Five different conspiracy behind flight MH17

There are several versions of the phrase: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” While the sentiment is not entirely applicable to the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines’ flight MH17 over Ukraine – it seems impossible that there was no malice involved in bringing down a passenger plane carrying close to 300 people who had nothing to do with anyone’s conflict – it’s still worth holding in our thoughts as we try to get to grips with exactly what happened. Was this a cock-up or a conspiracy?

First, the cock-up. Russian-backed Ukrainian separatists gained access to a sophisticated Buk ground-to-air missile system, most likely via Russian channels. They were keen to shoot down Ukrainian planes. Unfortunately, they did not have the equipment or expertise to differentiate between civilian and military aircraft, and the result was the horrific death of MH17’s 298 innocent passengers.

This is still a crime, no doubt. But for some this is not enough. For various reasons, ranging from fear, to vanity, to hatred, people need an overarching theory. There must always be more to matters than meets the eye.

Here are five of the “alternative” explanations for the downing of MH17, in order of diminishing plausibility (not to suggest that any one of them is really plausible – but some are weirder than others).


 1. The Ukrainians did it

Straightforward argument: The Ukrainian army should be the best-equipped force in Ukraine. It definitely has Buks, which Russia says it deployed near the separatist militia areas in advance of the attack. It shot down MH17 because…? That’s where this theory falls down. There is no reason why Ukraine, which already has significant sympathy from the international community, would jeopardise its position by senselessly attacking a civilian flight and hoping the blame would stick to Russia. But this is what the Russian military is hinting at with its series of questions to Kiev and Washington released this week.

2. It was the Ukrainians, attempting to shoot down Vladimir Putin

Russia’s Interfax agency reported excitedly after the attack that MH17 and Vladimir Putin’s presidential jet had been flying roughly the same trajectory. What’s more, the planes bore strikingly similar markings, with red and blue horizontal stripes on a white fuselage. Could it be the missile was intended for the Russian president?

Seems unlikely. Putin’s plane, flying home from a conference in Rio, was not scheduled to fly over Ukraine. Though the paths of the planes did briefly cross, that was apparently near Warsaw. Also, see 1. Unless Ukraine was hellbent on all-out war with Russia, there would be no reason to do this.

3. MH17 was shot down to conceal the truth about HIV/Aids


Flowers are laid as tributes to the Aids researchers killed in the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, at the base of a large sign for the 20th International AIDS Conference in Melbourne. Photograph: Stringer/Reuters
This is the point where the theories go from “interesting but unlikely” into “Oh. Right.”

Early reports of the disaster suggested over 100 people working in the field of HIV/Aids research, en route to a major international conference in Melbourne, had perished. When a clearer picture emerged, this was revised down to seven. No less horrific for those who perished or their friends and family, but perhaps less grist to the mill of those who speculated that the plane had been shot down to prevent a cure for Aids being revealed. Apparently, the “global elite” is keen to stop us learning about the cure for Aids, as it wants to depopulate the Earth. It seems fair to say that the global elite is not doing a very good job at this.


4. It was Israel

Speaking of “global elites”, if one delves far enough (ie not very far at all) into the conspiracy pool, one will quickly find talk of “globalists”, “internationalists”, “banksters” and “Zionists”.

The coincidence of the MH17 shooting with the latest outbreak of conflict in Israel/Palestine has provided perfect explanations for many who see the puppetmaster Zionist running everything. Curiously, they never say “Jews run the world” anymore. It is always couched in euphemism. Perhaps this is progress of a sort. But it still means you get to blame Israel for any event anywhere ever.

One theory, put forward by James Henry Fetzer of Veterans Today in an interview on Iran’s Press TV, is that Benjamin Netanyahu was behind the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in March. That plane was then hidden, possibly in Diego Garcia. When the Israeli bombardment of Gaza began, the plane was given new identification numbers and then flown over Ukraine, to be shot down by Ukrainian forces, backed by Nato, which backs Israel, which controls the world and is attempting to undermine Russia, the “last bastion” of the white race against the neocons and Zionists, as former BNP leader Nick Griffin called it in his recent resignation statement.



