or other fighter-jet that was firing into the cockpit from the pilot's left side didn't just riddle the area surrounding the pilot with bullets, but that it then targeted-in specifically onto the pilot himself, producing at his location a huge gaping hole in the side of the plane precisely at the place where the pilot was seated. Furthermore, this gaping hole was produced by shooting into the plane, precisely at the pilot, from below and to the pilot's left, which is where that fighter-jet was located -- not from above the airliner, and not from beside it, and  also not from below it .

In other words: this was precise and closely-targeted firing against the pilot himself, not a blast directed broadly against, and aiming to hit, the plane anywhere, to bring it down.

Haisenko explained how this penetration of the plane, though it was targeted specifically at the pilot, caused immediately a breaking-apart of  the entire aircraft.

Other readers have responded to my news-report about  Haisenko's article , by saying that shrapnel from a Buk missile could similarly have caused those holes into the side of the cockpit. However, that objection ignores another key feature of Haisenko's analysis. Haisenko said there: "You can see the entry and exit holes. The edge of a portion of the holes is bent inwards. These are the smaller holes, round and clean, showing the entry points most likeley that of a 30 millimeter caliber projectile. The edge of the other, the larger and slightly frayed exit holes showing shreds of metal pointing produced by the same caliber projectiles. Moreover, it is evident that ... these exit holes of the outer layer of the double aluminum reinforced structure are shredded or bent -- outwardly!"

What this means is that in order to have some of those holes frayed inwardly and the other holes frayed outwardly, there had to have been a second fighter-jet firing into the cockpit from the airliner's right-hand side. That's critically important, because no ground-based missile (or shrapnel therefrom) hitting the airliner could possibly have produced firing into the cockpit from  both sides of the plane. It had to have been a hail of bullets from both sides, that brought the plane down, in that circumstance. This is Haisenko's main discovery, by his pointing that out. You can't have projectiles going in both directions -- into the left-hand-side fuselage panel from both its left and right sides -- unless they are coming at the panel from different directions. Nobody before Haisenko had noticed that the projectiles had ripped through that panel from  both its left side and its right side . This is what rules out  any ground-fired missile.

Peter Haisenko posted an extremely high-resolution image from that photo which he used, and it shows unequivocally that some of the bullet-holes were inbound while others of them were outbound:  Here it is, viewed  very close-up .

Although the fighter jets that were said to have been escorting the Malaysian plane into the war-zone were alleged to be SU-25 planes, a different type might have been used. SU-25s are designed to be flown up to 23,000 feet without an oxygen-mask, but can go much higher if the pilot does wear that mask, which was probably the case here. Of course, an airliner itself is fully pressurized. That pressurization inside the airliner is, moreover, a key part of Haisenko's reconstruction of this airliner's downing. Basically, Haisenko reconstructs the airliner's breaking apart as soon as that hail of bullets opened and released the plane's pressurization.

The specific photo of that cockpit-fragment, which Haisenko had downloaded immediately after the disaster, was removed from the Internet, but other photos of this fragment were posted elsewhere, such as at the British publication (which, like the rest of the Western ?news? media is slanted pro-Obama, anti-Putin), on July 21st, headlining their anti-Putin missile-theory bias,  "MH17 crash: FT photo shows signs of damage from missile strike."  Their "reporters" opened with their blatant anti-Russian prejudice: "The first apparent hard evidence that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was brought down by a surface-to-air missile is emerging from the crash site in eastern Ukraine, after experts confirmed on Monday there were signs of shrapnel damage to the aircraft." Although they didn't say in their opener that the "surface-to-air missile" was from the rebels, they made clear their pro-Ukrainian-Government anti-Russian bias by saying, "Over the weekend, western intelligence agencies pointed to mounting evidence that backs Ukraine's claim that the aircraft with 298 people on board was shot down by mistake by pro-Russian separatists and Russian military personnel with an SA-11 missile launched from a Buk-M1 SAM battery." Their stenographers (or as they would say "reporters") stenographed ("reported") that, "Douglas Barrie of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the photographic evidence 'was consistent with the kind of damage you would expect to see from the detonation of a high explosive fragmentation warhead of the type commonly used in a SAM system'." No analyst  from the pro-Putin camp   was interviewed by their "reporters." For example, Russia's Interfax News Service headlined on July 29th, the same day as the  FT's   article, ?Boeing's downing by Buk missile system unlikely -- military expert,? and they stenographed  their   "expert," as follows: 

Chief of the Russian Land Forces' tactical air defense troops Maj. Gen. Mikhail Krush said he doubts that the Malaysian passenger liner was brought down by a Buk surface-to-air missile system. "No one observed a Buk engaging targets in that region on that day, which provides 95 percent proof that Buk systems were not used in this concrete case," the general said in an interview with the Voyenno-Promyshlenny Kuryer military weekly to be published on Wednesday [July 30th]. "This is no more than a theory for now. However, a guided missile launched by a Buk missile system leaves behind a specific smoke trail as it flies, like a comet. In daylight this trail can be clearly seen within a radius of 20-25 kilometers from the missile system. It cannot remain unnoticed. There are no eyewitnesses to confirm there was any. No one reported a launch. This is one thing," he said. "Second. The holes left by the strike elements on the Boeing's outer skin indicate that the warhead blew up from below and sideways. A Buk missile strikes the target from above," he said. "The damage done to the plane suggests that a different missile was used. Our guidance method is a zoom, when the missile strikes the target from above covering it with a thick cloud of fragments" the general said. "I cannot state categorically, guided by this data, but I can suggest, using my experience, that it was not a Buk missile that hit the Boeing," the expert said.

