UKRAINE

SAM BULLARD—Recently Ukraine Airlines Flight PS752 went down in flames but intact after being struck by two Tor M1 missiles. The missiles had 15 kg fragmentation warheads. This downing happened predawn in a populous area near Tehran. Very soon after the event, videos went online of PS752 being struck by the missiles. The cause of the crash was plain to see even if you lived on the other side of the world. Iran admitted the error within a few days. It was an error. Note two key differences between PS752 and MH17. PS752 really was attacked by surface-to-air missiles. It really was an accidental downing. There is no way to hide the use of a surface-to-air missile in a populous area. The 9M330 missiles fired by the Tor M1 system are only half the size of a Buk 9M38 missile. It was dark outside at the time of the strikes. Even so the missiles were seen globally.

ERIC ZUESSE—During the coup, eight busloads of Crimeans, who had come to Kiev to demonstrate against the oust-Yanukovych Maidan demonstrations, hurriedly reboarded their buses in order to flee from nazis who were attacking them, and they finally got cornered en-route home, by those pursuing attackers, in the town of Korsun, and some of their buses were burnt, and many of these Crimeans got clubbed to death by the nazis.

Then, during the interim between the Korsun massacre and the 16 March 2014 Crimean referendum on rejoining the Russian Federation, a Ukrainian federal prosecutor from Crimea, who opposed the coup and managed safely to flee back home by her own private means, was interviewed on local Crimean television and recounted how terrified she had been by the nazis. She was asked whether Crimeans had the right to vote in a referendum to return to being Russians, and she said, “Citizens of Crimea, you have every right in the world” to do that.

PETER KOENIG—Belarus is in turmoil, after an election where the incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko – 25 years already in power (in office since 1994) – has won with 80% of the popular vote. That’s what the official stats and media say. True or false? Does it matter?  The margin is large enough that it cannot be contested or questioned by “recounters”. So, people take to the streets. First police reaction against protesters is violent.

FRANCIS LEE—Throughout this period the EU and high-ranking US officials were openly engaged in Ukraine’s internal affairs. The US Ambassador, Geoffrey Pyatt, and the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, were strolling around Independence Square reassuring the protestors that America stood behind them. Also basking in the political sunlight were US NGOs (such as the National Endowment for Democracy – NED – directly funded by the US Government) and (USAID). Also involved was the US Human Rights Watch (HRW) and not forgetting of course the ubiquitous Mr. Soros.

MATTHEW JL EHRET—Together, Jones and Muggeridge’s “on-the-ground” reports were published in the Manchester Guardian, Nazi press, and William Randolph Hearst press machine. When Hearst began publicizing Holodomor, he had already become a devout Hitlerite. Professor MacDonald notes that “in September 1934, multi-millionaire William Randolph Hearst, the leading U.S. publisher of the ‘yellow press’ and an open supporter of Nazism, met with Hitler and Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels in Berlin and signed a cash deal to promote a positive image of the Nazis in the U.S. The Hearst papers soon carried columns paid for by Hitler, Goering and Mussolini.”