5. The “Illuminati” did it

The Illuminati, who have apparently been secretly running the world since the 18th century, usually in association with the globalists, the neocons, the Rothschild-Zionists etc shot down the plane. For all sorts of reasons. The useful thing about the Illuminati is that, despite being supposedly highly secretive, they leave clues absolutely everywhere all the time, from the symbolism on US bank notes to Rihanna (apparently Illuminati herself) throwing Illuminati hand gestures in videos. That is the other great thing about the Illuminati. Almost everyone you’ve ever heard of is in on it.

The Illuminati apparently have a thing for the number seven. So is it any coincidence that MH17, a Boeing 777 was shot down in the seventh month of 2014? Look at all the sevens and multiples thereof! It’s obvious!

We may laugh at these theories, but it’s worth remembering that they are being pushed by the likes of Press TV and Russia’s RT, both government-run channels for serious international players. It is easy at first glance to see why Russia has an interest in obscuring the truth about the horror of MH17 with a barrage of nonsense: Moscow has lost control of the situation in east Ukraine, and the last thing an autocrat such as Putin can admit to is that the monster of his making is not at his command.

But the formulation of conspiracy theories about MH17 is not isolated. Some of us like to believe these theories because the alternative is the terrifying idea that no one really knows what they’re doing; some because it lets us feel superior to others who have never even thought to gaze behind the curtain; some believe conspiracy theories give them a revolutionary edge, in spite of the fact that the vast majority of them come from profoundly reactionary places. And some theories on “Zionists”, “globalists” et al, come from a place of hatred and violence.

It is no good to say they are merely “alternative” ways of looking at the world, as some of their defenders will counter. There is reality and there is fantasy. We cannot engage with the world, or hope to improve it, without first knowing the true state of things. Conspiracy theories destroy any hope of that.



REFERENCES

Padraig Reidy
theguardian.com, Tuesday 22 July 2014 16.41 BST

THE PISSING TANKER MUMBAI

Many people say India is not a clean country or its unhygienic,  These statements are not used by only foreigners but also by the resident of India. My Question is to the resident of India, have you ever thought the reason behind it, I know your answer will be its because of the government.  My answer is stop blaming the government for all the things, its us who are responsible for it. We throw our garbage on streets, we spit on walls and we even piss on the streets. Is this our culture, No not at all. A group of people has started this operation known as Pissing Tanker to stop the people who piss on the street. Please watch the video below to know more about it.

America’s Secret War in 134 Countries

They operate in the green glow of night vision in Southwest Asia and stalk through the jungles of South America. They snatch men from their homes in the Maghreb and shoot it out with heavily armed militants in the Horn of Africa. They feel the salty spray while skimming over the tops of waves from the turquoise Caribbean to the deep blue Pacific. They conduct missions in the oppressive heat of Middle Eastern deserts and the deep freeze of Scandinavia. All over the planet, the Obama administration is waging a secret war whose full extent has never been fully revealed—until now.

Since September 11, 2001, US Special Operations forces have grown in every conceivable way, from their numbers to their budget. Most telling, however, has been the exponential rise in special ops deployments globally. This presence—now, in nearly 70 percent of the world’s nations—provides new evidence of the size and scope of a secret war being waged from Latin America to the backlands of Afghanistan, from training missions with African allies to information operations launched in cyberspace.

In the waning days of the Bush presidency, Special Operations forces were reportedly deployed in about sixty countries around the world. By 2010, that number had swelled to seventy-five, according to Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of The Washington Post. In 2011, Special Operations Command (SOCOM) spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told TomDispatch that the total would reach 120. Today, that figure has risen higher still.

In 2013, elite US forces were deployed in 134 countries around the globe, according to Major Matthew Robert Bockholt of SOCOM Public Affairs. This 123 percent increase during the Obama years demonstrates how, in addition to conventional wars and a CIA drone campaign, public diplomacy and extensive electronic spying, the US has engaged in still another significant and growing form of overseas power projection. Conducted largely in the shadows by America’s most elite troops, the vast majority of these missions take place far from prying eyes, media scrutiny, or any type of outside oversight, increasing the chances of unforeseen blowback and catastrophic consequences.

Growth Industry

Formally established in 1987, Special Operations Command has grown steadily in the post-9/11 era. SOCOM is reportedly on track to reach 72,000 personnel in 2014, up from 33,000 in 2001. Funding for the command has also jumped exponentially as its baseline budget, $2.3 billion in 2001, hit $6.9 billion in 2013 ($10.4 billion, if you add in supplemental funding). Personnel deployments abroad have skyrocketed, too, from 4,900 “man-years” in 2001 to 11,500 in 2013.