General Krush's statement can fit with Haisenko's and with Bociurkiw's, but not with  FT's   or the rest of the "reporters" (just consider them as rank propagandists) in the West.

U.S. President Barack Obama has been saying all along that Russia --  against which he is actually systematically building toward war  -- and not Ukraine (which he's using as his  chief vehicle to do that ), is to blame for this airliner-downing. Previously, he had said that the snipers who in February had killed many people at the Maidan demonstrations against the pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych came from Yanukovych's State Security Service and not from the far-right political parties that were trying to bring Yanukovych down and that Obama's agent Victoria Nuland selected to run the new Ukrainian government. But  that too was an Obama lie . He lies a lot, and it's just about the only type of statement he ever makes about Russia, and about Ukraine: lies.

If someone wants to verify how rabidly the U.S. Government lies, and has lied since at least the time of George W. Bush's Presidency, just look at  this video, by starting at 16:00 on it and going to 42:00 on it , and you will be shocked. (It pertains to lies by Bush that are still being covered up by Obama.) And when you further consider the many obvious questions it points out, which U.S. "news" media refused to ask and still refuse to ask about the matter, you'll recognize that we are being lied to systematically and with utter contempt of the public, and with no respect for the public's right to know the truth, even regarding massive history like that. It's really brutal.

Ignorant "reporters" sometimes slip-up and include, in their stenography, facts that actually support the opposite side's narrative of events and that discredit their own story-line. Such has been the case, for example, in the  Financial Times   piece, which included the statement that, "Anti-aircraft missiles are not designed to score a direct hit as they are targeted to destroy fast, agile fighter jets. Instead, they are designed to explode within about 20m of their target, sending out a cloud of red hot metal to increase the chances of inflicting as much damage as possible."

But rather than merely "a cloud of red hot metal," what actually brought down this plane was what Haisenko has said brought it down: magazines-full of carefully targeted rapid-fire machine-gun bullets pouring forth from below the plane, at both its left and right.

This was a Ukrainian Government job. It was  close-in . (No missile fired from the distance more than 30,000 feet down to the ground could have been that precise to target the pilot rather than the far larger target of the plane's entire body.) It came from  the Government that Obama installed there in February  and that's now carrying out an  ethnic-cleansing campaign against the residents in Ukraine's southeast , the places where Yanukovych's voters live ( to the extent that they still can and do live ).

Compare that picture with the following one, which I take from a  propaganda-site for the U.S. regime , and so which is intended instead to support the Administration's line on this, certainly not Haisenko's explanation of how the airliner was downed, though it actually supports Haisenko's case:

As you can see there, a plane that's hit by a ground-fired missile, instead of by bullets fired from an attack-plane only a few yards away, has the damage spread rather widely over its body, not concentrated into a tiny area, such as to where the plane's pilot is seated. Certainly, the contrast between that photo and  this one  is enormous.

And the European Union has been playing along with  this hoax . (If you still have any further doubts that it's a hoax, just click onto that link and look.) And the mass of suckers in the West believe  that hoax : it's succeeding to stir a fever for war, instead of a fever to get rid of our own leaders who are lying us into a war that will benefit only the West's aristocrats, while it inflicts massive physical and economic harms against everyone else ? as if it were the invasion of Iraq except multiplied in this case a thousand-fold, especially with nuclear weapons possibly at the end of it.

If we had a free press, the news media would be ceaselessly asking President Obama why he doesn't demand accountability against the Ukrainian Government for  their massacre perpetrated on May 2nd inside the Trade Unions Building in Odessa , where that  newly Obama-installed  regime's peaceful opponents were systematically trapped and then burned alive, which the Obama-installed Ukrainian Government has refused to investigate (much less to prosecute). Basically:  Obama had sponsored the massacre . So, our "news" media ignore it,  even though it started this civil war on Russia's doorstep , and thereby re-started the Cold War, as Obama had intended that massacre ( his massacre, and  his subsequent ethnic cleansing) to do. (Similarly, the "news" media, though all of them receive my articles by email, virtually all refuse to publish them, because I won't let them control what I find and report.)

And while  Obama leads this Republican policy , and Vice President Dick Cheney's top foreign-policy advisor Victoria Nuland actually runs it for Obama, congressional Democrats are just silent about it, and  do not introduce impeachment of this fake "Democratic" hyper-George W. Bush neo-conservative President , who's a ?Democrat?  in rhetoric only  -- and though Obama's policy in this key matter  threatens the entire world .

