July 18, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
15:31
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| Hi everybody, Stefan Molyne from Free Domain Radio. | |
| This is the breaking news regarding the recent downing of the Malaysian airline that apparently was shot down by a surface-to-air missile of extremely high sophistication and training requirements, therefore almost certainly military-grade, military-installed and military-trained. | |
| And I've done some videos on why the conflict is occurring, and we'll put those in the low bar, including an interview with Paul Craig Roberts about the situation. | |
| So we'll just touch on it very briefly. | |
| One of the most important things to remember about the relationship between Ukraine and Russia is that Ukraine suffered a worse-than-Holocaust number of casualties in what at least the Ukrainian government has termed A genocide against the Ukrainian people. | |
| This occurred 1932 to 1933 under Soviet, of course, domination. | |
| It's called the Holodomor or extermination by hunger and It's a man-made famine in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic that killed up to 7.5 million Ukrainians. | |
| This was the result of collectivized farming process, which also killed tens of millions of people around the world, including Cambodia and China and other places. | |
| During the famine, which is also known as the terror famine in Ukraine, and famine genocide in Ukraine, millions of citizens of Ukrainian SSR, the majority of whom Ukrainians died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe which was unprecedented in the history of Ukraine. | |
| Ukraine has for hundreds of years been known as the breadbasket of Europe because of its incredibly fertile soil and capacity to feed almost all the European population. | |
| Since 2006, the Holodomor has been recognized by the independent Ukraine and several other countries as a genocide of the Ukrainian people. | |
| Some people say that Stalin wanted to suppress Any possible rebellions coming out of Ukraine? | |
| There were, of course, it was some natural factors, some bad economic policies, to say the least. | |
| And there were a rejection of outside aid. | |
| Stories did get out to the rest of the world about this largely engineered famine, which could be the result of ideology and could have been a result of genocidal programs, which have not been confirmed as yet. | |
| They took all of the household foodstuffs And they also prevented the population from moving, from leaving. | |
| And so the loss of life, of course, is even greater than the Jewish Holocaust under the Nazis. | |
| Now, the fact that this is not part of our understanding of Eastern Europe and the relationships between Ukraine and Russia is one reason why it's a little hard to figure out what's going on. | |
| So let's just do a brief introduction. | |
| So a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, which was designated MH17, crashed near the settlement of Gravobo in Ukraine's highly volatile Donetsk region July 17th, killing all 298 people aboard. | |
| This is the worst airline accident since the 9-11 World Trade Center attacks. | |
| There were a lot of Dutch people. | |
| There was also, of course, a lot of researchers for an AIDS conference that they were heading to and a few football fans off to see their team play in New Zealand. | |
| But from a ratio of population standpoint, it's absolutely horrendous. | |
| This crash killed a larger share of the Dutch population than 9-11 did of the US population. | |
| So if it is an act of aggression, if it is an act of terrorism, then it is for the Dutch people greater than 9-11 in the United States. | |
| An advisor to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry claimed that the airline was shot down by a Buk surface-to-air missile system, and U.S. intelligence agencies have supported this claim. | |
| Mark Gagliotti, one of the foremost Western experts on Russia's military and security services, said, Although I wish it were otherwise, I feel that the overwhelming odds are that MH17 was shot down by a Buk M1 surface-to-air missile fired by the rebels but supplied... | |
| by the Russians and again this is all conjecture nothing has been determined for finalists yet The falling of the airline in the Ukraine scattered bodies and debris for miles, and of course the plane was considered to be destroyed mid-air. | |
| Critics are accusing Russia of providing the missile system to the rebels. | |
| So the rebels in the eastern part of Ukraine wished to rejoin Russia. | |
| There was a referendum, which was very positive. | |
| Wished to rejoin Russia, and they have basically been saying to people, don't fly over our airspace because they consider that Ukrainian... | |
| War planes are flying over their area. | |
| Russia, of course, denies any involvement. | |
| The rebels deny any responsibility and accused, as is usual in the fog of war, Ukraine of shooting down the plane. | |