A recent investigation by TomDispatch, using open source government documents and news releases as well as press reports, found evidence that US Special Operations forces were deployed in or involved with the militaries of 106 nations around the world in 2012–13. For more than a month during the preparation of that article, however, SOCOM failed to provide accurate statistics on the total number of countries to which special operators—Green Berets and Rangers, Navy SEALs and Delta Force commandos, specialized helicopter crews, boat teams and civil affairs personnel—were deployed. “We don’t just keep it on hand,” SOCOM’s Bockholt explained in a telephone interview once the article had been filed. “We have to go searching through stuff. It takes a long time to do that.” Hours later, just prior to publication, he provided an answer to a question I first asked in November of last year. “SOF [Special Operations forces] were deployed to 134 countries” during fiscal year 2013, Bockholt explained in an email.

Globalized Special Ops

Last year, Special Operations Command chief Admiral William McRaven explained his vision for special ops globalization. In a statement to the House Armed Services Committee, he said, “USSOCOM is enhancing its global network of SOF to support our interagency and international partners in order to gain expanded situational awareness of emerging threats and opportunities. The network enables small, persistent presence in critical locations, and facilitates engagement where necessary or appropriate…”

While that “presence” may be small, the reach and influence of those Special Operations forces are another matter. The 12 percent jump in national deployments—from 120 to 134—during McRaven’s tenure reflects his desire to put boots on the ground just about everywhere on Earth. SOCOM will not name the nations involved, citing host nation sensitivities and the safety of American personnel, but the deployments we do know about shed at least some light on the full range of missions being carried out by America’s secret military.

Last April and May, for instance, Special Ops personnel took part in training exercises in Djibouti, Malawi and the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean. In June, US Navy SEALs joined Iraqi, Jordanian, Lebanese and other allied Mideast forces for irregular warfare simulations in Aqaba, Jordan. The next month, Green Berets traveled to Trinidad and Tobago to carry out small unit tactical exercises with local forces. In August, Green Berets conducted explosives training with Honduran sailors. In September, according to media reports, US Special Operations forces joined elite troops from the ten member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar (Burma) and Cambodia—as well as their counterparts from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, China, India and Russia for a US-Indonesian joint-funded counterterrorism exercise held at a training center in Sentul, West Java.

In October, elite US troops carried out commando raids in Libya and Somalia, kidnapping a terror suspect in the former nation while SEALs killed at least one militant in the latter before being driven off under fire. In November, Special Ops troops conducted humanitarian operations in the Philippines to aid survivors of Typhoon Haiyan. The next month, members of the 352nd Special Operations Group conducted a training exercise involving approximately 130 airmen and six aircraft at an airbase in England and Navy SEALs were wounded while undertaking an evacuation mission in South Sudan. Green Berets then rang in the new year with a January 1st combat mission alongside elite Afghan troops in Bahlozi village in Kandahar province.

Deployments in 134 countries, however, turn out not to be expansive enough for SOCOM. In November 2013, the command announced that it was seeking to identify industry partners who could, under SOCOM’s Trans Regional Web Initiative, potentially “develop new websites tailored to foreign audiences.” These would join an existing global network of ten propaganda websites, run by various combatant commands and made to look like legitimate news outlets, including CentralAsiaOnline.com, Sabahi which targets the Horn of Africa; an effort aimed at the Middle East known as Al-Shorfa.com; and another targeting Latin America called Infosurhoy.com.

SOCOM’s push into cyberspace is mirrored by a concerted effort of the command to embed itself ever more deeply inside the Beltway. “I have folks in every agency here in Washington, DC—from the CIA, to the FBI, to the National Security Agency, to the National Geospatial Agency, to the Defense Intelligence Agency,” SOCOM chief Admiral McRaven said during a panel discussion at Washington’s Wilson Center last year. Speaking at the Ronald Reagan Library in November, he put the number of departments and agencies where SOCOM is now entrenched at thirty-eight.