A reader-comment to an earlier version of this news report and analysis objected to my identifying Obama as a Republican-in-"Democratic"-sheep's clothing, and said: "They may be rethug policies in origin but they are decidedly BI-PARTISAN to anyone who wants to admit FACTS. The democratic party you all think still exists is DEAD and only exists in your brain (the part that doesn't accept reality)." However, U.S. Senate bill 2277, which invites Obama to provide direct U.S. military support to the Obama-installed Ukrainian regime, has 26 sponsors, and all of them are Republican U.S. Senators. Democratic Senators, by contrast, are just silent on Obama's turn toward nazism (or racist -- in this case anti-ethnic-Russian racist -- fascism); the Senate's Democrats aren't seeking for it to be stepped up. This is a Republican policy, which congressional Democrats are simply afraid to oppose. Any realistic person knows that however far right Obama turns, the  overt Republican Party will turn even farther to the right, because they have to be to his right in order for them to be able to win Republican primaries and retain their  own Party's nomination. Just because Obama's game of moving the American political center as far to the right as he can move it is succeeding, doesn't mean that the Democratic Party itself should end. It instead means that progressives need to take the Democratic Party over, just like conservatives took the Republican Party over with Reagan. There is no other hope. If a Democrat in the U.S. House will simply introduce an impeachment resolution against Barack Obama, then the right-wing takeover of the Democratic Party might finally end, and the world might yet be saved, because the Democratic Party itself could then reject Obama as being a fake "Democrat," a Democrat-in-rhetoric-only. It could transform American politics -- and American politics needs such a transformation, which would move the Democratic Party back to progressivism, more like the FDR Democratic Party was, so that Republican politicians would no longer need to be so fascist as they now have become (and as they now need to  be in order to be able to win their  own Party's nomination). If Democrats fail to renounce the conservatism of Obama and of the Clintons, then the Party will end, and needs to be replaced, just like the Republican Party replaced the Whig Party immediately before the Civil War. Nazism has become today's slavery-type issue ? it's beyond the pale, and Obama's installation and endorsement of it in Ukraine is like James Buchanan's endorsement of slavery was during the 1850s: either the Democratic Party will become the progressive party, or else the Democratic Party is over.

But that's just my own theory of how Obama's frauds might yet be able to be overcome and defeated, if they still can be; it's not part of my presentation of the explanation of what brought down the Malaysian airliner, which has been an open case since July 17th, and which is now a closed case. This is past history, not future.

The present news story is being circulated free of charge or copyright to all "news" media in the English-speaking world, in the perhaps vain hope that the cover-ups of our leaders' constant lies will cease soon enough to avoid a World War III, even though communism is long since gone from Russia and so the ideological excuse wouldn't make any sense here. This  insanity  is actually all about aristocratic conquest, like World War I was. It's not for the benefit of the public  anywhere . Silence about it (by ?Democrats,? and the ?news? media) is a scandal, which needs to stop. The real Democratic Party (the Party of FDR, who loathed and despised nazis -- and even mere fascists -- yet today Obama installs nazis into Power in Ukraine) must be restored, and a real news media needs to become established in America. Even Republicans need it, because the very idea of  ?victory? in a nuclear war  is a vicious  fantasy . It is a  dangerous lie , though there are  some people who find it a very profitable one . And time might be short -- let's hope not already  too   short.

After all, Obama's hoax of having won from Europe the stepped-up economic sanctions against Russia after the government that Obama had installed in Ukraine downed the Malaysian plane and successfully blamed it on ?Russian aggression,? is very encouraging to him. And  European leaders know  that Obama's entire operation is  a very bloody fraud  (read the phone-transcript there -- it's a stunner). So, they certainly won't save the world from it. It's up to us.

----------

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of   They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 ,   and of  CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity .

The whole world has been horrified by Apartheid Israel 's latest Gaza Massacre that has killed 1,900 Occupied Palestinians and wounded 10,000. Even the unrepentant war criminal Israeli PM Benjamin  Netanyahu looks chastened by the reality that 7 billion human beings now regard him with  his predecessor PM Ehud Olmert as the ?Butchers of Gaza? over successive  Gaza Massacres,  just as former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon is forever known  as the ?Butcher of Beirut? over the Sabra and Shatila Massacre. However the Zionist Lobbies have muted the Western response and in Australia , neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel 's best friend after the US , the vociferous and venomous Israel Lobby has driven one of Australia 's top journalists, Mike Carlton, from his job with the Sydney Melbourne Herald after he forcefully criticized this latest Israeli Gaza Massacre [1, 2].  

Genocidal, neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel has temporarily suspended its latest  Gaza Massacre in the Gaza Concentration  Camp, This atrocity has so far has been associated with 1,900 Palestinians killed, 10,000 wounded, and 450,000 displaced  with 1.8 million Gazans ( 0.9 million of them children)  variously traumatized by Apartheid Israel (or more exactly, Nazi Israel if one accepts that Nazi is as Nazi does)  - and all this horror in response to the murder of 3 Israeli settler teenagers killed by persons unknown (possibly Israeli  state terrorists) ,  and zero (0) Israelis killed by Gaza rockets in the year before the latest Israeli invasion. Indeed 28 Israelis have been killed by Gaza rockets since the start of the Intifada  in 2000   or 2 per year  as compared to a total of about 130 Israelis murdered  by fellow Israelis each year [3].

Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. For anti-racist Jews and indeed all anti-racist humanitarians the core moral messages from the Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) and from the more general WW2 European Holocaust (30 million Slav, Jewish and Gypsy dead) are ?zero tolerance for racism?, ?never again to anyone?, ?bear witness? and ?zero tolerance for lying?. However these sacred injunctions are grossly violated by the anti-Arab anti-Semitic racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel and their Western backers variously involved in the ongoing Palestinian Genocide, Iraqi Genocide, Somali Genocide,  and Afghan Genocide (post-invasion violent and non-violent excess deaths 0.3 million (1967-2011), 4.6 million (1990-2011), 2.2 million (1992-2011) and 5.6 million, respectively; post-invasion under-5 infant deaths 0.2 million, 2.0 million, 1.3 million and 2.9 million, respectively; refugees totalling 7 million, 5-6 million, 2 million  and 3-4 million, respectively, plus millions of NW Pakistan Pashtun refugees).

All decent, anti-racist, humanitarians must vigorously oppose and sideline those supporting genocidally racist Zionism, Apartheid Israel and racist Western wars and occupations who are currently complicit in  0.7 million non-violent excess deaths annually in the American Empire; continuing, racist perversion of human rights, humanitarian  values and rational discourse in the Western democracies; ignoring of worsening climate genocide (that may kill 10 billion non-Europeans this century through unaddressed man-made climate change); and egregious anti-Jewish anti-Semitism through defaming  anti-racist Jews critical of horrendous Apartheid Israeli crimes and  falsely identifying decent, anti-racist Jews with these appalling crimes.

Decent people cannot walk by on the other side. However Mike Carlton, one of Australia 's top newspaper columnists, has been punished by his employer and driven to resigning his job with the Sydney Morning Herald after he responded angrily to a torrent of Zionist abuse after his forthright   criticism of Apartheid Israel 's  latest Gaza Massacre in the Gaza Concentration Camp.

This is in part what offended Zionist Australians when Mike Carlton responded to neo-Nazi Apartheid  Israel 's ongoing Gaza Massacre: ?Yes, Hamas is also trying to kill Israeli civilians, with a barrage of rockets and guerilla border attacks. It, too, is guilty of terror and grave war crimes. But Israeli citizens and their homes and towns have been effectively shielded by the nation's Iron Dome defence system, and so far only three of its civilians have died in this latest conflict. The Israeli response has been out of all proportion, a monstrous distortion of the much-vaunted right of self defence. It is a breathtaking irony that these atrocities can be committed by a people with a proud liberal tradition of scholarship and culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and the six million dead of the Holocaust at the centre of their race memory. But this is a new and brutal Israel dominated by the hardline, right-wing Likud Party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition? Fascism in Israel ? At this point the Australian Likudniks, as Bob Carr calls them, will be lunging for their keyboards. There will be the customary torrent of abusive emails calling me a Nazi, an anti-Semite, a Holocaust denier, an ignoramus.  As usual they will demand my resignation, my sacking. As it's been before, some of this will be pornographic or threatening violence... That is why the killing and the dying goes on. Ad nauseam, ad infinitum. And the rest of the world, not caring, looks away?  [1].

Gideon Levy (an anti-racist Jewish Israeli  columnist and editorial board member of the progressive  daily newspaper Ha'aretz) on the Gaza Massacre by a Fascist Apartheid Israel (2014):  "All the seeds of the incitement of the past few years, all the nationalistic, racist legislation and the incendiary propaganda, the scare campaigns and the subversion of democracy by the right-wing camp ? all these have borne fruit, and that fruit is rank and rotten. The nationalist right has now sunk to a new level, with almost the whole country following in its wake. The word 'fascism', which I try to use as little as possible, finally has its deserved place in the Israeli political discourse" [1].

One is reminded of Nobel Laureate Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt and numerous other eminent anti-racist  Jewish scholars decrying Nazi-style Irgun Zionists in a letter  to the New York Times in 1948 : ?Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the "Freedom Party" (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine ... The discrepancies between the bold claims now being made by Begin and his party, and their record of past performance in Palestine bear the imprint of no ordinary political party. This is the unmistakable stamp of a Fascist party for whom terrorism (against Jews, Arabs, and British alike), and misrepresentation are means, and a " Leader State " is the goal. In the light of the foregoing considerations, it is imperative that the truth about Mr. Begin and his movement be made known in this country. It is all the more tragic that the top leadership of American Zionism has refused to campaign against Begin's efforts, or even to expose to its own constituents the dangers to Israel from support to Begin. The undersigned therefore take this means of publicly presenting a few salient facts concerning Begin and his party; and of urging all concerned not to support this latest manifestation of fascism? [4].  

Fascist  is a fascist does (corporatist, anti-democratic, militarist, imperialist, human rights abusing i.e. upfront versions of the dominant, partly democracy-constrained, closet fascist Western corporatists ) . Nazi is as Nazi does (Nazism being a genocidal version of Fascism).

Outstanding anti-racist Jewish Canadian writer and humanitarian activist Naomi Klein has stated the fundamental anti-racist Jewish position  against the  ongoing Palestinian Genocide by neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel (2007): ? There is a debate among Jews - I'm a Jew by the way. The debate boils down to the question: "Never again to everyone, or never again to us?... [Some Jews] even think we get one get-away-with-genocide-free card...There is another strain in the Jewish tradition that say[s], 'Never again to anyone.?? [5].

Indeed Moshe Menuhin ( father of famous violinist and universalist Yehudi Menuhin and  author of "The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time", "Jewish Critics of Zionism", and of the family history "The Menuhin Saga") stated of  Israeli oppression of Palestinians: ?Jews should be Jews - not Nazis? [6].

For his forthright humane decency Mike Carlton was abused by pro-Zionists who evidently approve of neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel 's mass murder of Palestinian children. Mike Carlton  told the worst of these Zionists  to ?---- off. ? In Mike Carlton's own words about his punishment and resignation :  "When for weeks you're called Nazi scum and a lot worse, eventually it gets to you and I told a few people where to go. I would have thought in this country of ours that telling a few people where to get off occasionally was not a crime, but the sad thing is to see a once-great newspaper like the Herald buckle to the bullies. Certainly the understanding I had with the editor-in-chief was that there would be apologies and that I would carry on. Higher up the food chain they wanted me suspended for four to six weeks. That was [Sean] Aylmer , and that's when I resigned last night. I'd like to thank my colleagues at the Herald for the massive support they're giving me right now" [2].

Again one is reminded of the wise, eminent , anti-racist  counsel from the past, specifically that of Sir Isaac Isaacs, Australia's most famous Jewish government  figure and Australia's first Australian-born Governor General (1946): ?The honour of Jews throughout the world demands the renunciation of political Zionism" and "The Zionist movement as a whole...now places its own unwarranted interpretation on the Balfour Declaration, and makes demands that are arousing the antagonism of the Moslem world of nearly 400 millions, thereby menacing the safety of our Empire, endangering world peace and imperiling some of the most sacred associations of the Jewish, Christian, and Moslem faiths. Besides their inherent injustice to others these demands would, I believe, seriously and detrimentally affect the general position of Jews throughout the world" [7].  

The traitorous, anti- Arab anti-Semitic  and anti-Jewish anti-Semitic, racist Zionist Lobby has scored a major victory in forcing an honorable humanitarian, Mike Carlton, out of his job with a major Australian newspaper, the Fairfax-owned Sydney Morning Herald. Hopefully this Zionist  victory will be a Pyrrhic one and decent anti-racist Australians will be prompted to urge the sidelining of the genocidally racist Zionists  and their racist supporters from public life as has happened already to Nazis, neo-Nazis, Apartheiders and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

Of course Mike Carlton is not the only decent human being savaged by the Zionist Lobby over criticism of Israeli war crimes. Thus Helen Thomas (August 4, 1920 ? July 20, 2013) was an Arab American author and news service reporter, and famous as the  doyen of the White House press corps and as an opinion columnist. She was forced to resign her job when, having been asked  for comments on Israel , she replied: "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine." and "Remember, these people are occupied and it's their land. It's not German, it's not Poland ..."  and when asked where Israeli Jews should go, she replied that they could "go home" to Poland or Germany or " America and everywhere else. Why push people out of there who have lived there for centuries?" [8].

Indeed at present the British Zionist Lobby has turned it venom on John Prescott (Bar on Prescott, Lord Prescott, a British Labour politician who was the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 ) for commenting thus on neo-Nazi  Apartheid Israel's latest Gaza Massacre inflicted on  the Gaza Concentration Camp  (2014): ? Those who live in Gaza are kept like prisoners behind walls and fences, unable to escape the bombings, and an Israeli economic blockade has forced Palestinians into poverty. Israel 's Iron Dome defence system easily intercepts missiles launched from Gaza . Three Israeli citizens have died from these ­primitive rockets, with 32 soldiers killed fighting Hamas. Compare that to the toll in Gaza . Of the 1,000-plus to die, more than 80 per cent were ­civilians, mostly women and children. But who is to say some of the other 20 per cent weren't ­innocent too? Israel brands them terrorists but it is acting as judge, jury and ­executioner in the ­concentration camp that is Gaza . And Israel flouts international law by continuing to build illegal Jewish settlements. Why? Because it knows it can get away with it. What happened to the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis is appalling. But you would think those atrocities would give Israelis a unique sense of perspective and empathy with the victims of a ghetto ? We must force Israel to end the blockade on Gaza to ensure free and unfettered access for humanitarian aid and reconstruction materials. There must be a freeze on illegal settlement growth to let talks start. We should support a phased approach to end the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem within a reasonable timeframe. The EU should play a bigger role in supporting ­mediation and push for ­sanctions for non-compliance. The lack of a two-state solution is a running sore that continues to inflame the passions not just of ­Palestinians and Muslims, but all fair-minded people around the world. We cannot be a silent witness to this carnage one minute longer. The world must force Israel and Hamas to stop this endless cycle of death? [9].

Numerous  anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish scholars, writers and leaders are variously opposed - like Mike Carlton -  to the horrendous  human rights abuses of nuclear terrorist, genocidal,  racist Zionist-run , democracy-by-genocide , neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel [10-14].   Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity we cannot walk by on the other side.   Decent anti-racist folk around the world will honour Australian journalist Mike Carlton  for standing up for humanity against  the war crimes of a neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel .  

Decent people around the world must:

(1) inform everyone they can about the horrendous lies, human rights abuses and war crimes of Apartheid Israel (Nazi Israel)  in its ongoing Palestinian Genocide; \

(2) demand immediate cessation of murderous Israeli violence, human rights abuse,  Palestinian Exile and Palestinian Occupation;

(3) demand equal rights and one-man-one-vote for all the present subjects of Apartheid Israel in the former Mandatory  Palestine and indeed for all in a secure, just and reconciled unitary Palestinian state that permits all Palestinian refugees to return (90% of Palestine has now been ethnically cleansed i.e. a just  ?2-state? solution is dead);

(4)  demand  justice  through the International Criminal Court or through an International Tribunal of the most eminent humanitarians;  and

(5) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against not just US-, UK-, EU-, Canada- and Australia-backed Apartheid Israel but also, where practicable,  against all people, politicians, parties,  collectives, companies, corporations and countries complicit in neo-Nazi Apartheid Israeli state terrorism and US state terrorism in Palestine, the Middle East, and indeed throughout the world.

This must be the last Gaza Massacre and all Humanity must stand up and say ?Free Palestine? NOW.

The consequence of Washington’s reckless and irresponsible political and military interventions in Iraq, Libya, and Syria has been to unleash evil. The various sects that lived in peace under the rule of Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, and Assad are butchering one another, and a new group, ISIS, is in the process of creating a new state out of parts of Iraq and Syria.

The turmoil brought into the Middle East by the Bush and Obama regimes has meant death and displacement for millions and untold future deaths. As I write 40,000 Iraqis are stranded on a mountain top without water awaiting death at the hands of ISIS, a creation of US meddling.

The reality in the Middle East stands in vast contradiction to the stage managed landing of George W. Bush on the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln where Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” on May 1, 2003. The mission that Washington accomplished was to wreck the Middle East and the lives of millions of people and to destroy America’s reputation in the process. Thanks to the demonic neoconservative Bush regime, today America is regarded by the rest of the world as the greatest threat to world peace.

The Clinton regime’s attack on Serbia set the pattern. Bush upped the ante with Washington’s naked aggression against Afghanistan, which Washington clothed in Orwellian language–”Operation Enduring Freedom.”

Washington brought ruin, not freedom, to Afghanistan. After 13 years of blowing up the country, Washington is now withdrawing, the “superpower” having been defeated by a few thousand lightly armed Taliban, but leaving a wasteland behind for which Washington will accept no responsibility.

Another source of endless Middle East turmoil is Israel whose theft of Palestine is Washington-enabled. In the middle of Israel’s latest attack on civilians in Gaza, the US Congress passed resolutions in support of Israel’s war crimes and voted hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for Israel’s ammunition. Here we witness Great Moral America 100 percent in support of unambiguous war crimes against essentially defenseless people.

When Israel murders women and children, Washington calls it “Israel’s right to defend their own country”–a country that Israel stole from Palestinians–but when Palestinians retaliate Washington calls it “terrorism.” By supporting Israel, declared to be a terrorist state by a few moral governments that still exist, and accused of war crimes by the UN General Secretary, Washington is in violation of its own laws against supporting terrorist states.

Of course, Washington itself is the leading terrorist state. Therefore, it is illegal under US law for Washington to support itself. Washington, however, does not accept law, neither domestic nor international, as a constraint on its actions. Washington is “exceptional, indispensable.” No one else counts. No law, no Constitution, and no humane consideration has authority to constrain Washington’s will. In its claims Washington surpasses those of the Third Reich.

As horrific as Washington’s recklessness toward the Middle East is, Washington’s recklessness toward Russia is many orders of magnitude greater. Washington has
convinced nuclear armed Russia that Washington is planning a nuclear first strike.
In response Russia is beefing up its nuclear forces and testing US air defense reactions. http://freebeacon.com/national-security/russian-strategic-bombers-conduct-more-than-16-incursions-of-u-s-air-defense-zones/

It is difficult to imagine a more irresponsible act than to convince Russia that Washington intends to hit Russia with a preemptive first strike. One of Putin’s advisers has explained to the Russian media Washington’s first strike intentions, and a member of the Russian Duma has made a documented presentation of Washington’s first strike intentions. http://financearmageddon.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/official-warning-u-s-to-hit-russia-with.html By marshaling the evidence, I have pointed out in my columns that it is impossible for Russia to avoid this conclusion.

China is aware that China faces the same threat from Washington. http://yalejournal.org/2013/06/12/who-authorized-preparations-for-war-with-china/ China’s response to Washington’s war plans against China was to demonstrate how China’s nuclear forces would be used in response to Washington’s attack on China to destroy the US. China made this public, hoping to create opposition among Americans to Washington’s war plans against China. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2484334/China-boasts-new-submarine-fleet-capable-launching-nuclear-warheads-cities-United-States.html Like Russia, China is a rising country that does not need war in order to succeed.

The only country on earth that needs war is Washington, and that is because Washington’s goal is the neoconservative one of exercising hegemony over the world.

Prior to the Bush and Obama regimes, every previous US president went to great efforts to avoid telegraphing any nuclear threat. US war doctrine was careful to keep nuclear weapons limited to retaliation in the event the US suffered a nuclear attack. The purpose of nuclear forces was to prevent the use of such weapons. The reckless George W. Bush regime elevated nuclear weapons to preemptive first use, thus destroying the constraint placed on the use of nuclear weapons.

The overriding purpose of the Reagan administration was to end the cold war and, thereby, the threat of nuclear war. The George W. Bush regime, together with the Obama regime’s demonization of Russia, have overturned President Reagan’s unique achievement and made nuclear war likely.

When the incompetent Obama regime decided to overthrow the democratically elected government in Ukraine and install a puppet government of Washington’s choosing, the Obama State Department, run by neoconservative ideologues, forgot that the eastern and southern portions of Ukraine consist of former Russian provinces that were attached to the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic by Communist Party leaders when Ukraine and Russia were part of the same country–the Soviet Union. When the Russophobic stooges that Washington installed in Kiev demonstrated in word and deed their hostility to Ukraine’s Russian population, the former Russian provinces declared their desire to return to mother Russia. This is not surprising, nor is it something that can be blamed on Russia.

Crimea succeeded in returning to Russia, where Crimea resided since the 1700s, but Putin, hoping to defuse the propaganda war that Washington was mounting against him did not accept the pleas from the other former Russian provinces. Consequently, Washington’s stooges in Kiev felt free to attack the protesting provinces and have been following the Israeli policy of attacking civilian populations, civilian residences, and civilian infrastructure.

The presstitute Western media ignored the facts and accused Russia of invading and annexing parts of Ukraine. This lie is comparable to the lies that US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in behalf of the criminal Bush regime, lies that Colin Powell later apologized for to no avail as Iraq had been destroyed by his lies.

When the Malaysian airliner was destroyed, before any facts were known Russia was blamed. The British media was especially primed to blame Russia almost the instant it was known the airliner was downed. I heard the BBC’s gross misrepresentation and blatant lies on American National Public Radio, and only the Daily Mail’s propagandistic account was worse. The entire “news” event has the appearance of orchestration prior to the event, which, of course, suggests that Washington was behind it.

The airliner deaths became all important for Washington’s propaganda war. The 290 casualties are unfortunate, but they are a small fraction of the deaths that Israel was inflicting on Palestinians at the same moment without provoking any protests from Western governments, as distinct from Western peoples in the streets, people whose protests were conveniently suppressed for Israel by Western security forces.

Washington used the downing of the airliner, which probably was Washington’s responsibility, as an excuse for another round of sanctions and to pressure its European puppets to join the sanctions with sanctions of their own, which Washington’s EU puppets did.

Washington relies on accusations and insinuations and refuses to release the evidence from the satellite photos, because the photos do not support Washington’s lies. Facts are not permitted to interfere with Washington’s demonization of Russia any more than facts interfered with Washington’s demonization of Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Iran.

Twenty-two reckless and irresponsible US senators have introduced the “Russian Aggression Prevention Act of 2014,” US Senate bill 2277, sponsored by Senator Bob Corker, who well represents in his ignorance and stupidity what appears to be the majority of the American population or the majority of voters in the state of Tennessee. Corker’s bill is a mindless piece of legislation designed to start a war that would be likely to leave no survivors. Apparently, idiotic Americans will elect any fool to power.

The belief that Russia is responsible for the downed Malaysian airliner has become fact in Western capitals despite the total absence of even a tiny scrap of evidence in behalf of the claim. Moreover, even it the accusation were true, is one airliner worth a World War?

The UK Defense Committee has concluded that a broke and militarily impotent UK must “focus on the defense of Europe against Russia.” The military spending drums, if not the war drums, are beating and the entire West has joined in. A militarily impotent Britain is going to defend Europe from a non-existent, although much proclaimed, attack from the Russian bear.

US and NATO military dignitaries and the Pentagon chief are issuing Russia Threat Warnings based on alleged but non-existent Russian troop-buildups on Ukraine’s border. According to the the Western Ministry of Propaganda if Russia defends the Russian populations in Ukraine from military attack from Washington’s stooge government in Kiev, it is proof that Russia is the villain.

Washington’s propaganda campaign has succeeded in turning Russia into a threat. Polls show that 69 percent of Americans now regard Russia as a threat, and that the confidence of Russians in American leadership has vanished.

Russians and their government observe the identical demonization of their country and their leader as they observed of Iraq and Saddam Hussein, of Libya and Gaddafi, of Syria and Assad, and of Afghanistan and the Taliban just prior to military assaults on these countries by the West. For a Russian, the safest conclusion from the evidence is that Washington intends war on Russia.

It is my opinion that the irresponsibility and recklessness of the Obama regime is without precedent. Never before has the United States government or the government of any nuclear power gone to such great efforts to convince another nuclear power that that power was being set up for attack. It is difficult to imagine a more provocative act that more endangers life on earth. Indeed, the White House Fool has doubled up, convincing both Russia and China that Washington is planning a preemptive first strike on both.

Republicans want to sue or to impeach Obama over relatively inconsequential issues, such as ObamaCare. Why don’t Republicans want to impeach Obama over such a critical issue as subjecting the world to the risk of nuclear armageddon?

The answer is that the Republicans are as crazed as the Democrats. Their leaders, such as John McCain and Lindsay Graham, are determined that “we stand up to the Russians!” Wherever one looks in American politics one sees crazed people, psychopaths and sociopaths who should not be in political office.

Washington long ago gave up diplomacy. Washington relies on force and intimidation. The US government is utterly devoid of judgment. This is why polls show that the rest of the world regards the US government as the greatest threat to world peace. Today
(August 8, 2014) Handelsblatt, Germany’s Wall Street Journal, wrote in a signed editorial by the publisher:

“The American tendency to move from verbal escalation to military escalation–the isolation, demonization, and attacking of enemies–has not proven effective. The last successful major military action the US conducted was the Normandy landing [in 1944]. Everything else – Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan – was a clear failure. Moving NATO units towards the Polish border with Russia and thinking about arming Ukraine is a continuation of relying on military means in the absence of diplomacy.”

Washington’s puppet states–all of Europe, Japan, Canada, and Australia–enable Washington’s unrivaled danger to the world by their support of Washington’s agenda of exercising hegemony over the entire world.

The 100th anniversary of World War I is upon us. And the folly that caused this war is being repeated. WWI destroyed a civilized Western world, and it was the work of a mere handful of scheming people. The result was Lenin, the Soviet Union, Hitler, the rise of American Imperialism, Korea, Vietnam, the military interventions that created ISIS, and now resurrected conflict between Washington and Russia that President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev had ended.

As Stephen Starr has pointed out on my website, if merely 10% of the nuclear weapons in the US and Russian arsenals are used, life on earth terminates.

Dear readers, ask yourselves, when has Washington told you anything that was not a lie? Washington’s lies have caused millions of casualties. Do you want to be a casualty of Washington’s lies?

Do you believe that Washington’s lies and propaganda about the Malaysian airliner and Ukraine are worth risking life on earth? Who is so gullible that he cannot recognize that Washington’s lies about Ukraine are like Washington’s lies about Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nukes, and Assad’s use of chemical weapons?

Do you think that the neoconservative influence that prevails in Washington, regardless of the political party in office, is too dangerous to be tolerated?

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

Obama’s lack of concern for the ISIS invasion of Iraq was ideologically linked to his inaction in Syria: Obama wants regime change in both nations, and is using ISIS as a de facto ally in both cases. This became quickly obvious with Obama’s response to the ISIS invasion of Iraq; he simply criticized the Iraqi government for not being more inclusive; meanwhile ISIS butchered its way through giant regions of Iraq and subjected the survivors to a more brutal totalitarianism than the U.S.-allied dictatorship in Saudi Arabia.

Further political support was given to ISIS by U.S. politicians, who essentially accepted ISIS as the ruler of the newly conquered Iraqi territories; these politicians instantly referred to Iraq as being “de facto partitioned,” meaning that ISIS had created a separate Sunni region that would be complemented by Shia and Kurdish regions.

Coincidentally, this “partition” plan just happens to be the official plan of Vice President Joe Biden, who for a while has advocated a “soft partition” of Iraq, an idea as ludicrous as a “partial” nuclear attack. As long as ISIS was “de facto” helping achieve Biden’s partition plan, Obama was fine with ISIS’ murderous rampage. And now the media informs us, unsurprisingly, that Biden’s plan has officially been “gaining momentum” in Washington D.C.

But then ISIS went too far. The red line that ISIS finally crossed was their attack against the U.S. allied Iraqi Kurds. The Kurds govern their own oil-rich autonomous zone in Iraq, and have been steadfast U.S. supporters. The New York Times talks openly about the real, non-humanitarian motive of Obama attacking ISIS:

“Mr. Obama has been reluctant to order direct military action in Iraq [against ISIS] while [Iraqi] Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki remains in office, but in recent weeks there have been repeated pleas from the Kurdish officials for weapons and assistance as ISIS militants have swept across northwestern Iraq.”

The Times re-enforced this perspective when talking about the views of Representative Adam Smith of Washington State:

“…he [Smith] supported intervening on behalf of the Kurds, as opposed to the unpopular Baghdad government. "The Kurds are worth helping and defending" [said Smith].”

There you have it. The thousands who have been slaughtered by ISIS in Syria and other parts of Iraq weren't “worth defending,” but the Kurds are different, since their leaders are U.S. allies. This sums up U.S. foreign policy in a nutshell, which has absolutely nothing to do with “humanitarianism.” Gazans are allowed to be slaughtered, Syrian’s massacred, and half of Iraq torn to shreds while Obama has busied himself with making threats to Russia.

The logical of U.S. military intervention is completely based on a cynical calculation meant to boost U.S. military and corporate power abroad, by any means necessary.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com