| Sergei Kapvedatsy, a spokesman for the Donetsk People's Republic, DPR, prime minister, said, our militia does not have the armament that might down a plane flying at an altitude of 10 kilometers. | |
| We have shoulder-carried missile launches that might shoot down planes at an altitude of three or maximum four kilometers. | |
| So, It is, of course, to some degree a war zone over there. | |
| Our airlines were warned to avoid the eastern Ukrainian airspace after two Ukrainian planes, a fighter jet, and a military transport aircraft were shut down recently. | |
| Norman Shanks, who's a professor of aviation security at Coventry University, said, quote, It is a busy aviation route and there have been suggestions that a notice was given to aviators telling airlines to avoid that particular area. | |
| But Malaysia Airlines, like a number of other carriers, have been continuing to use it because it is a shorter route, which means less fuel and therefore less money. | |
| I expect the area will now be declared a no-fly zone and aircraft will have no choice but to take a different and longer route. | |
| An anonymous pilot for a major European airline told the British newspaper that it was normal practice for airlines to fly over conflict areas. | |
| We would often avoid areas where there is air-to-air conflict, but we flew over Iraq and Afghanistan when the British and U.S. armed forces were deployed there because only one side was using military jets. | |
| Now, there's been some misinformation, I guess it's not a huge shock, coming out of the mainstream media. | |
| Western media outlets falsely claimed that the Russian-backed separatist leader Igor Strelkov, in his, it's called VK, it's the Russian version of Facebook profile, confessed that DRP militias shot down the Malaysian plane. | |
| The post was later deleted, but screenshots of it circulated on the internet. | |
| In it, this leader Supposedly claimed that the separatists have managed to take down an Antonov An-26 military transport airplane instead of a passenger Boeing 777. | |
| But the VK profile is actually run by a group of Strelkov fans who collect and post information about the Crimean crisis. | |
| In a later post, the group stated that its previous information had come from a forum frequented by DRP militias, which I suppose would be the first indication of anonymous forum posts proving to be false on the internet. | |
| The deleted post didn't have the group's image manner that signifies an actual Strelkov statement. | |
| All right, so... | |
| The missile launcher has been rumored to be part of the militias or the rebels armaments for some time. | |
| On the 29th of June, Russian news agencies confirmed that forces of the DPR had captured a Ukrainian anti-aircraft base equipped with a book missile system, or more than one. | |
| At the time, a Ukrainian press secretary claimed that the rebels seized only two book system trucks that were out of commission. | |
| Furthermore, experts say that the separatists aren't trained to operate such military equipment. | |
| According to retired Brigadier General Kevin Ryan, director of the Defense and Intelligence Project at the Belfast Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, who must have one of the most landscapy business cards known to mankind, this is not, he says, this is not the kind of weapon a couple of guys are going to pull out of a garage and fire. | |
| Ryan concludes that only a professional military force, Ukrainian or Russian, can carry out such an attack, whether on purpose or by accident. | |
| Ukrainian Prosecutor General Vitaly Yarema says after the passenger airline was downed, the military reported to the President that terrorists do not have our air defense missile systems book an S-3000. | |
| He went on to add that these weapons were not seized. | |
| Now, the Russian response, Russia's defense ministry press service stated, quote, Thus, divisions of the 156th Air Defense Regiment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are deployed near Donetsk's northwestern suburbs. | |
| They have missile defense systems of the Buk M1 type. | |
| Such systems are capable of detecting air targets at a distance of up to 160 kilometers and hit them in the entire range of altitudes at a distance of over 30 kilometers. | |
| He goes on to say, apart from that, warplanes of the Ukrainian army equipped with various types of missiles are permanently present over the Donetsk, Donetsk sorry, region. | |
| The ministry says on July 17th, Russian missile defense systems in this region were out of service. | |
| Russian warplanes performed no flight in Russian regions bordering Ukraine on July 17th. | |
| This information is confirmed by our recorders. | |
| The ministry also noted that the plane was flying outside the range of Russia's missile defense systems. | |
| Could it be just a case of tragic incompetence? | |
| In my view, most likely. | |
| Russian news agency ITAR-TASS claimed that on July 16th, the day before the incident, Ukraine dispatched a book anti-aircraft battalion to the region where the Malaysian plane was shot down. | |
| Pilot and aviation expert Yuri Karash told Russia Today that the Ukrainians may have been behind the incident. | |
| Quote, I don't know who could have shot it down, but I can allege that it was most likely the Ukrainian armed forces, simply because its military, anti-aircraft defense in particular, are unfortunately unqualified. | |
| As judging by the overall state of the Ukrainian armed forces, insufficient attention has been paid to their training. | |
| Back in 2001, a Ukrainian missile fired during a military exercise took down a Russian passenger plane, killing 76 people. | |
| Political observer Maxim Zarov said it is yet to establish whether it was a deliberate provocation of the Ukrainian military that have run out of control or a tragic accident stemming from flagrant unprofessionalism. | |
| Niko Vorbach, president of the European Cockpit Association, which represents pilots, said information from the intelligence services will be crucial in deciding whether the aviation authorities erred in not including the Russian-Ukrainian border in the exclusion zone. | |
| Quote, I am a KLM pilot and fly over the area. | |
| If some intelligence agency did have information about a threat, we need to know if it was shared with everybody. | |
| We will have to wait for the outcome of an accident investigation to see if a mistake was made. | |
| Western leaders. | |
| How is the West responding with the usual non-partisan objectivity? | |
| I doubt it. | |
| Western leaders are already trying to drag Russia into the conflict over its alleged assistance of rebel fighters. | |
| Senator John McCain said, Hillary Clinton said, put Vladimir Putin on notice that he has gone too far, and we are not going to stand idly by. | |
| I guess he's been put on notice. | |
| So... | |
| Another quote from Clinton says, Now, how we determine that Russian-backed rebels are responsible for the attack will require some forensics. | |
| But then, if there is evidence pointing in that direction, the equipment had to have come from Russia. | |
| What more the Russians may or may not have done, we don't know. | |
| Now, given that the U.S. has poured $5 billion into Ukrainian politics over the last decade or so, some of that money may have been used to purchase military equipment from Russia. | |
| Now, there is some question as to whether the Ukrainians were aiming for Vladimir Putin's plane, which at a distance, of course, looks similar, has similar markings. | |
| But Putin's office and organization says that they weren't flying anywhere near it and the plane is not around. | |
| A Kremlin spokesman declined to comment on the Interfax report. | |
| So an unidentified Russian aviation official said that the Malaysian air flight bound for Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam may have been down by the Ukrainian rocket attempting to shoot down Putin's plane. | |
| Putin returned from a trip to Latin America yesterday, but that does not seem to be what happened. | |
| Now, this has happened before. | |
| Of course, the Americans shot down an Iranian airliner in Iranian airspace in 1988 because they mistook it for an F-14 Tomcat fighter plane. | |
| So these kinds of tragic misunderstandings, if that's what it was in fact that happened, have occurred before. | |
| It is somewhat instructive to see the differences between Obama and Reagan. | |
| Reagan, when he was faced with the knowledge of a downed airplane from Russia, Russia shot down an airplane, responded with outright moral condemnation, and so on. | |
| Obama said basically, well, that's a shame, and then went to two Democratic fundraisers to make sure that the money was flowing into his political coffers. | |
| As much as he wanted it to be. | |
| So it remains to be seen, of course, the truth may never be known. | |
| There are some recordings that have been intercepted from wiretaps which have been released in which Ukrainians seem to be discussing the oops, we shot down a civilian plane. | |
| Whether this is true or not, or staged, or it's all part of the fog of war, At the moment, but like what's going on in Israel and Palestine at the moment, this simply shows that we are heavily armed, stone-aged, tribalist monsters still as a species. | |
| We should be working to find our common humanity through reason and philosophy, and we should not be having this extremely deadly loyalty To dirt and bits of cloth and usually the blind, violent and tragic accidents of history. | |
| But these things are going to continue until we find more common humanity, which will be, of course, a multi-generational project. | |
| This is Stefan Molyneux for Freedomain Radio. |
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