134 Chances for Blowback

Although elected in 2008 by many who saw him as an antiwar candidate, President Obama has proved to be a decidedly hawkish commander-in-chief whose policies have already produced notable instances of what in CIA trade-speak has long been called blowback. While the Obama administration oversaw a US withdrawal from Iraq (negotiated by his predecessor), as well as a drawdown of US forces in Afghanistan (after a major military surge in that country), the president has presided over a ramping up of the US military presence in Africa, a reinvigoration of efforts in Latin America, and tough talk about a rebalancing or “pivot to Asia” (even if it has amounted to little as of yet).

The White House has also overseen an exponential expansion of America’s drone war. While President Bush launched fifty-one such strikes, President Obama has presided over 330, according to research by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Last year, alone, the US also engaged in combat operations in Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. Recent revelations from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden have demonstrated the tremendous breadth and global reach of US electronic surveillance during the Obama years. And deep in the shadows, Special Operations forces are now annually deployed to more than double the number of nations as at the end of Bush’s tenure.

In recent years, however, the unintended consequences of US military operations have helped to sow outrage and discontent, setting whole regions aflame. More than ten years after America’s “mission accomplished” moment, seven years after its much vaunted surge, the Iraq that America helped make is in flames. A country with no Al Qaeda presence before the US invasion and a government opposed to America’s enemies in Tehran now has a central government aligned with Iran and two cities flying Al Qaeda flags.

A more recent US military intervention to aid the ouster of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi helped send neighboring Mali, a US-supported bulwark against regional terrorism, into a downward spiral, saw a coup there carried out by a US-trained officer, ultimately led to a bloody terror attack on an Algerian gas plant, and helped to unleash nothing short of a terror diaspora in the region.

And today South Sudan—a nation the US shepherded into being, has supported economically and militarily (despite its reliance on child soldiers), and has used as a hush-hush base for Special Operations forces—is being torn apart by violence and sliding toward civil war.

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The Obama presidency has seen the US military’s elite tactical forces increasingly used in an attempt to achieve strategic goals. But with Special Operations missions kept under tight wraps, Americans have little understanding of where their troops are deployed, what exactly they are doing, or what the consequences might be down the road. As retired Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich, professor of history and international relations at Boston University, has noted, the utilization of Special Operations forces during the Obama years has decreased military accountability, strengthened the “imperial presidency,” and set the stage for a war without end. “In short,” he wrote at TomDispatch, “handing war to the special operators severs an already too tenuous link between war and politics; it becomes war for its own sake.”

Secret ops by secret forces have a nasty tendency to produce unintended, unforeseen, and completely disastrous consequences. New Yorkers will remember well the end result of clandestine US support for Islamic militants against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the 1980s: 9/11. Strangely enough, those at the other primary attack site that day, the Pentagon, seem not to have learned the obvious lessons from this lethal blowback. Even today in Afghanistan and Pakistan, more than twelve years after the US invaded the former and almost ten years after it began conducting covert attacks in the latter, the US is still dealing with that Cold War–era fallout: with, for instance, CIA drones conducting missile strikes against an organization (the Haqqani network) that, in the 1980s, the Agency supplied with missiles.

Without a clear picture of where the military’s covert forces are operating and what they are doing, Americans may not even recognize the consequences of and blowback from our expanding secret wars as they wash over the world. But if history is any guide, they will be felt—from Southwest Asia to the Mahgreb, the Middle East to Central Africa and, perhaps eventually, in the United States as well.

In his blueprint for the future, SOCOM 2020, Admiral McRaven has touted the globalization of US special ops as a means to “project power, promote stability, and prevent conflict.” Last year, SOCOM may have done just the opposite in 134 places.


This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com
Sources www.thenation.com

15 Year Old Invents Device That Generates Electricity While You Walk

15-year-old Angelo Casimiro from the Philippines recently made international news with a new invention that generates electricity in a very new and interesting way.

The invention is a shoe insole that harnesses electricity every time that the person wearing the shoe takes a step. Angelo constructed his device using piezoelectric materials, which actually generate an alternating current voltage every time they are squeezed.

According to a blog post made by the teenager, “Piezoelectricity was present ever since mid-18th century. Piezoelectricity is the electric charge that accumulates in certain solid materials (such as crystals, certain ceramics in response to applied mechanical stress.”

Young Angelo has been working hard developing this idea for the past 4 years, since he was 11 years old.  Now that he believes he has perfected his invention, he is prepared to share it with the world.  He started by entering the project into this year’s Google’s Science Fair, where he has become a regional finalist: